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!

Would also like to thank the Solomid staff for choosing this guide as one of the 4 best submitted as of 4-10-11!

I go an unusual 13/0/17 guide with Kennen. This build gives you good CDR to spam abilities early game for harassment and late game during team fights with blue buff as well as attack speed to get more (W) stacks and 3% move speed which can make or break chases with (E).

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.

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.

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.



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.





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



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!




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


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.





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


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.





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



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.




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 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!


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!


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.


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!


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.




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!


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.


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!


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




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 ()


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.


or 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.


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!


Against CC heavy teams.
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:

or 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!

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!

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!

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.


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 Sheen 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.


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!

My personal preference with Kennen is to take middle lane. The advantages are that you don't have anyone to compete for CS and you will be against 1 champion plus you have the mobility advantage to get to top or bottom very quickly! It is also the shortest lane before towers go down (meaning you can get from their tower to yours quicker than top or bottom lane.) The disadvantage of mid is that you can get ganked from two sides but with proper play you shouldn't be pushing too far past middle position unless everyone is accounted for or their missing doesn't have a strong gank ability.


You will get this lane if your team has a jungler/roamer and has some of the same advantages of Mid without having to worry about enemies coming from 2 sides. The disadvantage of taking the solo side lane is that you can't help your other side lane as easily since I do not advocate Teleport on such a potentially squishy champion. The other issue is that you will be fighting a lot further from your tower most of the time!


1v2 laning can be very good for Kennen or very bad. Since 3 of your abilities are AoE you can still harass and scare them in lane. It is to your advantage to let the enemy duo push you back near your tower. Try not to let them get close enough to attack it though since that tower going down can spell death for you! Fighting close to your turret allows you to quickly harass and fall back to a safe range since turret damage is equivalent to an auto attacking level 18 champ and you have a stun the potential for getting tower dove is slightly lower. The disadvantage here is that if their duo has stuns, disables, or forces you to push by not attacking minions often you are very out of position for their jungler or potential gankers.


Kennen is a very strong duo champion but does prefer the extra experience from a solo lane. If you get forced to duo make sure to harass hard since you may be paired with a tank that is still squishy early game til he get's his items and may not have much range(Singed). Duo laning as Kennen requires the most attention in my opinion. You have to ask a lot more questions due to the presence of bush in the lane, an ally to support, as well as what kind of champions you are fighting. Personally I ask a series of questions every time a creep wave breaks or a champions goes MIA. *A creep wave breaking is when either your team or theirs kills all of the creeps in the wave before another comes to take the line, this is typically seen when the other duo has a lot of AoE or just randomly auto attacks minions. "Will we be fighting near bush?" Yes - Throw a shuriken in once the waves meet if either has disappeared. "Did I hit anything?" Yes - Surge them for more damage and to see if they are sitting tight (sign of a potential gank) or ran back after the hit. "Are they sitting tight?" Yes - Check for MIAs. "Is anyone missing or is their jungler at a point he can gank successfully?" Yes - Last hit any low minion and work your way back to the tower just in case. "Are we near our tower and are either of them low enough to burn down?" Yes - Notify your laning partner that you will be going for a kill, if on a VoIP system it's easy otherwise ping and say 'Kill him', 'Going in', or anything to notify your laning partner that 'Hey we should be able to get a kill and farm some CS a lot easier! There are a lot of other things to keep in mind duoing but that is a typical thought process for me personally. As a carry in a duo lane you still need to farm minions but are forced to share some with your laning partner so the most ideal way to compensate for that is with a lot harder harass to go for early and many kills. If you are laning with someone that is very bad, is feeding, is pushing to their tower like it's the law, or has no way of assisting you prepare to suffer. You NEED your items to be viable mid-late game and without them you are just a stun-bot (which isn't bad if you have another farmed/fed carry.)




I typically start off with a Doran's Shield on Kennen for the extra survivability due to how often I use Lightning Rush to go set up a gank or harass. Remember that you can still cast other spells with Lightning rush and it will only hit one time per cast. If you have an enemy weak or over extending you can easily get a kill with proper skill usage. The optimal way to engage with Kennen in a 1v1 situation is to auto attack minions to get your passive from Surge then Lightning Rush through the enemy and as far behind as possible, immediately after the mark is applied you will activate Surge to get them to 2 Marks and auto attack for the stun as soon as Lightning rush is over. Once you have them stunned make sure you land a Shuriken and as many auto attacks as possible to go for a second stun before the reach a tower for safety. If you haven't landed a kill by now you have two options when they reach a tower. If you have the energy to Lightning Rush, they don't have a hard disable (stun/snare), and they are very low (sub-200 HP) then diving with Kennen is a breeze! By now Lightning Rush should be off CD and you can get through a towers range taking only 1-2 hits so you will Rush them, Surge, Shuriken and most likely land the kill and be back to farming without worry for a few seconds!


Kennen is a champion that excels at last hitting and harassment with his Shurikens. Since his resource is energy you lose nothing by using them to last hit minions and it is much less painful early game to miss a champion with this skillshot. Once you are level 3 and have Lightning Rush and Surge you can push a lane very quickly (not recommended if there are people MIA, jungling, or when laning against a strong harasser.) You simply use Lightning Rush to hit every creep in a wave then Surge them for another large burst of damage to every minion hit by Rush. Early game this won't kill all minions hit like it will with a decent amount of AP but you can easily finish off the wave with Shuriken's and auto attacks!

The goal early game is to get as many CS as possible while harassing to set up a possible first blood or forcing them to go back to base and heal while you rack up more CS. Always be careful when laning against strong early game champs like Caitlyn, MF, Urgot, ect. They have a lot more output and it is best to focus on only last hitting and wait for a gank! There isn't much reason to go back to base before level 6 unless you were careless and took a lot of damage or died. The first trip back you should always get your +1 Boots and an AP item () plus some Health Potions and possibly Wards if they have a very mobile/gank heavy team. I don't see enough people in mid get a ward or two then die to a gank. The cost for 2 Sight wards is 150g which is the equivalent to one Cannon wave worth of CS.

If you didn't get much harassment or a kill done before level 6 now can be your time to shine, you will use the same strategy before to go for a kill but after the Surge you will pop your ultimate instead of an auto attack/shuriken. If placed correctly you can easily get 3 stuns (9 marks) on a champions that has pushed to your side of the river or your tower. If you died or had to go back before 6 you should have at least boots which will make it very easy for you to get off the first stun before the enemy champion knows what hit him!

• Kennen should NEVER EVER EVER EVER!!!!! face check a bush. Your Shuriken's will still hit targets you can't see whether they are stealth or in bushes, always throw one into a bush before you dive into it! There are 3 ways to check, if you hit someone you will hear a "thud" sound and the shuriken will stop before max range and your Surge ability will light up saying "HEY LITTLE GUY YOU GOT A MARK ON SOMEONE!" Face checking bushes is the quickest way to die as a Kennen player!

Example of bush checking from mid lane.

• Surge will only hit a target that has a mark on them. Use this to your advantage when playing against stealth champions and when fighting near bushes. It has a decent range and will still hit champions you do not have view of. Did that Twitch just stealth after your Shuriken hit him? Pop surge to see whether he is going to try and go behind you or is running away! Did you just hit someone in a bush with a shuriken? Surge them to see if they are staying there to gank you or if your poke scared them off!

Example of checking.

• Lightning Rush will only hit 1 time no matter how many times you pass through a Champion or minion and you can only cast abilities while Rushing, you will not auto attack!
• Your ultimate will only hit a target 3 times, after that you just get a shiny animation. This can be used to your advantage though since some people assume that it will continue hitting them after the 3! It is also a great way to counter a gank, if they come from behind you it is optimal to pop your ultimate, Rush through them and hit them with Surge to guarantee a stun. At rank 1 you are capable of stunning 2 champions, 3 at rank 2, and all 5 at rank 3! Never forget this and also remember if more champions then you can stun get in your ult you will need to apply more marks to stun them with either a proc'd auto attack, surge, rush, or a shuriken!

People all have a definition of mid game, some give it a specific level requirement, some say after the first tower down, others say a specific time into the game (15-20min), personally I feel mid game is any point where you have stabilized your lane (either by downing a tower or forcing them to play defensively) and acquired your first core item as well as at least rank 1 of your ult. If all of these requirement are fulfilled I feel that you have progressed into mid game. Note that my definition means that everyone in the game reaches this point at different times, which is correct because "mid game" play to me as a carry means it is time to push your lane like mad or go help other lanes that are open to ganks!

So you got that first item, preferably Rylai's for survivability, AP, and slow. Time to check for gank opportunities. If you were mid or solo you have the advantage of level and farm over most other lanes so you are only looking for people over extending, out of position, or anyone roaming alone. If there are no people you feel confident enough to kill then just stick in your lane and start to push a little harder. Wipe out some creep waves and put some pressure on that tower. If you do decide to push keep an eye on that minimap, any time you see people disappear you should fall back to your tower or possible go do some neutral creeps. If you are in the middle lane it is very easy to farm both sets of wraiths rather quickly with a + combo plus a couple auto attacks.

Keep repeating this practice until you reach the stage where your team starts to do hard pushes with four or more champions in a single lane which usually means you are getting into the late game and team fights will be starting soon!

There isn't much to add in this guide about team fighting and late game play as Kennen. Always remember that K:D Ratio's do not win games. Yes I know, more kills means more gold means stronger champions, but I think everyone has seen a game that progresses to 40+ minutes and the team that was down 20 kills somehow makes an epic comeback by playing properly! Proper pushing strategy wins the game and being a strong leader of your team helps. Since you are probably the most capable of dealing mass damage to their entire team try to lead your team into situations that put that to use!

At this stage in the game you will see a lot of dual pushing, 5 man pushing, team fights, and Baron attempts. Your role in each of these situations is dealing mass AoE damage and focusing their squishy champions down. It is important to have at least a general idea of which champions fit this profile, low HP, low MR champions should be your targets for and auto attacks while focusing to hit every other champion around with your other 3 abilities.


So your team has decided to initiate a large fight with the other team. Letting your tankier team members go in first to absorb a lot of damage is key to winning these fights as well as team positioning. You always want to stay near the middle of the group when traveling around together, remember you are squishy and the other team will take advantage of it if you let yourself get out of position. Team Fighting is not much different for Kennen than solo fighting, start by Lightning Rushing as many of their team as possible and activate Slicing Maelstrom at a time where you will also hit as many enemies as possible. Remember that at max rank it strikes once every .33 seconds meaning that after 1 second you will deal no more damage with it and should back out of their team so as not to die. Once you get into a position where the ring is around all 5 enemies you can activate to become immune during the duration of the ultimate and come out close to the end of the stun. Once the hourglass wears off or you get 3 strikes from the ultimate you want to get back behind your team, while running back you should cast your to throw and extra mark up on every champion you hit with both &. Once at a safe distance start throwing shurikens and auto attacks to keep marks rolling while your cooldowns refresh. Remember you want to focus on stunning whoever your team is focusing when your ultimate is down.

The optimal way to engage with Kennen in a 1v1 situation is to auto attack minions to get your passive from Surge then Lightning Rush through the enemy and as far behind as possible, immediately after the mark is applied you will activate Surge to get them to 2 Marks and auto attack for the stun as soon as Lightning rush is over. Once you have them stunned make sure you land a Shuriken and as many auto attacks as possible to go for a second stun before the reach a tower for safety. If the enemy is close to a tower or they have allies potentially nearby using during a 1v1 is acceptable, otherwise if they are out of position you should not need the extra stun for a kill.


Kennen can be an amazing pusher with a decent amount of AP use Lightning Rush to hit every creep in a wave then Surge them for another large burst of damage to every minion hit by Rush. Early game this won't kill all minions hit like it will with a decent amount of AP but you can easily finish off the wave with Shuriken's and auto attacks!


If you are in the middle lane it is very easy to farm both sets of wraiths rather quickly with a + combo plus a couple auto attacks. This strategy applies to the dual golem and wolf camps. Dual Golem requires a little more damage to down quickly so throwing a shuriken or two is a good idea! To kill blue golem alone you will probable take a little more damage but with proper kiting and skill usage you can typically kite him around with stuns. Doing blue buff alone is typically not a good idea unless you know where all the enemy champions are and you don't have a jungler or other champion who needs it more. Red buff is unimportant for Kennen since he already has lots of stuns and slow from .


So your team has decided to initiate a large fight with the other team. Letting your tankier team members go in first to absorb a lot of damage is key to winning these fights as well as team positioning. You always want to stay near the middle of the group when traveling around together, remember you are squishy and the other team will take advantage of it if you let yourself get out of position. Team Fighting is not much different for Kennen than solo fighting, start by Lightning Rushing as many of their team as possible and activate Slicing Maelstrom at a time where you will also hit as many enemies as possible. Remember that at max rank it strikes once every .33 seconds meaning that after 1 second you will deal no more damage with it and should back out of their team so as not to die. Once you get into a position where the ring is around all 5 enemies you can activate to become immune during the duration of the ultimate and come out close to the end of the stun. Once the hourglass wears off or you get 3 strikes from the ultimate you want to get back behind your team and start throwing shurikens and auto attacks to keep marks rolling while your cooldowns refresh. Remember you want to focus on stunning whoever your team is focusing when your ultimate is down.

I realize this is a massive guide compared to others and there may be more information to come such as actual damage calculations at level 18 with different item builds, picture examples, videos, as well as game result screenshots! If you have any questions please comment or send friend requests to Tranikos ingame! I have used this guide many times in Normal games and only occasionally in ranked because there are other champions I play better with and theory does not equal skill =). I am currently in what is considered ELO Hell because I am a relatively new player with experience in MMO games ranging from Starcraft, Warcraft III, WoW, EQ2, and others! I played DoTA regularly on Warcraft III but never got behind all the theory crafting of MOBA games until playing LoL.

Thank you for reading this Kennen, The Heart of the Tempest comprehensive guide and good luck to all you lightning wielding hamsters!

http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kennen/ can be used to test out this guide from a purely theoretical standpoint by inputing different item combinations and looking at the result!