I'd like to say that this portion will look bland because YOU ARE LEARNING!!! Learning is about the content and not the fancy flairs and icons. Sit down and get ready to digest information and critically think for yourself. With this in mind, I won't be adding any eye candy in between my chapters.

Without further ado, my name is Regedice (or Rege) and I'm a Challenger Rengar main (no longer an OTP as of Season 13). As of 6/17/23 my peak is 1328 LP on my main acc. After recently getting Challenger without Rengar, I derusted on Rengar by otp'ing on a smurf to GM 700 lp with an 80% wr as seen in the header (90% wr to Masters, 72% wr to Chall). As a result, I figured it's about time I posted a guide. If you want to see more feel free to stop by my stream @ https://www.twitch.tv/regedice

Anyways, it all began when I picked up Rengar in pre-season 9 upon his swim-q revert. I hit Challenger the first season I picked up Rengar. I've gotten Challenger every season since then. Before Rengar I was hard-stuck diamond 5 playing tryndamere+draven for 2 seasons straight, so don't think you're stuck forever!!

This guide isn't for just learning Rengar, but to master him. With that in mind, get comfortable with reading as studying the game is how you get better. Make sure to read all the notes for everything in the guide. The hard way is losing your mind playing 2k games to learn what you can read on the internet, so the choice is yours!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TXcPwn6oyojtkgzQbceOD20huDL1NczoHPiCs83idPk/edit?usp=sharing

Rengar Abilities. It's mundane, but step 1 is learning EXACTLY how all the gears in Rengar function... your understanding of it all serves as the oil to Rengar as a machine.

One other thing I'd like to mention in this section is Rengars passive. You should never prioritize your passive ever. It should never be a driving factor in how you play the game. It's different from other champions scaling passives because you usually kill everyone at least once anyways. You should only do so when you're VERY fed and you have the luxury of being able to kill who you want by investing the map tempo. Killing someone just because you want to kill them in particular for something that isn't tied to macro is egotistical.

Timers for plays are finite, so you definitely don't want to miss an opening for another play because you spent time thinking to play for an aspect of your kit.

The only acceptable scenario is if the game is getting towards late game, the game is even, and you're at 4 stacks. At that point, getting the increase in AD might be what secures the win. With that said, majority of the time you shouldn't even be thinking about it. Your thought on your bonetooth stacks should stop at making sure you're on people as they die so you're getting stacks at all.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tueHKA4FMWNUN1wpIhSSibcTDjppOXYftv9q1L3PL-c/edit?usp=sharing

Rengar mechanics. There are only a couple of combos, but the key is mastering ferocity management. By this I mean with your purple stack, it can be easy to mis-combo and press the wrong empowered ability. Ferocity management is about keeping track of what combos you can get off with the ferocity and cooldowns optimally with the situation you're faced with. Don't button mash, there's a method to the madness that can be practiced with repetition and discipline.

I wrote the bulk of this guide at the end of last season prior to the current fleet Rengar meta, so read all the notes I left on the runes/builds/etc. first before reading the matchups. At times I will mention Conq being strong in a matchup, but Conq isn't as meta right now. Furthermore, I mention LDR in some descriptions but think of LDR as either last whisper item. Everything else in the guide is relevant. Champion identity/function rarely changes overall.

For runes, you can take health over armor (it outscales armor/mr after lvl9). Remember that most of Rengars leads are secured early, so having that armor might make or break an early game teamfight.

Future's market is really strong on Rengar because it helps achieve powerspikes by artificially creating item tempo. Furthermore, you generate gold faster (roughly 1.5x) in debt, so the -50 gold when you walk out of base is negligible. You generate 2 gold per second, so you can do the math on how much gold you'll generate in grey screen then go in debt buying whatever then undo'ing to potentially cover just enough gold for another item

Cosmic insight is nice as well because your flash is 45.76 seconds shorter along with a nudge in your smite cooldown allowing you to upgrade your pet faster, micro tempo leads with smiting camps, and helps with smite being up consistently for objective teamfights. With that in mind, if you're taking inspiration secondary, I prefer free boots + futures market for item tempo over other pairings. If you don't like future's market for whatever reason, free boots + cosmic insight is still solid.

For builds, see the top of the page. Just note that, for last whisper items, I believe Mortal Reminder (MR) is better than LDR most of the time. You can check yourself by hovering LDR to look at your giant slayer damage, it's usually negligble. Not to mention sometimes you'll go edge of night or black cleaver later, losing more value on LDR's passive. The grevious wounds on MR is guaranteed to be somewhat useful in any game. At the end of the day, make sure you're optimizing and tweaking the build to your needs in each game.

As for item purchase timing, lets talk about the concept of "Item tempo." Item tempo as a concept is why Rengar feels weak late game or people think he "scales off." It's not that he's weaker, but everyone else is getting stronger. For example, mythic at 7 minutes feels much different in strength than completing your item at 12 minutes. It's because you're ahead of them! Rengar played properly usually results in being an item or two ahead on others, making you considerably ahead in damage + lvl (which includes defensive armor spikes). All of this to say that many of Leagues concepts relate back to one another, so critically think how they tie together to better understand the bigger picture.

Wrapping this section with Serpents fang--only buy if they have 2+ enchanters that provide huge shields e.g. ivern + enchanter. In most cases, you go normal build because you burst through their shield, however, shieldbow + 2 enchanters is too much shield power to penetrate. That's when you want to buy serpents fang.

The more champions you have in front alongside with you the better. Rengar isn't frontline. He can be, but it's better to have someone else in front. It's worst when you have 4 ranged champions leaving you as the only one to serve as any cover. A skill you should invest into is jumping in knowing you will get one shot so you can full heal or burn ults that pack a lot of CC with your empW. DO NOT IMPULSIVELY JUMP!!! I can't tell you how many games I've lost jumping in to burn cooldowns or for whatever then I die, give 1k shutdown, lose baron (long death timer for being up levels) then immediately turning the tides or losing the game... be patient! You're a hunter.

Something you want to keep in mind is that matchup difficulty changes with comp. For example, if you're playing against fiddlesticks and you have tons of CC then he's not as hard to handle. Some matchups because really difficult if you have no frontline (e.g. poppy, wukong). With that in mind, keep comps in mind when thinking about matchup difficulty and how you adapt your early game in loading screen (and mid/late game when the time comes).

Moving on, utilize your dodges and try to avoid first pick if possible. The last thing you want is to be in a game where they have 5 champions that do well against Rengar, your comp sucks, AND your team is underperforming. THOSE games are unwinnable. Keep in mind these lobbies are uncommon and you shouldn't automatically blame external stimuli, always look inwards at yourself to improve what you CAN do in each game. Rengar is a very flexible champion, so itemize and play around what holds the most value in exploding the nexus.

Rengar does camps faster when chained together (e.g. red, krugs, raptors rather than red, blue, gromp) because he can carry his ferocity over between camps. Because of this, you should begin your clear with the framework or intention to full clear, but at the drop of a hat be able to adapt to the game and skip camps to arrive at plays on time. Understand, manage, and optimize the concept of tempo and pathing around the map.

Full clear every game isn't a good idea, but at the same time you want to set yourself up for success. Play towards the lane that will net you and your team a net lead over the other team. In matchups where it's best to invade and your teammates have lane prio, skip your next camps and look for the invade. You want to help your teammates, but if you're sacrificing way too much, then ping your team to play safe. KS kills and play to get your powerspikes as soon as possible. Lastly, make sure you secure dragons over anything else IF you can and secure heralds for plates before 14 minutes.

Other things you can do is instead of invading you can start in their jungle or plan to walk in and clear it knowing your laners will have prio. This is called splitting the map. As for splitting the map, understand how you're affecting your lanes on the other side of the map by doing this and plan ahead for your pathing after your first clear. It's not like you can always go back into their jg the second time around to clear camps, so make sure you execute whatever pressure you planned for early on and to play around the leads you generate when doing so. You are changing the game when splitting the map, so play accordingly. Sometimes you should only stay for 2 camps and not 3 because you'll get rotated on, or they don't know you split the map and if he runs into you you lose the fight. Or all of a sudden there's no play on the side you split the map so you need to reclaim control on the other side of the jungle. Or you take their camps then cross through mid (in our out of fog of war based on urgency) to catch them stealing your camps to balance the split map's resources.

If you're not used to splitting the map, then be ready to adapt your game. You can get away with not learning how to split the map, but others will do it to you, so you have to learn when it makes sense or when junglers can go for it.

Quick trick: when you're ganking sides through blast cone (or by walking through river), jump to the ward you get vision of with scanner to stack ferocity and to break distance between you and the target. It's hard to gank in the open with no ferocity, so having your purple stack from jumping on the ward is really nice. Use their warding against them!

Avoid dying at 20 minutes. Most games are decided early but are either broken open in possibility or sealed by baron. If you "die once then lose the game," it's your fault. It's hard to accept, but dying then losing meant you had all the gold/winning pieces on your team. If you're out of the picture, your team has nothing. The beauty of Rengar is you can consistently get all the winning pieces (turbo fed, 1k shutdown, etc.) so you can hard carry while being able to throw it away all at the same time. There is always something you could've done better when it comes to Rengar as opposed to say... tank junglers.

As for macro, ensure you're prioritizing dragons, and if you can't, make plays on the other side of the map by securing towers and waves. You'll reach a point of the game where you can split push quite well with your absurd damage and use your ult to run away. HOWEVER, using your ult means you can't fight teamfights in lane. Your ult is very useful. You can use it to walk into dragon (incase they established control before your team) and pressure the enemy team into possible jump angles. Don't go for 1 for 1 unless the person you're bringing down is as valuable as you are. Be patient, don't jump on people with zhonya or champions with cooldowns up that can shut you down (unless you have edge of night), and DON'T IMPULSIVELY JUMP. Similar to lee sin-drome, it can be very tempting to take a jump just because you can, and despite you knowing it's a bad idea, you jump anyways then lose the game instantaneously.

Keep tricks in your back pocket like jumping to wards they just placed to gap close to make plays happen or jumping over walls in your ult. If you don't know what I mean, when you jump over a wall on Rengar, the enemy doesn't see you until you land on top of them, so they have much less time to react compared to when they can see the full jump to do whatever (flash, zhonya, etc.)

During mid/late game split pushing can become a solid option. Effectively split pushing is about dragging pressure with an overall net gain (e.g. dying to 3 people but your team gets baron). Keep in mind the timing of you splitting, who you're dragging, positions on the map (using deductive reasoning to gather information on locations (e.g. if they use blue ward and they only have 1 blue ward on their team, then you know who's coming)), how long you can stay, the difference between you splitting and over extending and not crossing those lines. Split pushing is an art. I used to main Tryndamere, so a lot of these soft skills are already built. Take the time to learn how to split properly.

A huge strength to Rengar, especially paired with futures market, is how, if you're playing correctly, you're always ahead on item tempo. You're always ahead one, two, three items. But with late game, others start catching up. It's not that you scale off, but people are beginning to become as strong as you are, so you aren't the only one at demi-god strength. If you have an engage comp, play with your team, otherwise play alone by securing positions in wide angles to ult at any moment or split on opposite sides of the map using ult to run away or to run to the teamfight. With blue pet, you'll be able to get to fights fairly quickly. Also, knowing how far you can traverse across the map during your entire ult is a skill in itself as ulting as soon as you can knowing you'll get there is a form of optimizing your tempo.

Sometimes you can't kill someone because of GA, or they've been able to stack too much armor, etcetera. At this point, you want to avoid them (by killing someone else or splitting) or leverage your teammates to turn a positive into a negative. For example, you can jump on kindred, burn R, then root them (if you still have emp charge) and run away.

You need to be Tobey Maguire in Spiderman 2 during the train scene to carry on Rengar in general. Getting to late game usually is because you made a mistake along the way and because of that you're in a state of the game where you can't do everything you usually can, so figure out what you can do and execute. Your job isn't to be a jack of all trades, but to do what you can do. If you can drag their strongest player in side lane and get away alive, then do so. If you make a baron call then want to call off despite baron being 4k hp, call the play off. It's all about correctly making split second decisions.

This guide is more about giving you the philosophies, perspectives, and food for thought on how you should play Rengar rather than telling you exactly what you should do. There are many ways to win a game, so it's your call to decide which one is most optimal to win a certain game. Whether it be invading, full clearing, splitting in late game, risking a dragon play to ensure the game doesn't go late, etc. What makes a good Rengar player is not their build, because you can win with most setups/builds in the game. What makes a good Rengar player is their game IQ (ability to correctly determine the best course of action).

At the end of the day, the champion is exclusively played by one tricks BECAUSE ferocity management takes a long time to master. It's easy to learn how to lane gank, or learn how to counter gank, but it takes experience to know EXACTLY how you should execute on a particular teamfight. At the same time, most of the game takes place leading up to the teamfight, so study your macro as much as you do your micro.

If you have any more questions please ask me on stream (my schedule is on my offline screen). Furthermore, you can add me to dm at 'regedice' or rege#6221 through discord. Another way is joining my discord and directly dm'ing me through the server list here, or go to my metafy page to book a private session.