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Rek'Sai Build Guide by

Glasletter's guide to Rek'Sai, the true Queen of the Rift

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32 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Glasletter

Rek'Sai Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (32) More Rek'Sai Guides

Runes:

Domination

Hail of Blades

Sudden Impact

Eyeball Collection

Relentless Hunter

Precision

Triumph

Coup de Grace

Bonus:

+10% Attack Speed
+10 Adaptive (6 AD or 10 AP)
+15-90 HP (lvls 1-18)

Spells:

Flash

Smite

Items

Starting Items

Early Items

Core Build

Defensive (At least one)

Situational Builds

Example Full Build

Full Damage Build

Tank-buster

Bulky CC

Ability Order

Rek'Sai Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Zilean

Extreme

He'll drop bombs on tunnel entrances and ult your burst targets.

Galio

Ideal

A Galio ulting onto your engage makes teams want to run, allowing you free damage and your knock-up guaranteeing his ult lands properly. Amazing synergy.

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Galio

Ideal

A Galio ulting onto your engage makes teams want to run, allowing you free damage and your knock-up guaranteeing his ult lands properly. Amazing synergy.

Champion Build Guide

Introduction

Rawr. You are now a space bug demon with a thirst for blood and dirt. Congratulations.

Rek'sai, the rift's "best girl". Why haven't you played this wonderful champion yet? It's simple...! You are either afraid of the dark, don't like winning or you simply haven't heard of her yet!

You may think that this champion is bad or hard to play, that she's just a downgrade from or effectively a worse ward, but I'm here to explain to you why she is an amazing champion, easy to carry with and absolutely devastating in the right hands and with the correct build~!

Pros / Cons

Pros

+ High mobility
+ Both ranged and melee
+ Ultimate outplay potential
+ "True vision"
+ Extremely safe invades
+ Strong both early and late-game
+ Deletes squishy champions
+ Easy escapes/unique pathing options
+ Build option variety

To a seasoned Rek'sai, the "lack of vision" is actually true sight, the paths in the jungle are just recommendations and towers are just momentary inconveniences between you and your prey. Rek'sai has extreme burst potential and provides exactly what your team needs depending on how you build, whether it is burst assassin, tanky CC bot or simply a mobile ward with a smite.

Cons

- Difficult to learn/master
- Extremely squishy with damage builds
- Ultimate has a short windup
- Not great in team fights
- Can't tell which enemy is which
- Difficult to carry late
- Not much damage pre-serrated dirk
- Tunnels have long cooldown early

Similarly to many assassins, Rek'sai relies on flank 'n gank, or picking up the squishies from the backline before collapsing on the tanks, and if she can't get to them or there's too much CC she is kind of dead in the water. The lack of vision whilst ed and pushing lanes or contesting objectives makes identifying individual enemy targets difficult, as they all show the same with your Tremor Sense.

Runes

Keystones

		Hail of Blades This is the keystone of choice for Rek'sai. Hail of Blades is practically designed for Rek'sai, allowing you to unleash your full Queen's Wrath before they even hit the ground, building fury and allowing for your Furious Bite to finish while they spam their flash key hopelessly. An added bonus is the 4 second out-of-combat cooldown.
		Electrocute Electrocute is a valid alternative for Rek'sai, as she can proc it extremely easily and it makes burst simple and it is actually better burst damage at early levels. There are two reasons we take Hail of Blades instead. One is that Electrocute has a 20-25 second cooldown and can only proc on one target at a time, and the other is that Rek'sai wants to move in, out and back in on different targets at a time, and Hail of Blades is better for that spread-type of damage.
		Predator Rek'sai relies on ambush and sudden burst rather than running around as fast as possible with sirens blaring. Leave this obnoxiousness to Hecarim.
		Dark Harvest This rune is strictly worse on jungle champions since the rework made stacks only accessible by damaging champions, meaning at most one stack per gank. You already scale, so don't worry about it and take something reliable.

Runes

Tier 1


Cheap Shot You can proc this with your knock-up allowing decent damage off of your Q, but nothing more in your kit benefits from it.		Taste of Blood You're not laning against anyone, so why would you take this rune? You already have plenty of healing from your Burrow fury consumption.		Sudden Impact Sudden Impact Procs off of both your Tunnel for your engage and from the leap on your Void Rush, much better for both burst and your ebb and flow style of consistent damage.

Tier 2


Zombie Ward When first learning to play this champion the "lack" of vision is extremely disorienting, making this a very friendly option for becoming used to the unique playstyle that is Rek'sai.		Ghost Poro This rune is best on defensive junglers or against invading junglers. Rek'sai would rather trade camps or kill someone.		Eyeball Collection Any increase in damage is generally your best option, and this makes scaling somewhat easier. I personally run this every time.

Tier 3

To summarize the sub-tree, your runes of choice are and .

Triumph is vital on Rek'sai as you will be ulting into towers more often than not, and getting a kill or two and being able to walk away alive because of the heal is a wonderful feeling. is completely irrelevant to a Rek'sai and is more of a tanky rune.

Coup de Grace is the rune of choice for almost any champion with an execute ability when taking the precision tree. The other options aren't really relevant; if their full team is tanks, sure, does damage, but isn't helpful for you at all, because you'll either die quickly or heal quickly.

Runes of note:

If the enemy team has a ridiculous amount of CC, + could be a viable pick, but that would be a game I'd probably try to dodge or avoid playing a Rek'sai in altogether anyways...

Summoner Spells

Smite is mandatory for jungling. Without it, you cannot buy your jungle item, meaning you get reduced experience, less damage to camps, worse sustain, and most important to a Rek'sai, you can't smite enemies for your ult or a slow...!

Everybody loves a good flash! This is also mandatory for Rek'sai; your engages from under walls and from river have much more pressure and threat if you can add the distance of flash to your tunnel, and even if they flash in response you will still knock them up, allowing you to close the distance once again.

Skills

PASSIVE
ABILITY

Fury of the Xer'Sai (Passive): Rek'sai's passive is a fury effect, replacing her mana bar with a red bar which holds up to 100 fury. Each auto attack or unburrowed ability generates 25 fury, and while burrowed she consumes that fury to heal an amount based on the amount of fury you had before burrowing. To note, you can also gain fury by collecting honeyfruit, adding 5 fury per fruit, adding 25 from the drops and 25 from the auto to break the fruit.

Queen's Wrath/Prey Seeker (Q): Unburrowed, Rek'sai's Q empowers her next 3 auto attacks, adding a cleave effect and bonus damage scaling with AD. This is also an auto attack reset, allowing for strong burst damage and quick fury generation.
While burrowed it becomes which fires a projectile with a fairly long range in a straight line, granting vision of the first enemy hit and dealing damage with a slight AOE. This also allows you to use your ultimate on that target, as you both marked and can target them.

Burrow/Unburrow (W): Probably the most unique aspect of Rek'sai's kit, causes Rek'sai to burrow into the ground, restricting her vision to 250, or about Melee range. To counteract this, she gains tremor sense, showing small circles for monsters in motion and larger circles + an audio que for enemy champions within range of your tremor sense, regardless of actual vision of the enemy champion. Your Q and E have different effects depending on whether you are burrowed or unburrowed.
causes Rek'sai to leap from the ground, knocking up the nearest target and dealing damage. You will rarely use this ability directly, generally directly attacking the target instead, which will cause you to immediately unburrow and knock up that target specifically. There is an internal cooldown of 10 seconds on each champion for your knock up, similar to 's . Additionally, there is a small knockback effect to nearby enemies when unburrowing, which can be used to cancel channeled abilities even if you don't target the user directly.

Furious Bite/Tunnel (E): While unburrowed, Rek'sai's E is , a targeted ability that deals damage scaling off of AD. This damage is doubled and converted entirely to true damage when used at 100 fury, making it vital to use only with max fury. It also has slightly more range than an auto attack, allowing you to use it on enemies attempting to escape in order to finish them off.
Using E while burrowed activates Rek'sai's , causing her to traverse a certain distance and leave a tunnel behind. She can re-enter these tunnels for as long as they remain and can travel under walls with them as well. Enemies can collapse these tunnels by standing on either entrance, and otherwise they last up to 10 minutes or you exceed the 8 tunnel limit, at which point the oldest tunnel will collapse. Using this ability with one end partially inside terrain can extend the length of the tunnel to a set distance.

Void Rush (R): Rek'sai's ultimate is a targeted ability, causing her to burrow under the ground then leap at a target that she has damaged within the past 5 seconds and has vision of after a short delay, dealing a large amount of damage plus bonus damage based on missing health, generally used as a final hit or to dodge abilities from enemy champions. This does not prevent damage over time effects such as or .
It is possible to dodge the ability, but requires in addition to some other significant movement ability used only after Rek'sai re-emerges after the burrow, but before she connects with the target, making it only possible by certain champions such as . There is also a loud audio que given to all players when this ability is used. She scary, boi.

Audio ques for Rek'sai's abilities:
Tremor Sense -
- https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/b/b1/RekSai.R1.ogg/revision/latest?cb=20150214025537

Items

Stalker's Blade - Warrior - Fairly straightforward, finish your jungle item and boots before building anything else. Warrior gives damage which you need to be able to burst your targets. We take this over because gives you the burst attack speed you need and you're not going to be in a fight long enough typically to use it over the flat damage. Don't forget to targets out of melee range to allow you to use .

Berserker's Greaves - The only boots that increase your damage output. If you're really struggling to not die late game you can swap them for or , but you're likely already losing that game anyways.

Duskblade of Draktharr - Duskblade is typically the first item you go after finishing boots and your jungle item. Rek'sai gets a very early power spike with , and because and have the same build path it allows for some slight adjustment to playstyle before you complete the item. The reason we take Duskblade first is primarily for the hit-and-run strength of the item, allowing for easy 100-0 engages on enemy champions. Keep in mind, the proc on wards only shows the ward if you actually have sight of it, so if it procs you need to unburrow to find the ward unless you can guess where it is without doing so.

Youmuu's Ghostblade - You typically want to build Youmuu's just after when ahead or about even with the enemy team/jungler. On occasion you can finish Youmuu's first, specifically if most fights are in lane or around vision and you just don't find yourself fast enough to keep up. It is a straight decrease in damage between the two though, so Duskblade is the ideal start. If you're over 10 kills around 15 minutes into the game and no one is dangerous to you, building the 3rd lethality item, , may be a bit overkill, but it's certainly fun! Keep in mind the active is difficult to use on Rek'sai though, as you can't see many abilities.

Guardian Angel - When the threats on the enemy team are bursty, attack damage-based champions such as , , or and you either have a large bounty or are unable to duel them properly, gives strong defensive stats with an amazing passive that more often than not saves your life when followed by a quick + and negates a lot of power from burst-heavy comps. When you need the armor but they aren't quite killing you yet or are dealing more consistant damage, such as a difficult to catch ADC like , you can build instead. This is also better if you're behind. is the best MR equivalent.

Black Cleaver - I typically don't recommend locking Rek'sai into a tank-heavy comp as you'd be better off taking someone like or , but if for some reason you find yourself fighting a lot of bulky champions is a great item in that situation, often paired with and more tanky items like for MR and for armor.

Locket of the Iron Solari - This last item is highly situational and typically means the rest of your team failed in champ select. Taking means you don't have a front-line or they are behind and/or incompetent and you need to engage for your team. When you burrow into a fight and knock up, as your team follows you in(because of course they always will...) you need to pop the active for the shield and stay engaged as long as possible, allowing your carries to get out the damage they need without dying. It's a game changer, but one that hopefully you never need to use.

Bringing it all together: Gameplay

When playing Rek'sai the most important thing to learn is how to play while burrowed. As you go through the map, the only time you'll be unburrowed is when you're either attacking or need vision to check for wards when Duskblade procs, so learning tremor sense and using it to invade/counter gank is incredibly important.

Your early rotation when clearing camps is -> -> -> max fury -> -> -> -> -> .
That's Q* - AA - Q - E - Q - W - Q* - AA - Q, using Q as an auto-reset and auto-attacking while abilities are on cooldown.

My preferred style of clear is to invade the top jungle buff, taking your toplaner with you and your midlaner if they are willing. You do a lot of damage at level one and can easily trade well against most junglers/toplaners, assuming you run into them. If you run into enemies while doing this, just back up and clear your own top buff.

After this clear Raptors if you're topside or Gromp if you're botside then immediately gank toplane.
When ganking make sure to ping so your laner can keep vision of the enemy and follow up on your knock-up.
Come in behind the enemy, only using your tunnel if they react too quickly or after they . You'll want to clear one of your camps after your top gank then immediately go to scuttle, which spawns at 3:15, after which you can go about clearing the rest of your topside jungle. Ideally your first back is at around 1,350 gold so you can buy , , a and a .

On any gank, your general combo is knock-up+Q, run the full Q out then E at max fury, throwing out a near the end of the combo. The most important thing if they aren't dead at this point is to follow them burrowed, but wait for the internal knock-up cooldown to reset before attacking them again. It's a more guaranteed kill this way, and if they and your own+ wouldn't secure it then you've basically put your own laner massively ahead anyways, forcing your enemy to back and burn their summoner spells to survive.

Post 6 you can easily tower dive. In this clip I run for a regular gank, but because my laners didn't have vision of them I was unable to dodge the hook, and having that immediately followed by an prompted my swift retreat. Instead of leaving completely, though, I stay burrowed and fire a into the trade that follows, landing it on the Yasuo as he is taunted by Galio. They get a bit of damage onto him, then from the jungle I launch , executing Yasuo under tower and escaping through the jungle once again.

In this clip you can see how I use the terrain to extend my distance, to try and get close enough for a knock-up, hit two empowered autos with Q on the Cass, killing her, then I use my on the Lux in order to her, dodging her ultimate with my own. The "thumbs up" is vital in this situation as well.

When it comes to teamfighting with Rek'sai, you basically want to play it in a similar way as a gank, but instead you more rely on other team members to engage and follow up with your own CC, poking with until that fight breaks out. You can still force the engage with a + for a knock-up on a vital target or a followed immediately by , but in either case you are so squishy you'll almost always want to look to retreat immediately after putting out your burst damage. Never too far, though;
opportunity can always come knocking, and Rek'sai loves a free meal.

Pathing options for s:

Full map

Spoiler: Click to view

North:

Spoiler: Click to view

East:

Spoiler: Click to view

West:

Spoiler: Click to view

South:

Spoiler: Click to view

A small note; Rek'sai support?!?

Crazy, I know, but I've played Rek'sai as a support a decent amount and believe she has several reasons to work well in the role, which I will list. Ideally this will be a pick for counter-engage such as against , or junglers like and . You can also run this when the support is inherently squishy and easy to kill with little damage of their own, such as or . Don't take this against control mages like or .

Eternal vision - As long as you're burrowed you can see anyone coming to gank your lane, even if they have a control ward in the river. You can also use this against supports that try to poke you from the bushes in lane. This also applies to invisible laners and junglers, such as , and .

Endless poke - No mana means unlimited uses of your , which starts to do decent damage as you build, along with giving vision of the target and harassing the lane. You can even last hit from a safe distance if your ADC has backed and you've got to hold the wave.

Skill-shot bait - Enemy laners will attempt to collapse your tunnels to reduce your mobility, but in order to do so they have to stand still, making them easy targets for and other skill shots.

Amazing sustain - Using both and the healing from your fury consumption, you easily stay extremely healthy in lane and keep the pressure on your enemies to stay or lose turret plating.

Proper CC and Engage - Your tunnels can be used for engages as well as disengages and a good support will try and get between you and their carry, but that just gives you a closer target for your knock-up. If the carry decides to reengage, you've got a separate knock-up cooldown for them too!

If you decide to try this out, build almost the same as the regular build with the exception of as your keystone and instead of the jungle item. It hurts to lose smite as it makes it much easier to use ult, but an can do the job.