It’s long overdue, but the Trundle Champ of the Week wrapup is finally here! I went with a little more casual commentary style based on some feedback. Let me know if you prefer it to a more scripted style.
My first few games with Trundle went so amazingly well I couldn’t help but think the League’s only real troll might be a little overpowered. He’s incredibly quick in the jungle, has the tools for ganking early, has the damage output for sustaining into late game – where are the weaknesses? His one weakness is probably that he’s melee. Seriously. I think that’s his only weakness.
The flipside to all of that is that no one plays him. Like, no one. In the 50 or so games I’ve played and recorded, I’ve been the only person to play Trundle. I think this is mostly due to the fact that his skills are not exciting. You don’t take big chunks out of your opponents. You don’t get to stun people. If you miss your pillar by the slightest amount it continues to stand as a lasting monument to your failure. His ultimate is utterly boring.
Despite all that, he’s still powerful. In the video above I show a lot of different ways that Trundle contributes to the team. I think the most important thing you can do for a team as Trundle is to build tanky. Get an early GA and then follow up with some damage. The GA allows you to tower dive early and survive into late. It de-prioritizes you as a target in those early teamfights, which gives you the freedom to choose your targets carefully, make the best use of your ult, and rip through a team.
Skills and Items When I play Trundle, I like to focus on beefing up defensive stats and debuffing enemies with Rabid Bite and his ultimate, Agony. I level Rabid Bite first, and then alternate between Pillar of Filth and Contaminate. Both skills provide great benefit with each level, so I just go back and forth, grabbing his ultimate at levels 6, 11, and 16.
For items, I get a Wriggles, Merc Treads or Berzerker’s Greaves (don’t forget, Contaminate gives him CC reduction), Guardian Angel, and Trinity Force. If the game goes beyond that point you can either get a Banshee’s for survivability or the damage item of your choosing. I would personally go for Infinity Edge, but if the enemy team doesn’t have much in the way of Exhaust or Ignite, go for a Bloodthirster. You will probably be the last man standing more often than not, and that Bloodthirster only adds to Trundle’s sustain.
If I Could Change One Thing If I could change one thing about Trundle it would be his ultimate. The skill is definitely strong in its current form, but I would like to see it offer a little more punch. I think Riot could easily shift more damage to the front end, improve the animation a bit, and increase the cooldown. Yes, increase the cooldown. I know his ult is great for killing dragon and Baron and the occasional golem if you’re low on health, but it’s just too boring in its current form. I think we would see a lot more Trundle players if he was just a bit more exciting to play.
Don’t forget to Subscribe to the Fearless Gamer YouTube channel for notifications when my newest videos are up. I should have Veigar later this week but I am heading out of town for a wedding so I can’t promise anything.
With the release of Dominion and a backlog of videos for both Trundle and Veigar, I won’t be playing a Champ of the Week this week as I typically do on Summoner’s Rift.
In the interest of transparency, allow me to explain the Veigar/Trundle delay. Two weeks ago my hard drive started acting screwy. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but when I started to cut together the Veigar video, several of my clips became corrupted and wouldn’t work. After trying to recapture those clips, I realized the partition of my hard drive that housed my Fraps recordings was corrupt and needed wiped.
I now have a new hard drive up and running, a fresh Fraps install, but sadly, no clips. I’ve been using LoLReplay, which means going through quite a few games and capturing important moments without the benefit of a replay feature, which is time consuming.
The good news is that I should have time to work on both Veigar and Trundle tomorrow. I’m also planning a new feature specifically focused on Dominion, though I’m not totally sure where that one will fit.
Keep an eye on the YouTube channel for the newest videos as I have them. If you haven’t seen it, check out my Dominion commentary video for some tips and basic information on the latest game mode in League of Legends.
After so many games as a solo in the mid lane, I think it’s time I get back to the place I’ve come to call home in so many of my games – the jungle. What better champion to play in the midst of normal draft mode than the champion that embodies so many LoL players these days: Trundle. This week I’ll be taking everyone’s favorite troll onto Summoner’s Rift to see where he stands.
Trundle is sort of a unique jungler in that his power level hasn’t changed much since release. In fact, I can only remember bug fixes for him – not even the slightest number tweak. Trundle is also widely underplayed, at least in my experience. Most serious players regard him as a threat, and I’ve seen him picked in several high profile tournaments. Still, he seems to be missing the special something that makes players really fall in love with a champion.
I’ll be focusing mostly on ways Riot could give Trundle a bit of magic – not damage, just some spark. His builds are pretty standard for a jungler, but I’m willing to get creative if you have any suggestions. I was going to test to see if builds like Warmog’s/Atma’s work on him but I already know the answer. Of course they do – Warmog’s/Atma’s works on just about anyone.
Check back later in the week for more impressions, and keep an eye out for the Veigar wrapup tomorrow.
I’ve been fortunate enough to nab Trundle in every game I’ve played today except for one, so I’ve been able to test a few different builds and get a little time in the jungle as well as the lane. On the whole, I’d say he’s the best champion release I’ve seen in months. I think Riot really hit the mark with his design and his artwork, which makes for a rewarding play experience.
I tried for a long time to come up with a character with which to compare Trundle, but I’m just not sure who it would be. In the jungle he feels a bit like Warwick – use Q to burst units down, W to buff up your attacks, ignore E and R until you need to gank – but his ganking is very different. Trundle also performs well in lane and I think we can agree Warwick does not. Trundle’s passive is probably among the best in the game, not because it does anything interesting but because it allows him to lane forever. It’s not quite as good in the jungle, but it will keep you plenty healthy when other characters would have to recall. I can make it through the entire jungle with plenty of health to spare long before my small creep camps will respawn.
I was a little shocked at the AoE of his Contaminate, but the skill can be a bit of a double-edged sword. The size is great for chasing and those sprawling teamfights, but it can also give away your position if you aren’t careful. Pillar of Filth is similarly huge, though, you won’t have to worry quite as much about it revealing you. My one complaint about these two skills is that they don’t deal any damage. It’s not really a complaint, though, because both skills provide enough utility that you don’t need the extra damage.
Utility is where Trundle really shines. I have yet to see any “wow” moments with him, but I have seen him used and used him to create highly favorable situations for my teammates. With just a Phage and a maxed out Contaminate buff, Trundle is nearly impossible to get away from, and he hits fast and fairly hard. His Pillar of Filth seems to hit the magic median between feeling good when you land it and bad when you miss. I have already blocked my teammates out of several kills. I even blocked a Fiddlesticksin the enemy base after a particularly nasty Rocket Grab, but I’ve also successfully shackled enemies in my team’s grasp.
Surprisingly, the only skill I found truly underwhelming is his ultimate. It’s a good skill, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not great, and it certainly doesn’t have that “ultimate” quality. Let’s compare it to Mordekaiser’s ult, which I think is closest in function. At rank 3, Kaiser’s Children of the Grave deals 34 percent of the target’s health in damage (17 percent on cast, 17 percent over the duration) and, on target death, gives Kaiser 20 percent of the target’s AP and damage for 30 seconds plus a pet with improved stats for the same duration. Trundle’s Agony deals 250 damage and drains 25 percent of his target’s magic resistance and armor and then that same amount again over an 8 second duration. I’m sure you can see where this is going. While it’s cool that his ult both deals damage and saps resistances, it’s sort of the worst of both worlds. The damage is pretty low, especially at level one (200 damage total, seriously?), and it doesn’t scale well. Conversely, the armor/MR reduction is terrible early and only really works late game against tanks. Granted, it’s very good against them, but you need to be hitting them for it to be good, and that’s not really the skill’s best use. Ideally, you want to be in the mix, stealing armor from the tank for survivability while you beat down the carry. The fact that you’re debuffing the tank is almost moot.
Even with those issues, though, I’ve found Trundle to be a lot of fun. I think he could have a very steep learning curve; expert players may take some time to get proficient with him, but he could very well become a force to reckon with. He deals very solid damage, can survive a bit of burst, and has a nice set of utility spells. All in all, he seems to be one of the most well-rounded characters in the game, while still managing to remain balanced.
I’m ready to call today’s patch the biggest thing that has happened to the game since the release of Season One. Today, Riot finally took some steps the reds have been talking about on the forums for months, making changes that could have a significant impact on the metagame. It won’t change things entirely, but it will almost certainly start to shift things in a new direction.
This patch is focused upon the following main issues:
Area of Effect damage and disable spells being too powerful Area of Effect is taking a pretty large hit this patch, especially to the damage on Galio’s Idol of Durand, Morgana’s Soul Shackles and Vladimir’s Hemoplague. After seeing its effect on the game over a longer period of time, we’ve found something more akin to Annie’s Summon: Tibbers is a proper mix of area size, damage, and disable. We have several area-effect skills in the game that have snuck past this and we’re looking to bring these back to acceptable levels.
Strong supports are able to protect powerful ranged carries too well, cancelling their fragility too easily We’re starting with a duration nerf to Morgana’s Black Shield and Janna’s Eye of the Storm to reward better timing of the spell reactively and to raise the skill ceiling a bit on these spells. If this proves too little, we’ll evaluate the need for additional changes in a future patch.
Ranged carries, holistically, are too safe considering their damage output While we predict bigger changes will be required, our first adjustments are to lower the movement speeds of ranged carry-style champions to provide more of a tradeoff, and nerf Blessing of the Lizard Elder when used on ranged champions. We’d like to keep ranged carries “safer” than melee, while beginning to provide more tradeoffs that both give melee a place in the game and differentiate the roles of melee and ranged characters.
