Hey guys! With the season 5 changes, objectives like dragon and towers are became more and more important. Dragon now gives permanent buffs that stack, and towers give more global gold when destroyed. Then Rek'sai came along on PBE. And I wet my pants. I played the **** out of her on PBE and spammed her on live because I knew I would love her playstyle. Everything about her kit perfectly complemented controlling objectives. I like to call her the colonoscopist of the Rift is because it's a metaphor for the way she plays: UP EVERYONE'S A**



~PROS~
-Constant pressure on the map
-Unique gank paths
-Easy to learn
-Great split pusher
-Resourceless
-High mobility
-Good followup initiation

~CONS~
-Requires decent game knowledge
-Non-Combat Ultimate
-Requires ingenuity & planning

Due to the uniqueness of Rek'sai's kit, I'd recommended reading her W ability first, then read the remaining abilities in order. This way it will be easier to understand how they work together.

I will use the official Riot champion spotlight multiple times in this section which can be found here. If you don't want to read this giant wall of text on Rek'sai's abilities, watching the entire video is much quicker and will accomplish the same thing.



Passive: Fury of the Xer'Sai
Fairly straightforward passive. When you burrow with your W( Burrow / Unburrow), you will consume any fury you have to heal a certain amount of health. Use this after every camp to keep your health high. You also gain 15 fury on your next attack after burrowing.



Q: Queen's Wrath / Prey Seeker
Unburrowed, Queens's Wrath will cause your next 3 auto attacks will have AOE damage, similar to a Tiamat. While burrowed, you will shoot out a pulse that does extremely minor damage but reveals enemies hit. Prey Seeker is useful for checking who a circle is while using tremor sense. REMEMBER: This ability can be used to score a surprisingly large amount of kills when enemies are fleeing on low health. You should be using the unburrowed form, Queen's Wrath, anytime you are doing damage. For more info, click here



W: Burrow / Unburrow
This is one of Rek'sai's signature abilities. When toggled on, Rek'sai enters a "burrowed" state. In this stance she:

-gets access to 3 new basic abilities
Prey Seeker, Unburrow, and Tunnel

-has GREATLY reduced vision range
This is very severe, you can hardly see in front of you

-loses access to auto attacks
don't worry, you'll be killing people soon enough

-gains the ability to detect nearby movement
This passive, called "Tremor sense", shows you circles of moving nearby enemy units. Small
circles are mobs, big ones are champions. Example of this

-gains increased movement speed
This scales with levels so it will increase as the game goes on.

-heals herself by consuming fury
The amount you heal is based on your current fury. This heal amount will scale with level.

You will be swapping in and out of burrowed mode constantly throroughout fights, so make sure to be comfortable with doing so. Use this ability to move around the map quickly and safely because of the movespeed and Tremor Sense.

Unburrow will, as its name implies, take you out of burrowed mode. Any enemy units above you will be knocked up for one second. Use this to cc and catch people out for you and your team.



E: Furious Bite / Tunnel
This ability is fairly simple. It is also one of your best. Unburrowed, you will bite an enemy with damage based on your fury. At maximum fury, you will deal TRUE DAMAGE. This damage also scales with AD.

Your burrowed form however, Tunnel, is much more interesting. You will create a tunnel in a linear skillshot path. You can use this to hop over walls and terrain, or to cover distance. However, the tunnel WILL STAY on the ground for 10 minutes. You can use a tunnel about once every 10 seconds. Enemy players can also destroy your tunnels by stepping on them for 2 seconds. For more on this ability, click here



R: Void Rush
Passively, you gain 20% attack speed per point put into this ability (max 60%).

The active of this ability is after channeling, you rush rapidly to one of your set tunnels. This is essentially a global teleport to one of your tunnels. Most of the time, you will use this after backing to instantly come back to the jungle/lane to either gank or farm. However, if you have tunnels set up in good spots behind your opponents, you can use them to gank. It should be noted that if you receive any damage, the channel is cancelled (like recall).

You take Flash 99.99% of the time. It is standard almost all of the time. No questions asked. The versatility of this spell is just so good. Offensively to pursue fleeing champions, defensively to hop over a wall to get away. Even though you have a tunnel to hop walls, other champions will have flash, and your tunnel is on a long cooldown. Flash + Unburrow is also a very strong initiation.


Smite is the Flash of Junglers. You need smite to help with clearing camps early game, gold generation while farming jungle, CC for ganks, and objective control for dragon and baron. If you do not take it, you will rarely secure a contested dragon or baron.

Starting Items

x2
Standard Start on almost every jungler, you need machete to build into a jungle item, and health pots help with sustain.

Core Items

Skirmisher's Saber - Warrior

Mid Game

Overall, Rek'sai is best built with 1 damage item, boots, and 4 tank items. This is the best way to maximize her damage and survivability and to be useful in both teamfights and in a split-push scenario.


These are my 3 most common tank items after my core items are bought. Thornmail is always a good buy because of the armor and passive which are both very useful against ADC's.

Refer to the following image for jungle clears:

Full clear:

1. Krugs
2. Chickens(I always call them chickens, they're actually called raptors)
3. Red Buff
4. Wolves
5. Blue Buff
6. Gank nearby lanes

Also note that you can kill the scuttle crab near your blue buff in order to heal back up using Fury of the Xer'Sai after you kill it.

Level 3 Gank:

1. Krugs
2. Chickens(I always call them chickens, they're actually called raptors)
3. Red Buff
4. Gank nearby lanes

How to clear a camp

Once you get a jungle item, you can really just walk up to a camp and kill it, but for early game, there is an optimal way to clear a camp. This is (assuming you have all 3 basic abilities):

Prey Seeker --> Unburrow --> Queen's Wrath. Use Furious Bite whenever you reach 100 fury for true damage. Whenever the purple indicator around the jungle camps is gone, switch back to burrowed form and use Prey Seeker + Unburrow again to take advantage of the knockup.

I know that's a lot of stuff to read, so here's a good example of how to clear a camp.

Ganks

Rek'sai's ganks are one of the reasons that Rek'sai stands out from other Junglers. Like Zac or Jarvan IV, Rek'Sai's ability to jump walls allows very unique gank paths.
The best way to learn these gank paths are to experiment for yourself and see the unique ways Rek'sai can gank, but here I've outlined some notable ones:

The gank I find the most success with that I spam every game is the tri-bush gank to side lane, which you can do to bot lane on blue side, or top lane on red side. An example of how this is done on bot lane while on blue side is shown here, by HoTTab1CHtv. You essentially come up from behind the laner and catch them off guard most of the time.

(NOTE: The information in HoTTab1CHtv's video is partially outdated, some of the more glitchy tunnels he does were in PBE and are not possible on live, but his video is also a good one to watch for tunneling tips in general, just make sure to make sure they still work before trying it at an important time.)

Early Game(1-2 Items)

After your first clear, you should be healthy enough to gank. Rek'sai has very strong level 3 ganks, which you want to take advantage of. Look for a lane to gank and see if you can't burn a flash or even get a kill. When there are no lanes to gank, farm your jungle or counterjungle if possible. A lot of the time, but not all the time, I end up not backing until level 6 due to my Fury of the Xer'Sai sustain. This is ideal because then you can simply use Void Rush to teleport back into your jungle and continue applying pressure. Also remember to keep Dragon warded, and to keep a tunnel somewhere in the area to teleport to Dragon if need be.

Rek'Sais main strength in this stage of the game is her presence on the map. Because of Fury of the Xer'Sai, she doesn't have to back after 1 or 2 ganks. Due to her ultimate Void Rush, she can respond to the game as it occurs, or set up numbers advantages for your team. Is the enemy doing dragon while you are top lane? Kill their top laner and then you and your top laner can teleport into the dragon area for a 5 v 4 fight.

TL;DR Gank when you can, farm jungle when you can't. Don't back until level 6 if you can help it so that you don't waste time.

Mid Game(2-4 Items)

At this point, you should be getting your second tank item. For the most part, you function the same as you do in the early game, continue to apply pressure on the map. I cannot overstate this. You would like to be at every fight that you can be at. It's okay to be very aggressive with Rek'Sai because she has excellent mobility with her move-speed from Burrow and her tunnels.

In the mid game, you are also the queen of objective control. This is one of your strongest points in the game. It's best to be able to take as many towers and dragons during this time as possible, if you are able to. Rek'sai's job mid game is to either win the game in 20 minutes or set up your team with an advantage large enough to close out the game.

Unless, of course, you became fed in the early game. In that case rip anyone you see into shreds due to Rek'sai's excellent mid game damage and snowball nature.

Late Game(4-6 Items)

Your role in the late game depends on what is best for your team. If your team can win 5 v 5 teamfights, you want to serve as initiation or secondary initiation. Use your deadly Tunnel + Unburrow combination to start fights in your favor. While you aren't a hard tank like a Malphite or Nasus, you are fairly beefy at this point and a good duelist to boot.

If your team is struggling to 5 v 5, you can splitpush. If you don't know how to splitpush, do the following:
1. Set up tunnels near objectives your team wants to take, be it towers, dragons, or barons.

2. Push a lane that is away from that objective, so that you can drag off someone from the opposing team, then teleport back to your team with Void Rush and hopefully win the 5 v 5

3. If they don't come for you, continue pushing and take towers/inhibs, or simply teleport to your team.

But please, don't be THAT splitpusher. Make sure to WARD the jungle near your lane so that you don't become 1 v 4'd top lane (unless your team is pushing elsewhere and you can waste a lot of time.) Additionally, ONLY play aggressive when your team is in a position to take an objective. If half of your team is at base, it is NOT a good time to splitpush. If you die, don't blame them for not capitalizing.

Thanks for reading my Rek'sai guide. Do me a favor and kick a** with her! Upvote the guide if you found it helpful and comment if you have any tips on how I could improve it!