What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Recently, we’ve been getting all of these weird builds pop into the spotlight, you know
tank ekko top, tank fizz, and others, but they are mostly just builds surrounding the
tank items.
And one of those weird builds that has slipped a little bit under the radar, is this new
tristana build involving guinsoo’s rageblade and runaan’s hurricane.
It’s a bit weird, and I thought it was kind of crazy when I first heard about it, so I
wanted to to take a look at it and find out, just how good is rageblade tristana?
And if you guys enjoy the video don’t forget to hit that like button, and if you don’t
enjoy the video click the dislike, and let’s started.
So the way I first heard about this build and how it’s starting to gain popularity
at higher rankings of play all of a sudden, was an interview with TSM’s Doublelift and
Travis on Yahoo Esports.
It’s a pretty interesting story, essentially what happened was that CLG started playing
the build in scrims against TSM after seeing it from the Korean player named Pilot, and
TSM saw the build and tried it out, and thought it had some potential to be successful.
They didn’t think it was crazy, but it was a bit weird and pretty solid overall.
Now that pick got leaked to most of the other teams, and since they didn’t know how to
deal with it, it was just banned out every single game in the semi finals.
So despite the power that rageblade Tristana supposedly had at the competitive level, we
didn’t actually get to see too many games of it in the LCS playoffs, because Team Liquid
and Immortals didn’t actually know how to play against it at all, and they didn’t
want to take the risk of having to face this new strategy.
So There’s your proof right there that rageblade tristana has a solid amount of merit to it,
and is decent at the competitive level, at least in the eyes of CLG, TSM, Team Liquid,
and Immortals.
The build involves a tristana ad carry rushing guinsoo’s rageblade first, and then building
runaan’s hurricane into an infinity edge, and from there you build items based on the
situation of your current game.
The goal is to take advantage of Tristana’s super high range due to her passive, as well
as mitigating her lackluster mid game.
Tristana is an insane hyper carry in the late game, but her mid game really is lacking,
and a lot of the time, the teamfights during the mid game are what snowballs the game and
decides the eventual winner at the competitive level, so finding a way to mitigate that power
trough while also still having this trump card up your sleeve in case the game isn’t
decided yet 35 minutes in, sets you up for a solid overall composition potentially.
She ends up playing out a lot like a kog maw would, but tristana’s escape is amazing
so it makes her so much more reliable and harder to counter, albeit with a little bit
less damage, it’s not by much, she’s still definitely dealing tons of damage regardless
due to her steroid and the whole late game ad carry thing.
Guinsoo’s rageblade is built as a way to improve the mid game, as the stats that the
item brings can be quite insane.
At just 3 stacks it becomes gold efficient, and when it is fully stacked it blows everything
out of the water and is giving you a whopping 192% gold efficiency, without even taking
into account the on hit area of effect damage.
Meanwhile, infinity edge which would be the alternative built caps out at a measly 97%
gold efficiency until you get some more crit chance to increase the power of the crit bonus
damage passive.
And sure, you have to stack up guinsoos, but with high range and a great attack speed steroid,
tristana can do that just fine.
And let’s not forget that Tristana has AP ratios on her W, E, and ultimate, so it’s
far from a useless stat on her.
Once this build gets a bit further along the item path, she can easily hit the attack speed
cap using her rapid fire ability.
On top of that, the build is incredible for macro and objective play.
The waveclear tristana gets becomes insane, as she has the guinsoo’s rageblade area
of effect damage, the runaan’s hurricane area of effect damage, and her explosive shot
passive area of effect damage, and her explosive shot has attack damage and ability power scaling,
so she’s gonna be killing turrets insanely fast, while her waveclear will allow you to
siege, push out lanes, and defend versus your opponent’s siege.
Her waveclear becomes so amazing that you can even stall out when the opponent has baron
buff, so on the objective level this build is amazing compared to the traditional tristana
build, and it does a solid job of capitalizing on tristana’s strengths in her kit of her
passive and her Q in order to take objectives and stop your opponent from taking objectives.
One weakness this build presents is that the super early game, during the laning phase
kind of takes a hit, since the build path of guinsoo’s rageblade is not ideal for
the laning phase.
And while this doesn’t matter at all in competitive play because they usually just
lane swap anyway and build a cull, in soloqueue this can be a detrimental.
I definitely think this build is better in competitive play than in soloqueue, since
in competitive play the objective game is much more sophisticated and the tools this
tristana build brings will be more impactful, it’s also true that in soloqueue lots and
lots of games are decided during the mid game teamfights, and tristana’s laning is safe
enough to where she can usually just farm and try to survive if she has too.
As well, it also causes her to need time to stack up her rageblade, but in a fight where
the dps of an ad carry will have an impact, you’re going to get off more than 8 auto
attacks, and a lot of the time you can get maybe 2 or 3 stacks from minions somehow before
the fight starts.
And in the early game, it’s a lot more powerful than a standard infinity edge would be once
you finish it.
The build path kinda sucks, so you do have to try and survive for a bit, but once you
finish it, it gives you a really strong 1 item powerspike that allows you to compete
with the early to mid game strength of the other meta ad carries.
And the whole idea surrounding this is that her late game is going to be so amazing regardless,
just because she’s tristana, that it really doesn’t matter at all, and you still pick
up infinity edge as the third item.
This build does a great job of taking advantage of guinsoo’s and hurricane, which are two
powerful items that are arguably a little bit overtuned right now.
Ever since the season 6 changes, we’ve been seeing these items on anyone that can make
use of them, and for good reason, so why not tristana?
And I do believe that some other ad carries are actually starting to maybe use this build
as well, because they have the similar problem to tristana of having a weak mid game, which
has always been kind of a bummer for an ad carry, since a large amount, maybe even a
majority of games are decided in the first handful of mid game teamfights, and not being
able to compete in those fights as an ad carry compared to the other meta ad carries that
have a lot of damage on their abilities, or some sort of crazy thing to give them mid
game power going on kind of sucks, and is a serious weakness for those champions.
So it’s certainly not a bad build, and it probably is better than the traditional ad
carry build on Tristana most of the time, as long as you can manage to survive the part
of the laning phase when you have to back and then pick up a blasting wand.
It’s a pretty cool build that has some interesting traits, and it’s a lot more versatile than
standard tristana, which to me makes it a lot more interesting, and certainly, a lot
more fun.
And since it’s proven to have power at the competitive level, it’s not unreasonable
to build tristana this way yourself, as despite the differences between competitive play and
soloqueue, most of the pros are still building and playing tristana like this in challenger
soloqueue anyways.
So, maybe give it a try if you haven’t already, and dust off that old tristana pick if you
feel like it.
And most of all, have fun!
Looks like that’s gonna be just about it, thanks for watching, subscribe if you want,
and I’ll see you guys next time!