LAST UPDATE: 26.04.2010
- Completely different, better, item build
- Changed masteries a lot

Hi,

I. Introduction:
I've been experimenting a lot with Trist lately. First I tried all sorts of AD builds and she was amazing, but then I tried AP builds and I really liked that massive burst she's capable of. Recently I saw my friend do a hybrid Jax and I thought that it could work on Trist just as well, and it did!

Now it's not an AD/AP hybrid. It's more of an Attack Speed/AP hybrid. You'll see later on.

II. Runes/Summoner Spells/Masteries:

For runes, I basically go with lots of penetration
Marks are all Insight (+9 magic penetration in total)
Seals are all Vigor (+4 hp per 5 sec regen flat in total)
Glyphs are all Potency (+9 ap flat in total)
Quints are all Desolation (+12 armor penetration in total)

For summoner spells, Ignite is essential. The other one is flexible, but I always prefer Flash.

Now comes the masteries: 9-0-21

Offensive: 9
Deadliness: 1/3
Archmage's Savvy: 3/3
Sorcery: 4/4
Archaic Knowledge: 1/1

Utility: 21
Perseverance: 3/3
Good Hands: 1/3
Awareness: 4/4
Expanded Mind: 4/4
Greed: 1/1
Quickness: 3/3
Blink of an Eye: 1/1
Intelligence: 3/3
Presence of the Master: 1/1

III. Items:
This's the most critical part.

- Rod of Ages
- Sorcerer's Boots
- Guinsoo's Rageblade
- Lich Bane
- Madred's Bloodrazor

(thanks to Concretar and RamboBatman)


IV. Skills:

Rapid Fire:
We leave this for later on because it's a lot more useful combined with the Rageblade. I don't think it's useful in the beginning because you won't be killing people by just shooting at them early game. You need more nukage. Later on with the Rageblade and the Black Cleaver using this you'll shred people and towers apart.

Rocket Jump:
You will use this a lot for the damage. You will initiate with it and often finish with it. With enough AP chaining kills isn't too hard because it resets and it does a lot of damage. You'll be doubling and tripling.

Explosive Shot:
Makes last hitting a lot more fun. People usually underestimate its damage because it's over time but it's amazing. It will nail you the first kill with Ignite. Scales well with AP.

Buster Shot:
Scales 1.5 with AP with a 60 sec cooldown. You bit your ass it's ridiculous. You can initiate or finish off with it depending on your style and the situation.

01: Rocket Jump
02: Explosive Shot
03: Rocket Jump
04: Explosive Shot
05: Rocket Jump
06: Buster Shot
07: Rocket Jump
08: Explosive Shot
09: Rocket Jump
10: Rapid Fire
11: Buster Shot
12: Rapid Fire
13: Rapid Fire
14: Explosive Shot
15: Rapid Fire
16: Buster Shot
17: Rapid Fire
18: Explosive Shot

V. Gameplay:

Early Game:
You should always and try to go for a mid. You have a pretty expensive build and first blood is almost a guarantee unless someone dies really early one the sides.

Grab your Sapphire Crystal and 2 Health Pots. The moment you see your enemy for the first time jump on them and use your ignite and start shooting them. This won't kill them but it'll bring them down to about 1/2 health.

At level 3 with a level 2 jump and an explosive shot you will get the kill. It always works out. Use your potions to make sure all this jumping in doesn't kill you.

Try and bring their health down again and save up mana for an instant level 6 kill. People are always surprised by how much damage Tristana dishes out in burst.

At some point finish off your Tear of the Goddess. You should start ganking around level 7.

Mid Game:
Whoever's mid is probably going to be terrified of you. Try to push mid hard and then go to other lanes and gank people. If they're level 3-5 then you can just kill them almost instantly, especially with ignite.

After a few ganks you should buy your Blasting Wands and Boots of Speed. With the Wand your burst damage is going to be considerably higher. +36 damage on jump, +34 damage on explosive shot, and +60 damage on buster shot.

When you get your full Rageblade and Berserker's Greaves all hell breaks loose. You will have an extremely high attack speed and really high AP. By this time you should try and save up your ultimate for finishing people off because then it's about +180 damage more. A gank usually goes like this: Rocket Jump -> Ignite -> Explosive Shot -> Rapid Fire -> shoot -> Rocket Jump -> Buster Shot and with all the AS and the AP they'll die. Taking down tanks will be very tough though.

The game will be very team oriented when you get your Black Cleaver. Basically you'll be sitting back there shooting people's armor down very fast and whenever someone's about to die jump in and try to get the kill, and Buster Shot their casters that are low on hp.

Late Game:
The Archangel Staff will add a lot to your burst damage (should be around +90 AP). You should be killing multiple people in team fights.

I have never finished a Trinity yet. Closest I've got is a Phage and a Zeal and by then I can take down towers and people so fast it's not funny anymore.

VI. Closing:
Thanks to my friend ThugUpInHur for doing that Jax build and inspiring me to do hybrid Tristana.

If you play a lot of Trist I really think you should read all of this and try it out.

I really like pure AP Trist on TT because there are fewer people and games are shorter, but putting AP Trist in SR is horrible because when it's team fight phase you can't really jump people and cast Buster Shot because you'll die.

This build gives her a lot of AP for the ganking phase, and sets her up with a lot of AS for that Black Cleaver to just shred people in team fights.

Please comment for questions, suggestions, opinions, and discuss ^_^

I play a similar style of Tristana but with a very different item build. I went with the idea of getting her damage off the ground as soon as possible, and I'm still tweaking a lot of it. I begin with a dagger + pot and build Stinger. Then I grab basic boots and build Fiendish Codex to combine with Stinger for Nashor's Tooth (50% IAS, 55 AP, 10mp5, 25% CDR). It's the perfect item for this sort of build. Next I finish whichever boots seem best for the situation (usually merc treads, sometimes ninja tabi, almost never anything else).

My build gets flexible at this point, according to the composition and items of the other team. I often go for the standards of Infinity Edge and/or Phantom Dancer, but a Phage, Last Whisper, or thirstier can easily find its way into the build. If I do build the dancer I can hit the attack speed cap with level 3 Rapid Fire at character level 16, which is nice, and at level 18 autoattack happens just under twice per second. If the enemy is stacking armor I'll grab Last Whisper and load up on AP to punish them.

I like to cap my CDR with masteries/runes, rounding out my rune selection with armor penetration and mana regen. This means the enemy always has to worry about you having rocket jump and explosive shot ready to go and a buster shot every 36 seconds to really put the fear of megling in them.

Care to explain youself?

She has mana problems, and this item just covers that.

It's an ok build, but if you want to get AP on a character like Trist I'd go with Rod of Ages myself. Getting Catalyst instead of Tear gives you just as much mana in laning WITH health boosts. Mid and late game it also helps your squishyness a good deal.

Archangels' staff is normally used by characters with other big Mana items to proc it, otherwise it's less viable.

Still I like hybrids! If it works, it works.

I like the idea of a hybrid Tristana, however, I think you could make a couple of changes to increase the effectiveness of your build.

First, I'd change up your boots. Really, any boots are better than greaves. It isn't that they aren't effective, its that they give a stat that is easily attainable with different items. Mercury Treads are still the best boots despite their nerfs but, if you want to go aggro, go with sorceror's shoes. Magic pen isn't easy to come by, so get it where you can.

Next, masteries. This is certainly debatable but, I don't like going any deeper than 10 into the offensive tree. The spell pen mastery is a no-brainer and if you're running ignite, the assicated mastery isn't terrible but, after that the tree is pretty bad unless you're picking rally. A case could be made for putting 3 points into armor pen so do that if you like. Next, skip the defensive masteries, if you wanted to go deep to pick up ardor (+attack speed and AP) that would be one thing but you aren't so, skip it entirely. Pick up some utility points, specifically the mana regen and the increased buff length, they're both very useful. Personally, I'd go 9/0/21.

Finally, your big ticket items. Guinsoo's and Triforce are great for a hybrid build and should be your bread and butter. I'm not big on saying that you have to build things in a certain order, just buy what you can afford when you have the chance to shop. What I would cut/replace are the Black Cleaver and the Archangel's Staff. The reason is, both of these are specialization items, good for people who are trying to push a single damage type.

Black Cleaver is good with attack speed but only increases your physical damage so it doesn't synergize with the AP you're getting. Similarly, Archangel's Staff is for mages who do a ton of casting and is most effective when combined with other mana items, which you lack. By way of replacement I'd suggest a Madred's Bloodrazor. It has some attack speed to replace what you lost by cutting the Greaves, it has some straight physical damage and it does magic damage on-hit which synergizes well with the magic pen mastery and your new Shoes. All in all, a good item for a hybrid build.

Anyway, sorry if this is a little long. I appreciate the work that you put into the guide and I think you've got the start of something that could be very effective. AP Trist can be a early/mid game beast but falls off later, AD Trist is a great ranged carry but can take some time to farm up enough gold to be godly. A hybrid build could hit the sweet spot, able to gank effectively early and then mop up towers shortly after.

That's in an interesting point. She could use the HP. I'll try this and report later.

That's a lot of changes but I'm willing to try them some time next week and see. My build is highly experimental and I almost just took it off of the Jax build I was talking about.

It's true what you're saying about the sweet spot. AD Trist takes a while to build up steam with her items, and AP Trist is simply not viable in the team-oriented phase on SR.

I think we're getting to something here. We need more people testing this out.

I tried RoA and really liked it. I might have to rewrite some parts of the guide (hey! I just thought of most of it on the spot, it's a work in progress)

The problem you're talking about is AP Trist's problem. That's why she's not viable on SR. She has to jump in to do her magic but that means death when it's team-battle time. So what this build does is give you AP for the ganks, and AS and some damage for the team fights. This way you have AP Trist's early game intensity but you don't have to put up with the danger she puts herself into late game.

Basically in a team fight you shoot people down and when someone's low on health and the situation's right you can jump in and do massive damage.


The most recent item build I tried was this:
- Rod of Ages
- Sorcerer's Boots
- Guinsoo's Rageblade
- Triforce
- Madred's Bloodrazor

Thanks to the suggestions from Concretar & RamboBatman. I must say it has a lot more damage (1150 damage Buster Shots and Rocket Jump, finishing people off was too easy) AND survivability, but I didn't get to always finish the build. By the time I get Triforce her damage is pretty scary. I don't know about Madred's (AS overkill? Maybe could use more damage) I think we're close to the final Hybrid Trist build.

Opinions? Discuss!