Why the Rengar Rework is Hilariously Overpowered on the PBE

In my opinion, the Rengar rework is actually pretty fine. However people seem to overbloat the power of tank rengar. IMO when rengar comes out, his tank/bruiser build will be strong, but it will be overshadowed because his assassin build is hilariously broken and with little counterplay.

The main thing that makes it broken is his new ultimate. While most people think of it as a massive nerf, the main thing to consider is that the ultimate gives you a GUARANTEED CRITICAL HIT. People really undervalue the power of a guaranteed crit, as something like that has never been put onto a champion, aside from and . However the difference is that Fiora is not an assassin, and Shaco's entire burst is put onto his crits and his E. The people who say that "assassin rengar is weak," or "please buff assassin rengar," are simply not building him right, or building him like old rengar.

---

Let's analyze Rengar's current build, which is something like this , , , , /, , /
The reason that this build works is that Rengar is very much auto attack based. His Q is an auto attack modifier, and it also gives him attackspeed. This is why we build crit, for the Q damage; and , for the stronger clear.

New Rengar no longer relies on auto attacks. His Q is not an auto attack, nor does it give attack speed. The only auto attack based ability in his kit is the leap on his passive and his ult. This means that_ building crit and attack speed is worthless on Rengar_, as well as , since he doesn't rely on autos as much as before. Instead he would rather amplify his Q and crit damage with armor pen lethality and AD.

The new Rengar build should look something like this: , , (Edge of Night if versus big AP threats), , / if you didn't buy it already, Edge of Night, /Other damage items or defensive items that you may need.

Even though I said that crit is crap, we still take IE since it amplifies our crit, as well as giving us a sizable amount of AD.

---

Using this build against a theoretical target with no armor, taking into consideration the bonus AD that rengar now gains from bonetooth, and ignoring any runes or masteries, a level 18 Rengar now crits for about 1677 damage on his crit alone. If the lethality stat removes the rest of the target's armor, that's enough to take out most ADCs instantly. And keep in mind that is without bonuses like infernal drakes or runes and masteries, which could even take your AD up to 1000, which would deal about 2.5k damage in 1 crit. That is without even using a single ability, I'm sure that rengar could pull off about 3k to 4k damage on a target with no armor. Now obviously most champions with that much HP would probably have armor, but it goes to show how little Rengar actually has to do to kill someone now. Plus it drastically increases his escape now, as he can now get enough ferocity to either stay in the fight with emp q, stun someone with emp e, or just run away with emp w's cc cleanse. This is incredibly unhealthy, as somehow there is even less chance for counterplay now.

Luckily, I believe that this is easily fixed with a number change. Remove the guaranteed crit and instead make his next auto on the marked ult target do 150% bonus damage rather than the 250% damage that the current rengar brings to the table. Afterwards tank rengar may become a problem, but we'll have to see because of his huge reliance on bonus AD over base AD.

Mark my wards, if this is not resolved, rengar will get a solid 60% winrate for the first few days of the patch, until he is hot-fixed nerfed.

---

Edit 1: It appears that I undervalued the power of , and a lot of you have called me out for it. The main argument for this item is that it gives strong AD, lifesteal, and the active adds more burst, and you're right. You can probably take this item over or if you don't need sustain, although I am not sure if Duskblade would deal more damage. The new Duskblade passive seems pretty strong, especially on Rengar, and lethality is very strong.