[Tristana Rework] Make E a Skillshot

Jamener·Jan 19, 2015·18 votes·1,513 views

I've seen some videos of the new E on the PBE. I like it a lot because it provides a lot of different opportunities to make cool plays by combining all her skills. However! I think it's too easy to land. You just point and click and all of a sudden your lane opponent has to choose between backing off and losing CS or CSing and taking a big chunk of damage from an auto-attack empowered E. If you made it an arcing skillshot like Zigg's bomb, Trist could still shoot it over minions, but it would be dodgeable. That means it would be much less of an oppressive zoning ability. As it is right now, Trist has a zone (the radius of the new E) that's tough to enter without taking big harass.

7 Comments

UberAffeJan 19, 20154 votes

I agree with making it a "lobbing" skill shot but that also introduces new problems. What happens when it lands on the ground and not on someone. does it just explode or can she still stack it? what if it lands in a bush, does that now grant her vision?

JamenerJan 19, 20151 votes

Interesting point! I hadn't thought of that.

ErockandrollJan 19, 20154 votes

Too many Problems to make a skill shot. Considering that you need a clear line of fire to use it. It would have to have Jinx's zap level of damage to be good.

This is still more interactive than her Previous E which was completely fire and forget. (cast one, back off, at it will do it's damage) She now at least has to auto attack you to get the full effect.

MrBuffingtonJan 20, 20153 votes

I think that's the reason they're experimenting with lower base damages; Tristana needs to AA her target to get much use out of it, which, considering they're gutting her AS/lvl even more, it's going to be more difficult to get the full damage until she has more items. They want to keep Tristana a relatively simple champion to play (something that I personally am grateful for), so I don't think they'll turn it into a skillshot. I do think they can afford to nerf the damage more, though I'm not sure without seeing it in game. Tristana looks like a champion where you have to bait out her abilities and abuse her windows of vulnerability to play against her effectively, since she does have pretty long cooldowns.

Teridax68Jan 20, 20152 votes

I'd give Trist's new E a try. It looks like a test on new ways to engineer unreliability: Riot's always looking to add ways to add counterplay or enemy-controlled unreliability to champions, and so far the most common way of implementing that has been skillshots. There are also a lot of ground-targeted abilities, delayed or heavily telegraphed skills, or effects that can be otherwise dodged completely, but so far the only enemy-targeted ability with a large degree of counterplay is Zed 's Death Mark. The new Explosive Shot follows the exact same model (point-and-click damage, with extra effort needed to make the damage significant), and I think its point-and-click guaranteed damage can actually be fine, provided it's gated well enough by its difficulty and mana cost. Unlike Trist's current E, which is massive fire-and-forget damage, her new skill deals little damage on its own, and requires Trist to put herself at risk, or at least focus her target, in order to make the most of her kit. I have a hunch that spamming it would quickly burn through Tristana's mana pool without achieving much, and if the ability's point-and-click damage is too high then it can always be rebalanced (you could slash the base amount of damage and increase the damage amp per autoattack, for example). Tristana isn't meant to be particularly mechanically complex for a marksman, and I think she could take over Ashe as the "learner-friendly" ADC.

SorryBoysImLesJan 20, 20151 votes

As long as the base damage on it is atrocious (as in low) when it goes live it shouldn't be a problem. I just hope Riot doesn't expect us to deal with potential Zilean bombs coming from currently one of the best ADC in game.