Hi, I"m Fòxý, and this is my 2nd intensive guide project to a new champion release and my insight on the champion and what I believe works best for them. My first champion I fell in love with on release and felt I had a lot of fresh and new ideas to share on was Kayn and my guide is still up from the time of its relevance Kayn Guide. I instantly fell in love with Kayn's unique ability set and playstyle, and I have the same feelings with Kai'Sa! So please check out my Kayn Guide in order to see my ambitions for this guide and what I hope this guide will look like as I work on it in the next few weeks!

I love new things in league and trying to find the best ways to take advantage of them and fit them into what already exists and figuring out their unique relationship to the current game. I loved everything about Kai'Sa and followed updates on her, but from seeing players play her in norms, even ranked, and from what I see on the stats on op.gg of what the majority of players are doing with Kai'Sa, I felt the need to release this guide in the early stages as soon as possible, because I've been having incredible success with Kai'Sa jungle in my Solo Queue games going very different runes and item paths than most players out there.

I present to you my personal choice of style for Kai'Sa as a sort of merge and bits of Nocturne, Elise, Lucian, and Yasuo - an AP burst assassin with incredible team fight fighter levels of dps as well.

I really wanted to be the first to release this build and style of Kai'Sa before anyone else, so a lot of the reasoning and explanation of all the choices and why's of things in this guide are in my head but not yet on paper. I will be updating this guide as much as I can in the next few weeks so please stick around and check back as I build this guide!

Thank you for checking out my guide and reading, hope I help you have a blast on this new champion because she is a stomper in the jungle! <3

aa - auto attack
AD - attack damage
AP - ability power
AS - attack speed
dmg - damage
dps - damage per second
cd - cooldown (of abilities)
cdr - cooldown reduction

(more coming soon!)

This is a built that gives Kai'Sa tons of early game power in lvl1 invades and lvl3 ganks and throughout the early game, then later, with items, allowing her to transition into a very powerful skirmishing and assassin jungler. The build and playstyle is focused around the carry side and countering opponent carries and dishing lots of damage in fights.

Electricute provides the best burst early game and scales really well with bonus ad and ap, so that is the best keystone choice for this.
Kai'Sa's R procs Sudden Impact and so does her E once it's upgraded to give stealth during charge.
Stats is most important to Kai'Sa, and taking advantage of every possible rune to give you them helps a lot. You can use Kai'Sa's Void Seeker similarly to Ashe's Hawkshot so zombie wards and ghost poros are not nearly as good as eyeball collection. Going AP first will give you more stats than ad from this rune as well.

Order
Start with Q Icathian Rain:
With Q having a very low CD, you can cast Q twice during clearing the first buff, providing the most dps on the buff clear, more than E or W could give you.

2nd level E:
The AS you gain provides more dps than using W, has less cd and the cd gets reduced when you AA as well, and E is safer and more useful in case of early lvl2 jg invades and skirmishes. Also E allows you to kite the wolves camp better and take less damage during the clear on the wolves and the buff after.

3rd get W:
Having all 3 abilities is huge to Kai'Sa's lvl3 power spike for ganks and for burst and kill threat.

Maxing
Max W first:
Going AP burst Kai'Sa, means it's best to max W for the most damage. Once you have 100ap from items to upgrade W, the cd reduction from leveling W will provide incredible power to your poke, your lane ganks and threats, dives and skirmishes.

Max E second:
Going Nashor's Tooth is incredibly efficient on Kai'Sa because the stats and the 20% cdr that comes with it. Maxing E second is best because once you have Berserkers and Nashor's and your passive stacked from Legend: Alacrity, you will have over 100% AS to gain the stealth upgrade for E. Having E up more often will help Kai'sa's struggle against heavy cc tanks and snowball-intensive bruisers.

Max Q last.
Once you have Duskblade you'll gain the upgrade for Q as well, dealing tons of extra damage and securing Kai'Sa's ability to stay relevant in teamfights through the late game.



Pathing:
Start Botside buff first for healthy leash, then go to Wolves, then 2nd buff and then look to roam a gank on top lane. If no gank top, take scuttle while waiting for Top or Mid opportunity or ability to harass the enemy jgler if that's an option. Finish with raptors or sometimes Krugs with or without a kill/assist and back.
Keep W handy and not so much for clears if an opportunity to throw W to a lane is likely.
Having Red for ganks is fantastic, while having Blue during invades and more farm-heavy games and counter-gank heavy matchups is also great for CD and spamming of abilities and poke to shut down the trickier matchups.
Buffs aren't crucial for clears for Kai'Sa, but are more of a utility such as more W and spamming of abilities on Blue, and more kiting and zoning and kill-threat on Red, but giving over blue to mid or even top is totally fine if it helps your team mates and makes up for some large weakness or struggle.



Tricks and Versatility of Abilities:
Q
- This ability specifically states the 6 bullets deal single target damage each. With Hextech Gunblade, running by any camp will heal you from "no health" to full in most cases, especially with some stacks of Ravenous Hunter and especially with a Raptors camp
- This ability has almost no cast time. The damage and effect happen after the channel, allowing for AA and other abilities to be cast during the Q ability's effect. Use this to not have dead time during channeling of E and when diving with R right before cast W.


W
- Gives true vision of whoever hit, so it counters stealth with great uses for examples like Vayne, Kha'Zix, Rengar, Teemo, and Talon.
- Great for scouting for camps, like enemy jg camps or your own camps from safe distances if being heavily starved/invaded
- W used at point blank can be very effective and guarantee the burst damage it carries. Use this in combination to do the RQW (and the ERQW combo) in order to guarantee the W hit.


E
- Very useful for repositioning, creating distance when dove, avoiding skill shots,and roaming to team fights and objectives in preparation for W+R engages.


R
- Use to shield from burst damage and also to avoid skill shots and cc as well.
- A useful escape technique is to run away from the desired escape route in order to lure whoever may be chasing you, use W or AA to gain charges of plasma on the opponents, use E to create distance away, and then surprise the team by dashing to the far end of another player towards your more desired escape this way buying time for your team mates to rescue your escape path and wastes time of the enemy team chasing you. This is very similar to the escape technique often used by Zed and LeBlanc in team fights and tricky situations

(under construction, way way more coming!)

Start:
Hunter's Machete will give you tons of healing from your AA, because lifesteal includes all effects from basic attacks, the healing will proc from Kai'Sa's passive ap damage throughout your clears and Kai'Sa's abilities' mana costs are modest at best, so running low on mana won't be an issue even when going Red buff first.


Early Game:
Skirmisher's Sabre will help a lot with dealing with camps like Raptors and Krugs, so picking this up first is essential to allow smooth clearing and the mana regen is crucial.

Thanks for checking out my guide! Check back as I'll be updating the guide pretty rapidly and please share the guide with friends and mates if you found it helpful! Also leave a vote to help me get this guide to the top! pc <3