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Kayle General Guide by

Kayle AP Top lane Bruiser Patch 4.11

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Kayle Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion More Kayle Guides

Spells:

Flash

Teleport

Items

Starting Items

First Items

Core Items

Building Tanky

Options

Relevant Consumables

Ability Order

Kayle Passive Ability

Introduction

This is a guide on how to build kayle as an Magic Damage / On-Hit Bruiser in response to the significant Kayle changes in the 4.11 patch. It focuses on building on-hit damage, attack speed, cooldown reduction, and defensive stats. It's intended for top lane on summoner's rift, but it may be viable elsewhere.

Patch 4.11 Nerfs

Quoted:

Kayle gets less attack speed per level and her E scales less with ability power. Intervention's cooldown has been increased.

"Kayle has a ton of strengths - good damage, safe laning, high utility, great wave clear, fancy wings - and not too many weaknesses. Initially we wanted to only hit Kayle's high offensive power so we could continue to emphasize her utility, but saw it just wasn't enough to reduce her fervor in a meaningful way. All of these changes, combined, should help in clipping some of Kayle's high power across the board."

General
ATTACK SPEED PER LEVEL +2.5(OLD) ⇒ +2.2(NEW)
E - Righteous Fury
BONUS ABILITY POWER RATIO +0.4 ability power(OLD) ⇒ +0.2 ability power(NEW)
R - Intervention
COOLDOWN 90/75/60 seconds(OLD) ⇒ 110/95/80 seconds(NEW)

Build Summary

First, focus on building offensive stats. Nashor's Tooth and Berserker Greaves give Kayle some much needed attack speed and cooldown reduction. With these two items complete, start building an Iceborn Gauntlet. By juggling abilities with sheen procs, Kayle can perma slow an opponent while shredding their resistances for the rest of her team. Additionally the bonus cooldown reduction, mana, and armor help immensely.

With the core items completed, the remaining defensive items should be built depending on what immediate dangers you will expect to face next. Team fighting mid? start on a magic resist item to tank against the opposing mid laner's magical damage (assuming an AP mid-laner). Pushing them to their inner turrets? Build armor to survive turret damage. If your ahead enough to be in this scenario, their opposing magic damage shouldn't be enough to burst you.

TL;DR:
Build for AS, CDR, and On-Hit dmage and effects, then build tanky depending on opponent's damage type.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Is ranged (most of the time)
Still has high wave-clear
Still an early/mid game bully
Max cooldown reduction
1.5 Attacks per second
Can perma-slow and shred resistances of opponents
Highly durable tankiness
High utility (Heal, Move speed increase, invincibility ultimate)

Cons:

Not as tanky as true tanks (Dr.Mundo, stc)
Not as high damage as other carry top-laners (Riven, Tryndamere)
Little burst damage, mostly sustained damage compared to other AP Champions
Passively pushes lane due to E splash damage
Item reliant for damage and tankiness
Juggling spells for sheen procs can be difficult
Lacks hard cc

Closing Statement

I hope you found this build interesting and might consider trying it with the new patch. From my limited time playing with it, I found kayle to make a very decent bruiser, but she might still be outshined by others who offer more offensive cc or higher damage (Jax, Nidalee, Renekton, Shyvana, etc).