Call me Houdini - The Great Escape 1v4
Ranked silver 1 renekton vs olaf - climbing back to gold.
For those who don't know the matchup - olaf is a strong laning counter-pick to renekton. He wins burst trades via his true damage e, he has great chase and kill potential via his q's, and he wins extended trades via his passive (attack speed gained at lower hp). He also wins level 6 all-in's via his ult which negate's renekton's stun - one of his strongest parts of his kit - which gives him free quick trades vs most opponents.
We both run grasp. I know conqueror is meta, but trust me, grasp is 100% better in this matchup unless you are running ignite and are confident in a risky all-in level 3 or so. Also, pta - which offers more flexible damage amp to renekton (conqueror is only good for extended trades) - is similarly not as strong in this matchup as grasp. Having extra sustain and scaling via grasp let's us better survive olaf early and potentially outscale him depending on each player's builds.
key runes: grasp, bone plating, transcendence, gathering storm
Why? I already explained why not to take the other 2 most popular keystones, so let's look at the rest of the runes. Boneplating - lessens olaf's strong early trades via blocking some damage from his first 3 attacks. Makes kiting it out better. Also, we won't be making much use of demolish early/mid if olaf plays correctly; we'll be farming by OUR tower. And if we play well enough to pressure his tower, we don't need this extra tower damage compared to having safety in trades.
Second wind or chrysalis are good options if our goal is to be able to splitpush vs olaf. The 60 extra hp from chrysalis early helps us survive trades better AND gives us some more ad in the future. One of renekton's biggest challenges is that he scales best off BONUS ad, but also needs to be tanky and there aren't many items that give both durability AND bonus ad. So getting free bonus ad from somewhere always helps. Second win helps us trade more evenly in short trades - minimize losses. If you just plan to teamfight and build mostly tank, conditioning is okay, but we want the ability to 1v1 too.
Overgrowth is probably the smartest option in the bottom because extra hp counters true damage. But, revitalize is great too because it amps our healing - especially when we get lower health which is almost sure to happen laning vs an olaf. It amps healing from grasp, from 2nd wind if we run that, from our q, and from any lifesteal items we get.
Transcendence - this gives us more options for our build and converts excess cdr into bonus ad. Which we've already mentioned is great for renekton. Cdr is also great for renekton because he is a caster-based damage dealer; relies on abilities more than auto's to win fights.
Gathering storm - great because the longer the game goes... the more BONUS ad we get. Much better than the minor increased kill potential scorch gives us in lane.
If you don't want to trust me on this or... my unusual build, just check my verification; a pretty high elo renekton main is in the same boat with me: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfAzHq5tIEi8pTUOZ9gdCw
Although normally the order you build this stuff is different and you go triforce and titanic in addition to the sterak's. This build is more about the 1v1 than teamfights - because adc's and poke damage will punish you for not building any resistances. Not to say that you can't teamfight, but you need to do it intelligently. You are honestly very similar to a late game Korean jax/steven's jax with this build. You want to be the secondary or flank engage for your team; not the primary engage for teamfights.
Anyways, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed learning about renekton runes and/or alternative itemization that works. And if no to both of those, then I hope you at least enjoyed the vid. Stop by my YouTube and see the rest; anything I upload here is also on my YouTube, although there's more if you visit that site than what's on the boards. Have a great day everyone.[sg-ezreal]