Rek'Sai Build Guide by Tear Collector

Introduction

Rek'Sai has a considerable potential to survive enemy attention in top lane; her potential to waste enemy ressources goes completely off the charts. She can starve most mana users while still being quite healthy.

Pros / Cons

Pros:

• Incredible sustain
• Very annoying map pressure
• Great escape potential
• Good frontline
• Fair damage output
• Unusual pick

• Very hard to solo carry post mid game
• Must force your team to hold 4v5 once in a while
• There are better teamfight oriented picks

Runes

Since Rek'Sai's Fury of the Xer'Sai regenerates flat amount of HP based on her level, all she needs to survive tremendous amounts of damage is armor and magic resist. Having to much health points would only reduce the percentage of health she regenerates. Here are my favorite runes for both ad and ap matchups.

AD Matchup:

• Mark of Attack Speed x9
• Seal of Scaling Armor x9
• Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist x9
• Quintessence of Armor x3

• Mark of Attack Speed x9
• Seal of Armor x9
• Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist x9
• Quintessence of Magic Resist x3

Masteries

Since Top Rek'Sai is based on healing with Fury of the Xer'Sai, they won't really change no matter what matchup you are facing. Here are my favorite Top Rek'Sai's masteries and with explanations.

Ferocity: 6

The mastery Fury x5 will help Rek'Sai generating rage by attacking more often. Feast will grant her more health regen once in a while.

Cunning: 6

Since the recommended runes for this build do not include physical damage, Savagery will help farming.
Secret Stash will help Rek'Sai regenerating even more health from biscuits.

Resolve: 18

Unyielding will boost up Rek'Sai's already high defensive stats and Tough Skin will help Rek'Sai tanking champion basic attacks while trading or farming when behind. Runic Armor will help Rek'Sai's passive regenerating even more Health. Insight will reduce Rek'Sais summoner spell's cooldown, helping her both escaping and pressuring. Swiftness will help escaping ganks and taking favorable trades. Grasp of the Undying will surviving and surprise enemies when low on health.

Summoner Spells

Your summoner spells should always be Flash and either Ignite or Teleport.

Ignite grants you ennough lane pressure to stay in lane until Void Rush is ready for you to recall and rush back into lane.

Teleport is a better choice when your matchup is too hard or risky. Use it to roam only since you have Void Rush to come back to lane already.

Flash is a must.

Skill Order

Level 1

Queen's Wrath will increase your auto attack damage to farm with low AD. If you can go aggressive, it will help you push while trading. Additionally, Queen's Wrath will grant you the ability to reset an auto attack and generate more fury.

Level 2

By unlocking Burrow, you will unlock Prey Seeker as well as Unburrow. Since Top Rek'Sai builds mostly tankiness, Prey Seeker and Unburrow will take an important place in your total damage output due to their high base damage. Prey Seeker will also damage nearby units while revealing a small area where the explosion is. Burrow will grant you movement speed but reduce your vision to only what is almost directly above Rek'Sai. You will still get vision from your team while burrowed. Burrow will also grant you tremor sense which will roughly reveal where moving enemy and neutral units are. Unburrow will knock up enemy units up to one second depending on how far from the center of Rek'Sai they are.

Level 3
Furious Bite Will help you damage enemy champions while trading and securing minions that the auto attack delay would keep you from last hitting. Upon reaching 100 Fury, Furious Bite will deal true damage. Tunnel will grant you the ability to lay down tunels that will be reusable a short moment after creating or using them.

Level 4
Queen's Wrath will help you shoving and/or farming under turret as well as trading decently.

Level 5
Burrow and Unburrow will grant you better movement speed while burrowed and will double Unburrow's damage (fromm 40 to 80) which will help you last hitting under turret and trading.

Level 6
Void Rush will grant you the ability to recall and rush back into lane. It will help you reducing cs loss as well as keeping your turret healthy. Void Rush will also grant you more consistent lane and map pressure when advantaged. Your map pressure will allow friendly teamates to control objectives such as structures and neutral monsters. Void Rush will passively grant you attack speed.

Level 7-18

Max Queen's Wrath/ Prey Seeker
Max Burrow/ Unburrow
Max Furious Bite/ Tunnel

Maxing Burrow/ Unburrow second will grant you a similar damage output to maxing
Furious Bite/ Tunnel because Unburrow's base damage scales better off level than Furious Bite's when not building mostly tankiness. Maxing Burrow second will also grant movement speed while burrowed and decrease the reset on Unburrow's knockup.

*****Max Void Rush at level 11 and 16*****

Deeper Spell Knowledge

Fury of the Xer'Sai will stop draining rage upon reaching max health. Although, if you loose hp again and you have been full health for a Fury of the Xer'Sai's tick, you will not drain fury to regenerate anymore. You will have to Unburrow and Burrow to start regenerating health again.

Rek'Sai's auto attack can be reset with Queen's Wrath.

A Queen's Wrath empowered basic attack can not be canceled by crowd control effects and movements. This means that Rek'Sai can move immediatly after attacking using Queen's Wrath. This also means that you can either kite forward to be agressive or backwards to escape. Kiting with Queen's Wrath will reduce enemy damage output will keeping yours at it's maximum.

Furious Bite won't be canceled by crowd controls or movement. Although, Furious Bite will not fall on cooldown if it's damage is not applied.

Unburrow will cancel damage on enemy dashes and leaps if they are knocked up before the damage is applied. (e.g. Lee'Sin's Resonating Strike and Zac's Elastic Slingshot)

Tunnel or taking a tunnel will ignore all crowd control effects other than knock ups, knock backs, prisons and suppresses if it's animation started before the crowd control effect.

Rek'Sai's Void Rush will be canceled by any forms of damage or crowd control effects if she is casting. Therefore, Void Rush will be put on a 8 second cooldown.

Trading Knowledge

Do not hesitate to stack 100 Fury to get true damage off Furious Bite if a safe opportunity shows. If the opportunity doesn't show, use Burrow as much as possible to make sure you do not waste potential fury that could be turned into health points.

Staying burrowed will also grant you the ability to knock up and disengage opponents for favorable trades. If you combo fast ennough you might be able to chain a Queen's Wrath empowered auto attack followed by a Furious Bite and disengage without taking any damage.

Staying burrowed will also grant you the ability to damage champions and last hit from distance using Prey Seeker. Although Prey Seeker should be used as much as possible on champions as it is not needed to farm.

Prey Seeker followed with Unburrow is the safest combo Rek'Sai can provide when it comes to trading. If your opponent is standing in his minions, you can even use this combo to poke and AOE farm minions.

The full combo for an extended fight is Prey Seeker => Unburrow => Queen's Wrath => Furious Bite => Queen's Wrath x 2

Lanning Phase

When pushing, always lay down Tunnels as soon as you possible

Make sure Tunnel a tunnel sits hidden behind your turret in case you die.

Once you have Raptor Cloak, you can walk under enemy turrets (while minions are tanking), build up movement speed, use a small combo, walk out of turret range and regenerate health with the fury you got. This will help you sieging an oponnent trying to freeze.

If trades are not favorable, you should freeze and sustain with Fury of the Xer'Sai. If your opponent has mana, be aggressive as soon as he is out of it.

How To Know When To Split Push

You can splitpush if:

• you can at least 1v1 any of the enemy champions
• if your team is in position to pressure down objectives (turrets, dragon, herald, jungle)
• if you have some sort of escape route
• if you have ennough vision to know enemy locations

How To Orient Tank Rek'Sai Towards Team Fighting

Teamfighting Items:

• The Black Cleaver is a must againsts any team with unduying front lanes.
• Sterak's Gage helps you front line against teams with high damage outputs and good crowd control effects.
• Sunfire Cape helps you tanking and zoning out enemy teams that are heavy on bruisers.
• Locket of the Iron Solari can be good if both your support and jungler can not build it and the enemy team is heavy on magic damage.
• Frozen Mallet is really efficient when it comes to peeling your back lane or zoning fighting enemy carries.
• Randuin's Omen is good against comps with multiple close ranged threats. Its active disengages enemy front lanes and gives more ease for your back lane to kite. Also, its passive reduces auto attack based champions' damage to you.
• Guardian Angel is a strong last item if your damage is sufficient.

• Stay burrowed under your carries and knockup any approaching enemy.
• Damage approaching tanks to reduce their armor with The Black Cleaver.
• Force the enemy back line to focus you over your carries.

How To Orient Tank Rek'Sai Towards Split Pushing

Split Pushing Items:

• Zz'Rot Portal is your core split pushing item. It can either help you apply hard pressure on a lane or slow push while grouping elsewhere. It will also grant you important movement speed while being nearby a portal or any turrets, even the destroyed ones. It will help you escaping from enemies as well as dodging skillshots.
• The Black Cleaver helps you smashing tanky matchups while laning and split pushing.
• Sterak's Gage helps you winning bruiser/carry matchups.
• Dead Man's Plate allows you to escape at ridiculous speed. In addition, this item combined with Zz'Rot Portal and spirit's visage grants you the ability to destroy enemy structures while tanking champions.
• Spirit Visage is great against magic damage heavy teams. It also increases Fury of the Xer'Sai's fury per health ratio.
• Maw of Malmortius helps dueling if you need more damage and magic resist against semi tanky mages. Its passive will not go off until you quit combat. Although, this item is really situational and should only be built in extremely specific situations.

How To Split Push

First things first, you will always need to set up your split push. Here is why and how.

Even if you can split push, you must acknowledge that your team might not be in position to take advantage of your split. If you start too early, your enemies will rotate on you and destroy both your portal and escape route. Not only will your split have been useless, both your Tunnels and you Zz'Rot Portal will have to be rebuilt, making you uneffective for one to three more minutes.

Split pushing as top Rek'Sai can be done different ways:

• Structure Sieging is to force your opponent to stay under his turret and damage it. It requires you to move around the turret between each auto attacks while dodging incoming enemy skills and escaping his auto attacks. This is what you should do when you are healthy and have a big wave.
• Global Taunting is to keep a couple enemies bothered with you as long as possible, preferably without dying. While global taunting, you must ping for objectives so your team gets advantage of their supernumarary.

Outro

Thanks alot for reading my guide!

-Miaow