Kai'Sa Build Guide by PH45

Hello, I'm PH45, and this is my Kai'Sa Guide. My real name is Patrik, but you can call me either way. I am a long time League of Legends player (started back in Season 1). I mostly play top lane, where my main champion is Jax, but I do have pretty good understanding of other roles as well. Kai'Sa is an interesting champ in that fact that while she is designed as an AD carry, she has both AD and AP scalings on her abilites. Nowadays her build mainly focuses on AD though, but she is still a top tier ADC especially in the current meta. My OP.GG for anyone interested.

Flash: For Kai'Sa we will be going with the standard ADC summoner spells, and the first one is Flash. Helps you get out of sticky situations (Flash over walls etc.)

Heal: Can save you and your support in some cases, or even other teammates, also the small movespeed burst is nice in some cases.

Pros + Great range with Void Seeker + Hybrid ratios on Q,W and R + Has invisibility with evolved Supercharge + Can disengage and also re-engage quickly if needed + Can build items like Zhonya's Hourglass and utilize it fully Kai'Sa dashes in-and out from combat and can also peel for herself with her shields, which makes her a great carry champion.

Cons - No CC - Weak to CC - To evolve all abilities you need to build AD, AP and attack speed, which can be difficult to do in some games depending on the opposing team - Can't control Icathian Rain

Domination fits into Kai'Sa's playstyle and kit quite well, giving her sustain and power for proccing passive with Hail of Blades.

Hail of Blades is really great option for Kai'Sa. This helps for quick trades combined with Icathian Rain, and helps you quickly setup stacks of Plasma. Kai'Sa naturally isn't that great at trading especially in early game, so this helps her quite a bit.

Tase of Blood helps you sustain up in lane, so you'll have a more healthy lane phase and help her out during her weak early game. The other runes in this row are a bit meh for her so this is just the best choice.

Eyeball Collection is there just to grant you pure damage stats to make you scale more. On champion takedown you'll gain 1.2 AD per stack up to 10 stacks. Nothing more to really explain here.

Ravenous Hunter is another rune to help you with sustain, especially later in the game. You'll start off with very low amount of omnivamp but when you gain more stacks the healing becomes a lot more noticeable which helps a lot in late game.

For the second tree I most of the time run Presence of Mind, due to it offering mana regen and more scaling in terms of life steal.

Presence of Mind is really nice rune for Kai'Sa. You most of the time are using your abilities quite often, so you'll be consuming a lot of mana. Presence of Mind will help you to keep your mana consumption in check since you will regen mana when you hit enemy champions.

More sustain basically. You'll get life steal as you stack this rune, which again will help you keep your early and late game more healthy. This rune combined with Taste of Blood and Ravenous Hunter will give you a lot of sustain and healing during the game.

• Second Skin (Passive):
  CAUSTIC WOUNDS: Kai'Sa's basic attacks, Void Seeker Void Seeker and nearby allies immobilizing effects mark enemies with Plasma for 4 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. At 4 Plasma stacks, Kai'Sa's next attack ruptures the target, dealing damage based on target's missing health as bonus magic damage, capped at 400 against monsters.
  
  LIVING WEAPON: When a certain stat reaches the required amount, Kai'Sa can evolve the related basic ability. This has a channel time of 2 seconds, and the upgrade will be canceled if the requirement isn't fulfilled anymore.
  

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• Icathian Rain (Q): Kai'Sa releases a swarm of 6 missiles that evenly distributes among nearby enemies, each dealing physical damage. Non-minions take 25% damage from missiles beyond their first. This is your main damage ability, which you will be maxing first for that reason. Great ability otherwise but you can't really control where the rain hits other than just standing near your target/targets.
  
  LIVING WEAPON: Requires 100 bonus attack damage – Icathian Rain fires 12 missiles and deals 100% increased damage against minions below 35% health.
  

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• Void Seeker (W): Kai'Sa fires a Void blast in the target direction, stopping at the first enemy hit, dealing magic damage, revealing for 4 seconds and applying 2 Plasma stacks.
  
  This is one of your key assassination abilities. You use this combined with Killer Instinct to dash to your target and burst them down.
  
  LIVING WEAPON: Requires 100 ability power – Void Seeker applies 3 Plasma and refunds 70% of the cooldown against enemy champions.
  

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• Supercharger (E): Kai'Sa charges for 1.2 - 0.6 (based on bonus attack speed) seconds, during which gains bonus movement speed, increased by 0% - 100% (based on bonus attack speed).
  
  After charging up, Kai'Sa gains bonus attack speed for 4 seconds.
  
  LIVING WEAPON: Requires 100% bonus attack speed - Supercharge grants invisibility while charging.
  

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• Killer Instinct (R): Kai'Sa dashes to a target location near an enemy champion with Plasma and shields herself for 2 seconds on cast.
  

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Doran's blade Basic starting item. Gives a good amount of HP, some AD and bit of omnivamp. Good for lanes where you feel like you wont get poked down too hard.

Doran's Shield Pick this up for lanes with lots of poke. Kai'Sa doesn't have that strong early so she will get poked down quite easily and you can't necessarily respond to the damage quite at the same level.

Galeforce A really strong Mythic item for ADC's right now. Just the active alone that allows you to reposition is a strong tool to have, but it also has an execute damage proc which is kind of crazy. Other than that, it gives AD, attack speed and crit, and it gives your Legendary items 3% movement speed.

Kraken Slayer Good item for dealing with tanks and overall just more damage for Kai'Sa if you don't need the repositioning power of Galeforce. Basic attacks on-attack grant a stack for 3 seconds up to 2 stacks, at 2 stacks next basic attack consumes the stacks to deal bonus true damage to the target. As mythic passive you will gain bonus 10% attack speed for your legendary items.

The Collector Gives some AD, crit chance and lethality. THe bigger thing is that if you deal damage that would leave a champion below 5% of their maximum health, it will execute them. On top of that you will gain 25 extra gold for champion kills.

Runaan's Hurricane This item will give you good amount of attack speed, crit chance and some movement speed. The unique passive is that your basic attacks will fire additional bolts up to 2 enemies that deal 40% AD physical damage. The bolts apply on-hit effects and are affected by crit modifiers. Really nice item for Kai'Sa overall.

Phantom Dancer Some attack speed, crit, AD and movespeed. It also has the old passive again which grants ghosting after attacking and 7% movement speed for 2 seconds. If you attack 4 times you also get 30% attack speed for the duration. Great item to pick up to get some more mobility while getting crit.

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Infinity Edge Every crit users best friend. Nowadays it functions a bit different, if you have 60% crit chance Infinity Edge will grant you 35% critical strike damage.

Lord Dominik's regards AD, crit chance and 35% armor penetration. You'll get this item if enemies have armor stacking champions with a lot of HP since this item also grants bonus physical damage up to 15% depending on maximum health difference between you and the enemy champion.

Berserker's greaves Pretty standard boots for ADC's. Gives you attack speed and movespeed. This season I think this is the only set of boots that you run since it helps you upgrade your Supercharge.

Guardian angel Really strong item to pick up if you are getting focused. Gives AD, armor and a revive for you. Also while building this item you have access to Stopwatch which can save you from a sticky situation.

Mortal Reminder AD, attack speed, crit chance and movement speed, which are all useful stats for Kai'Sa. You'll buy this item if you need healing reduction against the enemy team. Since healing is quite the problem in the current season you will probably be picking this item up quite often since it gives you 40% healing reduction against targets you attack, and if you attack the champion 3 times within 2 secons it will increase the Grievous Wounds to 60% until it ends.

The Bloodthirster Gives you lot's of sustain and damage, and the shield helps especially a lot in teamfight's once you stack it up.

Maw of Malmortius Good item to get if enemy AP carries/carry is fed and you can't avoid their damage. Gives nice amount of damage and also gives you some sustain after the shield procs.

At level 1 you almost always want to try and push the wave on bot lane to reach level 2 before your opposing bot lane does. Taking Icathian Rain at level 1 helps you accomplish this quite easily. Pushing the wave also helps you create a bigger wave, thus you'll have better trades.

Depending on what kind of support you are laning with and what are you laning against, you can look to potentially fight at level 2/3. If the matchup is unfavorable you can try to freeze the wave by only last hitting minions. After a while if the opponents keep pushing the wave while you only last hit the opponents can be vulnerable to ganks depending on their vision control and position.

Keep in mind that Kai'Sa has a pretty low autoattack range so most of the time you'll get poked down in lane while not being able to respond to it. However, you have a surprising amount of burst with your Plasma proc's. Combined with Hail of Blades you can potentially score a kill onto the opposing laners if they underestimate you/you catch them off-guard. If your support can CC a target down that gives you the opportunity to stack your Plasma on them and boom, you won a trade.




After laning phase is over, you should be most of the time grouping with your team. Alone you can't really fight most assassins/bruisers unless you are miles ahead of them in gold/exp and even then potentially not. You and your team should try to take down objectives (towers, dragon , Baron if favorable) to gain gold advantage and work towards the victory.

Also remember to keep clearing sidelane waves when you and your team aren't looking to take down objectives/teamfight since you should always look to do something valuable where you can gain gold/exp from.

When the teamfights arrive, you'll most of the time want to stay further back, but since Kai'Sa doesn't have really that long attack-range that often isn't possible. Main targets are usually opposing carries but going for them straight away often can put you at risk. You as an ADC are one of the main sources of damage for your team, and if you die in a teamfight straight away that cuts your teams damage down quite a lot. Most of the time you should try to focus down the targets that are most near to you, since they are the most dangerous to you at that moment.

Kai'Sa's Killer Instinct allows you to reposition near a target that has been applied with Plasma recently, this can allow you to quickly dash in to take out a squishy target for example, and then reposition with your Supercharge (especially once you've upgraded it to have stealth).

When opponents have assassins on their team, you should most of the time wait out till they show up and focus someone else since they'll likely just delete you in under one second and boom, you did nothing in a teamfight. Leave handling the assassins for your team and keep yourself alive so you can deal damage on the rest of the opposing team.

Kai'Sa's Void Seeker can be a great way to scout out unwarded territory/objectives like Dragon and Baron to see if the enemies are taking them.

Kai'Sa is a very diverse champion, who can be played in multiple roles with different playstyles and builds. She offers burst damage and can quickly jump in fights with her Killer Instinct, which can sometimes turn the fights. Any feedback on this guide is highly appriciated, I will be updating this constantly whenever I have time and I learn more about Kai'Sa. Have a great time hunting voidborns and non-voidborns as Kai'Sa! And of course if you enjoyed the guide make sure to subscribe on YouTube for League of Legends content! Subscribe Also some of the code used in the making of this guide is from http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/making-a-guide-101506#chapter11 @jhoijhoi - PH45