Rakan is in my opinion one of the most fun and versatile champions, from his personality to his kit, he can work in so many different situations. Although his only scalings are AP (very good ones at that, specially after patch 13.3, hopefully they don't make him giga broken), he can work well as tank too thanks to his kit having a lot of utility in the form of amazing engage, mobility and a decent amount of healing and shielding. As a little sad reminder tho, remember these builds are all pretty off-meta, so although they're high on the fun chart, they're definitely not good for sweating in ranked so have fun with them in Draft and Flex with friends but only use them in solo duo when you get reeeal comfy with Rakan and his limits.

Runes Resolve Grasp of the Undying Font of Life Second Wind Overgrowth Sorcery Manaflow Band Gathering Storm 10% Attack Speed 6 Armor

Rakan top can be very fun but also very frustrating, depending on the matchup, unfortunately top is plagued by broken and very oppressive champs such as Jax, Fiora, Camille, Darius, GP etc. making him a risky first pick. With that being said Rakan top does have its strengths, coming in the form of his great mobility and cc, unless getting ganked, you must make a bunch of mistakes to die in lane, since both W Grand Entrance and your ultimate The Quickness are amazing tools to get out of sticky situations, the real pro of having Rakan in any of the solo lanes is that he's able to join fights very quickly and turn the tables thanks to his great engage. In the early game, unless you're permashoved under tower, you can quickly join your jungler to secure scuttle and perhaps get a kill, same goes for invades, either the enemies or your jungler's, Rakan can always join the fray either before or at the same time as the enemy laner. This is also why I choose Ghost over Flash, as it allows to reach fights much quicker and catch up to enemies even if they flash, plus every takedown resets the duration allowing you to chase and keep up the pressure, with Shurelya's Battlesong you can also make sure your teammates chase with you (and you will want that as you don't have much damage). On this note, let's take a second to talk about the runes: Grasp of the Undying is an amazing first rune for Tank Rakan, specially now that he's considered a melee champ, proccing it is very easy and the extra damage, healing and permanent health work perfectly for this build, for the rest of the resolve tree almost every rune can work under the right circumstances, but I really like Font of Life since it's really easy to activate and provides both you and your team with decent healing. Second Wind is great with Doran's Shield and gives you a lot of sustain to farm and overall just survive lane during the early levels, specially against poke champs, Bone Plating is good against all-in heavy champs and Conditioning is great for passive lanes making you tankier in the late game. Overgrowth is also really good but can be swapped for Unflinching against teams with heavy cc, even though your goal as Rakan is always to dodge cc when possible.

For the secondary tree I go Sorcery with Manaflow Band, very useful for the early levels and the overall match if you don't end up getting a mana item like Frozen Heart, I feel like Rakan chews through mana pretty quickly, specially if you use your skills to farm and chuck a few Qs at the enemy for healing.
Gathering Storm is just good for some much needed AP, but Transcendence and Waterwalking are also good choices.

For flex runes I almost always go for Attack Speed and double Armor or MR, depending on enemy laner and overall comp.


Laning phase for top can be pretty aggressive, since usually you will outrange other melee champions and are able to proc grasp a lot of times, in the early levels you even have some kill power for potential solo bolos, but your true strength relies on tower cheese and gank setups, as soon as you hit level six all it takes is for the enemy laner to make one small mistake under your tower and by comboing with W and R you can make sure the tower (or your jungler) will take care of him.

After your tower falls (unfortunately it's almost a given unless you get strong sided by your jungler) you want to start roaming and getting your teammates ahead, just rarely stopping to farm. You don't have much kill power nor amazing split pushing (although it's decent since you can usually get away with R even if the enemy team collapses on you) so your best bet is to count on your teammates, you can make plays happen but unfortunately you have to rely on your teammates to follow up and do decent, which is why this build is better suited for higher ranks (not silver/bronze basically) and probably better to not bring in ranked altogether unless you get last pick and think it's a good fit.

My rating is 8 off-meta Rakans out of 10.

Mid builds are AP all the way baby, there's many guides you can reference for full AP Rakan mid so I won't get too in depth, the only difference about my build is that I'm focusing on maximising damage by stacking magic penetration, I've experimented with a lot of different builds and found out that to deal the most burst damage against non MR equipped targets flat pen is the best stat (with as much ap as possible of course); since almost every champ has around 50 mr (around level 13-14) by just having Luden's Tempest, Sorcerer's Shoes and Shadowflame you instantly negate 39 to 49 (see shadowflame's passive) MR, basically dealing true damage. Against tankier enemies that stack mr the better choice would be Void Staff because of % pen. As a rule of thumb Shadowflame is more effective while the enemy has around 50-80 mr whereas if they have 100+ you should add Void Staff in your build, I recommend ignoring void staff if the enemy doesn't get any mr and focus on more AP heavy items like rabadons or cosmic drive for the added ability haste. Morellonomicon is another great item because of the high AP and the newly added 10 magic pen. The only problem with this build is that both shadowflame and morello have no ability haste, I make up for this by having Transcendence and the ability haste shard in my runes, this way I get 38 AH by level 11 (the bare minimum for a skill-reliant champ like Rakan). If you get ahead, this build is a blast, run into teamfights and blow everyone up or one shot some squishy adc. If you fall behind you can still go Crown of the Shattered Queen and provide decent damage and the usual amazing engage. 10 off-meta Rakans out of 10, after patch 13.3 AP buffs might even become meta who knows.

Runes Domination Electrocute Sudden Impact Eyeball Collection Treasure Hunter Sorcery Transcendence Gathering Storm 9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP) 8 Ability Haste 6 Armor

Runes Domination Electrocute Cheap Shot Ghost Poro Treasure Hunter Sorcery Transcendence Gathering Storm 9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP) 8 Ability Haste 6 Armor

Like AP Rakan mid, AP Rakan supp is already very well documented, my only addition is, same as mid, the use of ability haste runes with Luden's Tempest and Shadowflame. Another good rune that I don't see many AP Rakan builds using is Treasure Hunter instead of Ultimate Hunter, Rakan's ult is already on a low cooldown and the extra 550 gold really helps with building your items, since without them AP Rakan support has no damage and no sustain, not the best when you're behind. Not only you will have a lot of damage with this build, being able to almost one shot the enemy adc if you're ahead, but you also get a massive shield on passive Fey Feathers and E Battle Dance and very good heals with Q Gleaming Quill, use this knowledge to make the difference during teamfights, e.g. hitting a Q and Eing on top of a teammate that's getting low or dying from ignite/other burn damage. You can also use the Q healing on baron and drake to keep your team at full health for an eventual enemy engage. Very fun! Use your early damage to cheese some early kills and try to snowball, kinda ****py if you fall behind, but Crown of the Shattered Queen is still an option. 9 off-meta Rakans out of 10.

This is another fun build, very weird but very powerful, it takes inspiration from hwipham's guide on Rod of Ages Rakan and repurposes it for Top lane. Using almost identical runes to the "regular" Top build, the biggest change is having Rod of Ages as Mythic, this provides with a decent amount of HP, AP and mana, all stats that Rakan needs, the only thing that's missing is Ability Haste, which it only gives from finishing other items, and since out of the core items Rod of Ages, Sunfire Aegis, Demonic Embrace and Spirit Visage, only the latter gives a little AH, I make up for this by having either Transcendence and/or Ability Haste shard. Early game is a little rough since RoA takes a while to build and another while to stack up, so contrary to the other Top build, where the Shurelya's Battlesong power spike comes early, you want to be playing safer and focus on farming (unless you can help your jungler/get his help) at least until you finish boots (I suggest Ionian Boots of Lucidity) and Rod of Ages. Other useful items are Bami's Cinder for waveclear and Spirit Visage for added tankiness and that sweet passive improving healing and shielding for you and your allies. Another good item is Demonic Embrace, giving you good damage along with the sustain you will have from Roa (improved by SV) and the resistances from Sunfire Aegis and Spirit Visage. Although not easy to achieve, the moment you close these 4 items rakan transforms into an hyper mobile AP bruiser, being able to take a large beating and still get out of jail free thanks to R and W's low cooldown.

If you manage to get ahead enough to get RoA, Sunfire and Spirit Visage, a good strat with this build is to side lane a lot; since you're really tanky you can keep the pressure up against 1 or 2 enemies and if the rest collapse on you you can just R W your way out of there, wasting a lot of the enemies time and allowing your team to pressure other parts of the map/take objectives.

Thanks to Ghost and Teleport you can also quickly join teamfights and be a great engage frontline.

Still early in development but this build is a ton of fun when it works, potentially being another 10 out of 10 off-meta Rakans.