The rocket jump makes a great escape method for this squishy, and is useful for early escapes. This is why it's the 1st ability, but you don't get 2nd rank until the end -- you're usually jumping *away* from enemies. If you jump *into* a group of enemies, expect to be ganked.

The rocket jump + buster shot combo is good, but everyone is wise to this, so it's hard to pull off. Sometimes you can hide in bushes and jump out behind them if they're stupid, or maybe if they're pushing mid solo, and you have a teammate near your tower, to help stun/takedown.

More often than not, the Buster shot gets used to knock enemies off your tank or other characters (or yourself), as you're escaping a gank attempt.

My favorite ability is the explosive shot, both for the passive that can do more damage than your regular attack, and the the active DOT. If you can keep kiting around the lane minions, you can keep hitting your opponents with the DOT to whittle down their life.

Tristana only has 1 ability that benefits from AP: Rocket Jump deals 80% AP plus an OK chunk of damage. Since dealing damage with Rocket Jump can easily lead to being ganked, AP doesn't provide a lot of help to this build.

This 21/0/9 build is designed to push damage, mana regen, and cooldown. There's also a lot of crit strike in the Offense tree, so an Infinity Edge could make a good crit build with the Phantom Dancer.

You can swap a few points between Alacrity, Sorcery, and Offensive mastery depending on your tastes.

Manamune gives any character a strong bonus in both damage and mana, and for Tristana this means you can pump abilities like a caster, and also put out good mid-game damage. Manamune is a self-synergy item -- its benefits work together in a crazy way -- so both attacking and using abilities gives you more mana, and having more mana adds more to your physical attack. I'll usually build to this around level 9 to level 11, and Trist's physical attack will jump from about 94 to about 117, and go up from there. Midgame you're a 140-170 damage ganking machine. The Manamune's mana bonus caps out at 1000 mana, so your physical attack will usually max at about 190 or so damage.

The Tear of the Goddess, which builds into Manamune, has a similar mana bonus for abilities, also caps at 1000 mana, and seems to stack with Manamune -- meaning that you can get a couple hundred extra mana from the Tear of the Goddess, then upgrade to Manamune and get the full 1000 there as well. You'll want the Manamune quickly to keep up, but every minute you hold off is a bigger damage bonus when you get the Manamune, and means the Manamune's 1000 max mana bonus will leave you with more total mana at the end.

The Ionian Boots of Lucidity are great for a mage build with the cooldown reduction. Another option is the Berzerker's Greaves, since the attack speed bonus is nice.

Starting with the Vampiric Scepter gives good survivability and health regen. Upgrading to the Emblem of Valor is a good upgrade. After getting the Manamune, you're dealing 100-180 damage per hit, which means 17-30 HP regen * ~ 1.3 fire rate = 22 to 40 HP regen per second. Add in the explosive shot for a bonus ~125 damage = 22 HP regen every few seconds, and you can start tanking lane and jungle minions while gaining life.

Building the Phantom Dancer gives Tristana a 400+ movement speed, giving good map superiority. Add in a rocket jump and exhaust and you can help your teammates catch up to escaping gankees.

The Madred's Bloodrazors is perfect for pushing back against a tanky team that's holding you to your towers. By this point, you're dealing over 180 damage about 1.8 times a second, and increasing that by another ~100-150 (4% of their max HP) can only be good. Yes, 180 + 150 * 1.8 = 594 DPS against a tank with 3750 HP, dropping them in just over 6 seconds. Even faster if your DOT is on them.

Of course it's based on their HP, so you're doing 180 + 80 * 1.8 = 468 DPS to an enemy with only 2000 HP (4.2 sec), and 180 + 60 * 1.8 = 432 DPS against something with 1500 HP (3.5 sec).

With the Infinity Edge instead of the Madred's Bloodrazors, you have a good crit build. Your masteries give you 12%. Add that to the Phantom Dancer (30%), and an Infinity Edge (20%), and you get a 62% chance of dealing ~180 damage * 2.5 crit bonus = 450 crit damage each hit.

62% crit chance * 450 crit damage = 279
38% non-crit chance * 180 non-crit damage = 68.4

279 + 68.4 = 374.4 average damage per shot * 1.8 hits per second = 625 DPS against any amount of HP.

If you're high level and don't know what to buy next, keep these usual suspects in mind: Madred's Bloodrazors, Infinity Edge, Frozen Mallet, Stark's Fervor, BF Sword, and anything that builds off the BF Sword.

Probably because I'm a nooby player, but Ghost and Flash don't work for me. They don't fit my playstyle. Here's what does:

Teleport gives good map superiority - a good control of the map, by being able to get somewhere and attack/gank/defend in time. You can recall, buy something fast, and teleport back to your lane quickly. Also, you can move to a tower fast, to keep them from knocking it over. And if you die, you save about 30 seconds getting back to your tower. This keeps you in the game, gaining experience, keeping your tower safe, and helping you catch up to the gold & XP the other guy got for ganking you.

Exhaust is an OK stun, and it's useful both for slowing down a gank and for escaping gankers. It has the same range as Explosive Shot's active ability.