Hey guys, welcome back to the third part of the Ultimate Renekton guide!
If you missed the first or second part, click the links up above to check them out!
During this part of the guide, we will cover Renekton’s favoured items, and his pre-6
laning phase.
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Renekton has a pretty simple build path, he has 2 core items that I always build, so let’s
go over those first.
Black Cleaver is one of the most necessary items on Renekton, now that Conqueror no longer
gives true damage.
You’ll want to build this first in just about every game that you play of Renekton,
the stats that it provides are just too good to miss out on.
It gives 40 attack damage (speaks for itself!), and 20% CDR - which is huge, especially for
Renekton, he’s an “AD Caster”, who relies on cooldowns instead of mana; the quicker
our cooldowns are up, the quicker we can dish out the damage.
Black Cleaver also grants us 400 health, which helps us bulk up a bit as early game Renekton
can be squishy.
Along with these perfect stats, Black Cleaver has 2 unique passives.
The first one, is that dealing damage to an enemy champion reduces their armor by 4% for
6 seconds, stacking up to six times, for a maximum of 24% armor reduction.
This is insane for us, especially as we deal nearly all physical damage, it allows us to
shred through even the tankiest of targets - Ninja what now?!
The second unique passive is “Rage”, dealing physical damage grants 20 movement speed for
2 seconds, and killing - or assisting on - a champion that has any amount of Black Cleaver
armor shred, grants 60 movement speed instead.
Renekton, outside of Slice and Dice, is a largely immobile champion, and this allows
us to stick to targets with ease, and chase down enemy champions who think they can get
away!
Tiamat is Renekton’s second core item, helping his waveclear, and setting up our build paths
for the late game.
Renekton doesn’t generally have the strongest waveclear in his abilities, and with the long
cooldowns before we get our CDR, we don’t want to be wasting all our abilities on wave
clear, if we get ganked after we’ve used Slice and Dice, we have no escape.
This is where Tiamat comes in.
Along with 25 attack damage, we also get 50% base health regeneration, which although sounds
rather low, it’s invaluable to help us regen in lanes that are either set on poking us
down, or constantly engaging in quick trades.
Tiamat provides us with one unique passive, and one unique active.
The passive causes your attacks to cleave around your target, up to 60% of your attack
damage, decaying down to 20% near the edge.
This is very strong for our waveclear, as we only have to basic attack the wave to clear
it out.
The unique active deals up to 100% of your attack damage to units around you , decaying
down to 60% near the edge.
This is a very strong active on only a ten second cooldown, and it’s also used as an
animation cancel, enabling us to deal a large amount of burst damage in a very short period
of time.
After your core items, Renekton has a flexible build path, whether you want to go for more
of a bruiser build, or if your team comp needs more of a tank.
Something that you should always look for in your builds is 40% CDR considering mana
isnt a concern.
Yomous Ghostblade This is one of my favorite items on renekton
and i do tend to build it in almost all my games.
The item gives you 55 attack dmg and 10% cdr it also gives you 18 Leathity which with black
cleaver allows you to burst any squisher target.
What seperates this item from most is the passive which allows you that 40% movespeed
outside of combat which can assist you to being at every objective.
Once your in combat you can use the active to grant an additional 20% movespeed for even
more stick to the target.
Death Dance Another fanastiac cdr item that grants you
an insane 80 attack dmg and 10% cdr.
What seperates this item from the rest is the fact that it gives you 15% of all dmg
dealt as healing.
So as long as you can stick to targets you should really outsustain basically anything
with this.
It also has another passive that allows any burst dmg that would kill you to just play
as a bleed effect that you can try to sustain up and possibly survive any burst champs that
stand in your way.
The only downside is the price is a little high 3.5k gold so build in games where you
are truely snowballing but def and high value item.
Duskblade Drakthor The last CDR item I want to mention DuskBlade
of Drakthor.
This has prob the most value when it comes to putting out dmg.
It cost the same as Yomous which is 2.9k gold, but it also gives you 60 attack dmg and 21
leathalty.
Whats really cool about this item is that the passive gives 2 major things.
The first is a very heavy burst of dmg of up to 150 extra dmg and slows them by 99%
even for less than a second but that can make a major diffrence.
Also and prob my favorite part is the fact that the passive will always give you information
if your on a ward or just in vision of the enemy.
The passive will only be up when they cant see you and you can use that information to
cheese enemys which is what i do all the time.
Did I meantion its got 10% cdr as well just to add more value to this alredy fanastic
item.
If you are still having troubles getting your cdr in your builds then you can always look
at going into the sorcery tree and grabbing trancendence which will give you an extra
10% cdr.
Lets get into other items that are beneficial for renekton.
Sterak’s Gage is a very strong item choice on Renekton, and shouldn’t ever be overlooked.
We gain 450 health just for building it, which is necessary on a frontline champion, and
grants 50% base attack damage as bonus attack damage, and finally, it provides us with an
interesting and useful unique passive.
Lifeline: Grant’s Sterak’s Fury upon taking up to 1800 damage (at maximum level) within
5 seconds, every 60 seconds.
Sterak’s Fury: For 8 seconds, grants increased size, 30% tenacity, and a shield that starts
decaying after 0.75s based of 75% bonus health.
This is a super strong passive, that allows us to escape CC quicker, while granting us
a large absorb shield after taking a burst of damage.
This means we have more opportunity to take down the opposing enemy champion, gives us
a better chance of escaping, or a longer window in which our team can arrive.
It’s also extremely useful during teamfights, giving you just that bit extra survivability,
long enough to turn the fight around.
Guardian Angel is a somewhat situational item, but it is a very good last item pickup if
you’re against a very bursty team.
Not only does it provide armor against physical damage dealers, it gives us a little boost
in damage - but the main selling point is the unique passive it offers.
Guardian Angel: Upon taking lethal damage every 300s, restore 50% of base health after
4 seconds of stasis.
This provides us with what is essentially a second life.
If you’re getting focused, and burst down by the enemy team, then Guardian Angel can
be a valuable pick up.
It’s also a very good “bait” tool, as it can essentially force the enemy team to
use all their firepower on you, just to have you revived, and now it’s still a 5v5, but
they don’t have their ultimates!
After building Tiamat, you’re going to want to transition it into either, most commonly,
Titanic Hydra, or less commonly, Ravenous Hydra.
Let’s talk about Titanic Hydra first.
You gain 40 attack damage, 450 health and 100% base health regeneration, along with
the unique passive -
Cleave: Basic attacks deal 5 (+1% of your maximum health) to your primary target and
40 (+2.5% of your maximum health) as physical damage to enemies in a cone on-hit.
And unique active -
Crescent: Cleave’s damage to all targets is increased to 40 (+10% of your maximum health)
as bonus physical damage in a larger cone for your next basic attack.
This makes Titanic Hydra a very strong pick up on Renekton, increasing his tankiness exponentially,
along with providing him a stronger cleave that is based on his maximum health - a very
good route for when you’re wanting to be a frontline, or main tank, for your team.
Ravenous Hydra is similar to Titanic Hydra, but it’s generally built when you’re wanting
to go for a full split push build.
It does not provide us with the extra tankiness that Titanic provides, so we’re far squishier.
What we do gain is double the attack damage (80), 100% base health regeneration, and 12%
life steal.
We also only retain the unique passive and active from Tiamat, though this does scale
with AD, not your maximum health.
Very strong item for splitpushing as I said, but not strong for trying to be that frontline
tank for your team.
The items I’ve just covered, are generally Renekton’s core items, that are extremely
good on him, and are built the majority of the time, in the majority of games.
The next items I’m going to list are situational to the games you’re playing in, and what
type of team comps you are facing.
I won’t go into great detail, but I will break them down into sections.
Against AD Randuin’s Omen - 20% damage taken from basic
attack critical strikes, and reduces the attacker’s attack speed when hit by a basic attack, by
15% for 1 second.
Unique active also slows the movement speed of nearby enemies for 2 seconds.
Very good item when against hard hitters such as Vayne, Xayah, Sivir.
Thornmail - When hit by a basic attack, reflects magic damage equal to 25 + 10% of your bonus
armor, and inflicts Grievous Wounds on the attacker for 3s, also reduces attackers attack
speed by 15% for 1 second (does not stack with Randuin’s!).
When against a team that prefers to auto attack to deal damage (think Vayne top, Lucian mid,
Yi jungle, Xayah bot, Senna support), and build items such as Bloodthirster and Blade
of the Ruined King, Thornmail is exceptionally valuable to negate their healing and becomes
a case of “stop hitting yourself” with the damage reflect.
Against AP Spirit Visage - 10% CDR, 450 health, 100%
base health regeneration and 55 magic resist, along with increasing all healing, regeneration
and drain effects on yourself by 30% - this increases our healing done by Cull the Meek,
and also if you have a healer on your team such as Soraka or Yuumi, increasing their
healing done to you as well.
Maw of Malmortius - Along with providing attack damage and magic resist, upon taking magic
damage that would reduce our health by 30%, we gain a 350 magic damage shield for the
next 5 seconds.
When this shield triggers, we also gain 20 Attack damage, 10% spell vamp and 10% life
steal until out of combat.
This has great synergy with Spirit Visage, Cull the Meek and our healing runes, providing
us with insane sustain.
Wits End - A fun item ive been testing and having alot of success with is Wits End.
It gives 50 magic reist while giving you insane attack speed that can help with animation
cancels.
What really sets this item apart though is the fact that the passive wits end has heals
you once you are at half health based on the full dmg the item does which procs tremeduoulsy
well with your empowered w which can help it proc 3 to 4 times based off if you can
get an auto before the w.
Still testing it but so far i love it.
Now we understand what to build, and hopefully when to build it, on Renekton, I want to go
over his pre-6 laning phase, as learning how to start off the game well, is one of the
most important things to learn, and not just for Renekton.
Early Laning Phase
Renekton has two starting paths he can go, one is the standard start which is a Long
Sword and 3 pots, which you generally buy the majority of the time, and the other is
Dorians Shield with a Health pot, this is when you’re against a lane that’s going
to be harassing you down constantly such as Quinn, Teemo, Jayce or Cassio.
One of the first things you need to do when going into lane (and this applies for every
top laner!), is your thought process.
What is our thought process?
Where is the enemy jungler starting?
If he’s starting at the opposite side of the map, you know - especially if they’re
an early game jungler - they’re most likely going to gank you around 3 minutes at the
latest.
Who are we laning against?
Is it a melee, or a ranged?
Is it an aggressive champion, or passive?
The next thing you want to keep in mind is whether you need to leash your jungler or
not.
If you don’t, great!
You can go into lane and what I normally do is go up to the enemy minion wave and tank
it just for a few seconds, then drag it into the brush where you’ll lose aggro and eventually,
it will start to build up a slow push towards you, 100% of the time.
The reason we want the wave to push towards us is because all we want to do as Renekton,
is to survive until level 3.
Levels 1 and 2 you’re basically not a champion, just farm as safely as possible.
Another reason is to give your jungler ample time to gank, if you’re on the blue side,
and your jungler is starting Red buff, they’re going to path top by the latest 3 minutes,
and you’re going to be hitting level 3 around that time.
This is where you hit your first power spike, being able to use your full combo and either
forcing an enemy Flash, or at best getting First Blood - with or without your jungler.
When you’re going vs an aggressive melee laner, you want to keep in mind what your
laners early levels are like.
As I mentioned, Renekton’s 1 and 2 are very weak, so when going against a champion that
can outtrade you such as Fiora, you’re going to want to play as safely as possible.
You should also keep in mind their power spikes, as well as your own; your first one being
your level 3.
At this point, you need to make an informed decision of whether you can all-in, or take
a short trade where you will come out on top.
The questions you should always ask yourself in lane are How many minions do you have?
How many minions do they have?
Have they hit level 3 first or have you?
Are they still level 2?
Think back to before, is their jungle going to be near?
All of these are valuable things to be thinking about even before you hit that power spike,
otherwise the enemy could take the initiative.
Ranged match ups are slightly tougher, especially those that are going to want to harass you
- think Vayne, Quinn, Teemo.
First 2 levels, play safe.
Use bushes as cover to keep their harass low, if they can’t see you, they can’t attack
you.
Remember to play off of alcoves as well if you do find yourself being ganked, fog of
war has a huge potential for you to outplay a 2 v 1, especially if you can Slice & Dice
through the little alcove wall, with vision on an enemy in the bush.
As I mentioned in one of my previous How to Top Lane videos, experience is king - so if
you have to sacrifice some early CS, then do it.
Again, level 3 is your first power spike, and ranged top laners are always squishier
than melee, so you have a large opportunity to go all in - keeping in mind the questions
we asked ourselves before.
Following your level 3 for both melee and ranged, you want to play knowing your match
up, whether you have to play safe, or whether you can be aggressive.
This also depends on whether you have managed to get a kill, blown any sums, whether your
jungler is helping you, or whether you’ve died yourself.
Always make sure to keep the river warded, you don’t want to be playing aggressively
forward and suddenly an Elise pops up behind you and oops, you’ve given Riven first blood
and she’s now ahead in experience and items.
Now we’ve gone over Renekton’s favoured items and his pre-6, early laning phase, you
should be able to take this into your next ranked game with confidence.
Next video, we will be covering Renekton’s late laning phase.
Thank you so much for watching, and make sure to drop a like, and subscribe so you don’t
miss out on the latest Academy content, where we also cover a wide variety of top laners.
Duece’s boys!