Renekton is a tanky bruiser who excels in the early to mid game. In the late game his damage falls off, but his durability and utility remains relevant.

As one of the strongest top lane champions, he is very dominant in lane and tends to be able to bully out most other champions. Even if he falls behind or does poorly in lane, he can still be helpful to his team as his utility will always be relevant.

When all other champions fail, he is a very safe pick, and one of the most reliable champions to pick.

Renekton is centered around an aggressive playstyle, that uses brute force to power his way through.

He is a very powerful and durable tank/bruiser who specializes in area of effect, and is meant to bring damage and disruption to the enemy team.

Pros:
- Strong early & mid game
- Safe & Reliable
- Mana-less (No resource cost)
- Uses fury (Bonus ability effects)
- High durability alongside decent damage
- Dominant in lane, useful in fights
- Versatile skill set: AOE damage & heal, single target stun, gap closer/creator, steroid ultimate for bonus HP + constant AOE damage

Cons:
- Late game damage is poor
- Limited by cooldowns unless cooldown reduction is built
- Reliant on team
- Short gap closer, unless certain requirements met
- Fury may be simply bonus effects, but without knowing how to properly use it, the bonus effects are meaningless and go to waste

Flash and Ignite are the most common choices.

However, there are other viable options:
- Teleport to provide more map presence for the team, or split push.
- Ghost to help keep up pace with enemies to deal damage. (especially if the enemy team is very mobile and has escape abilities)

The Runes I have shown at the top of this guide are meant to go hand-in-hand with the Masteries shown.

By putting some emphasis on offense in Runes, you can opt out of the offense portion of the Mastery Tree to obtain far more useful defensive stats in the defense Mastery tree. This is the most optimal set up.

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Another (non optimal) option would be to change your Masteries to 9/21/0 to add some offense, and substitute for the defensive stats through a different set up of Runes.





However, in this trade off, it isn't the most optimal: you gain AD and HP, but you lose far more incredibly useful stats in this.
- In Runes: you would lose AD and Armor
- In Masteries: you would lose Missing Health Regeneration, Enhanced Self Healing below 25% HP, and bonus Armor & MR per nearby enemy champion.

The main problem is not that you lost AD and Armor, but that the unique and versatile stats you lose in the Defense Mastery Tree are otherwise unattainable through any other means except the Mastery Tree. You can see why the first set up is significantly better than the second.

Masteries are the basic defensive bruiser/tank masteries.

The difference is that it's more optimal to go 4/26/0 for Renekton rather than your typical bruiser who prefers 9/21/0 because of the fact that Renekton thrives on survivability at low HP through healing. This is why taking the healing masteries are more useful than getting a little bit of Attack Damage.

Level your ultimate Dominus whenever possible (Levels 6, 11, 16)
Otherwise, this is your order of skill levelling:

1. Max Q Cull the Meek: Increases damage and healing. Increases your laning power & survivability, as well as your ability to push or farm.

2. Max E Slice and Dice: Increases damage and armor reduction. Increases your pushing/farming ability, and your strength in team fights.

3. Max W Ruthless Predator: Increases damage | The damage doesn't matter as much, since you want to always use the Fury Empowered version of this spell for the longer stun anyways, in which the damage is already great in the Fury Empowered version of this ability. Also, the stun duration does NOT increase with rank, and the damage increase is less than the damage increase for E ( Slice and Dice) so once you obtain one point for the hard stun utility, max this last.

Renekton is fairly strong even without items, hence why he has few core or necessary items, leaving him many available build options to better synergize with his team, or against the enemy team.

Starting Items

Buy a Stealth Ward and after one of the purchase options, spend the rest of your money on Health Potion
Options:
- Cloth Armor for more effective HP, especially against other AD caster champions and AD bruisers
- Doran's Shield against ranged champions who will auto attack you and poke you a lot

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Core Items

Main Core Items:
- Sunfire Aegis for Armor tankiness, but more importantly for the Passive synergy with Dominus for massive AOE damage. (Good for team fights, or pushing/farming)
- Spirit Visage for Magic Resist & tankiness, Cooldown Reduction for more spell casts, and increases your natural health regeneration, and increases the healing cap for Cull the Meek

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Situational Core Items:
- Black Cleaver if your team is heavy in AD, it can synergize with all your Physical Damage abilities to shred Armor in team fights for your team mates.
- Ravenous Hydra to improve mainly your AOE damage, farming, and pushing. As well as increasing the damage of your abilities, with a bit of added survivability. (Decent item to buy if you want to play more aggressive and increase your offensive capabilities, but slows down your tankiness build)
- Mercury's Treads if the enemy has a lot of crowd control
- Ninja Tabi if the enemy does NOT have a lot of crowd control so you're not buying Mercury's Treads. OR if you're against a lot of strong auto attackers ( Vayne. Jax, Aatrox, Tryndamere, etc.)
- Ionian Boots of Lucidity is not the most recommended item as it's very situational. Under the situation you're building Spirit Visage as your only means of Cooldown Reduction, and there is not much Crowd Control on the enemy team, then this item is viable. Otherwise, you're better off with Mercury's Treads.
- Spirit of the Ancient Golem is the only other viable Tenacity option for Renekton aside from Mercury's Treads. Bought under the condition the enemy team possesses strong auto attackers (requiring you to buy Ninja Tabi), and plentiful Crowd Control.
- Warmog's Armor is purely a defensive item if you fell behind and need to rush tankiness, or don't know what to buy.
- Frozen Mallet for the main purpose of it's Icy Passive for added crowd control to slow targets. Recommended if your team doesn't have much crowd control to follow you up with (e.g. Lucian, Ezreal) or if the enemy team is very mobile/has escapes/susceptible to slows.

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NOTE: When purchasing components for a larger item (such as Sunfire Aegis or Spirit Visage) it's best on Renekton to purchase the Resistance components of the item first (Respectively: Chain Vest and Negatron Cloak). The reason being Renekton's Ultimate Dominus already provides you with HP, so buying Armor/MR for resistance synergizes with the Bonus HP, and multiplicatively gives you more Effective HP. (And Armor can provide more tower diving power)

Use your strong early game to your advantage.

Be aggressive. Brawl. Win trades. Rinse & Repeat.

This should help push them out of lane, or at least they will begin to fear you and respect your damage. You should be able to free farm, deny them farm, and punish them when they try to go in for farm.

Standard combo: E->W->AA->Q->E
- Use E (Slice) through enemy minions to the enemy (allowing you to later use E again)
- Use W (Ruthless Predator)and land a basic attack on the enemy for a stun
- Auto Attack them once
- Use Q (Cull the Meek) to damage them and heal from them and their minions
- Use E (Dice)backwards to return to the safety behind your minion line.

NOTE: The more Fury you have built up, the more damage you'll do, the better the trade will be for you.
- This combo with 50+ Fury will grant you an Empowered Ruthless Predator for a double duration stun and 50% bonus damage.
- This combo with 100 Fury will grant you the bonus above, along with an Empowered Cull the Meek for bonus damage and bonus heal.

At this point, they may also tell their jungler to repeatedly come top lane to help them out. Don't be afraid of this. Renekton can escape easily, and is decent with 2v1s. By doing this, you draw enemy jungler pressure to your lane, allowing your mid and bot lanes to act more freely without worry of the enemy jungler.

You draw pressure to you because you can take it, and help out your team mates indirectly through that.

NOTE: If you plan to get Black Cleaver for your team, purchase an early The Brutalizer to snowball your lane, and change it only to a Black Cleaver in the late game, as you want to begin working on your Sunfire Aegis ASAP.

FURY TIPS will be listed at the end of this guide showcasing when to use your fury through all stages of the game.

Once you complete your Sunfire Aegis, this is when Renekton gets a huge power spike, and his "strong mid game" is known to start. Now you may begin to roam the map to help out your team (after pushing your lane up to the enemy tower or beyond)

The Passive burn damage synergizing with your ultimate Dominus AOE damage deals tons of damage. Use this to your advantage. If the enemy team is smart, they will avoid fighting you at this point, so you must either try to force a fight or take free objectives through:
a. Taking Dragon. If the enemy tries to stop you, you can force a fight in the tight river areas.
b. Take mid. Push mid with your team, and begin taking their towers.
c. Tower dive. If you try to take mid and they try to fight back or stop you, you can tower dive if your team is confident and strong enough that they could win a fight under enemy towers.

If a fight does end up breaking out, and you know for sure both teams are committing to the fight. Get ready and hit your ultimate, run through their team and straight for their backline carries. Not only does this cause damage throughout the enemy team through out the fight, but as you jump on their backline carries, you'll cause a lot of disruption and panic as the rest of the enemy team tries to protect their backline from you. This should buy your team some time of free reign to do as they please. During these team fights, the entire focus of the enemy should be on you and trying to get you away. Use this to your advantage so your team can follow up and do work.

- Try to use your Empowered W ( Ruthless Predator) on the enemy backline carries, buying your time longer crowd control time to follow up.
- Save your Q ( Cull the Meek) until you have an Empowered spell, and try to hit everyone on the team with it for massive AOE damage and healing.

By now, you should be a huge tank for your team, capable of outputting decent damage, and taking a lot of punishment.

Your job remains somewhat the same as the mid game: Once a fight is guaranteed to break out, hit Dominus, and run into the enemy team.

With this in mind: you want to do the same as the mid game - run through their entire team, and head straight for their backline carries, attempting to use your stun + damage + heal combo on them. Your goal is to continually stay on top of them as your Sunfire Aegis and Dominus continually output tons of damage to them. You want to either stun the carry long enough for your assassins or follow up to come in and clean up the carries, or you want to push the backline out of the fight. This will zone them out from the fight, and zone them out from doing anything useful, and the enemy front line will die to the rest of your team.

Renekton can effectively 1v2 or 1v3 in these fights, distracting the attention of multiple people, and leaving the rest of your team to collapse on the enemy with the numbers advantage. The goal is as you stay on the enemy carries and output constant damage, the support and several other members of the team will try to save their carries by pushing you away, which draws a lot of attention, thus providing free reign again for your team.

Make sure the fight has broken out first, if you hit Dominus early, it may discourage the enemy team to continue the fight, and they will back off for those 15 seconds until your ultimate wears off. If you wait until the fight has started and both teams have committed, Dominus is used to proper effect.

NOTE: Even if you have to begin the fight yourself, and yet still wait for the fight to begin for a few seconds first while you take damage, Dominus should only be used when both teams are committed for certain.

To sum it all up from the above stages of the game:

- You want to bring heavy panic/disruption while dealing AOE damage
- Your priority targets: backline carries
- Once the fight has begun (by you, your team, or the enemy team), jump in, and begin dealing damage and causing havoc
- Once both teams are committed, hit Dominus
- Head straight for the enemy carries using your double-dash, and use your 50+ Fury Ruthless Predator for a stun on a carry, and wait until you have 50+ Fury ready again, and use your Cull of the Meek to deal massive AOE damage and heal from it.
- Stick on the carries, dealing continual AOE damage over time
- Use Q whenever you can to deal more damage and receive big heals (preferably over 50+ Fury, but if you need to use it and heal on low health, don't hesitate)
- Use W whenever you can stun the enemy carries (preferably over 50+ Fury, but if you think they're about to get away before your team can follow up, don't hesitate)
- Use E as your primary means of gap closing and chasing down the carries. (You don't always need to use both right away, as there is a 4 second timer before the second dash wears off)
- You can also use E if you're high on Fury as you run in and engage, to shred armor of the targets you hit on the way in, in order to reduce the armor of the tanks for your team mates, and reduce the armor of the backline for yourself to deal more damage.

Don't rush into using your Empowered Abilities once you get 50+ Fury. If you don't need it, try to build it up to 100 as you can do a lot more with that. It's obvious that having 100 Fury ready for you to use is the best case scenario, but you won't always have that ready for yourself. This will help guide you on when to use your Empowered Abilities with only 50+ Fury.

Laning
- Low HP, and want to heal: it's best to use Fury on Cull the Meek for bonus heal, and to try to hit as many minions as you can (including the enemy champion) to get the maximum heal.
- High HP, and want to harass enemy: Use it on Ruthless Predator so with a longer duration stun, you can land a few more auto attacks easily, and can land Cull the Meek easily as well.

Getting Ganked
- Typically ("Unsuccessful Gank"): It's best to use Fury on your W in order to get a longer stun on one of the enemies (preferably on the enemy jungler because as you run away you'll likely have to run through them) to stop them in their tracks for the gank.
- If the enemy gets a "successful gank" off: Meaning that the gank is already in motion and they are both already attacking you - it might still be optimal to use W to stop the enemy jungler to end the chase before you run, but if you're low on HP, then you'll have no choice but to Empower your Q to heal more from hitting both enemy champions.
- NOTE: Try to get a second dash on your E for an escape can be tricky sometimes in lane, it's best to position yourself so the enemy jungler is between you and your turret. This way, you can quickly dash through the enemy jungler, and once again to get away.

Getting a gank
- Empower your W: Longer stun duration to improve the gank, and give your jungler more time to close the gap to the enemy.

Getting tower dived
- Dived by 1 enemy = Empower W: Regular stun is 0.75 seconds, Empowered stun is 1.5 seconds, and if an enemy damages you under tower, a 1.5 second stun will give your tower the time to fire off an extra shot on the enemy, which could make or break a kill on the enemy with an extra tower shot
- Dived by multiple enemies = Empower Q: much larger heal hitting multiple champions which enhances the heal even more

Diving enemies under tower
- 100 Fury: You really only want to tower dive with 100 Fury to use it on both your W and Q

Starting Fights
- The more fury you start a fight with, the better the fight will go for you.
- Always try to start a fight with 50 Fury, and at best: 100 Fury. This can be achieved by auto attacking minions and jungle monsters around the time you think a fight will break out (When you're about to go for dragon or take a tower)
- Engaging: Use Fury to empower your Slice and Dice, so when you dash in, it will do bonus damage and provide Armor Reduction on your way in.
- Next 50 Fury: Should be used on Ruthless Predator on the enemy backline carries for the stun
- Next 50 Fury: Should be used on Cull the Meek for the heal and bonus AOE damage all around

NOTE: You can still use 50 Fury on Slice and Dice, 50 Fury on your Ruthless Predator, then hit Cull the Meek for AOE damage and heal even when it's not empowered. The Empower just makes it more effective for damage and heal, but by no means does this mean that you can't Q whenever you need it. Just try to have it off cooldown when you're about to hit the next 50 Fury.

NOTE: Cull the Meek is always a shorter cooldown than Ruthless Predator, so you can basically cycle Fury use between W->Q->W->Q. This does not mean you should always be revolving between W and Q. It just means you CAN, and will likely be revolving between spells when you get Fury. However, you should always try to use spells accordingly with what you need at the time (Empowered Cull the Meek for heal, Empowered Ruthless Predator for stun for your team to catch up)

Renekton as I've said is a very solid champion, and a safe and reliable pick, so if you're ever unsure about who to pick, he is a great choice.

Playing as Renekton means that even if the enemy laner is better than you or has a better champion, you still won't lose or fall behind that badly because of how forgiving Renekton is, allowing you to remain useful and relevant in the mid game.

As well, if your team is behind or is doing bad, Renekton can easily help to pick up the slack with his strong 1v2 or 1v3 capabilities. It provides a bit of fall-back room and margin of error for your team, and if your team is bad at focusing down a single target, it's no problem, since Renekton does so much AOE damage all around through the enemy team anyways.