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Runes: Burst Damage
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor
Spells:
Heal
Ignite
Items
Threats & Synergies
Annie
Pay attention when she has 4 stacks of her passive as she can easily one shot you. This is a pretty desperate matchup as she is better in engage, trades, poke and teamfights. Pay attention, ward and roam.
Greetings summoner. My name is Tauricus. I am a League of Legends player and guide writer since the very end of season 6. This guide is aimed at an AP Tristana. You can play her on all lanes but you will find the most success as a midlaner or ADC. AP Tristana has a lot lower DPS and late game potential then AD Tristana but on the other hand she has an insane burst damage and can make it pretty awkward for an enemy team to buy defensive items against. The main point of this guide is to help you have fun with Tristana and make you try something new and interesting. Have fun <3 |
450 BE / 585 RP
Secondary Bar:
Mana
Release Date:
2009-02-21
Secondary Attributes:
Ability Power
Style:
Marksman
Difficulty:
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Health: Health regeneration: Mana: Mana regeneration: Range: |
559 – 2055 3.75 – 14.8 250 – 794 7.2 – 14.85 525 - 661 |
Attack damage: Attack speed: Armor: Magic resistance: Movement speed: |
61 – 117.1 0.656 (+ 0 – 25.5%) 26 – 77 30 – 38.5 325 |
- Are stressful to play against
- Are very strong in the current meta
- Counter a champion they want to play
An example of a champion that is very strong at the current meta as for time I was writing this is Sona. At the time of me writing this, she is holding a 52.77% winrate and her playrate is only growing up. She is powerful, popular and very effective at this time.
An example of a champion that counters Tristana would probably be Sivir. She can easily block your very expectable Rocket Jump and this ability is pretty much all damage you have with this build. Sivir just counters Tristana with her playstyle and there is nothing you can do about it.
But If you really don't have a champion to BAN, then here are my personal recommendations:
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✱ Cheap Shot Tristana rather always takes Cheap Shot or Sudden Impact. Both of those amplify your damage from Rocket Jump engage. I would personally say that as for right now Cheap Shot provides less damage and thus should be never taken. |
✱ Taste of Blood Hypothetically a good rune. Great into poke matchups and allws you to keep up in lane. However usually When I face a poke champion I don't want to "survive" his damage and just CS, I want to crush it to the ground and that is Why is this rune usually pretty bad. It allows you to survive your opponent, but not to kill it. |
✔ Sudden Impact Great rune. Boosts your all in potential with Rocket Jump. You can even proc it when using blast cone or Flash. |
✱ Zombie Ward Tristana has hard time dealing with wards. This rune is usually good only on Oracle Lens supports and/or Umbral Glaive users. Tristana is none of those. |
✱ Ghost Poro This rune generally isn't bad. On Mid, it is hard to keep up the vision in both bushes and longer ward duration can come in handy. As the game will go, however, you will lose a lot of AP you would get from Eyeball Collection and you will fall a bit more behind. Not bad rune - situational - not good either. |
✔ Eyeball Collection Great rune, allows you to snowball very quickly forward and keep up the damage train going. It is a bit worse on bottom lane because it takes time for the game to kill all those enemies in lanes far far away. |
✱ Ravenous Hunter This rune is a pitfall you have to avoid. You don't need more self sustain. You jump on your enemies and you survive/die, there is no way that healing would do anything there. |
✱ Ingenious Hunter We have only one active item, Zhonya's Hourglass in our build. That however isn't enough to get much value from this rune :/ |
✔ Relentless Hunter Great rune that helps you get to your lane faster then your opponent. Your engages will be quite a bit quicker and when deep warding you won't lose that much EXP. |
✔ Ultimate Hunter Generally a tiny bit better then Relentless Hunter. You often times NEED to use Buster Shot to survive and your damage without it is pretty low as well. With this rune you don't have to worry that much about it. |
✱ Overheal Usually a bad rune. It finds a bit of value with healing based support like Soraka but even then it just is not enough. |
✱ Triumph Definitely a great rune in situations when you feel like Ignite in 1v1s might be a problem. A solid rune in some cases. |
✱ Presence of Mind Probably the best mana focused rune available. Sometimes it can be hard to stack it but when you do, the mana sustain it provides is amazing. Helps you keep up in game without recalling for mana restoration. A solid choice in some builds. |
✔ Legend: Alacrity Great in most cases. Allows you to stack up Explosive Charge faster and makes your combos and DPS a lot stronger. Also ties well with Nashor's Tooth. |
✱ Legend: Tenacity When the enemy team has way too many CC champions in their team like Morgana, Leona, Ashe, Evelynn, Amumu, etc. this rune becomes absolutely insane and overvalues Presence of Mind with ease. On the other hand If the enemy team doesn't have that many CC champions, this rune becomes almost useless. |
✱ Legend: Bloodline Pretty bad rune. We already have low AD with this build and thus the value of this rune is underperforming. |
✔ Coup de Grace Coup de Grace is a very powerful rune that empowers our damage significantly. Since we want to engage mainly on low health enemies this rune is just absolutely insane. |
✱ Cut Down This rune is pretty bad at every situation. Doesn't matter If you are facing max HP based champions like Cho'Gath. With AP build you won't ever kill them, and Cut Down makes no difference here. |
✱ Last Stand Usually when you hit the HP level this rune needs to start working, you will be already dead in next few seconds anyway. This rune is not useful at all. |
Attack Speed is the king of shards in most Tristana builds. People often ignore this rune on APCs like AP Tristana, but I consider the bonus attack speed much more relevant then more AP. It helps you clear wards, destroy turrets or stack up Explosive Charge much easier. Adaptive Force is not necessarily a bad choice but there the value is barely not good enough. Ability Haste is a really bad rune, that is almost always pretty bad. Ignore this one completely. |
Adaptive Force is (almost) always a right choice. It just brings you so much more value then Tenacity and Slow Resist or Shield could ever provide. Even against full AD team compositions, you would still probably go for Adaptive Force rather then Shield. Against full AP compositions I guess Tenacity and Slow Resist could be selected as it gives you more MR then Shield gives Armor, but even then, Adaptive Force would be an optional and completely viable option. |
Since Flat Health is extremely bad rune for you, as you don't scale with HP by any means. Always choose Tenacity and Slow Resist or Shield depending on which champions are you facing on your lane. If the botlane is double AD ( Pyke + Jhin for example), always go for Shield. If there is a high poke mage on botlane ( Xerath, Brand, etc.) or If the marksmen is AP champion ( Viktor, Ziggs, etc.), go for Tenacity and Slow Resist. If the damage of the enemy botlane is somehow equal ( Sona + Ashe), choose between Shield or Tenacity and Slow Resist, depending on other champions you will often see in game like a jungler or enemy midlaner. When you are mid, simply pick a rune that counters damage type of enemy midlaner. |
+ Ranged champion + Amazing Burst + Great Engage + Great Disengage + Versatile Item Path + Great self peel + Doesn't need Flash AP Tristana is a queen of burst damage. She can annihilate her prey very quickly and then immediately Rocket Jump back into the safety. Even though this build is kind of trolly, Tristana still has 3 abilities that scale with AP. She has absolutely outstanding late game potential and she is overall a great champion to play. |
- Squishy - Low DPS - Easy to counter - Under-performing early game - Report Magnet - Her combos are tricky - Requires good Support synergy AP Tristana sucks in longer fights. Her Rocket Jump can be really easily denied with CC, making her highest source of damage nearly useless. Her early game is quite bad due to non existential passive ability and low damage output. She needs a good setup from her support, otherwise she won't be able to properly engage. Her combos take a lot time to learn. |
Always Choice Ignite is a very powerful summoner spell that helps pushing your engage damage over the top. It is necessary in every situation and every situation when you don't want to run Ignite you don't want to play AP Tristana either as burst damage is all she has. This summoner spell can also be potent against healing based champions like Soraka and Vladimir. |
Bot Lane/Good Communication Only A pretty good summoner spell that works best on bot lane as it can save you or your partner from danger or setup an engage. It can also do the trick on mid lane but only when you can communicate with your jungler well as this summoner spell can help both of you collect early kills. |
Against DPS Exhaust is a very universal summoner spell. It can be used as a way to lockdown high DPS champions like Cassiopeia, Vayne or Riven. It can be used as a way to lower damage of assassin champions like Katarina or Talon when used before their combo activates. It can also be used on enemy jungler while ganking you to prevent them from engaging properly. But it can also be used as a way to slow down your prey making it easier to chase down or to protect your ADC from enemy ADC. Overall it has a lot of uses and is a very universal summoner spell that still shines the best against DPS thread. |
Anti-CC Cleanse is a solid summoner spell that can save you from situation where Exhaust and/or Barrier are completely useless, most notably heavy CC abilities that can lock you in place making you a vulnerable prey. It offers bad teamfight potential and is hard to use but can be crucial If you want to survive constant CC engages from champions like Sejuani or Morgana and in combination with Ignite it can make up pretty undetectable engages and turnarounds. |
Roaming Teleport is amazing teamfights turnaround ability. It can be used to quickly get back to your lane or to kill a low health enemy in a galaxy far far away. It can be also used as a way to escape engages when paired with Bushes or Alcoves. It has high cooldown but is very useful. |
Against Burst Barrier provides you a solid defence against quick and burst champions and provides the most safety out of all secondary summoner spells. Barrier can also be used as a way to tank a turret shot for your jungler/support, remain longer in a fight, when tower diving or to proc Shield Bash If you are an absolute madman. |
Disengage A pretty unnecessary summoner spell for AP Tristana since we engage with Rocket Jump > we get a reset somehow > we Rocket Jump back. Still Flash is a solid summoner spell that allows you to flash into dragon pit and still have Rocket Jump available for dragon steal or you can use it as a tool for W animation cancel combo or as an emergency survive tool when you mess up something. |
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Draw a Bead (Passive): The range of basic attacks, Explosive Charge and Buster Shot increases with each level. |
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Rapid Fire (Q): Tristana increases her attack speed for few seconds. |
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Rocket Jump (W): Tristana jumps to nearby location dealing damage and slowing nearby enemies that she lands on. On enemy champion takedowns or upon detonating Explosive Charge at maximum stacks on an enemy champion, the cooldown is reset. |
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Explosive Charge (E):PASSIVE: Enemies explode when killed by Tristana's basic attacks, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies. ACTIVE: Tristana places a bomb at target unit or turret. The bomb grows in power as it gets hit by Tristana's basic attacks and abilities up to 4 times. After 4 seconds (or when applying the last stack) bomb explodes and deals damage to nearby enemies. If Buster Shot is used to apply the last stack, the detonation will instead be delayed until the end of the Airborne or the 4 seconds expire. |
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Buster Shot (R): Tristana fires a massive cannonball dealing damage to target hit and knocking it back. |
STARTING ITEM?? As a MID/ADC player you have a lot of items you can buy at the start of the game, that will affect your early game a lot. Here are ones you should be focusing on, reasons why they are so good and in which situations you should take them. |
DORAN'S BLADE Going Doran's Blade makes all your Adaptive Force runes into +AD which is brilliant for farming. You can also punish your enemy/ies a lot harder when they come for CS (generally good against close range mid laners). Also When you switch to AP items the Adaptive Force runes turn into +AP creating something I personally call "Unexpected shift", enemies will all of a sudden have to fear your Rocket Jump engage more then your AA poke, completely re-learning what they have learned when playing against you, which may or may not result in their mispositioning and underestimation of your power . |
CORRUPTING POTION Corrupting Potion is great for early engages with your Rocket Jump. The bonus damage works well If you feel like you and your jungler are planning some early ganks. It can sustain you from damage and renew some mana you lost for trades. It provides 0 stats throughout the laning phase though, making it problematic for newer Tristana players to last hit. |
DARK SEAL A very risky choice to take. If selected in right situation it can snowball you incredibly hard and allows you to take some easy kills here and there. It also provides some solid healing bonus and makes it able for you to go Refillable Potion instead of just healing potions. Makes last hitting quite a bit harder though and when things go wrong it can mess up your early game a bit. Good with aggressive supports or against poke midlaners. |
CULL Cull is great for chill CS farming. If you will play safely and just CS a lot in general while avoiding any dangerous fights, you will get an insane value out of this item later on. The healing is generally stronger then healing from Doran's Blade and selling this item provides a lot more gold as well. I dis recommend it to newer players, since this item requires you to play around it and shift your playstyle to a bit different position. |
Sorcerer's Shoes provide you a much needed boost in AP damage against squishy champions. The bonus is very negligible against tanks but you don't want to focus on them anyway. Plated Steelcaps are great against AD/AA team comps featuring a lot of dangerous AD threads like Yasuo, Tryndamere or Zed. Mercury's Treads are great against heavy AP damage based enemies like Syndra or Anivia. It is also great as a way to reduce effectiveness of strong CC abilities like Dark Binding or Glacial Prison. |
Essential Item Amazing stats for you. AP helps you in engages and attack speed helps you to proc all stacks of Explosive Charge. The on-hit damage helps a lot during CSing and it ties really well with Rapid Fire. Super good item you want to build every game. |
Essential Item The only really good Mythic item for AP Tristana. It provides great load of AP and Magic pen. as well as some mana on top. The passive effect it provides is great for bursting down enemies and the mythic passive is absoilutely nuts as well. |
VS. Heavy AD Great item that provides you amazing stats that are generally better against AD team compositions but work well every time. The stasis is extremely effective as it can be used to survive even the deadliest damage abilities or remove minion/turret/dragon aggro. |
Huge Powerspike Amazing but very expensive item. It takes time until you will be finally able to afford it but when you do, it is absolutely worth it. The damage boost is simply insane and post Rabadon's Deathcap you will have no equal. |
Essential A very powerful item that provides you some solid battle stats. A lot of AP, health and some movement speed on top. You need all of those stats pretty hard to remain relevant in the game. It's spellblade passive ability is very useful while taking trades, engages or when farming to get rid of the siege minions. |
VS. Heavy AP Great magic resistance based item that works best against AP team compositions. It provides solid damage stats and nice +10% CDR. The Spellshield ability is always amazing but it finds the most value against champions that need to hit that 1 ability to engage like Zoe's Sleepy Trouble Bubble or Fizz's Chum the Waters. |
Snowball This item is very risky but can provide you a huge spike in damage If built in a right situation. That is, When you are already ahead and you need to push your power quickly forward. Keep in mind that building this item has consequences. If you die, you lose A LOT power, enemies will be more likely to focus you, you will have to play much more safe and you will have to sell this item after fullbuild to obtain something more reliable. |
VS. Healing When building this item, you usually want to stop with Oblivion Orb and finish it later on as the rest of the item is very expensive and inneficient. This item provides some nice battle stats but the main part of this item is Grievous wounds passive that can reduce the healing of your opponents. Great against healing based champion like Vladimir, Soraka or Dr. Mundo. |
VS. Magic Resist Great item that allows you to takedown larger and much beefier opponents. Great when enemies are building a lot of magic resistance against you or when you are just facing a lot of tanks. |
- Requires 110 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge)
- This combo is great for aggressive trades when you don't have Buster Shot or Ignite available.
- It offers great damage, it is pretty easy to do and procs Electrocute
- Make sure you cast Explosive Charge before actually landing on your opponent to not lose 1 stack of Explosive Charge
- Requires 50 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge)
- This combo is great for basic trades and it doesn't require you to jump into dangerous position.
- Every auto attack you cut from this combo, makes it unable to reset Rocket Jump and the combo will do less damage but it will be a lot quicker and safer.
- It offers solid damage, it is pretty easy to do and procs Electrocute
- Requires 210 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge)
- This combo your strongest engage combo in your disposal.
- It offers enourmous damage, it is pretty hard to do, moves you and your enemy forward and procs Electrocute
- Make sure you cast Explosive Charge before actually landing on your opponent to not lose 1 stack of Explosive Charge
- Cast Buster Shot just as you are about to hit ground to reduce it's cast time and make a combo faster
- You can cast this combo with missing Ignite but keep in mind that it reduces damage of this combo quite a bit
- It does not matter when will you cast Ignite.
- Requires 210 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge)
- This combo is great to turn the tides of battle around after getting engaged. Simply wait for opponent to get right next to you, throw him away with Buster Shot and then immediately engage with Rocket Jump on place he will appear.
- This combo is very hard to pull of, has a lot of requirements and is very situational but it can dish out a lot of damage
- Requires 60 mana.
- Simply use Rocket Jump at close distance and then immediately Flash at the exactly same spot. If you have done it right, you cast Rocket Jump and immediately dealt damage around yourself without any cast time.
- This combo is very, situational and hard to pull of and has extremely small range, but on the other hand is very quick and unpredictable.
- Requires 160 mana.
- Simply use Rocket Jump to get behind your enemy and then push him right into your team/turret with Buster Shot
- To maximize the damage but lower the reliability, you can use Rocket Jump on your enemy while still being behind him. It is hard to hit but it does a lot more damage.
- This combo is quite easy to pull of and it is very powerful in utility it provides to your team
- Make sure you follow up with Basic Trade combo after this If necessary.
- Requires 150 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge).
- Simply use stack a Explosive Charge on your target and then throw him into enemy team with bomb on it to deal a massive team damage.
- This combo is one of the hardest to pull of as you have to know exactly where will your target be after Buster Shot. I generally dis-recommend to newer Tristana players to use this combo.
- Requires 210 mana (+5 mana for every additional point in Explosive Charge).
- Use this combo to engage on your enemy under the turret and kill him instantly. Zhonya's Hourglass helps you redirect the turret shot on nearby friendly minions as you won't take any turret aggro after landing with Rocket Jump
- Make sure you cast Explosive Charge before actually landing on your opponent to not lose 1 stack of Explosive Charge
- Cast Buster Shot just as you are about to hit ground to reduce it's cast time and make a combo faster
- You can cast abilities during Rocket Jump. Use this to make your combos faster, so you won't have to wait for ability cast times.
- When being chased by an enemy, you can fire an auto attack on a Blast Cone (explosive flower in the jungle) and then use Zhonya's Hourglass right after to not get knocked back by it.
- You can use a Blast Cone as a way to proc Sudden Impact magic penetration bonus
- After casting Buster Shot you should be able to fire a one more auto attack onto your target while it is knocked away
- If you use Buster Shot on a target with 3 stacks of Explosive Charge the target will explode immediately after getting knocked back, giving its allies no space to dodge the explosion.
- Try to make your damage seem "bursty" rather then "over time". If you will wait for your Explosive Charge to get last stack and then immediately cast Rocket Jump and Buster Shot in the air and make all of those 3 abilities (combined with Ignite If possible) hit your target AT THE SAME TIME, you will crush your opponent out of nowhere, If you would wait on the other hand and make big space between your abilities your target will be able to react with Flash or Barrier and there is a chance that you will miss a kill.
- YOU ALLOW OTHER PLAYERS TO TAKE YOU DOWN - Seriously, don't listen to other people. All they usually want is to win or just make you feel terrible. Whether they are overpinging you for mistakes, flame you or just want to report you - don't listen to them. Mute all players, mute all pings and focus on yourself.
- YOU ARE FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON OTHERS - This is basically an opposite version of last point. When you keep watching other players and you flame them, ping them or 'guide them' (=meaning you keep telling them What to do and How to play the game - players hate that, don't do it!). You are going to have fun much less frequently. Don't center your mind around others - leave them alone and focus on yourself.
- YOU ARE PLAYING TOO MUCH RANKED GAMES - Alright, ranked games are basically normal games but centered around competition. Competition might be fine for winning and pushing your game knowledge further but it really is not good for having fun. Play normal games instead. In normal games there is nothing you can win and nothing you can lose.
- YOU CENTER FUN AROUND WINNING - Probably the most important point of them all and hardest to overcome. All people enjoy winning, that sweet taste of victory on your tongue is amazing - I know it - But is it correct to have fun only when you are winning while falling down when you are losing? If you teach yourself that winning X losing are just 2 words with very small meaning, you will not center your excitement around state of the game. The only real difference between having and not having fun should be you. You should be able to decide yourself If you are/aren't having fun and not center it around other's gameplay.
- YOU ARE AFRAID OF EXPERIMENTING - Experimenting is great, trying new strategies, builds, rune setups, champions, etc. can keep the game fresh and unique. Don't stick to just one build. Open your mind to new options, Is there something so crazy what you have always wanted to try out? Go for it! Test it! Who cares that it might be bad If it makes you have fun.
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