Hey guys, my name is Lycra and I am an ADC main who plays on EUW! I have been playing League since Season 1, though I have taken several short breaks from the game. Currently I am Diamond 4. I picked Kai’Sa up upon her release, and since then I have racked up about 200 games with her. Kai’sa is a very unique and fun ADC; her abilities feel really good and she has a super smooth auto-attack animation. You have a reliable damage source and wave clear ability with your Q, a poking and scouting tool with her W and E gives her movement speed, attack speed and, after upgrading the ability, it even grants a short term true stealth. Her ultimate is a long range dash with a shield, so she almost feels like an assassin - jumping in, dealing lots of damage and then escaping suddenly under the cover of stealth.

Pros & Cons Runes Summoner Spells Abilities Ability Sequence

Item Build Gameplay Laning Phase Out of Lane Conclusion

She has good damage with her passive, an attack speed steroid in her E and two damage abilities, Q and W. She deals mixed damage, this makes it harder to itemize against her.

Once you upgrade your E (by reaching 100% bonus attack speed) you will be able to briefly go into true stealth when you activate Supercharger. True stealth means that nothing will be able to detect you at all; this includes Control Wards and Oracle Lens - which do detect regular stealth.

Kai’Sa has a long distance dash built into her ultimate which can be used both offensively and defensively, as you are the one who decides where you want to land. It will also shield you upon activation, for 2 seconds. The shield has an AP and an AD scaling, so it can get pretty big in the late game.

It is possible to either play AD or AP Kai’sa, which is a unique ability for an ADC. If you see you have a full AD team, just go with the AP variant to round out your team comp.

Kai’Sa’s W, Void Seeker, has a whooping range of 3000 (the same as Lux’s ult) making it a great scouting tool later on in the game when it’s not safe for you to check Baron/Dragon or brush.

Kai’Sa is on the lower end of AA ranges, particularly for an ADC, with a range of 525 (compared to the highest, Caitlyn, at 650). This means that you are forced to stand in closer proximity to your enemies than other, longer ranged, ADCs are. It is easier for your enemies to poke and engage on you because of this. You may get bullied in lane, especially by champions who outrange you a lot, for example Caitlyn or Ashe.

In order to fully shine, Kai’Sa has to first obtain a bunch of bonus stats (AD, AP and AS) and evolve her abilities. Once you gain 100 bonus (either from levels or items) AD, AP and AS, you can evolve your Q (AD), W (AP) and E (AS) abilities. Your evolved abilities gain a few improvements over your regular spells (more on that in the ability section).

Kai’Sa is heavily dependent on her support in the early game, because of her lower range and need of items and levels. She can have a hard time against lane bullies like Draven and Lucian, who are much more self-reliant than her in the early game.

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The recent changes to Hail of Blades made it the best keystone option for Kai’Sa. It gives you a lot of attack speed and its cooldown is pretty short, too. Hail of Blades makes your early game better by helping you proc your passive a lot faster. Press the Attack is still an option, but for now I would suggest using Hail of Blades in all your games.

Taste of Blood is a good rune for the early game. When you damage an enemy champion, you get a little heal. It has a 20 seconds cooldown and scales with your bonus AD and your AP.

Eyeball Collection gives you adaptive bonus AD or AP damage. For each takedown (kill or assist) you collect one eyeball, up to a maximum of 10 eyeballs. You gain either 1.2 AD or 2 AP per eyeball. Once you finish your collection you gain an additional 6 AD or 10 AP, giving you in total either 18 AD or 30 AP.

Ravenous Hunter heals you for a percentage of your damage dealt by your abilities, on-hit effects (Rageblade & Nashor’s Tooth) and items. You gain a Bounty Hunter stack for unique enemy takedowns, up to a maximum of 5.

Presence of Mind is a great rune for Kai’Sa, because your first item in your games will always be Manamune. Takedowns restore 20% of your maximum mana and increase your maximum mana by 100, up to a maximum of 500 mana at 5 takedowns. This rune is so good on Kai’Sa because Manamune grants you bonus AD for 2% of your maximum mana. This could potentially give you your Q evolution faster, if you get early takedowns.

Gives you 12% Lifesteal, once you finish stacking it. In comparison, Blade of the Ruined King also gives 12% Lifesteal. In your build, usually the only option for a Lifesteal item is Mercurial Scimitar, which is built after you finish your core items, so you don’t have any source of Lifesteal until very late into the game.

Flash is the best Summoner Spell in the game, so you should always use it. It has a lot of different uses, you can either Flash offensively to secure a kill or defensively to dodge a skillshot or escape a gank. There is just no better option.

Heal is also a really good summoner spell, especially for a duo lane, since you will heal your support as well (they will appreciate it!). It also gives you bonus movement speed for 1 second, so it can situationally be used to chase down an enemy. The most important thing to keep in mind about Heal is that Ignite reduces it effectiveness by 40%, so if you know you are going to fight to the death in a 2v2 fight, an early use might prove most effective!

Kai'Sa's basic attacks deal 4-10 (at levels 1-16) (+ 1-5 (at levels 1-17) per Plasma stack) (+ 10 / 12.5 / 15 / 17.5 / 20% of ability power (based on Plasma stacks)) bonus magic damage. Kai'Sa's attacks inflict Plasma. Kai'Sa's abilities evolve with stats.

Second Skin is a triple threat ability! To start with, your basic attacks are naturally enhanced to do bonus magic damage in accordance to the amount of plasma stacks a target has and how much AP you have. The second part of her passive is called Caustic Wounds. Your basic attacks, Void Seeker (W) and your allies’ immobilizing attacks will tag enemies with Plasma stacks. Attacking a target with 4 stacks of plasma causes the stacks to detonate, dealing damage based off the enemy’s missing health. You can also detonate the stacks with Void Seeker (W), in which case the enemy needs only to have 3 stacks of Plasma on them (or 2, later, when you upgrade your W). This passive allows you to shred tanks pretty easily. It synergizes well with Runaan’s Hurricane, since the bolts will also apply Plasma to enemies. The final part of the passive is called Living Weapon. Upon reaching 100 bonus AD, AP or AS, Kai’Sa can evolve her abilities to gain an extra effect. Items and levels count towards the 100 bonus stats, runes do not. Since Manamune is the dominant Kai'sa build at the moment, you will most likely unlock your Q evolution while you are in lane. To minimize your downtime, you can animation cancel the evolution. To do this, you need to click on the evolution icon (it does not work when you press CTRL + Q) and simultaneously press B to recall. Then just simply cancel the recall by moving. This cancel works for all of your evolutions!

Kai'Sa releases a swarm of 6 missiles that evenly distributes among nearby enemies, each dealing 45 / 61.25 / 77.5 / 93.75 / 110 (+ 40% bonus AD) (+35% of ability power) physical damage. Non-minions take 25% damage from missiles beyond their first. Deals 100% increased damage against minions below 35% health.

Icathian Rain is a pretty straightforward ability. Basically, upon activating it, a whirl of missiles are released and they seek out the closest enemy target(s). It is, of course, most effective when all the missiles hit a single target. As you get more experience with positioning yourself with your ultimate, you can try to isolate your target by ulting appropriately (away from the minion wave) so all the missiles only hit 1 enemy. It is a pretty good waveclear tool and deals double damage to minions below 35% HP. You need to reach 100 bonus AD to evolve this ability. This includes level-up stats and item stats. Runes are not included! If you are playing the AD variant and start with Doran’s Blade, you can evolve your Q with Infinity Edge at level 10. With Infinity Edge and Pickaxe, you can evolve it instantly.

Kai'Sa fires a Void blast in the target direction, stopping at the first enemy hit, dealing 20 / 45 / 70 / 95 / 120 (+ 150% AD) (+60% of ability power) magic damage, revealing for several seconds and applying 2 Plasma.

This spell provides good early game poke and also applies 2 stacks of your passive. If you have a support with CC, you can really surprise the enemies with a lot of burst damage! It is also really useful for hunting down enemies - all you need to do is hit them with your W and you can then follow up with your ultimate immediately. Later in the game it is also a pretty good scouting tool for checking baron or brushes. With Rageblade and Nashor’s Tooth (you need 100AP), you can evolve this ability. It then applies 3 stacks of your passive and refunds 50% of its cooldown when hitting an enemy champion. With the AP built, this spell can deal a lot of damage in the late game to squishies.

Kai'Sa charges for 1.2 - 0.6 seconds (based on bonus attack speed), during which she gains 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 / 75% bonus movement speed, increased by 0% - 100% (based on bonus attack speed). After charging up, Kai'Sa gains 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60% bonus attack speed for 4 seconds.

E gives you a burst of movement speed which is decent enough early game, as it can help you escape ganks or dodge abilities. You have to keep in mind you can’t auto attack while your E is charging up. Your charge up time goes down with more attack speed. The higher your attack speed, the higher the bonus movespeed you get and the faster the charge time. This is capped at 100% bonus attack speed. Once you get to 100% bonus attack speed (again, runes like Alacrity don’t count towards the 100%!), you can evolve the ability and gain true stealth for 0.5 seconds. This is very useful for juking enemies in fights. Your basic attacks reduce its cooldown by 0.5 seconds. Keep in mind that your E is your escape tool, so running into a fight with E is often not a very good idea. It is like jumping into a fight with Ezreal E, sometimes there is a place for it, but most of the time it will end badly for you. You can evolve your E with Rageblade, Berserker Boots, Zeal and a Dagger at level 10. If you’re playing AP, you need Rageblade, Berserker Boots and Stinger (Stinger builds into Nashor’s Tooth).

Kai'Sa dashes to a target location near an enemy champion with Plasma and shields herself for 75 / 100 / 125 (+ 100 / 150 / 200% AD) (+75% of ability power) for 2 seconds.

Your ultimate is a long range dash to any enemy who has at least 1 stack of your Plasma applied. It is good to follow up ganks and chase down kills. You can also use it defensively by jumping a short distance away from your enemy. A neat way to use your ultimate is for escaping while standing close to a wall. You can dash over that wall and leave your enemy behind. Timing is very important with this ult, so keep a close eye on the abilities your enemy has used and jump in when they are most vulnerable. The range indicator of your ultimate is a bit misleading. You might think you can ult once you are in range of the circle surrounding the enemy champion. This is not the case, you have to be in range of the enemy champion. Once you are in range, you can then also jump to the far end of the circle, even though it looks like it is out of range. The color of the circle, depending on the skin, also changes from almost transparent when you are out of range, to a brighter color once you are in range.

Play Video

// 1/4/5/7/9 Maxing Q is the best choice, since it provides wave clear and damage to enemies. It has a good AP and AD scaling as well.

// 2/14/15/17/18 The first point in W is pretty important, it deals a lot of damage early game and applies 2 stacks of your passive. You can also scout the jungle with it. You will max this ability last.

// 3/8/10/12/13 Your movement speed and attack speed steroid will be maxed second. The movement and attack speed bonus increases with each rank and that’s exactly what you want as Kai’Sa.

// 6/11/16 You want to skill your ultimate whenever possible. That means at level 6, 11 and 16! The cooldown goes down by 20 seconds per rank and the AD scaling and range go up with each skillpoint.

You can start with either Doran’s Blade, or Shield. Doran's Blade is the best option, since the extra AD it provides is very helpful for evolving your Q as early as possible. When you feel like the enemy botlane can poke you out of lane, Doran's Shield might be an option.

As of patch 9.10, a new build with Manamune is an option. First you get Pickaxe and build it into Manamune. Your next purchase is another Pickaxe, with Pickaxe and Manamune (at about 300 tear stacks) you get your Q evolution. Manamune grants 2% of your maximum Mana as bonus AD, so you get your Q evolution fast and cheap! Once you finish stacking the Tear, the on-hit damage Muramana provides, gets improved by Rageblade, so you will deal a lot of damage!

Alternatively, going Stormrazor is also an option. A BF Sword would be your ideal first back. If you start with Doran's Blade, you get your Q evolution after finishing Stormrazor and buying an extra Pickaxe, which you will build into Rageblade. Since Stormrazor got changed this preseason, your E evolution will be delayed. You now need Stormrazor, Rageblade and two daggers for the evolution.

Manamune is great, because you get lots of AD from it. The Manamune build is the fastest and cheapest Q evolution possible. It is very important to start with Pickaxe and not Tear on your first back. You will finish stacking Manamune between 20-25 minutes, and the Muramana on-hit effect is pretty good and synergizes with your Rageblade.

Rageblade is the other item basically made for Kai'Sa. Like Stormrazor, it gives both AD and AS, which is nice for you evolutions, but this item is amazing on Kai'Sa for its unique passive - every third hit applies on-hit effects twice. This is incredibly helpful, because you will detonate Plasma more often. The only downside is that you need to be at 6 stacks of Rageblade for the Rage passive to activate. Unfortunately Rageblade was nerfed in patch 9.10, but it is still a great item for Kai'sa.

Finally, your third big purchase will be zeal item. You have the choice mostly between Runaan's Hurricane, Rapid Firecannon and Phantom Dancer. They all have their own unique strengths, so it is best to decide on a game to game basis on which to buy.

QSS is often a really good choice to survive hard CC like Skarner or Ashe’s ultimates. It removes all crow control debuffs. In addition, it also gives you a little Magic Resistance, but its active it by far the most important part of this item. It builds into Mercurial Scimitar, which is most often your only source of Lifesteal.

A really good item in combination with Stormrazor. Stormrazor enhances its bonus attack range by about 200 and helps you gain the energized effects faster due to its unique passive. It is a good item against enemies who outrange you.

It is nice for wave clear with your Q, since the minions often survive with only your Q. In combination with Stormrazor, its lightning effect hits 7 targets instead of 5 and even slows all of them!

A very nice mixture of offense and defense. It is really good against bursty champions like assassins. Be careful though, its passive, Lifeline, is the same passive as Hexdrinker and Maw of Malmortius and they DON'T stack!

It provides lots of AD and 25% crit chance. The passive enhances your critical strikes to deal 225% damage. If you want more damage after your core items, Infinity Edge is the way to go!

A very nice defensive item against AD assassins. You can buy Stopwatch first, use it, and then finish building Guardian Angel. The armor it provides also comes in handy against assassins!

Kiting is the skill of moving your champion after an auto attack. You can cancel the animation of your champion’s auto attack by clicking on the ground. Different champions have different auto attack animations, and the faster your attack speed, the faster you can cancel the auto attack animation. So instead of watching the full animation, you can move to gain or close distances with enemy champions. So why is this useful you might ask?

Because you are a lot more mobile when your auto attack animation is being cancelled. You have more time to move and you are not just standing there, waiting for your animation to finish, so you can dodge skill shots more easily. The practice tool is a nice way to improve on your kiting. Just place a dummy and attack it. Walk back and forth and around the dummy. Try it with different items, since it is vastly different depending on your attack speed. After a while you will get a feel for your champion’s auto attack animation.




There are three different ways to auto attack - by right clicking, by pressing A and left click (Attack Move), or by pressing Shift and right click (Attack Move Click). When you are only using right clicks, you run the risk of miss clicking and running straight into the enemy champions. A-click and Shift prevent this. To decide if you want to use A (you can bind it to a different key!) or Shift, it is heavily dependent on how your hand is positioned on the keyboard. Some people play with their pinky on Q, others have their ring finger on Q (like i do). For me, the most comfortable button is the Shift key, since my pinky is resting on it anyway. If you are not used to using attack move, it will take some time to get used to it. There is also another setting in the option, which lets you bind attack move click to your left click. Try to do it from now on with every single auto attack, doesn’t matter if it’s last hitting minions or attacking enemy champions. You can also go into the practice tool and practice it.

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If you don’t have the pleasure of playing with a premade support, you are going to play with a random support. They can either be auto filled or really good, so there is a lot of variance. It is easy to start blaming your support if something goes wrong in the lane, especially when you feel like you are a better player than your support. This behavior is completely useless and only creates a negative atmosphere in the team. You are most likely never going to play with that player again, so don’t waste your energy by concentrating on their mistakes. Instead, focus on your own gameplay. Yes, there are going to be times when your support is inting the lane, but you are also most likely not playing perfectly. If you get the feeling that it is unfair and that the enemy ADC has the better support, remember that you will get good supports too, and the enemy will get the auto filled ones.

It is a good idea to think more about the bot lane matchup in the loading screen. If the enemy ADC isn’t playing Lucian or Draven, you should focus more on the support, since they will dictate the lane more than the ADC. You can categorize them as Poke, Trade, Catch and All-in. This helps you to identify their win conditions and make a plan to avoid them.

Poke supports can make your life hell in bot lane. They outrange you and can poke you from a safe distance. Champions in this category include: Soraka, Brand, Xerath and Zilean. You have to pay a lot of attention to those supports and always be ready to dodge their skillshots. Early boots and a refillable potion are recommended. Sometimes you can’t really do much against such lanes, try your best at getting as many last hits as possible. Asking your jungler for help can also be really useful, since you are most likely pushed under turret.

Similar to poke, these supports are only lacking the range. This means you can trade back, but they most likely out-trade you, or they can sustain themselves back to full health. Champions like Nami, Lulu and Sona fall into this category. Depending on your support, you might have to play this lane more passively, since their damage is very high. You can often win those lanes by getting a good all-in, since they are squishy. Be careful while last hitting, always watch out for the enemy support’s positioning, sometimes it is not worth to get a lot of damage just for a single cs.

All-in supports usually have a gap closer and hard CC. This means you can poke them with your range advantage, but you have to be very careful of their gap closers and CC, so you have to move in and out of range, depending on their cooldowns. Leona, Alistar and Braum are typical Champions of this category. It is very advantageous if you know the cooldowns of their CC and gapcloser abilities. These champions are often very weak when their abilities are on cooldown, since they rely heavily on them, so be prepared to punish them once they are on CD!

Catch: Champions with hooks or other long range CC. Your positioning is very important, standing behind minions can save your life. This category consists of Champions like Thresh, Blitz and Pyke. Warding the bot lane brush is a good idea, otherwise they can zone you hard. Similar to all-in champs, catchers also rely on their abilities, a Blitzcrank without his hook is no threat and leaves the ADC almost 1vs2 for a few seconds.

Champions can fall into multiple categories. This categorization can help you mentally prepare for the lane. Having a good plan before going into the game is important and will make the game a lot easier for you. You can already start in champ select to think about their win conditions. Ask yourself questions like: When are their power spikes? Can they win an early all-in? Do they out sustain you, therefore making your trades and poke useless? Who has the better scaling? With enough practice it is easier to spot their win conditions and you will learn to avoid them and play to your own win conditions.

Most of the time, you will have to leash for your jungler. Kai’Sa is a pretty good leasher, just attack the buff five times to detonate the Plasma and then go to your lane. The melee minions will have taken a bit of damage once you arrive at your lane, you can then auto attack the healthier melee minions and finish them all off with your Q.

It is absolutely important to get level 2 before the enemy bot lane does. You will hit level 2 after you have killed all the melee minions of the second wave. If you have a support with CC like Leona, you can easily get kills as soon as you turn level 2 and the enemies are still level 1. Don’t push the wave too hard though, because when they are near their turret, an all-in is not really possible. Even when there is no opportunity for a level 2 fight, you still have the lane under your control as long as you are first to level up. If, however, you are losing the race to level 2, back off in time so they can’t engage on you.

A good trading pattern for Kai’Sa is to stand next to a dying melee minion and as soon as the enemy ADC goes in for the last hit, auto attack them and press Q. Since they are in their auto attack animation, they either have to cancel it and miss the cs, or take the cs and get hit by you, without being able to retaliate. Keep in mind that this will give you minion aggro! You also have to be mindful of your and the enemy supports positioning. When your support is standing far behind you and the enemy support is close to you, going for this trade will result in the enemy support dealing more damage to you than you do to the enemy ADC. Poking the enemies with your W is also a good idea early game, since it deals a good amount of damage. It works best with a support with CC, Leona for example, she engages and stuns the enemy, meanwhile you can fire your W to proc the Plasma and deal a lot of burst damage, maybe even forcing an all-in or burning their summoner spells.

After the laning phase is over and you have destroyed the bot lane turret, you have a few options. Firstly, while you have bot priority and dragon is up you should probably take it with the help of your team.

It is a good idea to swap with your top laner right after the laning phase is over. There are a few reasons for this: the enemy top laner is most likely going to be a melee champion, that means you are going to out range him. Coupled with your support, you have a range and numbers advantage. Depending on how fast the enemy bot lane reacts, you have a bit of time to try and push the top lane turret. Be careful though - if the enemy top laner is fed, he could 1v2 you. If he isn’t fed, taking the turret should be relatively easy. After taking down the turret, there might be a good opportunity to get the Rift Herald as well with the help of your jungler.

It is also an option to swap with your mid laner instead of your top laner. It is much better to knock down the mid lane turret than the top lane turret. This is because the mid lane turret opens up the map much more for you and your team than the top lane turret. You can better invade and set up vision in the enemy jungle with the mid turret down. It is often harder to get the mid tower though, because mid lane champions are often ranged and have some form of wave clear. Therefore it is more common to swap top lane and get the mid turret with the Rift Herald.

Sometimes, it is best to just stay bot lane. If you are crushing the enemy bot lane, you can extend your lead by keeping up the pressure. That way, the enemy bot lane won’t be able to catch up with you. You will attract a lot of attention by pushing to the second botlane turret though. It is easy for the enemy jungler or mid laner to gank you when you are pushed up this far. To avoid getting ganked, it is very important to set up proper vision in the enemy jungle with the help of your support. Don’t shy away from buying a few Control Wards! If you have their jungle properly warded, the enemies will still waste a lot of time trying to gank you, therefore relieving pressure on your teammates, who can do something on the other side of the map, for example getting Rift Herald.

Finding the balance between going bot to farm and grouping with your team can be hard. You should either write in chat that you are going bot, or at least ping, otherwise your team might engage while you are bot. While farming in bot lane, you need to be careful and watch out for the enemies positions on the map. If they have fast moving champions, or a lot of them are missing, you can’t really push the wave far. Blue trinket and a control ward can come in handy in situations like that.




As with any ADC, being aware of the enemy threats is extremely important. It is your job to stay alive and deal the most damage possible. You often have to attack the target closest to you, which will be a tank most of the time as the carries tend to stay behind the front line. This is okay though, as long as you are dealing damage.

It is also possible to play dice in team fights and dive the backline with your ultimate. It is a fine line between jumping in the backline and killing their carries or just instantly dying. Before you go for a risky play you have to be sure what abilities they still have. Trying to ult to a Sona and her ADC, while she still has her ultimate ability ready? You will get stunned and killed. Even if they don’t have any threatening CC or summoners, if you are too behind, then forget about this option entirely.

Sometimes you can’t do much in a teamfight and will get zoned. It is often better to retreat than to die an unnecessary death. You will get a better feeling for deciding to running away or staying and fight with more experience on Kai’Sa. Once you have played her a lot, you know her power spikes and her potential damage output and can therefore make a more informed decision. It is easier to decide if you have seen the teamfight unfold and know what abilities the enemies have used. As a general rule, the more they have used and the more health they have lost, the easier it is for you to turn the fight around on your own. Especially in games that are almost for sure lost, trying to go for the hero play to turn the fight around is often a good idea. Normal games are also a good place to test your limits with your champion. That doesn’t mean you should just randomly feed, but playing more aggressively makes you better at the champion faster.

Always keep your cooldowns in mind before a team fight starts. Are your summoner spells up? Is your QSS or Hourglass on cooldown? Depending on your answers you can play more aggressively or defensively. Knowing if the enemies summoners are up is also important. When you are unsure if their summoners are up or not, play like they are up. It can cost you the game when you play too aggressively only to get flashed onto by the enemy Alistar. Your stealth from E can also be really helpful for juking and repositioning in fights. Also, don’t forget about your Rageblade! You will be most effective at 6 stacks, so attacking minions before a fight happens to stack it helps a lot. There are a lot of things to keep in mind and it will get easier with more experience. Just try to be mindful and don’t play on autopilot.

And this concludes my first ever guide here on Mobafire! It was a fun experience and I hope I managed to help you in some way with your Kai’Sa gameplay. If you have any questions, or suggestions to improve this guide, please leave a comment!

I also want to thank Jovy for her amazing banners and formatting help, without her this guide would not have been possible! She is a veteran guide author and you can find her guides here.