First of all I want to tell you guys that most of this content is not written by me, I am simply just showing a very good build that I use when I play Kennen in ranked games. Here is the original guide.

SO PEOPLE! BEFORE FLAMING I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT ALL CREDIT GOES TO "BISHOP" (account name on solomid.com ). I AM SIMPLY JUST HELPING YOU GUYS OUT! :) Therefore you should upvote it the original guide instead of this one. Link is above.

Kennen, The Heart of the Tempest may be one of the best champions to turn a team fight around in LoL. The ability to stun large groups of enemies with his ult can not be ignored. In this guide you will find out how to play Kennen to his highest potential and dominate teamfights, 1v1, and occasionally 1v2 situations! This guide is relatively large and contains sections with math, abstract examples, and many details. If you are uninterested in reading the entire guide please jump to Chapter 11: Playstyle Excerpts of Importance which covers the basics of Solo Fighting, Pushing/Farming Tactics, Neutral Farming, and Team Fighting!

Now this is a bit by myself. The guide on solomid run 13/0/17, getting the extra attack speed to support his passive. In my opinion it's a very useless mastery compared to lower cool downs and more summonerspells. Therefore I run 9/0/21, getting only one point in improved buff duration since, Kennen is not the champion to get the buffs very often.

Magic Pen marks and quints are used to increase damage which is Kennen's role as an AP carry! Flat armor seals are mostly for early game because Kennen starts out with 14 armor at level 1 but can be replaced with just about any survivability seal or even Energy regen if you're brave! CDR/level Glyphs are used because Kennen is an energy champion who should always have blue buff mid-late game if possible which is why these are chosen over flat CDR Glyphs.

Little twist from my side: First a suggestion from "Considereth" saying that energy regeneration (per level) seals really makes a big difference only your energy regeneration. Like another blue buff (without the cooldown reduction). I can't really comment on that since I don't even have those runes =]. Oh and also, for some reason I can't add energy regeneration seals up top. Don't know why...

Another thing, "AGRNOX" suggest going for magic penetration instead of AP. Might be true, so I'll leave the blue magic penetration runes an optional rune choice.

Explanation:

Ghost and Flash are my preference since Kennen is rather squishy and does need to be close to enemies to apply marks with his Lightning Rush and Slicing Maelstrom.
*Note: Lightning Rush + Ghost is a great way to get in and out of a clump of enemies or escape at a speed very few champions can match!

Alternatively you can use , or on Kennen. If you are a very aggressive player and prefer Ignite to go for that First Blood or need to put a stop to their heals and don't have a teammate with the ability to then go for it. Exhaust can give you a great advantage in 1v1 situations and allow you to gank efficiently until you get Rylai's. Teleport is all about personal preference, if you like to be able to port across the map and farm up that huge wave of minions or spend a lot of time placing wards in places to set up ganks go for it.

Passive: Mark of the Storm

Kennen's abilities add Marks of the Storm to opponents. Upon receiving 3 Marks of Storm, an opponent is stunned and Kennen receives 25 energy. Has a diminished effect if done twice within 7 seconds.

Marks of storm last 8 seconds on the target.

Explanation:


Kennen's passive is what lets him destroy other enemies in team fights and 1v1/1v2 situations. All of his abilities apply marks if they hit and knowing how to land that stun for 25 energy to keep wrecking them is crucial to playing this great champion.

Q: Thundering Shuriken

Kennen throws a fast moving shuriken towards a location, causing damage and adding a Mark of the Storm to any opponent that it hits.

Throws a shuriken that damages the first enemy it hits for 75/115/155/195/235 (+0.66) magic damage and adds a Mark of the Storm.

Cost 65/60/55/50/45 Energy

Range 1050

Explanation:


Kennen's Q is a skill shot that is his bread and butter ability. You will use this to harass, poke, land that last hit for a stun, as well as kite with Rylai's!

W: Electrical Surge

Kennen passively deals extra damage and adds a Mark of the Storm to his target every few attacks, and he can activate this ability to damage and add another Mark of the Storm to targets who are already marked.

Passive: Every 5 attacks, Kennen deals magic damage equal to 40/50/60/70/80% of his attack damage and adds a Mark of the Storm to his target.

Active: Surges electricity through all nearby targets afflicted by Mark of the Storm, dealing 65/95/125/155/185 (+0.55) magic damage and adding another mark.
Cost 45/45/45/45/45 Energy

Range 900

Explanation:

This ability is the reason you get some attack speed with Kennen, every 5th attack applies a Mark and deals bonus damage. Combo the passive, active, and a well placed Shuriken will stun the enemy and allow your team to destroy them with little resistance.




E: Lightning Rush

Kennen morphs into a lightning form, enabling him to pass through units. Any enemy unit he runs through takes damage and gets a Mark of the Storm.

Kennen moves very fast and may pass through units, dealing 85/125/165/205/245 (+0.55) magic damage and adding a Mark of the Storm to any enemy he passes through. Additionally, Kennen will gain 10/20/30/40/50 armor and magic resistance for 4 seconds.

Kennen is refunded 40 energy if he passes through an enemy, but can only gain this effect once. Lightning Rush deals half damage to minions.

Cost 100/100/100/100/100 Energy

Range 200

Explanation:

This ability is your initiator, chaser, and "get out of jail free" card. Being his most expensive ability it can be used several ways. You can use this ability to move quickly around the map if you know you won't be engaging an enemy before the energy is restored, you can use it to initiate on an enemy champion (remember if you pass through an enemy it only costs 60 energy!), you can use it to chase with the speed boost as well as run away using the speed boost but it really shines when you need to farm up some CS! By lightning rushing a creep wave you can then Electrical Surge to deal massive damage to every creep around.




R: Slicing Maelstrom

Kennen summons a storm that strikes at random nearby enemy champions for magical damage.

Summons a magical storm that deals 80/145/210 (+0.4) magic damage and applies a Mark of the Storm to a random enemy champion near Kennen every 0.5/0.4/0.33 seconds. This storm attacks up to 6/10/15 times and cannot hit the same target more than 3 times.

Cost 40/40/40 Energy

Range 20


Explanation:

Kennen's ultimate, the ability to stun up to 5 champions around you in under a second at max rank! When used properly in team fights Kennen has some of the highest AoE and disruption available! The best use for this ability is to wait for you're team to engage then Lightning rush into the center of the enemy champions hitting as many as possible, immediately activate Slicing Maelstrom to put a second mark on them, wait for the stun from the second Maelstrom tick and start throwing Shuriken at their squishies then Lightning Surge after the 3rd mark from Maelstrom which should leave every champion hit with Lightning rush at 2 marks allowing you to immediately stun them again with a Shuriken or passive from Surge!

Being an energy champion we must realize that items with Mana and Mana/5sec are much less cost effective for us than items without these stats. Cooldown reduction is another stat that is not used to its full potential on Kennen, again because of our resource system.

Survivability:

Health:

HP is a flat 1:1 stat meaning it does not suffer from diminishing returns and every point of HP is one more point of damage you can take before you die!

Armor:

Armor is not a flat stat meaning that every 1 armor does not reduce damage taken by 1%. The ideal amount of armor in my mind is 100 because at 100 armor you reduce damage by 50% from physical attacks which doubles you're effective health to auto attacks and physical damage abilities!

Magic Resist:

MR is not a flat stat meaning that every 1 armor does not reduce damage taken by 1%. The ideal amount of armor in my mind is 100 because at 100 armor you reduce damage by 50% from physical attacks which doubles you're effective health to magic based attacks and abilities!

Effective Health:

EHP is a product of your HP, armor, and MR. What this means is that you multiply your health by 1 + (Armor or MR/100) according to the type of damage being dealt as shown in the example.

Example:

You are being attacked by a Ryze with 1700 Mana, 0 AP, and a 100 damage Auto Attack. You have 100 Armor, 100 MR, and 1000 HP. Ryze's Overload spell hits for 300 (130base+170bonus) damage. If Ryze does nothing but cast Overload and Auto Attack he has to effectively deal 2000 damage to you before you die! How you might ask? Well to get that we multiple 1000 HP(1+(100/100)) or 1000*2=2000!

Lifesteal/Spell Vamp:

I am grouping these together because they are the same mechanic for physical and magical damage respectively, while lifesteal is pretty much useless since we are not AD and do not focus on auto attacks nor have physical damage abilities spell vamp does provide us with something useful. I personally feel spell vamp is not an ideal stat since the only items with spell vamp are . Of the three I would have to prefer Will of the Ancients but do not recommend it even though Kennen is a very AoE heavy champion. I do not recommend it since Kennen can get for regen and has the mobility to not need these gold leaching items.

Offensive:

Ability Power:

AP is the focus of this builds offensive capabilities. Kennen has relatively large AP coefficients (amount of bonus damage from AP) considering 3/4 of his abilities can his multiple targets! Kennen's AP coefficients are .66% for , .55% for , .55% for , and .4% for . In a team fight scenario these coefficients scale based on the number of targets hit, for example if you manage to catch all 5 enemy champions in rank 3 for 3 full hits each the amount of damage dealt is absurdly high! Assume 100 AP this ability does 210 base per strike plus 40 from AP 15 times! That is 250*15=3750 damage or .55*15=8.25 times your AP! In other words if you land all 15 strikes from you did 825% of your AP!

Attack Damage:

AD is a relatively useless stat for Kennen since the only gains from it are through passive which gives you a pseudo effect every fifth attack and is therefor the least useful Offensive stat for Kennen.

Attack Speed:

AS is slightly more useful since does proc off a certain number of attacks and does not have an internal cooldown like . While it should not be a primary stat for him it can be considered his secondary Offensive stat. More attacks = more procs = more stuns!

Cooldown Reduction:

CDR has one major flaw on an energy based champion and that is we can not increase out regen past a certain point. The highest potential energy and energy regen rates do not justify trying to hit the CDR hard cap of 40%! Base energy is 200 and base energy regen is 10/sec (50/5sec) with runes you can increase these to 242 Energy at level 18 and 16.42/sec(82.1/5sec) with blue buff and runes. I do not recommend these runes personally so I will not put the exact numbers or best setup in this guide since I feel my Rune setup is superior. CDR is more valuable than AD and less powerful than AS in this build. Also remember at level 18 with masteries and runes we are at around 14% CDR already.

Magic Penetration:

Magic Pen is a very valuable stat for Kennen since the majority of your damage is magic based and with glyphs and masteries you have a good amount until people start to stack it heavily.

Armor Penetration:

Armor Pen only affects our auto attacks in this build and can thus be ignored.

Other Stats:

Movement Speed:

MS is a useful stat for Kennen as it allows him to escape, chase, and travel faster. Not much can be said about MS since only a few non-boots items provide it AND are usful to our build ( )

Mana/Mana Regeneration:

These stats are useless, items with these stats must have superior Offensive and/or Defensive stats on them to be considered for Kennen... EVER!

Other stats such as Critical Strike, Critical Damage, Health Regeneration, and Dodge have been purposely forgotten since there is nothing to say for them and are not a goal or 100% useless stat for Kennen.

A few notes on the final 6 items you choose, remember 40% is the hard cap for CDR and any point after mid-game selling the for a more useful item is perfectly acceptable.

Starting Items:

or +3x . Doran's Shield is my preference 9/10 games because you get everything you need early game survivability! Boots + pots are an alternative if you prefer to just stay out of harass and do nothing but poke early game. I prefer the shield because it gives you the ability to take a few creep hits and be fine with the bonus armor from it and runes.

Early Game Alternative:

You should never get a Mejai's if you are playing super defensively or have less than a 3:1 K:D ratio. Why 3:1? Because this implies that you are getting 3 kills and various assists or at least 6 stacks, in other words you are actually getting the benefit from your gold since until 5 stacks Mejai's actually does very little for the investment. The recipe for Mejai's is 800 gold, approximately the cost of a , consider that you have to have anyways and you could be at +60AP for the same cost therefor having less than 5 stacks means you have to farm harder because you are missing at least 40 AP! However if you get over 10 stacks you are sitting around 100AP from Mejai's alone, at 20 stacks you have a whopping 180AP AND 15% CDR!

Core Items:

mercury treads Against CC heavy teams.
sorceror's shoes Magic Pen is always good!
Ability to AoE stun is good, add in a slow to all your abilities (is applied when you land a hit with a passive) plus the health bonus never hurts!
Damage, plus damage based on your damage... 'Nuff said? Getting this item first is a potential way to go but I feel like getting it after you already have a little bit of AP makes a bigger impact and allows you to get kills because you went from 80 AP to WTF!!! KENNEN JUST KILLED ME FROM 1500HP TO DEAD WITH ONE COMBO!!! (slight exaggeration but you get the idea.)
AP, Armor and an amazing active that synergizes with your ultimate . Remember to activate this during team fights or when you get out of position and have team mate close by.

Your final items should be a combination of the following items based on enemy team composition:

VS CC heavy teams:

or quicksilvers sash Banshee's is best if you are good at dodging skill shots since it does give us mana, a useless stat on Kennen. Quicksilver Sash is my preference because you can use it at will and combined with and you can typically survive any disable long enough to get to safety before resuming your casting!

VS AD heavy teams:

or Thornmail gives you a large amount of armor and makes bursting you detrimental in team fights since you will reflect a good deal of their damage back at them! Guardian Angel gives less Armor bonus but can make fights more of a 6v5 if you get focused first but the real advantage is that it deters people from doing just that since they know that you will be reviving and might not die if their whole team didn't run or die themselves! It also synergizes with your and by letting you time them to get away when you revive!

VS AP heavy teams:

or Force of Nature gives a large amount of regen on top of Magic Resist plus the bonus movespeed is always helpful. Abyssal Scepter is an offensive and defensive item giving you Magic Resist, solid AP boost, and a -Magic Resist aura to help all the casters on your team!

VS low damage teams:

or The main thing to notice about these items is that they seem to be more "hybrid" items. Which is correct, and they are placed in this section because there aren't a whole lot of other solid AP items that don't waste a lot of gold on Mana or Mana/5sec, Tooth has it but not to an extreme. Guinsoo's at max gives 93 AP, 35 AD, and 32% AS while the Tooth gives more AS, and 55 AP, 10 more than Guinsoo's with no stacks. This is a very discretionary pick since with Rabadon's that extra 38AP from Guinsoo's 8 stacks is worth about an extra 12 AP than Tooth.

Optional Late Game Items:

This is an item that I see a lot of people get with Kennen, I have two issues with it being a core item. First off is that it is built from which uses ~1/3 of its cost on a , which is a mana item! That is the reason I feel this should be more of a late game item and only purchased if you have the survivability to throw out several procs. Always purchase Sheen flat out if you have the available gold since it with your proc does 180% of your AD as magic damage!

This item was almost included in my "VS AD heavy team" section but is slightly more expensive than the other two items and we get no use of the Mana bonus. It does however have Cooldown reduction, a semi-useful stat for Kennen.

This is a common item on AP Champs because of the potential to blow people out in 1-2 shots. I only see a few uses for it on Kennen, this item is basically the of the AP world and should be used as such. Only purchase this item if they have at least 2 people with >3000HP and <200 Magic Resist. If they have 3000 HP and >200 Magic Resist well you're screwed just ignore them because any attempt to fight them will most likely result in death since you will either get baited into team mates or they will be able to kill you easily. Stick with defensive items if you face a super tanky team comp. That extra damage from another AP item won't be as valuable as the longer uptime. I will give a broad example of how this theory works.

Example:

Your stats are as follows:
100DPS (Damage Per Second)
1000HP
25% Damage Reduction

You are attacking a target that has:
100DPS
1000HP
25% Damage Reduction

You buy an item that increases your HP by 500 and your Damage Reduction by another 10%.
The "target" buys an item to increase his DPS by 50.

You:
100DPS
1500HP
35% Damage Reduction

Target:
150DPS
1000HP
25% Damage Reduction

It still takes you 1000/(100*.75)=13.33 Seconds to kill the target but it now takes him 1500/(150*.65)=15.38 Seconds to kill you!!!

The idea behind this theory is that if you are dying before the fight ends you are not doing your "maximum potential output" and basically means if you replaced that last Offensive item with a Defensive item of the correct type (don't get Thornmail vs 5 AP champs XD) then your sustained damage increases!

For the rest of the guide, go to this site