Tristana Wild Rift Build & Guide

Innate Passive: Draw a Bead

Tristana’s auto-attack, 3rd, Explosive Charge, and Ult, Buster Shot range increases per level. Each line represents Tristana’s range in the respective level.

There is a significant range difference between a level 1 Tristana and a max level Tristana. A max level Tristana’s range is only behind a Seraphine with 15+ note stack or a Jinx with max level 1st, Switcheroo! But, the big difference is that along with Tristana’s long-range, she has superior mobility thanks to her 2nd, Rocket Jump. 

Here is a comparison between Tristana, Jinx, and Graves.

• The yellow lines represent Tristana’s range. The outer yellow line is Tristana with the Firecannon Barrel passive which grants 150 bonus range. The second yellow line is Tristana’s max range at level 15. and the third yellow line is her range at level 1.
• The red lines represent Jinx’s range. The other red line is Jinx’s range with her cannon, Fishbones at max level and the inner red line is her range with Pow-Pow, the minigun.
• The blue line is Grave’s range.

Q | 1st: Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire is Tristana’s steroid ability. It augments her burst damage because it allows her to quickly charge her 3rd, Explosive Charge and in the late game, this ability gives her one of the deadliest DPS among the ADCs.

The only downside to Rapid Fire is its long cooldown. You don’t want to commit to fights when it is unavailable and wasting it is a big drop to your DPS.

When to activate Rapid Fire boils down to experience but as for beginners, here is some advice on when you’ll want to activate Rapid Fire when:

1. There is an out-of-position enemy you want to use your full combo on. The full combo is 2nd + 3rd + AA + Ult +AA.
2. Both teams have used their initiation abilities and crowd controls.
3. You are in a position to freely hit the enemies.

W | 2nd: Rocket Jump

Rocket Jump is Tristana’s mobility ability and her defining ability. This is what makes her annoyingly hard to deal with because its cooldown resets when she takes down an enemy and when she managed to detonate a fully stacked 3rd, Explosive Charge. 

Rocket Jump has a short casting animation which means that there is a short delay before she jumps and enemies will be notified and have a short time to react whether you are going in or out of a fight.

During the short casting animation, you can counter crowd control abilities. For example, if you are hit Blitzcrank’s 1st, Rocket Grab, you’ll be able to jump out to safety even you are hit. This applies to almost all crowd control abilities. But if you are hit after the casting animation, while you are up in the air, your jump will be interrupted and you’ll have no way to counter it unless you have flash available.

Experienced enemies will wait for your casting animation to end before trying to hit you with their CCs. To counter this, use your Rocket Jump reflexively, meaning, use it as the enemy uses their crowd control or even bait it out if you’re confident about reaction time.

You can use your abilities mid-air while jumping but you cannot auto-attack. Use this fact to drop in your 3rd, Explosive Charge while mid-air so you’ll be able to charge it faster because Rocket Jump can also stack your 3rd, Explosive Charge if you hit the enemy with it.

You may also use Ult, Buster Shot mid-air for the Insec play where you’ll push the target enemy into your team.

Be careful when engaging against ADCs with Rocket Jump because they are able to auto attack you while you are in mid-air while you cannot. If both you and the enemy ADC are low and you want to kill them, fake them with a Rocket Jump then cancel it using your Flash to surprise your enemy.

Because when using Flash with Rocket Jump. Using Flash during the casting animation will make it cast faster while using it during the jump will cancel the jump and no damage will be done upon landing.

You can do a double jump by jumping while your 3rd, Explosive Charge is nearly stacked or when an enemy is nearly dead.

E | 3rd: Explosive Charge

Explosive Charge is your main source of damage in the early and mid-game.

First, the passive part explodes enemies killed by Tristana’s attacks, dealing magic damage. This allows you to shove your lane and push back melee supports safely.

Second, the active part places a bomb on an enemy or turret which explodes after a short duration or when fully stacked. Each attack or ability Tristana lands on the enemy with an Explosive Charge increases its damage, up to 120%.

In the laning phase, you can safely harass the enemy by combining the passive and active parts of this ability. To do this, use Explosive Charge on a dying minion near an enemy champion then attack once. Both the passive and active portions will explode and damage the enemy champion near the dying minion.

Use the full combo (2nd + 3rd + AA + Ult +AA) on priority enemies when you get the chance. If you can reach level 5 before your enemy laners, immediately look for a kill opportunity before they acquire their ultimate.

Remember that you can use Explosive Charge on turrets to quickly take them down. The range is doubled when Explosive Charge is detonated on towers so use it whenever you can to harass enemy champions under turrets.

A high-level combo you can use with Explosive Charge is detonating it on time while pushing the target enemy champion to their team using Ult, Buster Shot so they’ll all receive the explosion damage.

R | Ultimate: Buster Shot

Tristana’s ultimate, Buster Shot, is a burst damage crowd control ability with lots of uses. Some of them are:

1. To burst down enemies with your full combo. 2nd + 3rd + AA + Ult + AA. You can sneak in an auto-attack after using your ultimate.
2. For self-peeling or to protect your allies by knocking away a pursuing enemy.
3. To set up a kill by pushing an enemy to your team.

The knockback of Buster shot is essentially a crowd control so always use it when dueling an enemy champion so you’ll be able to land at least one more attack than them which can mean life or death on 1v1 duels.

When an enemy has 2 stacks of 3rd, Explosive Charge, cast your ultimate and point towards the enemy team then auto attack so you’ll damage the enemy team with your 3rd, Explosive Charge. 

Full combo: 2nd + 3rd [1st] + AA + Ult +A

Any other combos are variations of this combo. You’ll want to activate 1st, Rapid Fire before auto-attacking. If your 2nd, Rocket Jump won’t damage the enemy, land another auto-attack first before using your ultimate, Buster Shot to maximize3rd, Explosive Charge‘s stack damage.