Hello! I go by Drake within the gaming community. I'm an illustrator, concept artist, and designer with a passion for video games and films. While I don't spend much of my time actually playing, I one-trick Renekton to give me an edge against players with several times more hours than I do in this game. I've compiled most of what I know in this guide to help anyone looking to learn the champion or brush up on what I believe is currently the best way to play him.

I am a consistency focused player and my builds balance and value in the widest variety of outcomes, but adaptation is always recommended. With that said, I hope you find my work here helpful, and here's one of my recent art pieces to spice up this guide's introduction!

12.4
Renekton's current future is looking pretty bleak. He's currently one of the lowest winrate Top laners in the game and there seems to be no, help in the expected future.Riot has expressed complete satisfaction with his weak state and is not considering a buff of any kind. His presence in pro play has effectively assassinated his solo queue viability. This doesn't mean he can't be successful when handled properly, you just have to be WAY better than your opponents to do it, and most top laners and junglers alike are straight up stronger than you at all phases of the game.

Since I'd rather just go play something else than tolerate it, I'm quitting League for this year and may consider a return in 2023 if improvements are made.

Mythics:


Goredrinker is the default mythic item for Renekton because it gives him everything you want to get rolling. 12.3's changes have given it a lot more damage in exchange for less health. This is a mixed package because the active is now slightly weaker when low, but the increased damage makes for a really nice first or second item. Vs matchups that don't call for a BoRK rush, this item now feels pretty nice as a first buy.


Ideal for ranged matchups or games with a lot of backline enemies that you need to stick to. The removed dash makes getting to targets but the slow is much stronger. Because of the huge slow, using this in the middle of a fight give your team easy skillshot hits. Though you never want to be in a losing situation with Renekton, this item peals well too since it slows enemies that are chasing you.


This performs a similar task to Stridbreaker but is better geared for assassination. Despite being a bruiser class, Renekton is quite at home with assassin items. This item is better picked over Stridbreaker when your team needs assassinations over backline rundowns. Build this item first vs ranged laners to gain a third dash on them. This is great for Renekton because he can dash a second time without the concern of burning Fury on his E. This item has the highest skillcap of the list and can be used in many advanced ways to maximize value. It will also follow enemy movement spells, the same as Warwick's Q can.

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Legendaries and other Items:


Great for wave management because you can use the active at will, unlike Tiamat where the AoE is passive. This lets you hold lanes and immediately push them whenever needed.


While it's not as ideal as it was before the item overhaul, BoRK is a great early powerspike and on-hit choice for Renekton. Great vs champions who build a lot of HP but not so much armor, like Mundo and other bruiser class champions.


With armor break, 30 Haste, and balanced core stats, Black Cleaver is a staple pick for Renekton. It goes great with Blade of the Ruined King for killing tanky units.


I'm a huge fan of the idea of this item but have a hard time fitting it in my builds. Renekton doesn't typically build pure damage items apart from Blade of the Ruined King. If you need to stick to targets, build this in place of your offense item.


Great high damage item that's great for spreading Black Cleaver's armor breaks throughout the teamfight. Build in place of your offense item.


This is the best item to complement high HP builds. With the bruiser item changes, these kinds of builds have felt weaker and Titanic Hydra is slowly losing value to Renekton.


Because of 12.3's changes, don't build this second anymore. Wait for the third or fourth slot because its value doesn't start matching its former until around level 15. If the burst resistance is mandatory, you can build it sooner.


Designed to be the sustain tool of high AD builds, Death's Dance works best in fast team fights where people go down quickly. Hit as many people as you can with Q and if they die in 3 seconds, you will be healed. I don't think this fully replaces Sterak's Gage, but instead complements it and replaced Gargoyle Stoneplate.


After HP has mostly left Renekton's build, this item has lost some impact but is still very strong in the right games. It works as an early Steraks-like shield when you expect a lot of damage and it gives you 60 for both resistances which is great value for bruisers only wanting to have one tank item.


A perfect complimentary item to a Stridebreaker build. This gives you an extra boost of speed outside of combat with its passive and activates for speed in battle, letting you rundown and assassinate priority backlines. This also secondaries as a split pushing item because of its speed. You can more easily outrun your opponents if more people than you can kill come to stop your push.


I feel like this is an improvement from the usual Mortal Reminder, giving HP and CDR. The grievous wounds part has also been buffed to 60% on half HP targets. Thanks to Renekton’s burst damage, rushing an opponent to this health percentage is a breeze and will throw many matchups like Mundo, Sylas, and Vladimir more in Renekton’s favor.


If your game requires a split pusher, this is a great item to pick up, and it's fairly cheap. It is also a great item if you have to become the strongest champion in a 1v1. You can't effectively split push if a single enemy can beat you. Even without the passive, this item gives good raw stats, but it's not an ideal team fighting item.

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DPS Bruiser
(New build for 12.3 changes)



Offense items

or

With the items overhaul of 12.3, Renekotn's most used items will be losing a lot of HP in exchange for more damage and CDR. This is generally a good thing for Renekton's playstyle. Instead of HP scaling, this is an AD scaling build that uses healing for durability. Killing off burst damage enemies is important for this build because healing doesn't help you against getting one shot. Grievous Wounds holders and the ADC are usually going to be your top priority.

Sterak's Gage helps survive late game burst, Death's Dance and Goredrinker keep you going throughout the fight, while BoRK and Black Cleaver are for damage. The full build has really quick cooldowns so you can fight longer battles than other builds.

When it comes to the offensive items list, there are options of preference. Just note that some of these items with Black Cleaver instead of replacing it may be overkill for your Haste stat.

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Team Fighter
(With the item changes in 12.3, this build is missing a lot of its HP scaling)



Choose , or




Designed for high ability cooldowns, and combat sustain, this build is the best one for the widest variety of games that your goal is to join your team for full-blown team fights instead of split pushing. This build can play front to back as well as diving for backline priorities. While many Renekton players have complained about feeling useless after the mid game, I've been very comfortable through all phases with this build and only feel a fall off vs hyperscalers that are meant to out scale everyone anyway.

Black Cleaver is a team supportive item by breaking down the armor of durable enemies. Absolutely buy this if your team is mostly if not all AD and the enemy has a tank. If armed with the Grudge passive, this Renekton build thrives in the center of battle, slowing enemies for his team while dishing out devastating damage in rapid succession with his short cooldowns. Blade of the Ruined King punishes other bruiser champions for stacking HP. Use its attack speed and on-hit passive to deal consistent damage and build Fury faster.

This build synergizes well with Teleport or Ghost for either side laning and always being ready to join your team, or speeding after your prey. Without your summoner spells you are a bit more susceptible to be kited than the following. If the enemy team has a lot of melee champions, this build is ideal.

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Assassin
(With the item changes in 12.3, this build will perform slightly better)





This build is very difficult to counter build after three core items. You have lethality, armor pen, armor break, and percent HP damage. Prowlers and Youmuu's provide a lot of mobility in combat while Black Cleaver breaks down armor to give your lethality stat more value. This build is very high in damage but very fragile in defense. Best used as a mid lane role, but can be fine top lane if your team has two durable champions in other places.

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(I'm Taking a hiatus from League at the moment, but worry not. I'm still keeping up to date on patches and new content so if I believe any items require changed info, I will be on it in a timely fashion.)

First Mention

The first thing I want to establish is a very important misconception about Renekton many new players to him have. Renekton is NOT an easy to master champion. Many people will say he's super easy and that's how you know they haven't invested much into learning him. Renekton's Fury takes time to get used to because that passive divides the good and bad Renekton players. Renekton also has A ton of combos to learn. Way more than most champions would ever consider. If you go in every fight with the same E-W-Q-E combo, you will be killed by a select amount of champions often. Learning what combos are needed in what situation, how much fury you need and can obtain in how many attacks will make you a better player.

Also, this guide will not make you a master Renekton. No amount of reading will prepare you like actually getting out there, but this guide has everything I can think of to help any level of player who wants to learn or improve with him and be a better top laner in general. The threats tab is a great resource for on-demand intro of nearly every opponent you will meet in the top lane and a few mid laners I've faced. Knowing your matchups is a huge deal for snowball champions like Renekton so know your enemy.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Strong early and mid game
Nearly unrivaled lane sustain
No mana
Fantastic duelist
Item versatility
Great outplay potential
Can destroy when ahead
He looks awesome... That's a pro, deal with it.

Cons
Doesn't have late game scaling
Usually weak without Fury
Cooldown reliant
Long cooldowns early.
Hard to come back if behind
Can be predictable

Playstyle

As Renekton, your main goal is to get ahead in your lane and extend your lead to the rest of the game and establish a lead that will hopefully result in an early victory. This goal is not always achievable of course, so this guide will help you increase the times it does and give you ways to handle times when the dream game doesn't come. The first and most important thing for Renekton is combat and Fury management If you can't fight with Renekton, then you probably need to either learn asap or move to a different champ.

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Combos


Ability keys: Q= W= E= R=
Combos:

Your full trade combo is to Slice in, do all your damage and Dice out while adding auto attacks to the mix.

Full Combo: -Auto- -Auto- -Auto-

Sustain Poke: - -Auto-

Safe Escape: - -Auto- -
(Use this against champions that can pull you back in like Darius, Mordekaiser, and Sett)(Don't use Q if it will be empowered. Empowered W is required)

Long gap closing. off minion- - -

Empowered W from 0 Fury: Auto- -Auto- -Auto- -Auto-

Empowered W from 25 Fury: - -Auto- -
(Same as Safe escape but I wanted to list it in the Fury specific spot too)

R: Gains you 20 instant Fury which is a good mental note when pulling off outplays with surprise empowered abilities.

- -Auto- will give you about 40 to Fury because you generate Fury over time with Dominus active. Take the Fury generation into account when working combos.

W, Ult cancel: W-R (Can dash instantly after ultimate as well)
I don't use this often but it does work. Better for dives if you need the added HP to survive the tower.

There are many more combos than this, and there's typically a very optimal trade pattern for every situation. Only experience will prepare you for them all but these are the most common combos you will need to remember. These combos also change based on your Ultimate which adds an entirely new layer of experience required to this character.

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Fighting!
"As I live, all will die!"

Your main combat goal with Renekton is to inflict short heavy damage trades to gain kill pressure in your lane. You will rarely want to stay and auto-attack your opponent on the first fight. Renekton is an outplay based champion who capitalizes on his enemy's mistakes in lane. This is why Champions like Camile, Riven, Jax, and Fiora often struggle against him. They have less room for error which puts players in tough spots. Renekton is not made to sit there and auto-attack for fights. Only by establishing a lead with proper trades will you be able to kill most top laners in a fresh HP fight early on.

Establish lane dominance and zone your opponent off if you can. Renekton is extremely powerful with full Fury but is also very weak when he has none. This means that you will usually crush your lane or get crushed yourself because of how easy you are to zone off if you mess up early. Succeeding in combat early and managing your wave properly will ensure a very strong lead and the power to shut down your opponent so bad that they are too weak in the mid-game to do anything.

Renekton has a few Fury amounts he can engage with. 35 and 25 are the most notable amounts BEFORE reaching 50 Fury. The combos are listed above in the combo section. Knowing these will allow you to fight much sooner than 50 Fury which is where most inexperienced Renekton players will look to wait for. These are also very situational. At 25 Fury, you actually have the potential to do more damage than 50 Fury against champions like Darius. This is because W always ends your trade with him so by starting with 25 Fury, your E and Q will be used first and W will allow you an escape. Going in with 50 Fury will avoid using Q so that W is empowered.

Hitting minions with Q can also spike your Fury amount a lot so you can often pull these off with less Fury than listed. Minions waves are just very diverse from each game and time so my combos are listed to work even when there are no minions. Knowing this will still help you. Say you have 22 or 13 Fury which is a bit awkward. You can still use the Escape combo so long as your Q is sure to hit a few minions. You gain 2.5 Fury per minion hit with Q. 5 Fury for 2 minions hit.

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Trading


Renekton's level 1 is rather weak and most top laners can beat you in this state. Usually, you want to start Q to secure the 3 first minions. It also doesn't draw minion aggro when hitting a champion. When level 2 is near, you have the chance to look for a level 2 all in if the enemy will not be hitting their level up when you do. The same can be done with level 3, so look out for these level spikes to get ahead in lane very early.

In cases where you are heavily disadvantaged before level 3, against champions like Darius, Fiora, Riven, and Irelia, you will most likely lose the race to level 2. When the second wave arrives, fall back before your opponent kills the front line minions. You can't afford to be killed so soon. This may have to be repeated for level 3 until you're ready to safely trade back. Vs Darius and Sett who have fast pulls, I recommend this, but the others can be traded with once you have Q and E.

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Tower Diving

Renekton is a really good diver but not all champions are easy to dive. If you can dive the matchup, make sure not to dash before your combo. Walk in with a large minion wave and test your opponent with the threat of an attack. This is aimed to bait out their CC based abilities or dashes. If they hit you, they will likely get minions aggro as well which will help with your burst damage. When the time seems right, kill them quickly and dash out. Champions that are risky to dive are ones with hard CC. Jax and Fiora are the best examples of hard to dive champs for risky CC moves. Shen and Rammus should usually be avoided because taunts will certainly doom you. If you can't get them to waste these abilities, back off from the kill.

In less dangerous cases, you can just walk in to cut off their path and get in for the kill. This works on the majority of champions at low HP. As long as they can't completely negate your W, you can usually just dive them with little concern.

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Vs Ranged Top

These picks usually involve ranged bullies like Teemo and Quinn or passive farmers like Hienmendinger. Your options can often be limited in these situations, but you can also snowball extremely hard if you get a lead vs them because they don't build armor, making it easy to repeatedly tower dive them at full health if you get a completed damage item over them.

Play safe for your first level until level 2 where you can look for E-Q poke combos to start healing and chunking them down. by level three, you have a few options. Either unlock W for a potential kill early or just level Q instead for better healing and poke. Unlock W by level 4 if you did.

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Snowballing

Renekton gets ahead in lane in most of his games. So now is the question of what the heck do you do now? How can you make your lead impact the game? Well it's super situational but I have a few methods that Renekton is great at.

Renekton is designed as a 1v1 and skirmisher-based fighter. After the first dragon, try to be there for the rest, especially if you're strong. Look to farm gold and take pick kills for most of your time, then rotate for high fights for objectives. This ensures your lead doesn't get lost so easily. Staying with your team always will cause you to level up slower even if you're getting kills.

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Rift Herald

When Rift Herald is alive and you have the advantage, build a slow push when your jungle is clearing his blue camps, them ping your intentions to help. Once you crash the wave, go down to help with the objective. Don't use abilities on the Herald so you have 100 Fury and all of your abilities in case a fight breaks out for it.

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General tips: Look for team fight opportunities when your or and ultimate are up. Consider split pushing when they are down. You should rarely team fight when your ultimate is down. It's far too important to Renekton. Ping your spells and Ult timers at proper moments to keep your team updated on your combat reliability.

Your job in team fights is to dive after the enemy backline and kill off their damage carries. It's your team's job to follow your engage but apply front-line pressure so the enemy front line can't turn on you without punishment. In most cases, the presence of a Renekton in the area will deter a lot of fights unless the enemy is just too out of control to be stopped. When the game is even, Renekton is generally strong at zoning enemies off because no one wants to get blown up by his burst.

Once your target is dead, consider quickly if you can stay in the fight or need to get out if able. While Renekton can make some big plays even at low health, you probably just used your Q and W so you'll need time to get them back. If you are running my Team Fight build, you will be able to sit in battle when you have three items and more because your cooldowns will be so short.

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Pick Making

Renekton's strongest time in 1v1 duels to 3 man skirmishes. Larger team fights are not particularly his favorite spot, but there are builds to make Renekton team fight very well. Despite this, you should be dedicating the majority of your attention to picking off stray enemy champions. Killing enemies without losing allies is the best way to set up successful objectives. Thanks to Renekton's burst damage and mobility, running down lone targets is easy unless they get help. Be aware of who's on the map when looking for these picks so you can get a good idea of who will come to your target's aid.

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Split pushing is the main role of a top laner. Renekton isn't the best split pusher when it comes to crushing towers, but he's very strong in a 1v1 fight which means he draws a lot of attention. Use this to draw enemies to you instead of grouping with their team. Side lanes are also good courses of experience so you stay ahead in level.

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Detouring

Taking detours in your split can sometimes convince the enemy that you're backing. Spend this time to take jungle camps and place vision in the jungle to make your push safer. This generally is most important the further away from an allied tower you are.

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Decision Making

Deciding to dedicate to your push, back off, or Teleport to help with an objective is very situational and won't be the same every time. These are some good guidelines though. If your team is guaranteed to get the objective like Dragon or Baron without you, then keep pushing. This will stack the pressure on the enemy team. If your team has a shot at Baron but will likely need some help, Teleport to the fight after you shoved the wave as long as possible. This is usually the case if the enemy is aware of your team's attempts to take Baron and is ignoring your push to trade it for Baron. If you being there has a good chance of securing it, then go.

If the team is so far behind that you simply will lose any team fights, then your pressure is better than you being at Baron. Continue to hard shove the opposite lane in hopes of doing two things. Either trade baron for an inhibitor instead of dying for the lost objective, or draw attention to your push either making the enemy neglect Baron, be down some people or have to surrender taking baron because you can end the game if they don't.

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A basic list of champions put into tiers of how difficult they are to successfully tower dive on average. These obviously vary with skill level, items, level, and minion count, but I can't really account for every factor. Before you tunnel vision into diving the tower, consider this list. Harder champs will require lower HP to safely dive. A failed dive can give your enemy a kill and throw away what lead you may have built. A successful dive will almost set your lane win in stone.

Champion difficulty usually regards their durability and CC potential. Tanky champs naturally take a beating better and are harder to burst down even when low. Lots of carry champs are easily killed with a burst and have more skill applied CC

Very easy: These champions have little to no protection from you.
Easy: Have little outplay under tower but are not out of options.
Average: Have a solid outplay condition that you can deal with.
Hard: Difficult to dive safely.
Very hard: Very dangerous under tower. Not recommended for diving alone in most cases.

Very Hard


Hard


Average


Easy


Very Easy

When you are the team's main frontliner, build tankier items like, , and

This is the newest item added to Wild Rift that has use on Renekton. Only buy this is hard snowballing or in need of armor penetration. It synergies with Renekton's ultimate amazingly and makes escape almost impossible for more champions. Last Whisper, its ladder item, is also great for fast armor pen if you need it ASAP.

Core build order for the majority of games. Boots should be adaptive but Ninja Tabi give you a strong edge over many top laners and scale well against fed ADCs or junglers. You can replace Sunfire Aegis for Guardian Angel if you feel more comfortable with the meta build. I've had a lot more success with Sunfire though. It synergies well with the HP Renekton buys and gains from his ultimate which also has an AoE burn of its own. because of this large HP pool, I take Conqueror for great teamfight capability. Keep track of how many enemies can build Blade of the Ruined King. If up to three can, it's better to go for GA or an armor item.

Runes: Conqueror, Brutal, Second Wind, Sweet Tooth.
Enchantment: Teleport, Glory.
Spells: Ignite, Flash, or Ghost.

Rune mentions.

Unlike normal league, you actually wanna get Ruthless Predator second after Cull the Meek in most games. I'll be calling them Q,W,E from now on, cause we all know what that means. In early fights before you've bought Blade of the Ruined King, you typically want to empower your Q. It has a better overall value early because you max it first and heal, creating a larger HP gap than empowered W does. Once you complete BoRK, your empowered W will hit harder than Q.

As usual, you play for the early game and snowball, using sustain to create a lead in lane. Zoning enemies away from minions is less effective in this game because you get a portion of minion gold even if you missed the last hit. This means you need to be more aggressive in order to dominate.

Once you have Teleport, stick to the side lanes to level up faster and be ready to teleprt in to help your team secure objectives or win important fights. This is easier when you can beat anyone in a 1v1, further implying how much you need to win lane. (NOTE) Renekton's W can now be used on towers to mow them down very quickly! This is a great tool for splitting that PC Renekton doesn't have.



MobaFire's owned Renekton guide for WRift is also a good place to get info and the build is spot on for the best items in the average game. https://www.wildriftfire.com/guide/renekton

That about wraps up the current state of this Guide. Good on you if you read this far without skipping. Leave a like if you, well, liked it. Let me know if there's any information you would like to see added here as well. One quick drawing of mine cause it's kinda cool. Now get out there and be the best crocodile man you can be!

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