Tryndamere is one of the rare champions in League of Legends that have not undergone any change. He has always been known to be a physical damage champion with high DPS. In recent times, however, there have been some interesting builds that are being seen to work well for the Barbarian King.
Contrary to popular belief, making ability power on Tryndamere is pretty decent. It sounds like an absurd concept if you are hearing of it for the first time. It is anything but so. Tryndamere has pretty high ability power ratios in “Spinning Slash” as well as “Bloodlust”.
That does not, however, answer the question of how is it useful. Ability power on this champion is useful for multiple reasons. Thanks to the exponentially higher healing from Bloodlust, you can stay in the lane for long periods of time. Even while split pushing, it is nearly impossible to force Tryndamere to leave the lane if he is making AP. Moreover, the Spinning Slash damage scales well with ability power.
Although we now know why and how ability power works well with Tryndamere, it is still unclear what items to make. Not all ability power items are effective on this champion. You need to know your build paths from runes to the complete build in different situations to make use of this play style.
Runes
Tryndamere is a champion that greatly benefits from attack speed, even in the ability power build. You will be doing a lot of your damage through your auto attacks, and as such, “Lethal Tempo” is the best keystone. You can also go for “Conqueror” if you feel it will be more effective.
Following the keystone, your next rune is “Triumph,” and then you have a choice. You can either go for “Legend: Alacrity” or “Legend” Tenacity.” This depends on the enemy team. If they have a lot of crowd control, then you go for Tenacity. Otherwise, Alacrity is the preferred option.
The last rune from the Precision page that you will take is “Last Stand”. On the secondary rune page, most of the time you will go for the Resolve page. On this page, you will go for either “Bone Plating” or “Second Wind” according to your lane matchup coupled with “Unflinching” or “Revitalize”.
The other page you can take as your secondary rune page is Sorcery. For this page, “Transcendence” with “Gathering Storm” is the optimum choice. The Resolve page is focused on giving more solidity in laning and some survivability in later stages of the game. The Sorcery page is much more long-term oriented with very low laning prowess.
Early Game
The starting items for ability power Tryndamere consist of a choice between three items. You can start your game with a “Doran’s Ring”, “Doran’s Shield” or even the “Doran’s Blade”. The Shield is often considered to be the best starting item as it gives a lot of stability in the lane.
You can get an early “Dark Seal” for a little boost in the lane if you have the gold to spare. If you are going for the “Riftmaker” build path, you should try to rush the “Leeching Lear”. The item is fantastic for the laning phase,
If you are going the “Night Harvester” route, you will have to rush the “Fiendish Codex” in most cases. The “Hextech Alternator” is only worth rushing if your enemy champion is squishy or easy to kill. This is rarely the case in the top lane, so the Codex is generally a better early-game buy.
Mythic Items
As far as Mythic items go, you have a choice between “Night Harvester” and “Riftmaker”. Both of these items give a different dimension to Tryndamere’s kit. The confusing part is knowing when to make which item. They are both suited to different situations, and you cannot blindly make the same item in every game.
The Night Harvester is an item that gives a lot of burst potential as well as haste stacking. Ability haste is crucial for Tryndamere as your Spinning Slash is the majority of your damage. Bloodlust is the major reason why ability power works on the champion. The sooner you have these abilities up the better.
Riftmaker increases your damage in longer fights by giving you True Damage. It also gives you omnivamp, which gives you even more sustain on top of your healing from Bloodlust. Riftmaker is primarily made in games where you feel that the fights will be long.
Night Harvester is to be made against squishy or low-health enemy teams. You can end up dealing a ton of damage to them really quickly. Since they do not have the health of a tank or bruiser champion, they cannot withstand a high burst. Riftmaker is better against tanky and high-resistance champions.
Core Items
Core items are the essentials of a champion’s build. These cannot be replaced with any other item. These are made after the Mythic item. It goes without saying that you cannot have a build without a Mythic item. For ability power Tryndamere one of these items is the “Nashor’s Tooth”.
Nashor’s Tooth is an ideal item for the champion. A lot of attack speed and ability power combined with on-hit magic damage. All of these are stats that synchronize extremely well with this champion’s kit.
The other core item is the Cosmic Drive. This item gives health, ability power, and the all-important ability haste. Cosmic Drive gives the highest amount of ability haste for a legendary item. Furthermore, you also get additional movement speed and ability power when in combat.
If you were forced to change your build according to the game situation, you probably would give up Cosmic Drive. Nashor’s Tooth is just too important for ability power Tryndamere.
Complete Build
After the Mythic and core items are completed, you have the last two item slots available. These are mostly up to you and what items you think will be more useful in the game. As every game is different, you need to adjust your build accordingly.
Some of the best items for the last two slots are “Rabadon’s Deathcap” and “Lich Bane”. This combination of items gives you the most damage. There are other items as well that may be more viable in certain situations. The Deathcap is a necessary item for ability power Tryndamere.
For example, you can buy “Demonic Embrace” if the enemy is tanky. Demonic Embrace gives you health as well as ability power and overtime burn damage based on the maximum health of enemy champions. The item is a great buy to deal with bruisers and tanks for ability power champions.
If the enemy team has champions that can heal and it is becoming a problem for you, you should go for the “Oblivion Orb”. Buy the Orb before completing the “Morellonomicon”. If your lane opponent has a lot of built-in healing, you can even buy the Oblivion Orb as your first item. You do not have to complete the item till later on in the game.
Defensive Items
If you are in need of defensive items, you need to change up the build somewhat. If you are being burst down too easily you need to make resistances against the type of damage that you are receiving. For physical damage, you should go for the “Zhonya’s Hourglass”.
To deal with magic damage you should buy “Banshee’s Veil”. Both of these items give resistance as well as ability power and ability haste. So, they fit into your champion’s build quite nicely. Moreover, Hourglass gives you the ability to go into stasis when you want. You can dodge a lot of important enemy abilities with proper usage of this item.
The Veil gives you a shield that blocks all effects of the first ability that hits you. This is extremely effective against champions such as Teemo, whose blind is a big problem for Tryndamere.
One thing to note is that when making defensive items, you will need to give up some aggressive items in return. If you wish to make only one defensive item, you can forego making the Lich Bane as your last item. In case you need to make both of these defensive items, Cosmic Drive is given up as well.
Final Thoughts
Playing ability power Tryndamere makes it a completely different champion as compared to the standard attack damage and crit build path. Instead of having insanely high DPS and kill threat, the ability power gives you the ability to outlast your opponent.
Very few champions have the innate healing to match this champion if it goes ability power. Most of the bruisers have self-healing in the form of lifesteal or by hitting enemy champions. They cannot heal themselves in isolation like AP Tryndamere.
Moreover, thanks to the high ability power ratio in Spinning Slash, the ability still does very high damage. There is almost no damage difference at all if you compare the Spinning Slash damage with ability power and attack damage builds.
In this way, you become a massive problem to deal with. This is especially true for split pushing as you continue to do high damage while having very high self-sustain as well.
Check out our ultimate guide on Yasuo in LoL.
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