Kennen Build Guide by PilfingR

Who am I [Intro]

Hello everyone.. My name is PilfingR. I'm playing on the Eastern/Nordic servers ranked around Gold I/II [1750-1850 elo] at the moment. I'm not a player who focus to much on ELO grinding, instead I like to experiment with alot of different champions and I currently have a quite large champion pool and can cover any lane [arround 1000 ranked games in s3 with 70 different champions].

Lolking profile

This is my first take on a guide.. so don't be to negative.. English isnt my mother language :)

Enough of the boring stuff, let's talk about what makes Kennen a kinky top lane choice.

Why Play Kennen? [Pros & Cons]

First of all i play Kennen because i think hes a amazingly fun champion to play!

You have a very strong laning phase bacause of your harash and sustain from auto attacks(2x Doran's Blade's)/(attack damage quints), Thundering Shuriken and the passive/active of Electrical Surge.

The passive Mark of the Storm adds a stun to your kit, which is great for both engaging or disengaging especially if combined with your build in speed steroid Lightning Rush. This makes it very easy for Kennen to close early kills with assist from your jungler.

When you hit level 6 Slicing Maelstrom your kill and damage potential spikes, it makes you very hard to gank and makes you translate very well into midgame with the AOE/CC it brings to the table. Slicing Maelstrom together with Zhonya's Hourglass changes your playstyle from being mainly poke based to being one of your teams potential initiators and all in AOE/CC damage dealers.

To summon it up.

Pros

Ranged auto attack makes farming easy
Has good crowd control with "Eye Of The Storm" and "Slicing Maelstrom"
Build in speed steroid with "Lightning Rush"
A strong ability kit with alot of options.
Good in almost any team composition.
Can initiate fights.

Cons

Knockbacks can screw your team fight presence
You can easily over extend in team fights
Gets focused hard if your team lacks additional crowd control.
Very reliant on flash and "Slicing Maelstrom" to make a impact mid/late game.

Attack Damage and Life Steal Quints... Wait... Why.. What? [Runes]

9 xFlat Armor Seals
Theese are a must against any AD toplaner. You want that early armor to win trades with your opponents. Normally you should try to stay out of melee range.. but if it should happen anyways you don't want to lose all of your health points.

9 x Scaling MR Glyphs
As the games gets into midgame, you want theese to increase you protection from the enemies AP carries.

9 x Magic Penetration Marks
You want to shread trough you enemies magic resist. Together with Sorcerer's Shoes, Haunting Guise and Abyssal Mask theese does the job.

1 x Attack Damage Quints
Together with your masteries and Doran's Blade theese makes your early auto attack harash very hard to deal with.

2 x Life Steal Quints
Theese together with the life steal from your Doran's Blade will make your lane sustain really high.

Standard offensive AP'ish masteries with a twist of attack damage. [masteri

To summon up the masteries you are going for a pretty standard 21/9/0 AP mastery tree.. the most noticable is the 2 points in Brute Force and 0 points in Mental Force . The extra 3 attack damage from Brute Force makes your early game even stronger while the extra 6 ability power you would gain from Mental Force will not make the big difference early game and none at all mid/late game.

Rush That Zhonyas [Items]

Standard Items

2 x Doran's Blade
Basicly the double Doran's Blade gives you all the stats you need to dominate your lane early game. Extra attack damage for auto attack harash, extra HP for survivability and life steal for sustain.

Sorcerer's Shoes or Mercury's Treads
I go for the Sorcerer's Shoes 9/10 times to get the extra magic pen but if you are up against a team with heavy crowd control go for the Mercury's Treads

Haunting Guise
This is a great item on Kennen extra HP for survivability and extra AP and magic pen for increased damage.

Zhonya's Hourglass
This item is so powerful on Kennen the extra AP and Armor makes your survivability and damage increase while the active gives you the capability to go straight into the back line of your opponents team, spam all your abilities, go invunarable while Slicing Maelstrom continues to channel... meanwhile your team should be following up on your initiate.

Liandry's Torment

Improves the stats of the Haunting Guise.

Enchantment: Distortion

Late game Kennen gets more and more dependent on Flash for the initiation. This enchantment lowers the cooldown by 25%.

Rabadon's Deathcap

This item just boost your AP by so much. It is really a "must buy" on most AP carries.

Abyssal Mask

Get this item before the Rabadon's Deathcap if your facing a heavy AP team. The extra magic resistence will give you some very needed survivability. This is also a good item if your running a double AP composition on your own team because of the reduced magic resist auta.

Void Staff

Even more extra AP and magic pen.

Optionel items:

Guardian Angel
Decent item late game for the extra survivability.. i very seldomly go this route thou.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter
Rylais is pretty nice the extra HP and the slow from the passive synergize pretty well with Kennen.. If your team is weak on crowd control this route can be pretty good.

Your a Ninja So Throw Thoose Shuriken's All Night Long [Skill Sequence]

Pretty standard... I normally max q first as this is the ability with the highest damage/best AP scaling.

So how do you put you spell combo's together!? [Ability Combo's]

Laning:

As Kennen you wanna harash, harash and harash some more.. Your basic attacks hurt so spam them at your opponent everytime it is possible without losing creeps. You want to mix in your abilities with your auto attack harash.. this comes very naturally with Kennen as the passive from Electrical Surge charges every 5th auto attack with extra damage and marks your target with Eye Of The Storm. With a mark on your opponent allways follow up with the active from Electrical Surge. This will leave 2 marks on your opponent making a hit with Thundering Shuriken leave him stunned for 1 sec and giving you time to harash even more with auto attacks. Experienced players will be careful as soon as he is marked making it hard to get the stun down but this will also make him lose creeps.. which is one of your main objectives.

If your first mark is obtained hitting with Thundering Shuriken, get the passive from Electrical Surge up asap and aa -> "w" him to leave him stunned. Exploit with auto attacks.

If your get your opponent to arround 20-30% health and he decides to stick arround, you can do the following combo to secure the kill.

AA with passive from Electrical Surge powered up, follow up with "w" (he will now back down] --> power up Lightning Rush and flash ontop of him leaving him stunned --> hit him with a Thundering Shuriken and ignite --> get as many aa's in as possible. Only do this when you have vision of the enemy jungler so you are sure he is not baiting you.

Team Fights

Playing top lane as Kennen should bring you into midgame feeling strong and some what ahead of your top lane opponent. It's very important that you use this lead to your teams advantage and remember, you dont always do this by making manly plays and sacrificing yourself to get your Slicing Maelstrom of deep into the enemies team.

Scenario 1, your team is snowballing

All your lanes are winning. Your objective in this scenario is to keep the snowball rolling. Play agressive and make your team push objectives to keep your gold lead increasing. If your opponents decide to contest a drake or a turret you are nuking down, then punish them, if you already have Zhonya's Hourglass dont hesitate to turret dive with following combo: "r" -> flash -> "w" -> "q". Keep as many opponents inside the Slicing Maelstrom. When your health drops to below 40% use the active from your Zhonya's Hourglass --> "e" to either get out or go even deeper to close the last kills.
If your up against a team with heavy crowd control, you should rely on your tank taking the initial cool downs, so you dont get cc'ed to death before you can use the active from Zhonya's Hourglass

Scenario 2, even Steven..

Coming Soon

Scenario 3, behind..

Comin Soon

General tips and tricks [Misc]

Warding

The biggest weakness of the Doran's Blade start is your lack of ward coverage. The enemy jungler will know that your are open for ganks and this might make him focus your lane. Therefore it is extremely important that you don't push your lane, this should be pretty easy as your farming can rely on single target damage. Still abuse your opponent as much as possible thou. When you go back push your lane hard to the enemy turret, so he will lose creeps and your creep wave doesnt get destroyed by your turret.

From your first buy back ALLWAYS buy wards.. allways, allways.. I've seen so many lanes lost because solo laners neglect to buy wards.. If starting on blue side, tell your midlaner to ward the opening into your jungle closest to the lane. This way you can put 1 ward at the drake and the enemy jungler cant move into your jungle without being spotted. Junglers like Vi, Jarvan IV , Sejuani and any other junglers who can jump walls, can jump from the enemy jungle to your river brush, so be extra careful warding when playing theese.

*Ilustrations will follow

Ranked play

When playing ranked try to keep a positive attitude straight from team selection. When playing Kennen you can really build some strong AOE/CC compositions arround him, so tell your teammates "Hey let's go for a hard AOE/CC wombo combo".. etc.
For example i had a game the other day with malphite] mid, [[sejuani jungle, Zyra and Miss Fortune bot lane. We totally destroyed the enemy team when we reached midgame, even thou we lost laning phase by a bit... We knew we had a strong team fight combo and nobody started flaming etc. just because we lost a drake or w/e. Kennen is best combined with additional hard crowd control abilities... this is where he really shines...

Who can you Rick Roll and who will roll you!? [Match Ups]

If there is a viewer interest i will add this section later

Screenshot's

6 game win streak