The Triumphant return of Trinity Force

It has been a while, but the band is back together again. No doubt Phreak is weeping tears of joy.

Look at how happy he is

Patch 3.10 brought some huge changes to what is likely League’s most iconic item. One of the original carry items, a favorite of several champions whose pick rate have fallen off along with Trinity's popularity. The Trinity Force used to be the item with all the stats, making you better at absolutely everything. I'm going to go through the numbers and then the impact the item has already made on play.

Let's start with Phage. It has been changed, getting a reduced price and a new passive, Rage, which arguably is much better than it's predecessor, Icy. Now champions with slowing abilities can justify the Phage/Trinity purchase (as if they needed to) since it can synergize with their own abilities to make pursuit and kiting nearly inescapable just by pure speed difference. The movement change also affects the champion rather than the target, allowing squishy champions to be even more slippery in a teamfight.

Trinity itself got the new Rage passive (and reduction in price) as well as a buff to the sheen damage, belting out 200% base attack damage after the update (up from 150%). A trinity of more damage, greater utility, and reduced costs combine to create a buff that has launched this item back into play, both in solo queue and the professional scene.

 

'dose stats...

Now for the impact.

Since the patch, the pick rate of Trinity Force in Diamond ranked queue has blown up to five times what it was. Win rates with the items have also increased a few percentage points.

If you have been around since Season 2 then you are probably asking yourself “does this mean that trinity force champions are back?” In a word; Yes.

Ezreal, a common pick in Korea, has been seeing some different itemization lately. Score, Space, and Hermes all picked Ezreal AD carry and switched out Muramana for Trinity Force into Last Whisper. Early Sheens and Phages let them do extreme damage while remaining almost uncatchable (some less so than others). Whether this means the death of the blue build or not remains to be seen, but I know some readers have their fingers crossed.

Corki has also shown up in pro play. One of the original Trinity Force AD carries, Score brought back the Scorki and spent a few games using the new Trinity Force to absolutely clean house.

Jax is officially drawing bans in OGN after Summday used a Trinity Force to absolutely ruin top lane, the enemy jungler, proxy farm, and generally roam around as an unstoppable bruiser even while his team was losing.

Hello, old friend

InSec, Shy and Summday all built a Trinity on Shen. Flame built one on Renekton, I even saw some Irelia among some of the NA LCS hopeful teams (no doubt preparing to carry as soon as the next patch was available).

Basically it has been all over the place after remaining basically unpicked for the entirety of Season 3. I have no doubt that we will be seeing a lot of old champions making a huge comeback in Worlds

If you just started in Season 3 and have never heard about the item, go ahead and check the store, it’s for real. Buy it, start experimenting. For all of the season 1 and 2 vets, you know what to do...