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Renekton for Dummies Like Me: Gold and below

woodvsmurph··4 votes·398 views

Not that anyone I have run into in game and have issues with will probably read this, but it is worth a shot; maybe it will help out some other renekton players with know-it-all teammates. Anyways, I have run into more and more people this season who tell me I'm an idiot for doing anything besides the "standard" (cleaver, titanic, tank) build on renekton and just want to explain why other builds are viable and BETTER in some situations and the reasoning for them. To do so, we must understand renekton's PURPOSE as a champion. To paraphrase a caster who summed it up nicely comparing renekton to shen: shen wants to dive the enemy backline and disrupt their damage by forcing enemies to focus him and absorb a ton of damage; renekton wants to dive the enemy backline and disrupt their damage by killing them.

Now an interesting side note is that renekton scales worse than pretty much every other bruiser in terms of raw base stats AND he doesn't even have the best base damage and tankiness - his power comes primarily from the insanely good synergy of all his base abilities and the fact he is a "resourceless" champ (no mana/energy required). His abilities scale off BONUS ad - not base or total ad - which is odd for a champ who is designed to build minimal ad items if he wants to survive any amount of return damage. Basically this puts him in the scenario of choosing between damage to keep his abilities relevant and hope mostly to 1-shot people and choosing tankiness at the cost of his abilities doing less than other champs whose abilities scale off total ad would do with the same items by mid-late game. Thus, you tend to either end games early, or over-itemize towards either damage or tankiness to TRY to maximize what you can do with your kit.

So there are a few types of builds to look at and that are best depending on the situation. Flat armor pen/lethality builds: Let's say the enemy team is 4-5 squishy damage champs. None of them are going to build much armor. In this scenario, flat armor pen like item 3142 followed up by cleaver let's you achieve nearly true damage early and mid game. Follow this up with a mix of survivability and damage as needed. If your team is losing/behind, build survivability and try to catch 1 enemy carry to let your team blow them up before they can deal damage. If ahead, you can build more damage focused (but still some survivability - think item 3026 item 3156 type stuff). Instead of setting up your teammates to delete an enemy carry, you basically e/flash stun a carry and delete them yourself. Due to your resistances, your ult, and being a bruiser you can survive the return damage long enough to let your team with the fight - maybe even to survive yourself. Example toplaners where ghostblade is actually ok first instead of cleaver: riven (if you are clearly more experienced than her), yasuo, tryndamere - stuff like that where their one armor item will be ninja tabi.

Tiamat rush - as far as I can tell and from my own experience, tiamat rush is generally done for waveclear (duh) in lanes where your opponent is harder to catch or kill (think gnar, swain, other ranged champs). In this scenario, you believe you can survive their poke or burst damage without building any resistances or hp initially and want to just shove them under tower and roam. Shoving without getting poked completely out or dying let's you punish such an opponent the way mid/late game pantheon punishes a toplaner he can't kill - by killing his teammates and taking objectives. Invade the enemy jungle with your jungler, steal jungle camps, roam mid and combo with mid for a kill and some tower pressure, get scuttle crab. The downside of tiamat rush - as SRO has pointed out on stream before - is that you can no longer freeze waves in winning matchups to deny the enemy cs and maybe xp as well. Sure for a very short time it might stay pushing your side, but you can't control the wave forever unless you also don't get any cs; it will push back due to tiamat aoe damage.

Cleaver into bork is probably the build I have seen hated on the most. It is also one of my favorite builds in the right scenarios. This has been played in the pro scene a few times this season - sometimes to good results, sometimes not - the only player I can recall (there are others, just can't remember right now) is seraph in na lcs. Renekton already has decent waveclear with his q - and bork gives enough bonus ad to make up for lacking tiamat to do the standard tiamat into q animation-canceling waveclear and just waveclear with an empowered q alone and an auto apiece on the melee's. But why build it instead of titanic? Bork is for when you are facing other bruisers and duelists with good kill potential on you - trynd, yas, darius, fiora, etc. Bork gives you LIFESTEAL which makes their poke and run trades meaningless whereas with titanic, you only have sustain via your q. You don't want to always use q because you want to build up your fury and save it for duels and teamfights - not farming. Thus bork or another lifesteal item helps solve this. Bork gives you a slow to kite fiora or trynd during their ult or to run people down when they try to escape and kite you - it gives you that extra soft cc to make your slice-n-dice plus stun combo be enough to catch and stick to them long enough to kill them. Basically - it let's you win 1v1's much later into the game than the standard cleaver + titanic + tank build would. What about in teamfights? Aren't you too squishy and lacking burst? If you slice-n-dice to their backline and stun into full combo an enemy mid or adc, chances are you get exhausted and chain cc'd for up to around 4 sec to stop you from 1-shotting the carry with your full combo or coming close enough that they have to leave the fight without dealing any damage. Chances are, if they can cc you that long, you die during that cc duration or shortly enough after it (if you went titanic) that the damage you deal is about the same regardless and what you tank in terms of moderate to long cd spells of the enemy (the stuff vital to deleting enemy carries and winning the fight) is about the same. So titanic doesn't make you survive for enough time compared to bork that it makes a difference being less or more tanky. If they aren't going to 5 man focus you, either build is enough to let you survive the dps, burst, and cc they do focus on you and get the kill or force that carry to leave the fight and you can focus other people. Now bork will leave you low hp, but you get to lifesteal that back up via aa's and q. Titanic will leave you slightly healthier, but also means your q won't be enough healing that they can't turn on you with a good spell rotation, a few aa's and you die. So the survivability when focused isn't enough stronger with titanic to make a real difference as far as I've experienced. But what about the damages? Don't you have way more burst with titanic vs bork? Bork only gives 5 more ad than titanic. But that ad scales up ability damage while the extra damage from titanic passive and active doesn't scale up the damage on your abilities. Bork also gives % hp damage AND let's you stack your fervor faster - giving you more ad that scales up ability damage faster - albeit slightly. The %hp damage applied 3 times nearly instantaneously via empowered w coupled with the 3 instant stacks of black cleaver on the target by empowered w is nearly enough to match the burst of titanic. Enough that any good folllowup burst by a midlaner or jungler like vi, yi, xin, rek'sai, etc. can remove that target from the fight before they do damage - even if you are say... exhausted or cc'd for 4 sec straight and focused by the entire enemy team. Plus - if you are getting focused that hard - you've already locked said enemy in place for the followup and are tanking every cc, exhaust, and burst that could be otherwise used to stop the followup damage from killing the enemy you engaged on. So damage on SQUISHY carries is comparable enough not to make a significant difference. Mind you - I'm talking about early game fights at 2 items - late game is a different story and I can answer that on a separate post if you would like. What about bruisers and tanks? Here, it is the same as 1v1's - bork is simply better. The damage is at least equal, you have more sustain so you can stay in the fight longer, and bork gives you an active that let's you catch enemies if they survive your initial burst and try to kite you while your slice-n-dice is down.

Possibly more to follow - but family calls. Let me know if you'd like some specific item combo's or other builds discussed. And thanks for the feedback so far everyone - it's nice to see a positive, helpful responses for once from the boards.[zombie-nunu-hearts]

9 Comments

HalcyonDweller2 votes

Really good read, at least as far as I got into it.

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

But you've got to separate paragraphs out, it's too hard to read it as a wall of text.

woodvsmurph1 votes

Thanks. I will fix it up a bit as best I can.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

Wouldn't Titanic be better than Bork for burst because of the active, and Bork better in longer fights (and sustaining) because of the attack speed?

woodvsmurph1 votes

Titanic is better for bursting squishies if you can 1-shot and they're dead. Anything other than that and bork is better. And the burst from titanic vs what you get from empowered w with bork onto a squishy is a minor difference. If the target is tankier, bork gives more burst and sustained damage. So it actually isn't trading off much in terms of survivability or burst to take bork 2nd over titanic if you are ahead. If you are behind or even at best and the enemy team has some fed people, bork and titanic are both bad calls for 2nd item; build a pure resistance item (hp+resist) to counter their most fed or most bursty fed member and build damage later. Remember bork will also let you stack your fervor faster - esp. with empowered w compared to what you get with titanic so despite only having 5 ad more on bork, it feels like more due to faster fervor stacking. Realistically these days with how strong adc's are - esp. with support items helping the, you probably don't 1-shot them in teamfights due to exhaust and chain cc, but either option can get them close enough that good followup by a damage jungler or mid can pop them before they get off damage; that holds true with bork or titanic. If you get 5 man focused though, you are probably dying either way without getting off more damage; if you don't get 5 manned to open the fight and you pull that off, bork let's you catch the adc or mid after they flash or heal to run away and kite while titanic doesn't offer any of that. So yeah, if you are just going for a squishy and don't consider being able to damage a tank or bruiser as well, titanic might be slightly better. But in total context, I prefer bork in the situations I described above - where you have someone who can duel you for split-push control. It's close enough to equal in teamfights for damage to squishies and better vs tanks and bruisers plus better in splitpush battles if the enemy has kill pressure on you (i.e. not galio or malphite type champs).

Asayake 5150glow2 votes

{quoted}

Titanic is better for bursting squishies if you can 1-shot and they're dead. Anything other than that and bork is better. And the burst from titanic vs what you get from empowered w with bork onto a squishy is a minor difference. If the target is tankier, bork gives more burst and sustained damage. So it actually isn't trading off much in terms of survivability or burst to take bork 2nd over titanic if you are ahead. If you are behind or even at best and the enemy team has some fed people, bork and titanic are both bad calls for 2nd item; build a pure resistance item (hp+resist) to counter their most fed or most bursty fed member and build damage later. Remember bork will also let you stack your fervor faster - esp. with empowered w compared to what you get with titanic so despite only having 5 ad more on bork, it feels like more due to faster fervor stacking. Realistically these days with how strong adc's are - esp. with support items helping the, you probably don't 1-shot them in teamfights due to exhaust and chain cc, but either option can get them close enough that good followup by a damage jungler or mid can pop them before they get off damage; that holds true with bork or titanic. If you get 5 man focused though, you are probably dying either way without getting off more damage; if you don't get 5 manned to open the fight and you pull that off, bork let's you catch the adc or mid after they flash or heal to run away and kite while titanic doesn't offer any of that. So yeah, if you are just going for a squishy and don't consider being able to damage a tank or bruiser as well, titanic might be slightly better. But in total context, I prefer bork in the situations I described above - where you have someone who can duel you for split-push control. It's close enough to equal in teamfights for damage to squishies and better vs tanks and bruisers plus better in splitpush battles if the enemy has kill pressure on you (i.e. not galio or malphite type champs).

Woaaaah formatting pls. Paragraphs would really help with legibility.

I'll have to disagree about Bork stacking Fervor faster, though. Titanic gives an auto attack reset, meaning auto+Titanic+W (even not empowered) is 4 autos, instantly stacking Fervor. Remember, you don't need Bork for W to stack Fervor... it's still 2/3 autoattacks even without it. Not to mention it applies Titanic's onhit twice, as well. However, Bork's attack speed means faster Fury charging.

Titanic doesn't have to be for oneshotting either. If you E in, auto+Titanic+W+Q, E out, that's just a normal trade, and against a bruiser or squishy it's stronger than Bork (it's just really hard to match an extra auto attack plus 300 damage or so from Titanic's active). A target would need 1625 health before Bork's onhit matches Titanic's onhit, and assuming ~250 AD, ~2625 health before Bork's damage equals Titanic's in terms of burst. Most bruisers aren't gonna have that type of tankiness by their second item.

As for squishies, well, Titanic is almost always gonna outclass Bork for burst. The extra (2) Fervor stacks help too.

In terms of DPS, however, I completely agree Bork is better.

woodvsmurph1 votes

Tiamat and ravenous hydra give an aa reset. Titanic doesn't - at least not if you use your w to lock the adc from flashing or healing and kiting away before you can deal damage. Let's assume 1k hp on the adc just to have an easy number to work with. 8% of 1k is 80. So that's nearly 8*3= 240 damage just from the passive on bork in the timespan of hitting someone with one empowered w. He gains 4-6 extra dmg plus extra healing on his q, 15-22.5 extra damage on w, and if he actually hit the carry with slice-n-dice (not likely unless cd's back up) 4.5-6.75 extra damage for slice and that much again for dice. Meanwhile you get around 240 damage with titanic active. You get about 25 bonus damage on autos... maybe a bit more. So the burst itself is about the same; less than 100 difference from passives on items. One gives you around 25-30 bonus damage on-hit, the other gives you 8% of target's current hp on-hit and some healing for the damage you deal. It also buffs abilities damage and healing slightly. And it gives you ability to reacquire your target if they are able to disengage and try kiting you. So raw burst, the titanic is better sure, but by how much? Is around maybe 100 extra damage (before resistances, exhaust, etc.) worth it? I think this is rarely the case. If you want to get even more technical, let's say you do the combo you suggest and the adc doesn't just kite away since you didn't stun them to lock them in place. Then titanic gives you an aa reset which gives around 240 damage from the aa minus resistances. That's 340 extra damage being generous. But then factor in bork active and we are basically down to 240. I guess running simulated numbers like this make it sound like a pretty big difference - 240ish damage before resistances are factored in. Not bad; however you also are unlikely to get this off as an aa reset in a teamfight when you are initiating for your team. You won't have time for such resets or you won't get off your stun before being chain cc'd and focused by the enemy team. So I will say that you are technically correct and that I don't feel it plays out as strong in game as it sounds on paper and leave it at that.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

Tiamat and ravenous hydra give an aa reset. Titanic doesn't - at least not if you use your w to lock the adc from flashing or healing and kiting away before you can deal damage. Let's assume 1k hp on the adc just to have an easy number to work with. 8% of 1k is 80. So that's nearly 8*3= 240 damage just from the passive on bork in the timespan of hitting someone with one empowered w. He gains 4-6 extra dmg plus extra healing on his q, 15-22.5 extra damage on w, and if he actually hit the carry with slice-n-dice (not likely unless cd's back up) 4.5-6.75 extra damage for slice and that much again for dice. Meanwhile you get around 240 damage with titanic active. You get about 25 bonus damage on autos... maybe a bit more. So the burst itself is about the same; less than 100 difference from passives on items. One gives you around 25-30 bonus damage on-hit, the other gives you 8% of target's current hp on-hit and some healing for the damage you deal. It also buffs abilities damage and healing slightly. And it gives you ability to reacquire your target if they are able to disengage and try kiting you. So raw burst, the titanic is better sure, but by how much? Is around maybe 100 extra damage (before resistances, exhaust, etc.) worth it? I think this is rarely the case. If you want to get even more technical, let's say you do the combo you suggest and the adc doesn't just kite away since you didn't stun them to lock them in place. Then titanic gives you an aa reset which gives around 240 damage from the aa minus resistances. That's 340 extra damage being generous. But then factor in bork active and we are basically down to 240. I guess running simulated numbers like this make it sound like a pretty big difference - 240ish damage before resistances are factored in. Not bad; however you also are unlikely to get this off as an aa reset in a teamfight when you are initiating for your team. You won't have time for such resets or you won't get off your stun before being chain cc'd and focused by the enemy team. So I will say that you are technically correct and that I don't feel it plays out as strong in game as it sounds on paper and leave it at that.

Um WHAT

Tiamat and Rav don't give an auto attack reset. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised, it's a common misconception. Tiamat and Rav simply do 100% of your AD as an AoE, diminishing to 60% at the edges. They don't apply onhit or stack Fervor. You can see for yourself as Tiamat is usable without a target to auto attack, and it won't stack Fervor.

Titanic, on the otherhand, is not. It's an auto attack reset/empower, like Jax's W. You see how it doesn't activate unless you actually auto someone, and it also stacks Fervor.

So you see, even with the 5 less AD, it more than makes up for it by stacking Fervor before your W and Q hit.

Also, who said we were in a teamfight? I'm more focused on the laning. Using Titanic as a reset is very possible in trading, and the extra 240 damage is pretty good. Especially as Bork's cooldown is 4 times higher than Titanic's, and in the duration of a lane, 2 Titanic procs isn't unreasonable with normal trading.

Calculated without health runes/masteries at lvl 10, Titanic will do 25 damage onhit and 250 damage on it's active. This means Titanic will give about 504 damage assuming 15 flat AD in runes. The extra Fervor stacks will gives, say, 10 damage to the rest of the combo. Bork does 240 damage with it's onhit and 100 damage with it's active, 340 in total. So Titanic does 200 more damage. Say 50% damage reduction (100 armor, so like Tabi's), and that's an additional 100 damage. That doesn't sound too impressive, but 100 bonus damage after resists is pretty good. Definitely worth tailoring too, especially as Titanic's damage will scale as you get more health, and the auto attack reset scales as you get more AD. Once you hit 3000 health, that active does 350 damage, which is pretty impressive honestly.

woodvsmurph1 votes

Tiamat and ravenous can break your w lock - this is resetting your aa. Titanic does not do this. And if you press either one, it does deal the aoe damage.

As for laning phase, titanic is not nearly as good as bork vs duelists, bruisers, and tanks. Tanks take more damage from bork because it is made to punish people with high hp. Bruisers can trade nicely with you, so you will lose chunks of your hp - just as they do. Because you are renekton, you want to go in, chunk them and end the trade until cd's are up again; repeat until you can all-in them. So if you take titanic, even IF you do more damage by maybe 150 more damage, you don't get to gain any hp back while waiting for cd's - with bork you do. So you enter the next trade at near full hp while the other guy has basically the same hp as when you ended the trade. Thus, you come out more ahead with bork than with titanic vs bruisers. Now if you talk duelists like fiora, they are going to build lifesteal - this exacerbates your issue of losing some decent hp vs them in trades. If you win the trade by some amount and back off to wait on cd's, you can't heal up more than one q worth of the damage you took unless you want to take the next fight with no fury built up. Meanwhile your opponent is healing for every aa on minions. And if you don't back off when your spells are on cd, you are much weaker because you are a caster-based bruiser - not aa based like trynd or xin. So you lose the damage battle during this extended trade and can only MAYBE make it up when you have your cd's again. During this whole time, in addition to losing the aa trade, you are also losing out because your opponent is HEALING off each aa on you while you are not. So in the end, you end up further behind in the trades and lower hp with minimal way to heal yourself up after you win the duel to the death - if you even win it. We can see this in pro play - just look at all the games where champs like gragas exploit their %hp damage, their durability, their more reliable or stronger sustain, and/or their greater tankiness and win out vs renekton both early and after cleaver+titanic. Sure if they overstep, renekton MIGHT all-in with ult and kill them, but if they have any patience, they can just whittle him out - and this is only more pronounced the more items you get. Thus renekton NEEDS to get a lifesteal item to really achieve his split-pushing power over most other champs who have any real damage.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

{quoted}

Tiamat and ravenous can break your w lock - this is resetting your aa. Titanic does not do this. And if you press either one, it does deal the aoe damage

That is NOT resetting your aa. That is animation canceling your W. Ren's W is an auto attack reset because you don't need to wait for your auto attack to happen again - it resets the timer and you auto instantly. Same with things like Jax W. Most auto attack enhancers are like this, especially those that only affect a single auto (regardless of whether it hits twice, like Ren W and Shyv Q). In comparison, Shen's Q amps his autos, as does Irelia W, but they don't reset their auto animation. Most noticable on Shen, because it's the type of ability where if it weren't for his spirit sword, it would probably be an auto attack reset.

As for laning phase, titanic is not nearly as good as bork vs duelists, bruisers, and tanks. Tanks take more damage from bork because it is made to punish people with high hp. Bruisers can trade nicely with you, so you will lose chunks of your hp - just as they do. Because you are renekton, you want to go in, chunk them and end the trade until cd's are up again; repeat until you can all-in them. So if you take titanic, even IF you do more damage by maybe 150 more damage, you don't get to gain any hp back while waiting for cd's - with bork you do. So you enter the next trade at near full hp while the other guy has basically the same hp as when you ended the trade. Thus, you come out more ahead with bork than with titanic vs bruisers. Now if you talk duelists like fiora, they are going to build lifesteal - this exacerbates your issue of losing some decent hp vs them in trades. If you win the trade by some amount and back off to wait on cd's, you can't heal up more than one q worth of the damage you took unless you want to take the next fight with no fury built up. Meanwhile your opponent is healing for every aa on minions. And if you don't back off when your spells are on cd, you are much weaker because you are a caster-based bruiser - not aa based like trynd or xin. So you lose the damage battle during this extended trade and can only MAYBE make it up when you have your cd's again. During this whole time, in addition to losing the aa trade, you are also losing out because your opponent is HEALING off each aa on you while you are not. So in the end, you end up further behind in the trades and lower hp with minimal way to heal yourself up after you win the duel to the death - if you even win it. We can see this in pro play - just look at all the games where champs like gragas exploit their %hp damage, their durability, their more reliable or stronger sustain, and/or their greater tankiness and win out vs renekton both early and after cleaver+titanic. Sure if they overstep, renekton MIGHT all-in with ult and kill them, but if they have any patience, they can just whittle him out - and this is only more pronounced the more items you get. Thus renekton NEEDS to get a lifesteal item to really achieve his split-pushing power over most other champs who have any real damage.

PLEASE SOME FORMATTING!!!!

I'll agree that sustain is pretty important, but I think Ren's trading power is at a level where he can zone via health advantage if he gets in a good bursty trade with Titanic.

Also, Titanic may be stronger in prolonged duels, even though it's got no attack speed and weaker onhit and no lifesteal. Why? Because of the 450 health which can definitely save your ass. It's simply not fair to only compare offensive capabilities on the items and ignore Titanic's health and regen. The health is better in all ins (no time to use lifesteal on minions, and there's no way you're lifestealing 450 health from a champion), the active giving more burst along with more waveclear (unless you feel like burning abilities on the minion wave, and as Renekton you should know you might be wasting fury, and even if you weren't Renekton, as an ability based bruiser being down on CD's is never a good thing). So that stops you from being pushed in if your opponent is someone who does that.

Renekton's burst is very strong, and while he is very good at trading, dashing in at full fury often results in death or recall for one of the participants, often Ren's opponent. Especially against duelists - Ren can easily kill Fiora or Riven with a double Fury full combo, meaning the sustain and DPS from Bork is wasted while the burst and durability (so Riven doesn't burst you instead) from Titanic is more effective.

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