Tryndamere Build Guide by Amikke

Introduction

DISCLAIMER: This guide is kinda old and noobish. The masteries are outdated and the runes are wrong. Items are only partially good. Keep in mind tho that I played Trynda on this build for quite some time and it still is very useful to help understand Tryndamere's gameplay.

Welcome to my Tryndamere guide. Please note that this guide is a work in progress, and by now it's mainly for people starting to play with this champion. Below I will try to show you some strategies and tips & tricks for him. If you find anything bad or useless, please tell me in the comments. I hope you'll enjoy this guide!

Pros / Cons

______ Pros: Quite tanky for carry Incredible damage output Good escape/pursuit method One of the best ultimates in a game (imo)

SPACE

Cons: Quite long cooldown on base abilities Not easy to master Vulnerable to CC

Basically, Tryndamere takes a while to learn, but when you do, you just come out of nowhere and spread destruction to your heart's extend. Sight of swirling figure suddenly appearing next to them is something your opponents will come to fear.

Masteries

Mastery tree is a quite standard for carry 21/9/0. I chose Havoc instead of Vampirism , because additional damage is way more useful then little lifesteal, especially with this build. Everything else is the most standard thing you can have.

Runes

We get increased attack damage by Greater Mark of Attack Damage, which counts very much for a champion based on AS and crit. strike, Greater Seal of Armor's bonus armor adds this little useful sustainability, and Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction cuts long cooldowns of our base abilities. For Quintessences I like Greater Quintessence of Critical Damage, but Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed, Greater Quintessence of Desolation and Greater Quintessence of Scaling Attack Damage are also good.
You can, of course, set your own runes, but this is the setup I play on, and it's very good.

Summoner Spells

Most useful spell in the game. Your Spinning Slash has a long cooldown, especially when you have to run instead of fighting, and ability to jump on this distance is very appreciated.
Slows target's healing abilities and deals damage over time. Very useful, and good at securing kills.
If you want to jungle, and know what you're doing, take this. In other cases, why would you?
Good spell, if you have trouble with pursuits, take this.
I don't think it's better in any way than Flash or Exhaust.
Nothing to explain. Like to play safe? Take this. It can save your butt if you misuse Undying Rage.
Why would you? Just having this instantly classifies you as feeder in eyes of your teammates. It's useless for everything but supports.
Spell mostly for APs. Even more atack speed? Why?
Tryndamere has trouble with all kinds of CC, so it may be a good choice for safe players.
You don't even have mana!
Trouble with farming or pushing? Such a thing doesn't exist for Tryndamere.
Useless on Twisted Treeline. Even Ghost is better for fast traveling.
Meh. Good for detecting ganks, but as long as you have good teammates, ganking you will be hard.

Skill Sequence

Practical uses of Tryndamere's abilities:

This passive is awesome, but it improves damage. Until you buy some item improving this stat, it isn't as useful as others. Use it to heal after defeating minon wave, and ALWAYS use it after Undying Rage. If you don't, anything that deals damage (minion attack for example) can kill you.

Get it before Undying Rage, but max last.

This ability instead of enchanting your stats, lowers enemy's ones. What is the outcome?
Pros:

• Your teammates also benefit from it, to extend of turning teamfight into one-sided massacre.
• Helps with defending practically anything.
• It's powerful enough to make tanking damage easy.
• Great for pursuits.

Cons:

• Long cooldown.
• Lasts only 4 seconds.
• Your opponent must be turned back to you to slow him down.

This is awesome pursuit/escape tool. It's also extremely useful with clearing minion waves. It has very long cooldown, but it's reduced by 2 seconds every time you make critical hit. My build is based on attack speed and crit. chance, which makes this cooldown easy to cease in mid and late game.

That ulti... It exceeds every other same-type ultimates I've seen so far. Poppy with her Diplomatic Immunity can go hide herself. Undying Rage makes you invulnerable to anything. Upon using it, you have 5 seconds of total immunity to death. Whole team can go against you, and you won't die. They can use everything they've got, and still you'll be there, massacring their little red bars. This + Bloodlust passive, and you have in your hands the most powerful champion on Twisted Treeline. Timing it is what separates bad Tryndameres from good Tryndameres. Mastering this ability will probably take much time, so don't give up after few fails. I personally recommend training this on bots, so you won't spoil the game for your teammates so much. And remember to ALWAYS use Bloodlust after it. Undying Rage is also a reason why Tryndamere is best on Twisted Treeline - in many situations you can deal with three champions at once, but doing this on The Summoner's Rift, against five, is practically impossible.

Core Items

Ideal item combo for Tryndamere is Berserker's Greaves Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, Madred's Bloodrazor, Last Whisper and Youmuu's Ghostblade. Honestly speaking, if your teammates don't feed totally the enemy, or you aren't up against some battling genius, you'll end game even before getting full Madred's Bloodrazor. When you get Recurve Bow with your previous items, you're practically unbeatable, and take down towers in no-time.
Some useful tips:

• If your enemies are stacking armor, get Last Whisper before Madred's Bloodrazor.
• I personally take Youmuu's Ghostblade because I don't like usable items and don't want to lose gold bonus from Alvarice Blade
• It's of course up to you if you want to buy items in other order, although I strongly recommend getting items up to Phantom Dancer the way I showed.

Sustain Items

As an AD carry, you'll have max. one inventory space for defense item. Tryndamere is kinda tanky and gets part of his attack from lowering HP, so I practically never use any defense items, but if you are up against CC heavy team, you should get one of those two:

Very useful, but opponents can break its shield easily with basic ability, and then use one they wanted. Despite that, in most cases I choose it instead of Quicksilver Sash.

Many people find it more useful than Banshee's Veil, because you get to choose which debuff you want to remove. If you're good with usable items and know what you're doing, take it.

Gameplay

There are some useful Tips&Tricks that should help you get more kills, and survive dangerous situations:

1. You probably question why did I chose Mocking Shout as first ability. That's for gaining First Blood. Though you have to decide if you want to decrease incoming damage from the start, or save this ability to slow down enemy running away. Spinning Slash is second because of chase/escape ability.

2. Spinning Slash enables you to get trough any wall on Twisted Treeline. Abuse it! :D

3. Tryndamere's mobility and pushing abilities makes him shine best at top lane. From there you can gank enemies everywhere.

4. Decide if you want to use Spinning Slash to surprise enemy getting through wall, or save it for chasing.

5. Be careful with getting through walls, because you can disturb monsters you don't want attacking you right now. Pursuing Flashing enemy through Ebonmaw's wall can be deadly.

6. When pursuing, use Mocking Shout after Spinning Slash. Don't do it though, if you think your enemy can escape it's slowing effect in some way.

7. Unless you have low health and need every bit of it, use Bloodlust after clearing minion wave, not as soon as you get full fury bar.

8. Avoid any CC! It can ruin your 5 seconds of god mode, and you'd get easily killed.

Jungling

On Twisted Treeline there's no specific jungler, and taking Smite is just a waste of summonner's spell. Every following jungling tip was made keeping in mind my normal build.

You can get normal wolves (outside corners of upper jungle) from the start. For golems (can spawn instead of wolves) you'd need at least lvl 2. Getting bottom jungle corners is possible since you get Bloodlust, and soloing Grez, The Lizard Lord (middle of bottom jungle, gives you red buff) can be done on about lvl 6. Since this level you can easily defeat whatever creep you want excluding Ebonmaw (middle of upper jungle). For him you'd need at least lvl 13, but I strongly recommend soloing him on higher levels. If you have tank, you can easily beat him even earlier, but it depends on how much are you fed. Take

Your Counterpics

He can easily ignore your blows and then stun you. Quite hard opponent.

I once played 1v1 Tryndamere vs. Nocturne. No way. He can pursue you, escape you, and most likely just kill you using his Unspeakable Horror. Very hard, better get your teammates to gank him often.

His passive is wrecking damage from every champion based on attack speed. Also he can stun you, he has nice shield, can get tanky and his ult is just a pain in the butt to deal with. Avoid him if you can.

Not that bad, although still your counterpick. Nicely timed Spirit Fire combined with Siphoning Strike will wreck your ult and kill you. His 90% slow is also deadly.

You Counterpick

You counterpick practically every other champion without heavy CC, including Tryndamere itself. Though Trynda is exceptionally good against:

She can't do much if you counter her Hiten Style with you Mocking Shout. Use it wisely, and every encountered Irelia will mean a free kill to you.

Dash & kill. She has slow, you have slow, she has dash, you have better dash, she has damage, you have Mocking Shout. Basically you counter every bit of her. Beware of her ult though, if you'd have to run with Undying Rage and Bloodlust, she can easily finish you.

Summary & Credits

Why did I decide to make this guide although I'm not perfectly good with LOL overall? Because with this build it's easy even for me to get double and triple kills, and stats like 19/4/3 stopped surprising me.

For now this is be it. I'll update this guide as soon as I'll find out something useful. Please write any comments and constructive critic you have.

Note: I discovered practically anything this guide contains by myself. If you find it similar to some other guide, tell me, and I'll look it up and decide what to do.

Credits:

• Special thanks to JhoiJhoi for her awesome guide and custom separators.
• Thanks to random dude on co-op vs AI, where I trained playing Trynda for one advice: "trynda, attack speed". This was the beginning of my search for ideal Tryndamere.
• Also thanks to people, that created pictures I included.

The only thing I fear is that if this build spreads, Riot could nerf Tryndamere's benefits from attack speed. But if they didn't nerf Xin...

Changelog

2012-09-03: Changed starting items from dagger to boots&pots. Added Last Whisper, Bloodthirster and stat potions.