Trinity Force has recently seen some changes that has reinstated it as a strong item and it is currently seeing a lot of play in the World Championship group stages. What has changed and why are people picking it up?
Phage Changes
Phage now grants 20 bonus movement speed, using a passive called Rage, rather than a 30% slow (20% ranged) from Icy. Additionally you are granted 60 move speed when you kill a minion, monster or champion.
It might not seem like a big change but it increases your ability to kite against multiple targets, who would all have required a single auto attack to slow them, but it does diminish your ability to escape single opponents who were slowed much more using icy procs.
However this buff is up all of the time, assuming you’re auto attacking, and there is no more randomness with the item. You can also use minions and monsters to increase your move speed while you’re out of range of the target you want to slow and it gives you triple the move speed if you kill a target.
Oh and did I mention its 215 gold cheaper?
Trinity Force Changes
Grants the same Rage passive as Phage rather than the 35% slow (25% from ranged attacks) that Icy provided and also carries the 215 gold reduction that Phage got allowing you to pick up Trinity Force slightly earlier than before.
However the biggest change is to the Spellblade passive granted by Sheen. Previously Spellblade allowed the next auto attack, or spell that applied on-hit modifiers, to deal 150% of your champions base attack damage as additional damage. That’s now been increased to 200% of bonus attack damage, which allows champions to deal an additional ~50 damage per proc at level 18.
It may not seem like much in the short term but it increases the champions burst damage and you’re likely to get several of these procs over the course of a teamfight if you’re playing the right character. Plus for champions that previously purchased Iceborn Gauntlet, who’s Spellblade passive only deals 125% of base attack damage, the increase in damage is even larger if you pick up Trinity Force instead.
Conclusions
It is evident, from the World Championship group stages, that Trinity Force is now a viable and strong alternative item for characters that can proc the Spellblade passive and use the movement speed from Rage, which i’m sure will delight Phreak as much as anyone reading this.
In terms of using this in solo queue we could see the return of Trinity Force on Irelia (better nerf..), Gangplank and characters like Shen in the top lane. They all benefit from the item in different ways, and with such a large offering of stats this is to be expected, but its the AD carries where has been seeing competitive play.
I’m sure most of us are looking for Genja to bring this out when playing Ashe, who would then have a slow and a move speed increase, to really ruin the day of any Udyr’s or Nasus’ who happened to be picked against Gambit.
More changes to Trinity Force
Although not a live change Trinity Force, and Phage, has seen some minor changes on the PBE that reduce the bonus move speed gained by ranged champions by half. Is this an item killer? Probably not but it does weaken it slightly for marksmen/AD carries, though I believe it’s the strength of Spellblade that is giving its current popularity in worlds.
Thankfully it doesn’t take anything away from top lane champions, who are mostly melee, and I look forward to trying it out.
