Lets think about why Tryndamere players feel like they have to split push all game.

Critkeeper··3 votes·1,362 views

All he has going for him is his auto attack damage-- he is strictly inferior to Yi or fiora at assassinating squishies reliably in a complicated team fight. What I mean is that if he can't scare the bejesus out of everyone on the enemy team then they can just put a disruptive tank on top of Tryndamere and prevent him from doing anything in a team fight. Even if they don't have that they can still zone him off with slow fields and knock backs because Tryndamere isn't particularly fast and spinning slash isn't a particularly quick dash. At the end of the day its just plain hard to fight with Tryndamere in a team fight without being focused and denied the ability to contribute anything meaningful, so this is exactly why most Tryndamere players just split push.

When he doesn't have anything particularly valuable to offer in a team fight he ends up being relegated to split pushing all day. There are plenty of champions that can split push every bit as well as Tryndamere, including Jax, Nasus, and Yi. The difference is that those champions don't HAVE to ALWAYS split push because they have something valuable to offer in a team fight. Tryndamere simply put, doesn't do enough damage to the people who want to sit on him in a team fight to keep him from trying to 2 shot a squishy. Jax has magic damage and enough durability to ignore the base damages that tanks have, and Yi has true damage and his attack speed cannot be slowed by wardens mail or frozen heart. Fiora is just impossible to peel outside of killing her inside the duration of a stun.

I'm not saying Tryndamere is bad at split pushing or that he is a weak champion. In fact he is overall quite strong. I'm saying that he doesn't have options. He just does the same thing every game because he doesn't have any real choice in the matter, and its boring to play against and its quite boring to play with.

The whole reason RIOT keeps Tryndamere weak as a team fighter is because they don't want someone who can be immune to death 2 shotting squishies with no counterplay-- they want to ensure that there is always a way to prevent Tryndamere from killing your carry no matter what your team comp is, because if you feel as though you can't then Tryndamere becomes what he was before his rework in season 2, a low counterplay hard carry.

I propose to fix that by making it impossible for Tryndamere to 2 shot anything-- he might need as many as 4 hits at the bare minimum to kill the squishiest of targets now, and likely 5 or 6.

Tryndamere should do 1*AD true damage on a crit instead of 2*AD physical damage like everyone else.

The strength he gets as a tradeoff for this and the other weaknesses mentioned above is that he would kill virtually anyone in 4 seconds. Consider that most squishies will have 2000ish hitpoints and an end game flat armor pen based Tryndamere can kill a squishy in 2 hits, which takes about 1 second. With this proposed change he would need 4 hits at the least because he would do at most half as much damage per second against a squishy with less than 100 armor, so he would need a bit more than 2 seconds. Most tanks have a combination of armor and health, and usually not more than 4000 health; but 4000 is only twice 2000, so it would only take Tryndamere roughly 4 seconds to kill a tank since he pretty much ignores armor after getting some critical strike chance from items.

I just think Tryndamere should be able to kill anything in less than 4 seconds, and nothing in less than 2 seconds. If you are standing near Tryndamere in a team fight, it doesn't matter if you are malphite or rammus with 500 armor-- he should punish you hard, and the reason that is fair is because he doesn't last forever. It isn't hard to force Tryndamere to activate his "time limit" and after 5 seconds he becomes a worthless liability in a team fight. So before and during that 5 seconds he ought to damn well be able to throw his weight around no matter which tanky bruiser is trying to push him around.

The basic idea is to make him less of an assassin and more of a fighter. He wouldn't really care who he is hitting since he does the same damage number to everyone, he just cares that he is actually hitting something. That makes him more flexible in team fights since you can zone off tanks like nautilus and maoki, UNLESS you are focused with CC. This change doesn't make Tryndamere any less susceptible to CC than he is now, but it offers him a way to be strong without mandating that he dive the enemy carry each and every time with no choice involved.

It also makes him a bit easier to handle in a split push because his damage is roughly half as much as it currently is against squishy targets late game. That means it becomes much easier for someone like lissandra or lucian to burst Tryndamere and survive him for long enough for his ult to expire.

It does make Tryndamere incredibly strong against tanks and off tanks, but it also makes him much weaker against a variety of other champions, like mages and marksmen.

11 Comments

DropFill6 votes

No, tryndamere has such a toxic design ( his W slows if you try to run, and doesn't reward you for fighting instead because it rapes of your AD ). His ult is stupid, his passive is cheese early game, he has his stupid sustain and his escape has low Cd because of crit

360D3GR3SS1 votes

He needs a new passive.

FalconPawwwwnch3 votes

"Jax has enough base durability"

Except Tryndamere has like 300 more HP than Trynd at level 18 along with -80 AD aoe and 5 seconds immunity. Jax does not have more innate durability than tryndamere. He just builds tankier because he has better base damages. Tryndamere has the luxury of building full glass, Jax doesn't, that's why he's given better base damages

Nonetheless all melee dps sucks right now because there's too much CC and damage in the game, that's why every melee dps is only used as a splitpusher now

Sooko2 votes

It does make Tryndamere incredibly strong against tanks and off tanks, but it also makes him much weaker against a variety of other champions, like mages and marksmen.

The problem is that there are already many champions weak against mages and marksmen, and very little champions weak against Tanks.

Critkeeper1 votes

Why does Tryndamere have to be one of them though, if this very thing just causes him to avoid interacting with the enemy team as much as possible and split push all day?

We could make quite a few champions weak to tanks, some would adjust to that new weakness more easily than others. Obviously Tryndamere doesn't take that as a weakness very gracefully because it flattens his gameplay to "just split push and never do anything else"

RevyUp2 votes

I agree lets give Tryndamere Poppy's ult. Bam he is now a teamfighter.

Lord Dusteon2 votes

So your suggestion to make tryndamere non toxic... Is to make literally the only counter to him cc and peeling.

Hint, if you get to where a champion both can do 500+ true damage 2 times a second AND become literally unkillable for 5 seconds that's toxic.

The highest comparison would be Kog + Zyra's passives (though those require death, one time hit only), Darius's ult (can only be used once unless you get a kill with it, then can be used for the next 20 seconds; requires bleed stacks to do max damage), or Yi's E (only works for 5 seconds, much lower true damage, lose AD passive after using it). You are suggesting to basically give Tryndamere a stronger Darius ult on no cooldown for his autoattack.

Critkeeper1 votes

So your suggestion to make tryndamere non toxic... Is to make literally the only counter to him cc and peeling.

Hint, if you get to where a champion both can do 500+ true damage 2 times a second AND become literally unkillable for 5 seconds that's toxic.

The highest comparison would be Kog + Zyra's passives (though those require death, one time hit only), Darius's ult (can only be used once unless you get a kill with it, then can be used for the next 20 seconds; requires bleed stacks to do max damage), or Yi's E (only works for 5 seconds, much lower true damage, lose AD passive after using it). You are suggesting to basically give Tryndamere a stronger Darius ult on no cooldown for his autoattack.

The damage would be approximately one darius ult per second, assuming you can auto attack unimpeded and the target doesn't run away.

That sounds like a lot, but consider that Tryndamere currently does far more than that against squishy targets. In fact, Tryndamere's damage output versus a squishy target at end game is close to 2000 damage per second even after armor, which is comparable to the nexus laser.

There is nothing about Tryndamere's theme that screams "I'm an assassin". He is a raging barbarian king, he should be a fighter first and foremost. He shouldn't really care about who he targets as long as he is hitting something. He shouldn't be able to kill carries in one second before they can react, but he also shouldn't tickle armor stacking tanks.

I'm talking about making the counterplay to Tryndamere uniform. Right now the counterplay to Tryndamere isn't to peel him from your carries, its to not ever let him be next to the carry in the first place. If he is in a position next to your carry for more than 1 second, then the carry is already dead.

With this change you have a bit more reaction time to deal with Tryndamere because he will actually take some time to kill a squishy, probably around 2 and a half seconds of auto attacking, which means he has to root himself twice as often and so not only will he be slower at killing carries it will also be more difficult for him to do that.

The counter to Tryndamere should not be armor and health, it should be damage and disengage.

Lord Dusteon2 votes

So your suggestion to make tryndamere non toxic... Is to make literally the only counter to him cc and peeling.

Hint, if you get to where a champion both can do 500+ true damage 2 times a second AND become literally unkillable for 5 seconds that's toxic.

The highest comparison would be Kog + Zyra's passives (though those require death, one time hit only), Darius's ult (can only be used once unless you get a kill with it, then can be used for the next 20 seconds; requires bleed stacks to do max damage), or Yi's E (only works for 5 seconds, much lower true damage, lose AD passive after using it). You are suggesting to basically give Tryndamere a stronger Darius ult on no cooldown for his autoattack.

The damage would be approximately one darius ult per second, assuming you can auto attack unimpeded and the target doesn't run away.

That sounds like a lot, but consider that Tryndamere currently does far more than that against squishy targets. In fact, Tryndamere's damage output versus a squishy target at end game is close to 2000 damage per second even after armor, which is comparable to the nexus laser.

There is nothing about Tryndamere's theme that screams "I'm an assassin". He is a raging barbarian king, he should be a fighter first and foremost. He shouldn't really care about who he targets as long as he is hitting something. He shouldn't be able to kill carries in one second before they can react, but he also shouldn't tickle armor stacking tanks.

I'm talking about making the counterplay to Tryndamere uniform. Right now the counterplay to Tryndamere isn't to peel him from your carries, its to not ever let him be next to the carry in the first place. If he is in a position next to your carry for more than 1 second, then the carry is already dead.

With this change you have a bit more reaction time to deal with Tryndamere because he will actually take some time to kill a squishy, probably around 2 and a half seconds of auto attacking, which means he has to root himself twice as often and so not only will he be slower at killing carries it will also be more difficult for him to do that.

The counter to Tryndamere should not be armor and health, it should be damage and disengage.

Well guess what? When your only counter to someone is "damage and disengage", and you then give that person 5 seconds of not dying, a large AoE AD removal + slow, and a gapcloser with a cooldown that lowers for doing your main source of damage, you kinda make the only counter cc and running for your life.

At no point should the ONLY way to survive a champion be, no matter what, spamming your cc and running.

Critkeeper1 votes

At no point should the ONLY way to survive a champion be, no matter what, spamming your cc and running.

I don't agree with this statement. The danger of making absolute statements like these is that if they are followed rigorously then you will never have champions which break the mold, like karthus.

Once I asked morello why some champions like karthus and tryndamere are allowed to defy the standard for counterplay by which everyone else is held to, and he said (i'm paraphrasing from a thread on the old forum) that the purpose of having a standard in the first place is to increase the value of the game. The question is always "what increases the value of league of legends?"; having clear and uniform counterplay makes the game more approachable and increases its value.

He then said that sometimes it is "worth it" to break this rule if what is gained would provide enough value to outweigh the clarity or uniformity otherwise provided. Even though karthus and tryndamere violate the rules of clarity and counterplay, it is worth having them in league of legends because the game would have less value without them. The fact that a champion with as crazy a kit as Tryndamere or Karthus can exist in league attracts players to league interested in experiencing something distinctly new, and in that way it increases the value of the game.

So I don't think it is wise to make a wide all encompassing statement like "At no point should the ONLY way to survive a champion be, no matter what, spamming your cc and running.". The question isn't a matter of what is philosophically correct or what is fair, it is a question of value, and what increases the value of the game.

You may think that the value increase due to incorporating a change like the one I suggested is too low to justify violating a balance principle, but I would point out that Tryndamere already does this anyway, so we are half way there! And yes I am aware that slippery slope is slippery.

Still though, sion in his passive has the same pattern. CC him and run from him or die to his lifesteal machine. And the counterplay to karthus is to just run from him after he goes into his passive-- both of these champion do have to die first, but from a fundamental point of view that doesn't really change HOW the interaction takes place, only the context in which it takes place. The difference is how difficult it is to run from Tryndamere, and I would be all for making Tryndamere easier to run from if these changes were implemented.

For example we could make spin stop when it hits the first champion, so tryndamere can't dive past you and into your carry with spinning slash. We could also tune mocking shout by giving some additional counterplay, like a visible shockwave rather than allowing it to be instantaneous after the cast animation.

Lord Dusteon1 votes

In the case of Sion, he's kinda like a Kog'maw or Zyra. Yes, after he dies he can do damage to you and maybe kill you, but your only counterplay through his entire life isn't spamming cc and running. You can kite him, try and kill him (not a very worthwhile choice most of the time, but something you could do), or even try and outfight him (really not smart, but again, it is a possible choice that could work). The counterplay to karthus, again, is based around where he is when he dies, his immobility, and his lack of anything but more damage (except for his wall, for some cc). While that damage is map wise for Karthus, it happens once on a long cooldown, and is easily countered by any mr item, shields, healing, or any form of sustain (or just ignoring it, as if you aren't in immediate danger it can be ignored).

Your Tryndamere would have much less counterplay than any of these. While Tryndamere already has item counterplay (thornmail, frozen heart, randuins; any armor or hp will help you), his counterplay besides that is either built in (IE Nasus W, Jax E) or ccing him and waiting for his ultimate to end (and hoping he hasn't kill you). Making him have guaranteed heavy true damage every strike removes most of his counterplay, item wise (randuins/frozen heart could work a SMALL bit in mitigating his damage, but no much), which makes the only way to stop tryndamere from destroying you is using cc and running. Due to constant true damage, you cannot attempt to tank any better than buying multiple warmogs and praying, and due to his ultimate trying to burst down or fight him is completely futile.

Basically, this change seems more likely to make Tryndamere completely steamroll most games without great peeling + built in counters, and be maybe balanced in the others (except you now, know he can toxic splitpush constantly and get guaranteed true damage nuke crits on everyone).

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