Talk:Kennen/@comment-87.120.65.203-20120310200151/@comment-72.235.150.154-20120325184158

Kennen is a monster in the laning phase, lol. He has weaknesses in team fights like displacement effects, exhaust, spreading out, enemy top or bot somehow scoring 8 kills in the first 12 minutes etc., but as a Kennen main and a dude who rereads Ignaxio's guide (http://solomid.net/guides.php?g=1691) most every day, I feel this "lol rape him in lane ez" sentiment is backwards and Kennen takes on this attitude more often than his lane enemy will.

He's squishy, not super squishy, and starts the game with 9% spellvamp plus Q skillshot with solid range. Depending on champ, you can pull 15 cs and maybe half a level ahead of him for the entirety of laning phase, but you're not going to dominate him.

He maxes Q first and you don't kill him, period. He stands at a distance chunking minions every 4-5 seconds for free on top of autoattacks. If he dies to you 1v1 while maxing Q first he made mistakes and that's no fault of the champion. If he maxes W first, starting from level 7 he'll make the lives of most champs in the game miserable with his infinite W passive/active poke. You're either eating the damage or waiting for the mark to expire only for him to have W passive up and most of his energy when you come back into the trading zone. If he isn't trading well with you, np, he just hangs back and Q/W farms his way up to full health.

Kennen has weaknesses, but his laning phase is not one of them. He crushes a lot of mids and tops, and he'll simply stalemate the lane against any champ that he can't bully out of it.