@Riot: A Tristana main's take on the current balance problem (parallel post to forum thread)

As someone who's stuck with Tristana through good times and bad, I want to talk a bit about where she is and how to get her back where she belongs. I have specific input on how to do this, but I would rather not focus on that in this thread, because to me, the most important thing is to describe the experience of Tristana play, how rewarding it was, and how that experience has been compromised. It's my understanding that what Riot finds most useful is accounts of user experiences – what felt satisfying, what felt frustrating, and the like. I'll readily admit I'm comparatively new to League of Legends. I started playing early in Season 3, and I didn't start playing ranked until November of last year. I played all sorts of champions but eventually settled on the ADC role. Missing skillshots is a frustrating experience for me, so I never really enjoyed playing mid lane mages. I've played in top lane some, and I've jungled some, but I always come back to ADC.

For a while, I started playing Jinx, and loved her. This is a champion who can do pretty much anything. She has a strong laning phase and scales beautifully into late game, she's got a global ultimate so she can help other lanes (or feed off of them), and a fed Jinx is ridiculous. There was a game where, caught out, I had the enemy champions come at me – first their ADC and top laner, whom I killed, then their jungle and support, whom I killed (at the expense of my guardian angel), and finally, rushing the base, I killed their mid laner for a 1v5 pentakill. This was in normals, at Bronze level, and I was ridiculously fed, so I know it wasn't impressive from a “skilled” perspective, but it was immensely satisfying. I'm pretty sure I played close to 100 straight games of only Jinx.

Then a game happened that I'll never forget. I had an epically great laning phase – I went something like 12-0-3. I felt invincible. While sieging mid, though, I got obliterated by a 2-0 Master Yi. I was upset that my perfect KDA was ruined, but then, the next teamfight, it happened again. I died first, without any kills. Just wrecked. I tried everything that game – split pushing, grouping, hanging back, rushing forward... I even tried different builds, because at full build I still had thousands of unused gold. I could not kill Yi, and I couldn't get him off of me. And because I was so easily neutralized, we ultimately lost that game. I ended something like 15-18-5. I have never been so frustrated after a game as I was in that one.

My least favorite phrase is “there's nothing I can do.” I like to think that every loss I suffer is in some way preventable by my own actions. If I won lane harder, if I positioned better, if I did something or other, the game would have been winnable. Imagine my frustration winning lane so hard and being ultimately unable to carry because I couldn't keep the Yi off of me. I was told my teammates were to blame because they wouldn't peel for me, but to me, that wasn't acceptable, because the answer rendered me powerless. I wanted something that I could do, myself, to win that game.

It wasn't just that Yi, either. There were Rengars, Wukongs, Dianas, the odd Jax... there were champions whom I couldn't escape from, who could destroy me slightly faster than I could destroy them. So I said goodbye to Jinx and took up Tristana. Around the very end of Season 3, I said, “I can't carry with Jinx because I can't peel for myself and I can't rely on my team to peel for me. Tristana can peel for herself.” Goodbye, Jinx. Hello, Trist.

Tristana's damage is not as strong as Jinx, I have to admit. She's considered the “queen of scaling,” but Jinx can do splash damage with her autos, meaning she doesn't always have to choose a target, so much as a group of targets. I still miss that. Tristana's lane phase is much weaker than Jinx's. Tristana's build path, at the time, was much rockier than Jinx's. It was an adjustment period, but it was necessary. I learned to take the weaker champion into lane and to still win (or at least tie and outscale) lane phase through superior knowledge of the matchup and mechanical skill. Keep in mind that at the time, Tristana was an off-meta champion. Varus was picked more often than her... VARUS. Still, after the rocky adjustment, I was starting to get good.

And then came Season 4. Goodbye, Janna, Nami, Sona. Hello, Leona, Annie and Thresh. And hello Lucian, Draven, Jinx, Draven, Sivir, Draven, Caitlyn... the lane bullies. I couldn't lane. Tristana had a choice between rushing Bloodthirster, and delaying her power spike until late-game, making her almost useless until after the all-important mid-game was over, or rushing Infinity Edge and just being destroyed in lane. No one picked Tristana because while she doesn't have the weakest of lane phases, she's much weaker than all the then-meta lane picks, and with the bully supports reinforcing this, she was almost unplayable. I suffered through it, though. Instead of buying Doran's Blade, I started Long Sword, built an early Vampiric Scepter, and then built IE. The Vamp Scepter plus Lifesteal quintessences allowed me to survive lane phase and hit my power spike much earlier. Lane phase was always a nightmare, but through careful play I could survive, and I wasn't useless mid-game. I used my E to halve enemy lifesteal during 1v1 trades, bringing Bloodthirster's advantage down a peg.

Then came the changes to lifesteal runes and the Heal summoner spell removing Grievous Wounds, and I finally had to put Tristana away. She was at the lowest I'd ever seen. She simply couldn't survive lane phase, because her E didn't allow her to win trades when the Grievous Wounds were just countered with the now go-to ADC summoner, and Lifesteal runes were no longer strong enough to keep her going with a Vamp Scepter alone. I started playing Lucian instead. It wasn't until a quality of life change made her jump easier to use (and her Q was made to cost no mana) that she was even remotely viable again, at which point I eagerly jumped back on that boat.

I just want to say, as an aside, that Tristana is REALLY fun to play. Her lane phase is weaker than most other ADCs, but strong play will allow you to win lane anyway, giving you a very rewarding feeling of accomplishment. The safety granted by her kit allows you to take risks you wouldn't dream of taking as Jinx or even Lucian or Corki, and sometimes those risks come back to bite you, but sometimes they pay off, giving you feelings of raising the stakes and playing like a goddamned hero. Playing her well early and reaching your late-game strength earlier gives genuine carry potential, allowing you to really take control of a game. The kill reset on her W allows you to live dangerously, jumping forward into what will be certain death unless you get a kill for a reset and escape. And, having played poorly with her and knowing how easy it is to punish her, success feels earned. Consistently walking the razor-thin line between epic success and epic failure is magical. You don't feel like you jumped onto a freelo, flavor-of-the-month champion and won because of course you did. You played well, and you were rewarded for playing well. And, when the enemy Yi and Kha'zix catch you, alone, and you push them both back with your ult and kite using your W to get a double kill and survive ignite – barely – thanks to the heal from Dangerous Game, you want to stand on your desk and shout “I AM A GOD!”

But then came the ADC item changes. Now, Bloodthirster is objectively a worse DPS item than Infinity Edge, even if you're a champion who scales off of bonus AD, because BT and IE give the same amount of AD. Bloodthirster now costs only 300 less than IE, and Doran's Blade now grants all the lifesteal you need to bypass BT completely. Now, Tristana doesn't have to do anything special to survive lane phase and build IE, because everyone else is building it. Her weakness is almost nonexistant now. And, as a Tristana player, I'm frustrated.

I don't like fighting for my Tristana pick – especially since you changed Lucian, and the new items fit much less snugly into his kit, so my second go-to ADC is no longer as reliable a pick. I don't like seeing her constantly banned. I don't like seeing people insist that playing her requires no skill. I don't like that I'm almost guaranteed to have the enemy jungler, mid-laner, and sometimes even teleporting top-laner making me such a priority. I don't like that despite all the camps and nonsense, there's so much expectation from my support and team to carry, to the point where I've been told “Never play ADC again” several times after being destroyed by repeated 4v2's, while the team expects me to be able to carry just because I'm Tristana. More, the team thinks that I'm some sort of freelo-grabbing noob who locked in Tristana because all the cool kids were doing it. There's been an increase in Tristana's overall strength, yes, but also an increase in the expectation, the adversity, and the overall toxicity that I face while playing Trist.

I can readily admit that Tristana is too strong right now, but not because she's actually too strong – because her predators are all too weak now. What on EARTH happened to Lucian, to Draven, to the occasional stubborn Varus or Quinn player? They've all lost their ridiculous early damage items, and now Tristana can survive – even thrive – in lane without any real difficulty. I miss the old lane phases, where surviving at all with Tristana was a bloody struggle, where the road to Infinity Edge was paved with tears and desperation. I miss the feeling of satisfaction when buying Infinity Edge, looking the enemy Draven in the face and saying “My turn,” like some V for Vendetta badass, now suddenly a threat despite the odds seemingly being stacked against him.

To those calling for Tristana nerfs, I say, I understand you, but really, that's not going to solve the problem. Tristana will be replaced with Vayne, with Twitch, with Jinx and Kog'maw. Those champions have already been strong, have already been dominating their share of games. It's just that Tristana is the undisputed queen right now, because all of her natural predators have been neutered. To Riot, I beg you – bring back her predators. Even Draven seems toothless, and plays scared, like the only thing he fears more than letting Tristana farm is letting Tristana get a kill. Let Graves and Draven and Lucian separate the strong Tristanas from the pretenders. Do away with Tristana the empress bully and return to us Tristana the heroic underdog.

The thing that made Tristana, TRISTANA, is that she sacrifices so much in the way of ease in exchange for independence. You want to have your own peel, and still have high DPS potential? Fine, you got it, but you can forget about safely farming at your turret – your passive is going to auto-push the lane, so you're going to have to venture into the wilderness if you want farm. Also, you can forget about buying your damage for free, because everyone else is going to be stronger, earlier, and they're going to make you pay for every minion you earn. Sure, your abilities do damage, but they scale off of AP, so your damage will gradually become less and less of a factor without the items you have to fight so hard to obtain. Bot lane used to be a bloodbath, from which Tristana could emerge only if she possessed the cunning, resilience and tenacity to do so, because she had not the ferocity or raw power to make it through in any other way.

Without a real predator in bot lane, the hyper carries, including Tristana will continue to be the bane of the top lane tanks and their ilk. Hyper carries, as a sub-class, have had their largest downside removed, and it's bad for the game. I beg you, Riot, reinstate the lane bullies. End the free ride for Tristana mains like me, make us earn our spot in bot lane through strong play through lanes that will unapologetically destroy us if we err. Make bot lane fun again.