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Rek'Sai Build Guide by _WhiteSnow_

Top [13.20] How to 1v9 on REKSAI TOP | White Snow's In-Depth Rek'sai Guide to ALL THINGS TOP LANE

Top [13.20] How to 1v9 on REKSAI TOP | White Snow's In-Depth Rek'sai Guide to ALL THINGS TOP LANE

Updated on October 12, 2023
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League of Legends Build Guide Author _WhiteSnow_ Build Guide By _WhiteSnow_ 14 2 37,690 Views 1 Comments
14 2 37,690 Views 1 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author _WhiteSnow_ Rek'Sai Build Guide By _WhiteSnow_ Updated on October 12, 2023
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Runes: Standard

Precision
Conqueror
Triumph
Legend: Alacrity
Coup de Grace

Resolve
Second Wind
Revitalize
Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor

Spells:

Standard
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport

Teleport

Threats & Synergies

Threats Synergies
Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny
Show All
None Low Ok Strong Ideal
Extreme Threats
Ideal Synergies
Synergies
Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Champion Build Guide

[13.20] How to 1v9 on REKSAI TOP | White Snow's In-Depth Rek'sai Guide to ALL THINGS TOP LANE

By _WhiteSnow_
Introduction
Hi, I'm White Snow, currently a 970+ LP/top 14 NA peak Challenger Rengar and Rek'Sai Main, mostly in the top lane! Rek'Sai is an extremely fun champion to play in the top lane. Though she lacks the flexibility of my other main champion, she executes her one game plan of taking over the map through getting a solo lead EXTREMELY well. Nearly every matchups is outplayable in some capacity, and you will find yourself being a menace both in the side lane pushes and 1v1s AND grouped teamfights. With extremely high game impact potential, Rek'Sai is a solid pick up for any champ pool!

If you ever want to check out live gameplay with the listed runes, build paths, and playstyles, check me out at my stream !!

If there's any outdated information about the guide, or if you want to say hi, feel free to join my discord at https://discord.gg/WnVXDTQGFG !
PROOF of HIGHEST RANKED Reksai TOP
Pros and Cons

Reksai Top's Pros

→ Strong Laning Phase
→ Extremely Strong Splitpush
→ Very Good at Diving
→ Extremely High In-Lane Sustain
→ Extremely Difficult to Catch Due to Tunnels
→ High Snowball Potential
Rek'Sai is a champion I like to pick to be a near-unstoppable force both in-lane and later on, in the splitpush. A combination of a brutal quick trading pattern that's hard to contest and high in-lane sustain makes Reksai an extremely oppressive lane bully after level 3.


Once you get items, you will first become impossible to escape due to your big Stridebreaker spike, then transform into the scourge of side lane turrets iwth Hullbreaker. You can take over teamfights with the durability of Sterak's Gage, and tear through even the tankiest of enemies with Black Cleaver and your true damage. Overall, Reksai is the pick for you if you enjoy dominating the laning phase and being an absolute menace in the side lanes.

Due to Rek'Sai's kit, you will realise that your first couple levels are rather weak. You're also liable to get kited really easily against team compositions that have a bunch of interrupts. If you get a dash cancelled mid tunnel, you may find yourself caught out in an awkward position.

While you also do have a lot of leeway from behind, you will find yourself feeling much less useful when you're not fed and capable of threatning kills. When this happens, you'll find yourself unable to play for the same wincon as usual and will have to play for team and provide utility.

If you do not enjoy being kite-prone or having a weak level 1-2, Reksai may not be the pick for you.

Reksai Top's Cons

→ Relies on utility from behind
→ Dependent on tunnel cooldown
→ Extremely immobile without access to tunnels
→ Struggles when kited
Abilities
Passive
INNATE: Rek'Sai basic attacks and ability hits generate 25 Fury. After 8 seconds of being out of combat, she loses 20 Fury per second. Prey Seeker will not generate Fury against non-Champion icon champions.

When Rek'Sai becomes burrowed, she consumes her current Fury over 3 seconds to heal based on current Fury, stopping once fully consumed or she reaches full health. If she starts generating fury while burrowed, the consumption occurs after 5 seconds.
Q - Queen's Wrath/Prey Seeker
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai empowers her next three basic attacks within 3 seconds to have a 0.25-second cast time and deal bonus physical damage to the target and surrounding enemies. The damage to the primary target is affected by critical strike modifiers.

Queen's Wrath resets Rek'Sai's basic attack timer.
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai fires a void bolt in the target direction that detonates on the first enemy hit, dealing physical damage to all nearby enemies and revealing them for 5 seconds.
W - Burrow/Unburrow
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai becomes burrowed, reducing her attack range to 75 and her sight radius to 250 units while gaining access to her burrowed abilities. She also becomes ghosted and gains bonus movement speed, as well as Tremor Sense.

TREMOR SENSE: Rek'Sai and her allies gain obscured vision of nearby enemy units that are moving every second.

Once Burrow has been learned, Rek'Sai automatically becomes burrowed upon completing a Recall channel or respawning.
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai becomes unburrowed, gaining access to her unburrowed abilities. Additionally, she deals physical damage to nearby enemies and knocks them aside. The enemy closest to the center is instead knocked up for 1 second, and cannot be affected by Unburrow again for some time.


Rek'Sai can also trigger Unburrow by issuing an attack command, applying the knock up against the target once she is in attack range.

E - Furious Bite/Tunnel
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai bites the target enemy, dealing physical damage.

At maximum Fury resource Fury, Furious Bite's damage is doubled and converted to true damage.
ACTIVE: Rek'Sai dashes in the target direction, leaving behind a Tunnel with two interconnected entrances that lasts up to 10 minutes. The Tunnel can be traversed again when Rek'Sai targets either entrance, shutting down the Tunnel for a few seconds.

Rek'Sai can have up to 8 Tunnels active on the map at once, but deploying beyond the maximum destroys the oldest one. Enemy champions can destroy a Tunnel by standing on either entrance for 1.5 seconds, granting them 5 Gold 5 upon successfully destroying the Tunnel.

An UN-BURROWED Rek'Sai will automatically Burrow before entering the Tunnel and automatically Unburrow after exiting it. This does not put Burrow on cooldown nor trigger Fury of the Xer'Sai, but does trigger other Burrow effects and Unburrow.

Rek'Sai cannot enter a tunnel while immobilized, grounded, or silenced.
R - Void Rush
PASSIVE: Rek'Sai applies Marked as Prey to enemy champions she damages, lasting for 5 seconds.

ACTIVE: Rek'Sai selects the target Marked as Prey, becoming displacement immune and icon 2 unable to act and vanishing into the ground. After 1.5 seconds, she becomes targetable again and emerges from the ground Un-Burrowed near the target and Dash pounces at them, dealing physical damage and dashing 125 units through them.


If the target dies or is too far away before Rek'Sai vanishes, Void Rush is canceled with a 10-second cooldown.
Runes


Precision
Conqueror is an extremely good rune for Rek'Sai, rewarding trades w/ a stacking system you can easily fill up with a single rotation of spells in one trade. Conqueror especially shines later on in the game when you're playing longer fights in the side lane.
Out of all the runes in the top row of the precision tree, Triumph is more or less the best one for Rek'Sai. The extra gold synergizes well with Rek'Sai's ability to snowball with leads, while the on-kill healing helps keep Rek'Sai alive after diving targets.

Also, Rek'Sai uses all the other runes in this row very poorly, making Triumph an obvious choice.
Out of all the runes in this row, Legend: Alacrity is really the only choice for Rek'Sai, alongside Legend: Tenacity in very rare scenarios.

Legend: Alacrity is good for scaling up your attack speed for higher DPS and combos in later stages of the game.
Legend: Tenacity is good for games against very heavy cc, however only take this into the heaviest cc comps you've ever seen, as you'll often have enough tenacity off steraks and you can mitigate most cc by buffering a tunnel.
As top lane Reksai, you'll be only taking Coup de Grace as your last precision rune. You build too much hp to be taking Cut Down and you'll mostly be playing at higher hp percentages due to your passive healing, meaning Last Stand isn't as effective - leaving Coup de Grace as the only choice.
Non-Mythic Items
Rek'Sai's builds aren't super flexible in the top lane, but its important to know which item to build to fit what need once you have your core items.

Below are items grouped by general stats, and explanations for when you'd run each item.

Bruiser Items

Black Cleaver Provides invaluable stats for Rek'Sai - Armor shred, Ability haste, AD, Movespeed to stick to targets. An extremely good staple item for most builds, but is generally built in response to teams with at least a couple of armor stacking champions to maximise use of the armor penetration. You can delay this until after Sterak's Gage if you dont immediately need the armor penetration.
Guardian Angel is a great last item to splash into your build whenever you have a free slot and have a big shutdown or are otherwise extremely valueable to your team's gameplan. It provides a nice mix of damage and resistances while protecting potentially one shutdown from being given over to the enemy team.
Titanic Hydra is a great last item when you want to add just a bit more damage and threat to your side lane while getting some extra durability. It's not a high priority item since you already have enough durability and waveclear without it, but is good if you've got nothing more pressing to build and just want to bolster your full combo damage.
Death's Dance is a rather valuable item that provides a lot of survivability in teamfights. Build this when you're able to get lots of resets for HP in fights and against AD heavy threats. Get this after you have some actual HP items to pair with its resistances.
Hullbreaker = me unga bunga split
You can still group with this item, but it's most effective in a game where you're planning on focusing on side lanes. If you're going to go hullbreaker, make sure your map awareness is on point and you're not losing the game for your splitpush. This is a big second item spike for Rek'Sai when you have the superior side lane potential, allowing you to kill turrets in pretty much 2 casts of q + auto attacks in between.
Sterak's Gage is an extremely good lifeline item again into heavy cc due to its tenacity on activation. It is a really good item to pick up for some fast durability in fights, either without hullbreaker when behind or after hullbreaker in the side lane to stay alive longer in collapses.

Survivability Items

Force of Nature is a really good MR item into ap heavy teams or a single ap-heavy threat that also has the bonus of extra movespeed in its statline to help you gapclose for your unburrow.
Thornmail is a good armor item for when you just want to tank and deny healing. You can take this or sit on Bramble Vest into healing heavy teams that you don't want to buy Executioner's Calling into.
Anathema's Chains is a great option to just stick onto the enemy fed carry if they're the sole threat, giving you a 30% damage reduction and improving the slow duration of your items and cc from your team is a big help for locking them down. This item can win you a game if you deny the enemy win condition with it.
Randuin's Omen is really good for games against heavy autoattackers, especially crit users as it will also lower their crit damage heavily. Can be paired with Frozen Heart for major armor + attack speed reduction. This also has the bonus of helping you stick to targets wit hthe aoe slow.
Frozen Heart is really good item for games against heavy autoattackers, especially on-hit users. Despite the wasted gold efficiency on mana, the raw armor + AH + attack speed slow is surprisingly useful. Pair with Randuin's Omen for maximum AS slow or any HP item so you can properly use the armor.
Gargoyle Stoneplate is a good final resist item, as the shield combined with the resistances can turn you into an end-game raidboss combined with other tank items. Make sure you already have health when buying this item, as resistances are useless without HP to go along with them.
Dead Man's Plate is really good for helping you gapclose on enemies with the bonus movespeed for your unburrow. This should be your default tank armor item when you need one, unless you're looking for one of the secondary effects from other ones.
Extra tips and tricks:

Tunnel Networks

With Rek'Sai, proper tunnel placement can provide a lot of safety - offering both ways to engage and to retreat from enemy ganks, for example in this clip right here.

While in lane, the standard desired tunnel network is simple - two tunnels running through the three bushes as pictured below. This placement not only hides all 4 entrances from vision without wards, but also allows for a quick excape from enemy ganks while pushed up alongside the far track of the lane, as far as possible from any potential gankers. If against champions who want you to be the walls, however, having a network running in the middle of the lane in a place where minions won't interfere with you clicking on your tunnels works as well.

When the enemy tier 1 turret is down, your tunnel network will change to be closer the the inside track of the lane, with the game plan of traversing as many walls as possible to make you hard to catch without a copious amount of dashes, as well as having the advantage of faster travel due to using the inside track of the lane. This way, you secure an exit strategy, movement into the enemy jungle, and a quick way of rotation all in one.

Don't forget that tunnels made over walls can be longer than normal, as the end of the tunnel will be put to the closes point to the intended exit if the original exit wouldve been inside a wall.

Tunnel Knockup

One trick that you can use to peel yourself while escaping at the same time is to use the tunnel knockup trick - where you essentially unburrow while mid-tunnel animation. This only works when casting Tunnel, not when entering a pre-existing one. To do so, you must cast tunnel, then use an autoattack command to unburrow mid-tunnel animation as shown below.

Final Tips

- You can use your ult to avoid abilities or move yourself away from bad situations if you have a suitable target
- When unburrowing on a mobile target, aim to cancel whatever movement abilities they may have to catch them out in an awkawrds position
- The above point also applies to channels
- Your fully charged e does true damage, so it'll ignore damage reduction such as Bel'Veth e and Irelia W.
- You can buffer cc as long as it doesn't cancel dashes using your tunnels, both the cast and entering pre-existing tunnels. You can near-nullify stuns, roots, and grounds this way.
- You can hide the start of your tunnel animation by starting unburrowed, then pressing w and e immediately as your burrowed abilities are immediately available the second you burrow
- Your threat in lane comes from being burrowed, try to be underground as much as possible. When burrowed, you can't be engaged on due to the knockup and you can use it to threaten a good trade if they waste cooldowns.

How To Pilot Reksai

Laning Phase (Winning Matchup)

With Rek'Sai, one of the things I love the most about this pick is the super aggressive laning phase - once you hit level 3, you gain access to your full combo and some of the best trading patterns against top laners.
Step 1: Your first goal is to hit level 2 as quickly as possible. Your unburrow has very little use without your q to follow up, and it's hard to trade against certain matchups with only q. In the event of matchups that you can't just walk up and auto them to death, you're going to want to take control of the wave by immediately pushing it quickly with q, or by sitting back with w and denying any level 1 engages with the knockup. Once you hit level 2, you can start trading against weaker enemies with unburrow -> aa -> 3 q empowered autos, or you can farm with burrowed q until you hit level 3.

step 2: Once you hit level 3, you have the safety of your tunnels to resort to, if you have the push. Look to set them up ahead of time as pictured in the above section. Against melees, look to initiate trades with knockup and follow up with an aa -> 2 qs -> e -> last q (optional), as 4 hits fully charge your fury for e. Against ranged champions, you can trade by either spacing them and baiting them into w range or gapclosing first with a tunnel, ideally a pre-existing one so you have one to disengage with, and trading normally.

step 3: Once you have wave control, try to zone the enemy laner off cs and last hits by threatening a knockup trade whenever a minion they want to kill is low. After enough trades, you can look to dive, especially after 6, by using a tunnel to escape after a knockup -> combo or by dodging a turret shot with r to reset turret damage/prevent stacking and escaping turret range with a tunnel.

If you're able to properly crash the wave, look to let it push back without letting it grow too big. Once it's pushed to your side of the lane, you can look to freeze and assume complete control over the lane until you get to the point where you think you can dive on repeat, in which case you can look to trade aggressively before crashing waves to set up dives. If you actually get enough of a lead, you can look to zone enemies off their turret between tier 1 and 2 starting from level 6, if you're sure their jungler will not be coming by.

Laning Phase (Losing Matchup)

Every now and then, and when you start learning the pick, you might find yourself falling behind due to ganks or misplays. You might also just be in a terrible matchup. Don't worry, as these situations are almost always easy to get out of. It feels terrible, but there are some key things you need to remember.

First, you must not die simply for a little bit of cs. You are able to farm relatively safely using your knockup tools and your burrowed q. Focus on staying within XP range and keeping the wave from slow pushing, as this will let the enemy laner freeze the wave on you. In the event of an enemy freeze, you're going to need to have your jungler break that freeze. Look for roams when the enemy laner recalls at a convenient time, or look to outplay dives.

Rek'Sai has a good time under turret due to her on-demand cc and her evasive ult, allowing you to outplay dives. You're usually just looking to catch as much cs as possible and trade as close to your turret as possible so that you're less reliant on your tunnel to trade, as in bad matchups your most common trade patterns are usually just unburrow -> 1 q -> back off + tunnel if needed. When trading with this short pattern, your tunnel won't be immediately available due to the burrow cooldown.

Mid Game


In the mid game, you are looking to rotate to objectives, create pressure on the map, and get resources so you can keep getting ahead, or back in the game if you're in a bad spot. Generally, your game plan will be to:

- Split down a side lane (Same side as the next neutral obj if your tp is down for it, else on the opposite side of the map)
- Ward your sides (So you don't get caught on the split) while setting up your tunnel network
- once you're pushed up and have pressure with your wave, (@river or past), you can either invade and steal camps if it's safe (vision control important), group up with your team for a play, or look for a pick (Also vision dependent).
- After a successful pick/play, look to gain an advantage on the map by either stealing jg resources, setting up wards for objectives, taking neutral objectives, or getting turrets.
- After gaining a lead, reset before the enemy team can abuse your unspent gold.
After this, you can rinse and repeat until the game ends.

Your goals are generally to gain an advantage, get an objective or map pressure or prep, and reset and keep your tempo going as a team. The above is simply an example of how to do so, and it may vary from game to game.
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[13.20] How to 1v9 on REKSAI TOP | White Snow's In-Depth Rek'sai Guide to ALL THINGS TOP LANE

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