Rengar is a champion that was considered very strong in the season 4 jungle, and was lesser known as a hard snowballing top laner with excellent mid game roaming potential. When people see me pick Rengar, I get the question of "why top lane?" well because I suck at jungling, but furthermore, Rengar is a champion that excels at capitalizing on the mistakes of enemy top laners, and if played correctly, can easily win most top lane matchups and scale excellently into mid-late game.

In the words of reddit, "'Its pretty much free elo now' ft. Ryan Choi"

I'm not really anyone special in terms of this game, I started playing on Vi's release, and have been maining top lane ever since I saw Voyboy play Lee Sin top in the LCS. I consider myself a Rengar main, with a background in Lee Sin and Nidalee. I have climbed from Silver 4 to Gold 1 playing almost exclusively Rengar in the last month of season 4, and from Silver 2 to Diamond 5 once season 5 began. I like to think I have a good understanding of this game, but I'm Still learning, and still climbing. I hope you like my guide!

Pros Insane burst late-game Good laning phase High outplay potential Excellent Duelist Good Escapes post-6 Minimal Counterplay Lategame

Cons No escape pre-6 Gold-dependent Requires above-average mechanics Low utility Requires support or jungle to be designated tank

The following two pages are not ideal, they reduce your late game damage a notable amount, however they can get you through even the worst lanes.

AP Champions

Pantheon

The runes I utilize are fairly common:

These runes maximize your potential for dueling other champions early game and are by far the best choice for a top lane Rengar.

Upon further testing I have decided that against AD top laners, going Greater Seal of Armor is preferable due to your ability to get more effective HP with potions. It's a somewhat difficult concept to explain, but the jist of it is that if your potion heals for 150 HP, that 150 HP will be worth more HP if you have a higher armor value, the contrary is also true, if you have a lot of HP, 150 HP is relatively lower and will heal you for less.

TL;DR vs AD top laners take Greater Seal of Armor and vs AP top laners take Greater Seal of Health and Greater Glyph of Magic Resist

This is the section on laning! Honestly there are so many tricks to laning with Rengar it is really difficult to cover them all, however there are a few that strike me as the most obvious tricks to discuss. These are the "Auto Q", the "level 2 cheese", and cancelling the bola animation.


The first trick I want to discuss is really simple, I'll refer to it as "auto Q" for the rest of the guide and it's really simple, you simply use the brush to jump on your opponent in lane, and then reset your auto attack with Q. At level 1 this will deal 85 + 85 + 30 ... 200 DAMAGE this ignores armor of course, because I'm bad at math. BUT this is still major damage at level 1, and is why you should ALWAYS use auto + Q instead of just using Q, there are a few exceptions to this that I'll talk about in the matchups section. After you do this you should immediately run back into your creep wave and go back to last hitting. If they chase you into your creep wave to try and trade back, you can easily fight them with the help of your creeps. If players at your elo are bad enough, they sometimes won't even auto attack you in return! Regardless, you should be trying to do this two times at level 1 to ensure your opponent is low enough for a level 2 cheese.


Have you ever wondered why lanes will randomly die around between 2:30-2:40 in game? This is the time a solo lane that is pushing will hit level 2. A lot of champions can do this actually, and it's not uncommon for players to try and push early so they can hit level 2 before the other laner. Although many champions can do this, I personally believe that Rengar's level 2 cheese is the strongest in the game. Rengar's level 2 cheese involves getting 3-5 ferocity stacks, and then using a full combo on the enemy laner who has already been chunked substantially. Ryan Choi is a challenger top laner who mains Rengar, and he EXCELS at doing this, even in challenger division.




Notice how in each of these games, Ryan starts off the game by waiting in the brush closest to the enemy tower and pulling the creep aggro towards the brush, this allows you to jump onto the enemy top laner whenever you want to, as all of the creeps that they will be going to last hit will be in range of the brush. When you are laning now, you should try to stack up your Q on minions while pushing the wave slightly. Your goal early game is to get 3-5 stacks of ferocity, and chunk the enemy top laner slightly. If you go for auto + Qs whenever the other top laner goes for a cs, you should win trades assuming they don't go for you instead of the creep. Regardless, once you hit 4 ferocity, and your EXP bar is near full, you want to auto the creep that is closest to death,and then go to the brush. Right after the creep dies, you want to level up your bola, jump onto the enemy top while throwing bola, and then double Q them, while animation canceling for your auto attack delay, if you've done this correctly they should be in ignite range, if they flash, flash to follow them for the auto ignite finish. Congrats. If you've done this correctly, you just scored first blood. After pushing your wave to their tower you'll hit 3, and you can go back and spend your 650 gold.



These are easily the best examples of Ryan doing a level 2 cheese, executed perfectly and does everything I mentioned in the section.


I mentioned it briefly on the section about level 2 cheesing when I said "jump onto the enemy top while throwing bola". Basically you can throw your bola while you are in mid leap as long as you leave your cursor over the enemy champion, you still have to aim it of course, but this allows you to chase so much easier as you do not need to stop moving your champion to land bola, also if you want to perform a 1-shot on Rengar you need to land this ability mid leap.

1-shotting people is a trick, but I think it deserves it's own section of the guide, so I'm going to leave this section as is, there are a few more tricks I can think of, and I'll explain them if people actually seem to take notice of my guide and want me to write more.

Performing a 1 shot with Rengar is a pretty exact science, there are pretty much 4 combos that you use as Rengar, but they all have a few core mechanics.

• The "Perfect" 1-shot:
  
  
  Spoiler: Click to view

  I would make a video explaining this, but jksad does it so much better

  Play Video

  
  
  
  If somehow that didn't clarify things for you, you can read this article.
  
  
  For those of you who don't like clicking on links or some ****. The idea is that you should get up 5 stacks of ferocity before you go to ult. Press R once you're in the vision range indicator (this is equal to the range you can chase a target before the ult runs out without your movement speed boosts) run up, activate q, and then ghostblade, once you start your leap, you want to use your bola (remember it's still a skillshot!) and activate the Tiamat active. After you land, you should W and Q and chase them down with your enhanced movement speed and attack damage. This shouldn't be necessary once you're full build, as you can pretty much 1 shot any squishy once you're full build.
  
  Youmuu's Ghostblade + Empowered Savagery -> Bola Strike + Tiamat -> Battle Roar + Savagery
  
  
  
• The "I hate Corki, Tristana, Vayne (AND PROBABLY KALISTA) Combo":
  
  
  Spoiler: Click to view

  Pretty self-explanatory, this combo is for use against HIGH MOBILITY squishies that can use a gap closer to escape you early game before you can instagib them with the first combo mentioned. Basically you get 5 stacks of ferocity like before, but instead of using empowered Q you use Ghostblade, and then empowered E and tiamat mid jump, and then on landing you use W an auto Q, and then E them before the root runs out so that they are slowed even if they use their escape. For a full build Vayne/Kalista you will want to use this combo so they can't kite you to death.
  
  Youmuu's Ghostblade -> Empowered Bola Strike + Tiamat -> Battle Roar + auto Q -> Bola Strike
  
  
  
• The "my jungler took my ferocity stacks" combo:
  
  
  Spoiler: Click to view

  Basically you didn't have time to get any ferocity stacks up, could be that you're rushing out of base to defend your inhib, whatever it is, you need to kill something even though you don't have any ferocity. It's pretty similar to the perfect combo, however instead of activating your Q before the jump, you want to run up, Ghostblade, E + tiamat, auto Q and W after you land. This combo deals significantly less damage, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
  
  Youmuu's Ghostblade -> Bola Strike + Tiamat -> auto Q + Battle Roar
  
  
  
• The "I couldn't think of an original name for this combo" combo:
  
  
  Spoiler: Click to view

  This combo is only used if you have exactly 4 stacks of ferocity, and is actually inefficient as it wastes 1 fury because you end up using two abilities and go over 5 stacks of ferocity. Regardless it's the best combo to use at 4 stacks of ferocity. It's literally the perfect combo, but executed with 4 stacks of ferocity, and then you use the empowered Q as your second Q. The reason you do this is because if you were to do the previous combo using the auto reset, you'd actually end up having to use empowered Q, which has a .5 second delay, as Rengar cannot use empowered abilities for .5 seconds after gaining his 5th stack of ferocity. So this combo looks like:
  
  Youmuu's Ghostblade + Savagery -> Tiamat + Bola Strike -> Empowered Savagery -> Battle Roar

These are all of the variations to Rengar's assassination combos that I can think of, if I've missed something, please let me know!

Your ultimate goal in laning phase should ultimately be to take the opposing laner's tower, and push the other laners creeps to the second tower.
One of three things will happen now:
-An enemy champion will come top lane to catch the wave
-You will get ganked by the enemy jungler as the top lane comes back
-Other team will try to force dragon as a 4v5 while you are top
No matter what happens, start pinging the **** out of dragon, you're going to draw pressure top lane no matter what, and this should be a free dragon or free tower for your team.
In each of these situations, you and your team can capitalize on your push. Let's say an enemy champion comes top. Can I tower dive this champion? Is this champion crucial to the other team's 5v5 potential? Does this champion have teleport? If you can tower dive the person who comes to stop you, back off like you're recalling, and press R, if you don't see anyone else near you with ult you have free reign to tower dive them. If you do see another champion heading towards you, it means you're getting ganked. You can easily escape the gank by ulting and running back down lane, or if you want to try something ballsy, pick the squishier of the two, and try to 1 shot them. If you're successful, you'll probably still be healthy enough to 1v1 the other champion, and force them to back off or just try to hold tower against you. If you get a double kill, back off immidiately and make sure your team gets a dragon with the 4v3, if you die, ping your team to get the dragon with the 4v3. With the pressure you're drawing top lane you should be able to capitalize in some way, shape, or form. If the enemy team tries to force dragon 4v5, you should take the tower, and then roam to dragon, assuming your team fought, you can probably pick up a kill or two, and if they stalled, you can probably fight 5v5 now that you are grouped.
Aside from split pushing, Rengar can also gank bot as soon as he gets his tower in lane. You can try to do this right at level 6, however this is very risky as if you don't get kills in the gank, you will lose your tower top lane for free, and fall behind in lane. On the bright side, a successful level 6 gank bot can put your bot lane significantly ahead, get your team a free tower bot lane, AND DRAGON. Sometimes it is worth the risk if you feel as though you're ahead enough top lane and your team needs your help.

Did anyone actually get this far? If you want me to finish this I will lolz...