As things stand, the top two AD carry champions in League of Legends are Kalista and Sivir, so to talk about Tristana and why it’s worth picking her in this the Meta is perhaps a bit odd. Both of these champions offer a strong lane phase presence and have good wave clear. Both champions can poke from distance, with Pierce/Boomerang Blade respectively, and both are very good in team fight situations.

The reason Tristana is comes up is because, in a lane match up, the Kalista/Support duo will beat almost any 2v2, including ones featuring Sivir. This hasn’t deterred some teams from playing Sivir into Kalista – opting for junglers to gank heavily, or to just focus on defending the lane push – but it’s difficult, and often falls behind. The result is that people are just banning one of these ADCs and picking the other early.

The Carry:

Tristana is a fairly strong AD carry. She has great wave clear, a gap closer/escape, burst potential, an attack speed steroid, and can shred towers as a result of her kit. The issue for those wanting to utilise her as a Kalista/Sivir opponent is that she is a late game carry. Tristana’s range is derived from her passive, which scales with her level. At level 18 Tristana has more range than Caitlyn and is only surpassed by Twitch’s ultimate or Jinx’s Fishbones rockets.

Early game Tristana has a modest range and splash damage from her E – Explosive Charge – and this is enough to give her the power to shove lane against enemy carries with low wave clear, or defend the shove, and to do some burst damage in trades, but her mid game is between the two points of easy early farming and late game long range poke. Tristana’s abilities scale with AP too. As she won’t be building AP her relative damage levels compared to an opponent’s drops off, meaning she become less of a threat while getting three or four items. The trick here is to use Tristana as an aggressive mid-game split pusher, or to get a good kill (a pick) on the enemy and siege a turret as a team with that player advantage.

The Composition:

For Tristana to work you need to provide protection, either with crowd control abilities or strong ways of engaging upon an enemy champion so that you go on the offensive before they do.

A good example of this would be Team SoloMid’s recent composition versus Counter Logic Gaming. They took Alistar support (arguably the best support pick at the moment) as well as Rumble, Azir, and Jarvan IV. The lesser-picked Jarvan offered a strong engage and front line damage soaking, as did Alistar (and he heals on top of this), while Rumble and Azir throw down great damage in teamfights following them up. This keeps Tristana safely on the back lines free to decide who to blow up. The composition also has knock ups and defensive abilities like Headbutt and Emperor’s Divide to keep the enemy from reaching the Tristana, meaning she can freely DPS and do a lot of damage.

Each role has its own job to do for helping Tristana achieve the ultimate goal of late-game domination, but the combination is the key. TSM fielded two tanks and two team fighters, using the Tristana behind these to burst a core target in fights and to help Azir drop towers quickly outside them.

Tanks:

The composition needs at least one tank. A support tank like Nautilus, Alistar, or Leona is a fine pick but they will be a slower to build items compared to carries because of their reduced gold income so end up off-tanking/secondary tanking. Instead your main tank should be a top laner or a jungler – or both. “One tanks, one does damage” is a solid plan.

There aren’t many top lane tanks aside Maokai at the moment (Shen/Nautilus/Gragas are fair)so more likely your top lane will be all about throwing out damage with Rumble, Ryze, or Hecarim, though picks like Ekko and Vladimir are good too but very skill dependent, and the jungle will pick up somebody like Gragas, Rek’Sai, Sejuani, or maybe even a Jarvan IV or a Nunu – the latter offering Blood Boil as a steroid to AD carries (and Azir!)

Team Liquid used Tristana and beat Team Impulse by virtue of a) having a great pick/ban phase, and b) Team Impulse leaving Piglet – a former World Champion with SK Telecom – alone in the bottom lane unchallenged to solo farm. Both of these were bad from Impulse and Impulse rightly got punished for picks like Lee Sin and Kassadin with a Rumble, Annie, and Kalista. No tanks, no win.

In comparison, Edward Gaming in China beat LGD with a big team comp featuring Shen, Gragas, and Nautilus, backed by Sivir and Cassiopeia. The team is mobile, has plenty of tank stats, burst damage, and crowd control. LGD were smart and took strong picks in Hecarim, Rek’Sai, Viktor, Tristana, and Thresh, but while this team pushes well it also looks to dive backlines – something that the EDG team can defend and halt quite easily, thus undoing their gameplan.

Photo courtesy of League of Legends official website

Team Fighters:

The Tristana comp needs champions that revel in combat; selections that will threaten the enemy with their damage and deter them from breaking through the thick of a fight to reach Tristana. TSM knew this with the Azir/Rumble combo behind their tanks, and SK Telecom in Korea did similar, front lining with Maokai and Evelynn, backed by team fight power from Ryze and Kennen, and then Tristana sat at the back of the pack.

Rumble, Ryze, Viktor, and Azir are strong picks here, but Vladimir and Ekko are again viable. At a push Urgot could be considered a useful pick, especially with sustained damage early game, but for all he becomes a bruiser marksman his damage does drop off later game with his focus only being single target.

Early Game Junglers:

The jungler needs to have strong control of the game and to pressure lanes enough to either keep the opponent jungler occupied and away from Tristana’s lane, or to feed the Tristana up and bypass that mid game dip. Lee Sin, Evelynn, and Xin Zhao are great for this because they’re good at ganking early. Xin’s synergy with Tristana is perhaps best for tower pushing and single target focus, and thanks to Black Cleaver’s rework he is less of a let-down late game. Lee offers ridiculous mobility though for harassment and pursuit/escape, and Evelynn is a stealth champ and forces the enemy to spend on pink wards or die for the disrespect. If you do go for the Eve then remember her synergy with Shen – his ultimate does not reveal itself if it’s used on her while she is invisible! This can make a lane gank extremely likely to land a kill or two.

Photo courtesy of League of Legends official website

Poke/Siege:

Stacking tanks in front of Tristana and a sieging mid laner is another tactic, should you prefer to group and brute force a win rather than rotate often. Lulu, Varus, Xerath, and Ziggs all offer great poke distance and wave clear potential. A Kog’Maw pick would be exceptionally powerful combined with the Tristana, but be wary – Kog is reliant on a comp for themselves usually. This could backfire and result in one of the two carries falling behind or being useless.

Assassins:

If the enemy has a glass cannon – somebody who does high damage but is very frail – then consider picking an assassin. Zed and LeBlanc are great mid lane choices for this, but it might favour your team to take a Rengar for regular stealth ganking.

Utility:

Classic Tristana compositions revolved around large elements of utility, in particular shields. Lulu, Orianna, Karma, Janna, Morgana… all have shields. Bar Ori they can all support too so don’t discount their value in both lane phase and team fights. Analyse your opponents’ weak points; can they escape from C.C easily? Are they mobile? Do they have high damage or a snipe shot?

One pick I do like with Tristana is Nami, especially in lane phase for the bubble catch and the time to stack autos for Trist, but Nami is a weaker pick in the tank meta because her ultimate really does nothing to stop the big guys. The knock up/interrupt element is nice, sure, but the time it buys isn’t allowing your team to drop theirs dead.

Below you can watch highlights from the LMS league in Taiwan where Hong Kong eSports beat Logitech Snipers in a battle between Sivir and Tristana.

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