Kennen has great abilities designed to start fights. Your main job is to initiate and stun them until your team mates can catch up after your Lightning Rush.

this guide will show you the best way for a tanky initiator Kennen, which is, in my opinion, the best way to play him.

Some people might not realize the initiating capability of kennen, so just shrug off any remarks until late game, where you can rub it in their face for a healthy victory.

Pros
Mark of the Storm can easily stack stuns on single and multiple targets.
Amazing damage and low cool downs, can get a full stun from only Thundering Shuriken
kennen uses energy, so you can stay in the lane much longer.
Every time you stun you regain energy.
If you hit someone with Lightning Rush you get nearly half your energy spent back. (only once)


Cons
kennen uses energy in replace of mana, so it runs out pretty quickly in a fight if you cant manage to activate the special effects, which restore your energy.
Not as good in team fights without your ultimate, but you can stay in a fight from low cool downs, and still kill them.
you are NOT a tank, so you can still get hurt pretty bad, so dont run in without your team mates very close to you.

gives you the only sustain you need, hp sustain. Surprisingly the health regeneration helps late game as well.

your basic shoes for an AP caster.

Required 3rd item. the health is a MUST for kennen, especially early game. the slow is amazing for picking up those kills and keeping everyone in your ult. and keeping them away from your ranged carries.

/ can be switched based on your needs of armor or magic resist, but if you cant decide, get abyssal scepter first, the magic resist reduction aura is amazing for you and your team.

is very useful for giving you that extra damage so you can get an easy ace.

If you haven't won by this time, you are facing one hell of an opponent. your last item depends completely on how you are doing. or what you want most.

If you need to be more Tanky, your ultimate stays up while your resurrecting too, so that will help in destroying the nexus if it stuns anyone standing around you waiting. this is usually what i would get, once you get this item, the game should be over.

If you are doing the best on your team, this puts you over the edge, your next basic attack every few seconds will be killing their carries in seconds


If you need more sustain in a fight. the reason I rarely get will of the ancients is you should be doing well once you have rylai's, so you wont be laning very often, so you dont need that lane sustain. plus doran's shield gives enough health regeneration to make up for it anyway. for early game, this item is good for a Kennen that doesn't help in team fights, and stays in a lane.


Alternatives

the only alternative i can think of, is for boots. which, in this case, Mercury's Treads would be the only alternative

Is used very well to place your Slicing Maelstrom closer to the target, and can be used over a wall to get away.

gives you that extra damage to finish off a target, or can be used on someone with health regeneration skills/life steal (dr mundo/volibear/master yi) to finish them off much quicker

Alternatives
is a great summoner spell for solo top, but your lane sustain should be good enough to not need it.

can be used for a faster Lightning Rush and to escape or catch an enemy.

is great for slowing enemies so you can land your stun or used on the right clickers so they are very ineffective and cant do a lot of damage.

My runes are mainly for early game laning, but can still help with late game action.

Greater Quintessence of Health Is my favorite Quint for any champion. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten out of a situation with just enough hp to survive, and helps a great deal early game.

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration Just your casual penetration mark. Really helps in early game damage and even some in late game.

Greater Seal of Armor amazing for early game armor, and helps late game

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist amazing for early game magic resist, and helps late game


Alternatives

There isn't a good alternative quintessence for this build that even stands a chance against health quints. However, Greater Quintessence of Ability Power, Greater Quintessence of Magic Penetration, and Greater Quintessence of Cooldown Reduction can all be used on Kennen.

Greater Mark of Magic Resist Greater Mark of Armor are good alternatives.

Greater Seal of Health can be a useful alternative for escaping those sticky situations. but missing that armor could put you in a bad situation, as well.

Again, there isn't a good alternative glyph for this build, but you can use Greater Glyph of Ability Power on kennen.

Alternatives

The Passive....the soul reason you want to play kennen.
Mark of the Storm the debuff lasts 8 seconds..giving you plenty of time to space out your skills to stun easily. and there is 7 ways you can mark someone with the storm. 1 from Thundering Shuriken, 2 from Electrical Surge, 1 from Lightning Rush, and 3 from Slicing Maelstrom

the energy return will make your break you as a kennen, if a minion has 2 marks already, use a skill to activate the 3rd, he should be killed by this point, so you basically just cast a free spell to get a minion kill because of the energy return.

same thing goes for champions. if you see someone with 2 marks...land that third to get energy back for a free harass, or to kick their ***

Thundering Shuriken is your main farming/single target damage skill, it has a faster velocity than your auto attack, so auto attack and use this skill in sequence for a good harass/last hit on a minion. max it first.

Electrical Surge amazing skill to tip you over if you didnt quite get the last hit, or for an easy surefire stun on an opponent. max it second, you will use it after any other skill.

Lightning Rush your speed, your escape, your chase. costs a lot of energy. but if you hit something with it, you will regain 40 energy. since you can also go through minions with it, run through minions on your way to the enemy champion, so you have more energy to spare.

Slicing Maelstrom your bread and butter. combined with Electrical Surge and Lightning Rush you just stunned a whole team in a matter of seconds. not to mention took a big chunk of their life. with 2 mark of the storm left after Slicing Maelstrom is finished, you can target whoever you want with Thundering Shuriken or Electrical Surge passive and get an easy stacked stun. and since your cool downs are so low. you can do it all again the next team fight.

for farming, you should Rarely use Lightning Rush with Electrical Surge, because it wont be able to kill the minions, which will just bring them down for your minions to steal the kill.

when pushing, attack all the minions with Lightning Rush and Electrical Surge to bring them down to one hit left, then auto attack the 1st ranged minion, Thundering Shuriken the 2nd, then auto attack the 3rd for 3 easy minion kills, by this time your minions should of killed the first 3 melee minions.

at level 18, you should kill all the minions in a wave with Lightning Rush and Electrical Surge, or at leased close enough. the siege minion is the only exception.

as kennen, try to focus on farming more than anything else. farming > killing because if you farm 30 minions before someone gets first blood, then you still have more gold than them.

only harass if you know your going to get someone on your team to gank soon, the best way to harass is use Thundering Shuriken get your passive on Electrical Surge up, then auto attack, and use Electrical Surge for a stun. and in the mean time, get in a few auto attacks, and another Thundering Shuriken to start over the routine.

the only time you should push is late game when you dont need anymore minion kills. and you can always push a little bit slower by getting all 6 minion kills instead of pushing, giving you only 3 minion kills.

Early Game
Thundering Shuriken will be a free spell early on, because by the time your cool down is up, you already regained all your energy. check bushes with Thundering Shuriken and if no one is there, then move on to the next bush, wait, if someone shows up, attack with shuriken and then harass with auto attacks, then run back, wait a bit, and use shuriken again to check bushes, and repeat.

Don't leave the lane until you have to. your main focus is getting as much gold as you can before you recall. At the very least, don't recall until 2210 gold, so you can get Sorcerer's Shoes and Giant's Belt

mid game
a sign your at mid game is if you have all your items up to rylai's crystal scepter. by now, you should be focusing on who is hurting you the most, and if they are AP or AD. if they are AP, get Abyssal Mask next. if their AD, Zhonya's Hourglass and don't get any other items until you have both of those.

Zhonya's Hourglass will not interrupt your ultimate, so if you notice your life bar dropping quickly, use the item and they should target someone else. in which case, it is your job to protect them by stunning everyone you can.

Late game
When you acquire your Rabadon's Deathcap, you are at late game. there should be many team fights going on, always initiate with your ult, 99% of the time, if your team sees your ult, they will go in to help. but if you know they wont, just quickly type, "go in" in the chat box and go in and they should follow.

The initiating capability of this build surpasses that of most tanks. You start with Lightning Rush then Slicing Maelstrom and Electrical Surge, which can stun a whole team, which activates Mark of the Storm giving you most of your energy back to keep fighting.

meanwhile, those that still have 2 more Mark of the Storm from your Slicing Maelstrom you can stun them with Thundering Shuriken for chasing down those low hp opponents trying to make a quick escape, or stunning those that just got in the fight trying to take down your carry.

never use your Lightning Rush to farm, I cant stress this enough, you will be ganked, electrical surge can be used to escape or initiate the fight giving you the advantage of killing 2, or even 3 (if bottom lane) champions.

Although ap casters are usually mid, Kennen is an amazing solo top. If its 1v2, once you get used to kennen, tell your jungler to gank once you have Slicing Maelstrom, and it should always be a successful kill.

12/11/2011 - guide released (with a bunch of changes the same day.)