Tristana Build Guide by joeishere

Hi, thanks for commenting! You pose a great question that I neither addressed nor mentioned before. [Morello's Evil Tome] is a great mid-tier item, giving CDR, mana regen, and AP. I feel my explanation is going to get length, but here goes:

Deathfire Grasp is truly my bread and butter with AP Tristana for a number of reasons. While it's not necessary to secure kills against squishy mid-lane champs, it is somewhat of an insurance. A number of things can go wrong when you attempt to kill a champion. They might have summoner heal, or exhaust, which can be crippling to you. They might move or flash out from under your Rocket Jump and avoid a lot of your burst. They might go for fast Mercury Treads on top of the MR/lvl runes. Perhaps they are natural healers like Nidalee, Vlad, Morgana, or Soraka who can keep their health relatively high in lane. Worse still, they might have a combination of all of the aforementioned. All these things make it harder and harder to kill an enemy 1v1. For only around 2500 gold, this item gives you 60 AP, and a spell that does a high percentage of their total that scales with your AP. It's sort of a fail-safe that ensures you continue to get fed at all stages of the game if you're playing intelligently.

There are other factors besides burst damage though. Morello's Evil Tome gives 15 more AP, 2 more mana/5, and 5% more CDR and the total cost of the item is 260 less than DFG. So let's address these one by one:

Gold: The 260 difference between the two items can be minimized by getting a Kage's Lucky Pick early on and then finishing your DFG once you've farmed up 1845 gold. Putting things into perspective, 260 gold is less than 2 creep waves or 1 champion kill.

Mana Regen: With runes and a Philosopher's Stone, you can pretty much stay at full mana if you spam your skills every time they're off cooldown. 2 more mana/5 equates to a difference of 6%. That might sound like a lot, but as a champion who only gets oom early game or when chaining Rocket Jumps, it's not a big deal.

Ability Power: How much damage does 15 AP add to your full burst? Her abilities scale at 0/.8/1/1.5, or in other words, 2.3*15 damage. The difference in ability power between the two items add 34.5 damage to your burst (before magic resist). Or, if you want to account for the Deathcap Passive, it adds 44.85 damage to your total burst (before magic resist). This seems negligible when you compare it to the DFG active which has a minimum of 200 damage. I've seen the DFG alone do well over 1000 damage in late game. Since it scales per 100 AP, it can do 54.5% of the target's current health in the end game. But the MET will never exceed 44.85 extra damage from abilities when compared to DFG.

CDR: This is really the only one that's open to debate. CDR is definitely a huge plus for AP Trist. Here's the way I see it: If you are 100% sure you can secure kills at all stages of the game without a DFG, then go ahead and skip it. You can plant your full combo down on enemy champions every 36.6 seconds with max CDR. Active abilities are not affected by CDR so if you rely on the DFG, you can only use your full burst every 60 seconds. However, on a field with 5 enemy summoners, the chances of running across one champion that will fall without the added burst from DFG increasingly diminishes as the game falls into later game. Even with max CDR, your usefulness in team fights falls off the edge after your initial gigantic burst. The only way to sustain damage in team fights is to chain Rocket Jumps, which is not dependent on CDR, but on whether or not enemy champions were slain.

To sum it all up, as your opponents get smarter and tougher, you want to maximize your damage as much as possible so you can play the role of not only anti-carry, but also tank-slayer and assassin. My build is aimed at giving you the biggest burst possible. I've had far too many ranked games against a fed Tanky DPS where we kill 4 of the enemy team and can't kill that one last champion who scores an ace. But with this build, you should have no problem bursting down the 4400HP Lee Sin with Force of Nature, Warmog's, and Banshee's Veil with a Sona healing him from behind. Maybe you won't be able to kill him 1v1 at full health, but at least in team fights, if you bring him low enough for your team to kill, your remaining 4 should be able to win without their most fed champion. Or in the case that you end up in a 1v2 skirmish vs two squishies, a DFG can score you an instant double kill, whereas a MET won't be of much help. If you find that DFG active is not necessary to maintain kills throughout long games, then by all means, skip it. There are better items that you can get in its stead that give you more damage and survivability. But as far as my experiences and choices go, a 15-minute DFG will make you a truly fearsome opponent for the next 15 minutes. And if you can get fed enough to finish a Void Staff before the entire enemy team starts to stack magic resist, there's nothing that can stop you from rolling in 20-30+ kills in the course of the game.

Good guide but ... ap trist is kind a usless .. and very focused

so my ranked randummie team couldn't decide who the jungler should be and we ended up with 2. Seing the team's demise beforehand, I thought I might as well troll into the defeat, and went AP Trist solo bot.

only 1050 elo, but I had no deaths - just the simple awe of this build remained when we won.

This surely made my weekend. +1

I use this site all the time and have never signed up.

But I JUST signed up just so I can tell you, this guide was AMAZING. I have had so much fun with AP tristana, and AD tristana just doesn't seem plausible anymore.

Thank you ever so much for this guide. +1

I LOOOOOVVEE AP TRIST!!!!!!
She's just do OPed

I voted up, i love non meta player, feel free to see my Kayle guide.

I like the guide, ap trist is stupidly powerful in laning and mid phases. a champ that you might want to put in for your versus section is Veigar. Simply put his picture and name and the fact that he only has about 900 hp at lvl 6. ur ult alone will almst kill him. simply farm off him and dont rush ap against him early on (b/c of his ult).

She... Just.... Scales.... Too... Well.....

I LOVE just about everything in this guide, awesome, but the only thing you should take a look at is the equation for magic resistance and penatration.
You can find it on leagueoflegends.wikia.com
Since magic penatration % is applied last, all other types of magic pen and reduction reduce the effectiveness of your void staff. All your red runes actually make your % pen from void staff less effective. So unless the enemy team is atleast building some mr, you should really think about subbing another item into that slot, as the gold can be spent on other items with similar ap amounts for more effective passives or less gold.

ad = knock down towers, ap = killz