Combo Review #10: Tristana + Ziggs

With the nerf to the tank champion meta in the upcoming Patch 6.8, this seems like a good time to revisit an old poke and siege comp combo favorite, the double Yordle terror of Ziggs and Tristana.

Introduction

With the nerf to the tank champion meta in the upcoming Patch 6.8, this seems like a good time to revisit an old poke and siege comp combo favorite, the double Yordle terror of Ziggs and Tristana.

Main Goals

Tower Damage

In terms of sheer tower damage, Ziggs and Tristana both provide massive tower damage in relatively small time intervals. This means that even against high waveclear teams, they can rain down safe, consistent damage on turrets via the following:

Ziggs (Passive): Ziggs's basic attacks periodically deal 20 - 160 (based on level) (+ 25 / 30 / 35% AP) bonus magic damage, doubled against enemy structures.

Tristana Explosive Charge (E): ACTIVE: Tristana places an explosive charge on the target enemy or enemy turret. After 4 seconds the charge explodes, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies. The explosion radius is doubled when used on a turret.

Waveclear/Poke

Using Ziggs' low cooldown, high AOE spells, he can easily clear out minion waves by himself. However, even if he doesn't manage to finish them off, a quick hit or two from Tristana at long range eliminates the remainder via explosive charge's passive.

This greatly reduces the amount of time enemies have at besieging unless they want to dive the turret against these two extremely high range burst champions.

Additional Synergies

As two Yordles, they also have fairly small hit boxes compared to other champions. This means that they can spread out easily without fearing multi-champion AOE CCs like Malphite's ultimate. If one gets dove, the other can still launch powerful peel and zoning spells to prevent a successful dive.

Alternative Tactics

Alternative tactics include other strong siege marksmen such as:

• Caitlyn - Good trap zoning and long range allows her to get multiple hits off on turrets safely
• Lucian - Strong six shot burst auto attack via his passive resets takes down towers quickly in small windows

For an alternative to Ziggs, Twisted Fate also works well against turrets with his pick-a-card, but it doesn't work against inhibitors or the nexus. His waveclear also has excellent range and cooldown.

Potential Difficulty

Slow Gap Closers and Damage
Both Ziggs and Tristana have relatively slow gap closers. This means that on a team that tends to do all-in plays, a lot of their burst damage can be delayed. If Tristana chooses to go the rageblade build, this also means significant ramp up time until full power during team fights.

Skillshot Based Mid Laner
As a champion that's essentially all skill shots, the difference between a good Ziggs and a bad Ziggs is extremely stark in terms of damage and utility.

Conclusions

Tristana and Ziggs offer a very safe combination that works well as long as the Ziggs player can reliably hit his skillshots. Their tower damage is one of the highest in the game, and combined with a Nasus, they can siege very hard with a simple Zz'Rot Portal, even against high waveclear teams.

What do you think about the Tristana Ziggs combo? Comment below!

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