After the recent buffs to him I figured I'd pick him up, and he's a ton of fun to use. However there seems to be quite a few ways to build him. Obviously it's going to depend somewhat on the game, but I've seen anywhere from a hybrid build, that supposedly some Koreans are starting to play, to full ap, to spell vamp, ect. Kind of curious if anyone has some input that might shed some light on his different builds.
I haven't seen any of the new builds, but I'm fairly certain there are a few core rules just the same:
Get a Zhonya's. This should IMO be your first item, especially against an AD laner. Against a magic damage lane, you can put it off for second, but no later than that.
AP items synergize with themselves really well. I think it's wasteful to mix and match. You should try really hard to have Deathcap/Void Staff/Zhonya's in your endgame build. You just can't get the same damage without them.
Doran's Blade opener is fine. I've even seen people build two. This gives you a lot of lane pressure. Kennen is a strong laner and you should try to take advantage of that.
There are a bunch of pretty good mid-tier items that I don't have a good read on, but I see a lot of players buy. Abyssal Scepter, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Haunting Guise/Liandry's Torment, Will of the Ancients. They're less damage efficient than the other stuff, but I can see the tradeoffs in durability. I just can't really tell you when and where to buy them.
Definitely max W first. It's reliable harass and waveclear... Definitely start dBlade too... The W has some AD scaling so it's not a waste, I think for 1v1 laning the ADC rune setup I use is stronger early game. With the AD marks and attack speed quints. I think AD marks and AP quints might be good too like Eve would do. Pure AP magic pen marks and AP quints works as well and scale better late game. It's not like you need AP runes to 100 to 0 ADC's, believe me you don't...
The trick to playing Kennen is abusing your passive for stuns in lane so you can auto them for free. Getting stunned by Kennen is annoying as heck... You need 3 stacks of your passive to trigger the stun and you have 4 different ways to proc it with your normal abilities. Two are on W: the active and auto attack proc. Then there's either land Q or get in there with E if you can get the kill and you know their jungle is somewhere else... Important tip for laning with Kennen properly: you shouldn't necessarily activate W as soon as you can. Activating W is a very easy way to reset the timer on your passive so you can zone them away harder for longer while you work on the stun. Try to use W just before your 1 stack falls off. That is unless your opponent literally leaves the lane...
It's easy to get stuns with just W if you use a charged auto, activate a delayed W and get another charged auto. No need for Q which is pretty disfunctional in his kit to be honest because W does so much. I only go Q first on Kennen in ARAM... Generally E is for safety or engage.
Seriously lol. Sometimes I max E second over Q for more durability/mobility and AoE damage.
You recolor him and his splash art twice and call them new skins. Am I doing it right?
I generally Max Q and then W for skill wise, and like predicted I'd start with Dorian's Blade + pot for starting. I actually play Kennen a lot and consider him one of my mains as well. I either play him Mid and go all AP, or go top and go pure Tank or Brusier based. Like..
When I go mid I usually get Zhonya's, and Abyssal Scepter (depending on match up) and then get Void staff and Rabbadon's. Try to get as high AP as I can so that when I go in to team fight, I can basically almost kill the entire enemy team by myself. I've gotten a few penta's already and even jumped in on the enemy team one time when they were doing Dragon and tried to 1v5. I ended up getting Drag and a Quadra but died at the end.
However, I generally build tankier when I go top lane due to the difference in who I'm facing, and the fact that I went top means we are losing out on a tank some times. I either go Brusier Kennen where I go Zhonya's/Abyssal Scepter, and then go into Rylai's/(Randuin's or Banshee's Veil).
The other way I some times build Kennen is pure tank Kennen, where I rush Sunfire/Banshee's Veil, and then Randuin's/Warmog. Tank Kennen actually still does some very decent amount of damage. I've had people hate me so much when I was going pure tank Kennen because we couldn't kill each other and the enemy laner would reply with "The most boring top lane I've ever played lol.." and since you're so tanky, you don't need to buy a Zhonyas making it much easier make sure everyone stays in your ultimate and you get the full use out of it.
Although I do have a lot of fun with Tank Kennen and I know from experience that it can work, just some lanes you might want to make sure you go damage lol.
