The Complete Kai'Sa Guide
There's rarely a time where Kai'Sa isn't meta, making her an amazing addition to any ADC's champion pool. She is without a doubt one of the most fun hypercarries in the game and you'll be able to climb in any ELO playing her.
The most unique part about her is the versality she offers. She is able to build both Attack Damage and Ability Power. This is actually where a LOT of people go wrong too; knowing what build to go or even which items to buy might just be one of the hardest aspects about the champion.
Don't sweat my dear summoner, because after reading this guide (which updates every patch) you will be a MASTER at Kai'Sa builds!
Summoner Spells
Regardless of what build you're going for this offers the most value in and out of laning phase. Easily the best scaling summoner option and good in lane given how short your range is.
Kai'Sa Spells and levelling
If you're going for the Crit or the On-Hit build make sure to Max Q and then E second.
There's some important things you need to know about how Kai'Sa's spells work.
- Your passive gives you some on-hit magic damage and marks people, up to 4 stacks. The 5th attack against them consumes the marks to deal % missing health magic damage which scales with your AP. If the enemy is CC'd by an ally they also gain a stack of Plasma.
- As part of your passive you're also able to evolve your basic abilities; each requires a different stat (AD, AP and Attack Speed, respectively) but it's always 100 of them. It has to come from items or leveling up, runes or other bonuses (like dragons or ally passives) don't count towards the evolution.
- Q evo doubles the amount of missiles (from 6 to 12), W applies 3 stacks of Plasma instead of 2 and refunds 75% of its cooldown if you hit a champion and E grants you 0.5 seconds of invisibility.
- The best way to use Q is to "isolate" it. Since this spell will distribute the missiles evenly among all visible enemies in range you want to have only 1 enemy in range so ALL of them target this enemy.
- W reveals champions for 4 seconds, meaning even if they go invisible you and your team will be able to see and target them.
- Since your teammates CC gives passive stacks Kai'sa excels with engage supports, and Kai'sa W does more damage the higher plasma stacks they have so try to use it as a finisher in early game 2v2's.
What build do I take?
This guide will be split into 2 parts, one for the AD builds (Crit and On-Hit) and a 2nd one for the AP build.
The AD Crit build will be the "standard" one, great whenever you're able to auto attack and/or dive the enemy backline.
AD On-Hit works against super tanky teams that you can auto attack repeatedly against without being in a dangerous position or just need a bit more hybrid damage.
AP is default if your team is full AD or barely has any magic damage. It's also really good against squishy enemy team comps if you have a free scaling lane matchup.
AD Build
If you can stack up Lethal Tempo this will be my recommended setup. In the secondary tree you can also take Biscuit Delivery over either of the other runes if you feel you need the extra mana during the early laning phase (your first 1-2 recalls). Don't take it for HP sustain.
AD Build - Crit
No matter what build you're going for ALWAYS start Doran's Blade. We need this stat stick to get our Q evolution.
This is your cookie cutter part of the build. Kraken Slayer + B. F. Sword should give you enough AD to evolve your Q. After Q we want to evolve our E, so we need Berserker's Greaves and some Attack Speed from the Terminus components.
With Terminus completed now we need to adapt to the game we find ourselves in.
AD Build - On-hit
Damage on this build isn't amazing as you might imagine, if you can throw basic attacks off cooldown is the only situation where you'll find yourself shredding the enemy champions. Very similar to the Crit build, we just skip the crit and spec into attack speed and on-hit effects straight away.
How to play the AD builds
Whether you go for Crit or On-Hit your mentality will be very similar when playing them.
Your level 1 all in is one of the strongest in the game alongside Draven & Kalista, this is due to your Q and passive damage, this is especially amplified if you go lethal tempo, if you have a strong support try to cheese in 3rd bush level 1 and look to all in them.
During the early game your main goal is to buy a bunch of AD so you can get your Q evolution. This is your main powerspike during the early game.
The key difference in playstyles would be the assassin mentality. When going for the Crit build you have a lot of AD and overall burst damage with your items so you don't just front to back but actually look to dive the backline and one shot them. Look for the primary target you want to dive and what's the best way to reach them; maybe someone in your team has a CC ability you can use to dive in (like a Vi ultimate) or maybe you are better off standing in a place far enough that you can wait out their important abilities, land your W on them and instantly ult in since they can't fight back. Since you're an ADC its still incredibly important that you don't die doing this so be smart when diving in.
The On-hit build isn't that great at this, until you build some AP and get a W evo. In this case you should be able to still dive squishies and kill them since now your passive execute damage will be a lot bigger, plus your W will have a very short cooldown and way more damage. Without W evo you're kind of stuck front to backing and can only dive in with a teammate since your damage alone most likely won't be enough.
AP Build (LS Build)
You won't be building ANY Attack Speed with this build so there's 0 scenarios where you should be taking Lethal Tempo. This will be your best setup most of the time since it will offer the most damage early game and scale pretty well since you will be able to quickly proc your passive.
Ingenious Hunter is very important since not only does the Item Haste let you stack Manamune faster but your Luden's Companion will also gain charges faster. Even more benefits if you build Zhonya's Hourglass later on of course.
AP Build - Items
Buying Cull in your first recall is pretty much core in this build since you NEED that extra AD to get your Q evolution early game. Once you have these 3 items you shouldn't need that many stacks on Manamune to get it. If you need a little bit of AD you can buy a Sapphire Crystal since Manamune converts Mana into AD.
How to play the AP build
There's 2 main things you have to keep in mind with the AP build.
- During the early game you will be noticeably weaker than with the AD builds. Getting Q evo is a nice power spike still but since you won't really have any damage passives from your items since you're still scaling. This build normally comes online around the time 3rd dragon spawns, given you didn't int and fall behind.
- By the time 3rd drake comes around you will have your W evolution and 2-3 items. This is where you start ramping up in terms of damage.
Once you have W evolution your main goal is to poke out the enemy constantly. Make sure the W's you throw will actually land since you really need the cooldown reduction to be useful. To increase the chances of hitting it you can use these tips:
- Stand in fog of war so the enemy team can't see you cast it and are forced to react once it enters their vision. (Buying pinkwards is especially useful with this build and going red sweeper)
- Use terrain to your advantage. If it travels through walls it actually goes inside them and can't be seen.
- Be aware of your surroundings; Any non-champion unit can block it preventing you from getting the cooldown refund.
- Once in fights, try to sync your W to when an ally hits a CC ability since this guarantees you hit it.
You win fights (and games!) by constantly poking the enemy before fights even break out so once they are forced to fight they will simply be too low to win the fight. The later the game goes the stronger you get; at one point you can 2-shot any squishy champion.
