It’s not often you see a champion get buffed and not picked up. Trundle is one of those champions. The tanky champion is, like Sejuani, something of an anti-tank. He has sustain in his kit, mobility, crowd control, and an excellent passive, not to mention the attack speed bonuses he can get to shred towers. In a patch dominated by tanks, why isn’t the tanky “anti-tank” being chosen?

The Buffs:

As of Patch 5.5, Trundle was given quite significant buffs. The first part resulted in his passive – King’s Tribute – being extended from 1000 to 1400 range to match the experience capture distance. The result is that Trundle’s passive healing (which comes from nearby units dying) gives him a percentage of healing back but at greater distance, allowing the anti-tank bruiser the option to not sit back under tower farming safely and to actually push up a little bit and contest once again.

The second big buff was a flat 20% increased healing bonus to Trundle’s ‘Frozen Domain’, rather than the previous scaling percentages as he leveled up. The radius is 1000 and for 8 seconds Trundle receives increased movement speed (scaling), increased attack speed (scaling), and bonus health regeneration from all sources. Perhaps this isn’t so spectacular in solo queue but given the LCS style of lane swapping and sending the support/top to go against an adc/support switch up, it’d be interesting and powerful for the likes of Nami, Sona, Soraka, and Alistar to duo with him until he gets out of lane.

The final buff was a bugfix to the Trundle ultimate – Subjugate. This super ability deals magic damage – equal to a percentage of his target’s maximum health – and heals for that same amount. The ability is what gives Trundle his ‘anti-tank’ status though because it also steals 40% of the target’s armour and magic resist. 20% is taken immediately, and the remaining 20% comes over the next 4 seconds. This is a huge (albeit temporary) buff to the Troll King, and usually results in a kill or at worst, the opponent retreating. Previously the move was bugged and doing 36% steal, not the full amount.

The Problems:

Trundle’s Q – Chomp – is a slowing ability but also one that plays around attack damage. It boosts Trundle’s AD and reduces his opponent’s. The issue here is that this is pretty irrelevant versus an ability power champion and that’s where the problems come in. Plenty of top lane ability power champions are really popular right now, so countering Trundle is easy. Picks like Lissandra, Cho’Gath, and Rumble would deal some serious damage to Trundle - as would Vladimir - or maybe you’d be bold and pick poke/kite AP from the likes of Lulu or everyone’s favourite hate figure, Teemo.

The alternative here then is to take Trundle into the jungle. His sustain and self-buffing means that he can clear the jungle very well early, but again there are issues of AP junglers in opposition (Elise, Evelynn, Sejuani, Amumu) and the deficiencies in Trundle’s kit for ganking and consistent jungle building. Trundle is slow and while he does bring a speed up AOE and the Pillar of Ice to block/slow, your lane needs to be sitting back and you need to be sure there are no wards giving your position away. If your lanes sit back too long the opposition will catch on and escape. If you aren’t sat back and your opponent has frozen the lane then there’s the issue that you are too slow to counter-gank and unfreeze the lane.

Also, what do you build? Do you go for the Warrior enchantment for the armour penetration, or do you go Cinderhulk for the AOE magic damage as a tank? There are risks going with both items in terms of being successful, and it massively depends on the team compositions and individual styles in lane for both teams to whether you can go down different build paths.

Solutions?

The obvious answer is to play Trundle a lot to practice him as a top laner or jungler in Normal and Team Builder queues. Once you know his kit and style well, as well as what items, runes, masteries, and Summoner Spells suit you, then you can brave him in Ranked. The best thing to do is to pick Trundle later on in a draft when you know what top laner they have. If it’s an AP laner then avoid the matchup and play somebody safer – unless of course your practice got you comfortable against them!

For the top lane, sit back and farm close to tower. Make it as easy as possible for your jungler to gank but also keep yourself topped up on HP. Ignite is a lot of fun to have for an all-in but nobody’s going to be that silly to take you on unless they know your stat-steals do nothing to their offence so take Teleport to offer support at Dragon or to the Bottom Lane as a counter-gank.

In the jungle, players often like to take Ghost rather than Flash to make lane ganks easier, but the Stalker’s Blade smite is pretty useless so you have the choice of Ranger’s Trailblazer for quicker farming or Skirmisher’s Sabre for damage over time as you fight. The latter is a better damage option but people tend to run away from a Trundle – they’re not that oblivious to his style – so realistically you want the Trailblazer to give you as many opportunities at ganking as possible, and to get you towards a late game point of being a fearsome bruiser.

Trundle isn’t bad, but like a lot of people not in the meta Trundle is a very specific pick. I believe we will see him come back, especially with his anti-tank stats, as a late pick up in draft versus a Malphite, Renekton, Yorick, Mundo, Shyvana - big people with their own preferences to tank up.

Below is a little bit of Trundle magic courtesy of Team Impulse top laner ‘Impact’ playing at the All Star tournament in Paris with SKT Telecom in 2014. Pillar of Ice? Pillar of Plays!

Video courtesy of AcuteWombat

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