Rengar/Strategy

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Tips

Playing As Rengar

• Use Rengar's ultimate to find and assassinate high priority targets in team fights and skirmishes.
• A lot of Rengar's comes from empowered abilities he uses at the right moment - choose wisely!
• Make sure to take paths through brush when chasing opponents to take advantage of Rengar's passive.

Playing Against Rengar

• ​ Rengar gains an empowered ability when his resource bar is full. Try to confront him when it's low.
• ​ Rengar's passive enables him to leap out of brush and gives him a free ferocity stack when he haven't any ferocity stacks , so avoid fighting him when near bushes.
• ​ Rengar's ultimate grants him temporary stealth, so try to avoid traveling alone when injured.
•   Battle Roar heals 50% of the damage he's taken in the last 1.5 seconds, if you trade with him when his W on cooldown you can win the trades or slay him easily.

Tricks

Ability Usage

• Unseen Predator allows you to gank unexpectedly. Use Thrill of the Hunt in order to not be seen across the map as you move towards your gank or save it for chasing if you think the target can escape with Flash and/or stealth or dash ability.
  • Be careful with this as opponents will know if they are revealed.
• Unseen Predator allows Rengar to lunge to his enemies while camouflaged using his ultimate. Use this to your advantage and use Thrill of the Hunt combined with Savagery for an exceptionally well executed combo in rapid succession, then slow the enemy using your Bola Strike.
• Rengar can hop over walls using Unseen Predator. Place a ward next to a jungle camp and get inside a brush over the wall, then simply attack the monsters. However, make sure they're inside your circle.
  • This is a great tactic for stealing epic monsters when counter-jungling or killing the enemy jungler.
• Maxing Savagery first gives you some wave clear power and burst.
• Rengar is a great jungler as his Battle Roar heals him for some of the damage he taken. This allows him for excellent survivability both in lanes and jungles.
  • When jungling alternate between Battle Roar and Savagery.
• Maxing Battle Roar first gives you a good burst of AoE damage. Consider it over maxing Bola Strike, when jungling or playing defensively.
• Use Bola Strike in order to stop enemies from running away.
• Thrill of the Hunt is a decent tool for escaping ganks and other nasty situations.
• Rengar can use his ultimate in order to see invisible champions, such as Shaco, Twitch, Evelynn, or another Rengar.
• When you cast Thrill of the Hunt Rengar does not immediately turn camouflaged but after about a 2-second delay. So keep this in mind while you are in battle.
• Thrill of the Hunt allows Rengar to scout as it reveals enemy champions in a huge radius. This can allow his team to catch enemy champions hiding in bushes, or to prevent an ambush by the enemy hiding in bushes. This can also prevent enemy champions juking you or your allies using the fog of war or bushes.
• When ganking a warded lane, use Thrill of the Hunt outside of the ward's range.
• Using Thrill of the Hunt with 4 Ferocity charges can lead to an overwhelming burst of damage, as he can leave stealth with an empowered skill, use his 3 non-empowered skills in quick succession on his target.
• Rengar can cast Bola Strike and Bola Strike when he's leaping mid-air with Unseen Predator. Therefore, casting Thrill of the Hunt first, leaping on an enemy champion with Unseen Predator then using Bola Strike mid-air almost guarantees a root, then following Bola Strike for further slow. It is extremely effective when ganking and is very easy for your teammates to deal more damage for a kill.
• Jungle Rengar is one of the best CC bursters allowing the player to Double Root:
  1. With 3-4 stacks of Ferocity, engage the enemy with Thrill of the Hunt.
  2. Use either Savagery for burst damage or Bola Strike for superior CC lockdown during or shortly after leaping.
  3. Then, use abilities to reach 4 Ferocity stacks again in which time you can Bola Strike to slow them for a ton, or use Savagery for further damage.
  4. Once 4 Ferocity stacks have been reached again use Bola Strike to root them again, or Savagery for more damage.
  5. After level 6 it should be OK to take 1-3 turret hits when ganking a lane to secure a kill.
  6. This combo is an effective lockdown tactic, which most champions would find escaping difficult (unless you miss the skillshots). This double Bola Strike root combo is mostly inescapable unless they have two or more flash/dash abilities.
  7. Make sure your lane partner(s) is there to deal the damage or alternatively you deal the damage while they focus CC abilities.

Rune Usage

• Hail of Blades is the best keystone for Rengar when jungling as it provides more burst damage as the game progresses. Combining the triggering attack with Rengar's ultimate will helps to take out a squishy target in a blink of eyes. If you use Q, mid air, you can get a bug where Rengar will do his q and auto on the same second. This causes Rengar to have high burst damage and gives him strong skirmishes, outdamging Electrocute and Dark Harvest because of the initial burst along with the extra attack speed for 2 more auto attacks + 1 Emp Q reset.
• Fleet Footwork is a good replacement for Hail of Blades if you are going to be a little less aggressive.
• Electrocute is also a good choice as it can easily be proc'ed off of a simple E-Q combo.

Item Usage

Rengar is generally played as an assassin or a bruiser, relying on mobility and disabling the enemies and dealing massive amounts of damage in a short burst. Therefore, he is meant to be built with items that help him achieve this.

• Ravenous Hydra is a must for Rengar, because of its very high AD, some health regen and life steal, and it also gives very nice wave clear and its active is very important for his one-shot combo.
• Youmuu's Ghostblade Is an exceptionally good item for Rengar since his skills are limited only by cooldowns, and the item's stats and active effect synergize well with his kit.
• CDR is one of the stronger stats you can get on Rengar, because you are not limited by mana whatsoever and Rengar's empowered abilities are VERY powerful.
  • Youmuu's Ghostblade and Spirit Visage are great items on Rengar, each giving 10% CDR.
  • The Black Cleaver is also great on Rengar, giving 20% CDR, AD, health, and armor shred.
• Frozen Mallet's Icy passive allows Rengar to squeeze in a lot more attacks when the enemy would otherwise escape.
• Rengar has higher than average base attack speed as well as good AS per level scaling.
• Spirit Visage can be a good choice since it grants you MR, health and cooldown reduction as well as empowering Battle Roar's healing and any lifesteal/spellvamp items that you may have.
• Since Rengar will sometimes need initiate for your team, it might be a good idea to buy tankiness and initiation items, such as Locket of the Iron Solari or Sunfire Cape. Ravenous Hydra is a very good choice to deal AoE damage and add burst to a target.
• A possible item is Triforce, as it pushes his burst damage even higher, but as this is not an optimal bursting item, purchase when very much ahead of opponents. However, if building a fighter Rengar, this will be a decent purchase.
• Rengar can take almost any boots and benefit from them.
  • Berserker's Greaves gives you bonus attack speed for DPS builds.
  • Ionian Boots of Lucidity gives you 10% CDR for reduced cooldown on your skills, which is very effective on a skill-based resourceless champion.
  • Boots of Mobility gives you more mobility and allows you to travel the map and gank more often.
  • Ninja Tabi gives you armor and damage reduction from autoattacks.
  • Mercury's Treads gives you magic resistance and Tenacity to make you less vulnerable to crowd control.
• The assassin build is recommended only for assassin Rengar players. It capitalizes on Rengar's ability to catch out single targets and quickly burst them down.
  • This build is full glass cannon build with only offensive items or maybe one defensive item.
  • In this build most important stats are cooldown reduction, attack damage, and probably the most important one, armor penetration.
  • Core items needed to oneshot someone are Ravenous Hydra or Tiamat and Youmuu's Ghostblade followed by a The Black Cleaver, and last two items can be recommended boots for assassin Rengar ( Boots of Mobility or Ionian Boots of Lucidity) and a defensive item like Banshee's Veil or Randuin's Omen or an Guardian Angel or instead of a defensive item you can buy one more offensive item, for example The Bloodthirster or Trinity Force (and in some cases Infinity Edge).
  • With this build your basic attacks and physical damage abilities will penetrate most (if not all) armor of Marksmen without defensive items or even Mages without Zhonya's Hourglass, which is equivalent to dealing true damage.
  • This build is very hard to counter in low ELO because this build counters armor so hardest counters of this build are Zhonya's Hourglass because of the active and Guardian Angel due to its revival passive.
  • It's mostly built on toplane Rengar and before this build players usually build 3 or 4 Doran's Blades. Stacking Doran's Blades is very good in the early laning phase because it gives you health, life steal and some very needed attack damage.
  • When trying to assassinate very mobile champion like LeBlanc or Zed is recommended to use Bola Strike instead of Savagery unless you are sure you can kill them before they can react for example with Distortion or Living Shadow in this case.
  • With this build you get around 500-600 attack damage or more and you still have a lot of armor penetration so you kill squishier targets easily and tanks like Malphite or Shen with moderate effort.
  • If you have built Frozen Mallet or Randuin's Omen you will be very hard to run away from because of Icy or the AoE slow (respectively) and both items give health which is always useful.
  • Don't buy Blade of the Ruined King on assassin Rengar if you are very ahead, as a round of your skills will kill your target, rendering the attack speed useless.
  • With an assassin build you want to maximize your burst damage and consistency, which is why it's recommended forgoing boots for another damage / crit item late game, like Statikk Shiv. This is done by many high-skill Rengar players such as dekar173, Avail, Youmuus, Ryan Choi, ChaosRain77, Pridestalker, NIGHTBLUE3.

Countering

• Since Rengar deals mostly physical damage, buying armor is a top priority. Ninja Tabi and Thornmail are very effective against him since the majority of his damage comes from autoattacks enhanced with Savagery.
• Avoid fighting Rengar near and especially inside brushes as his passive Unseen Predator provides him with great mobility and utility.
  • His passive has no cooldown making slows ineffective when fighting him inside brushes as he can constantly close the distance.
  • Skilled players can use Unseen Predator to juke and escape when being chased and even dodge skillshots and avoid AoE damage.
• Avoid dueling Rengar as his kit makes him excel at it.
  • Battle Roar and Battle Roar make him deceptively tanky. That alongside life steal and Savagery allow Rengar to quickly regain health and with Thrill of the Hunt and Savagery to overpower you even if he was at low health when you started fighting.
• When Rengar uses Thrill of the Hunt, nearby allies will get an exclamation point on top of their heads, which means he is close and could pounce you.
  • Always stick together or close to a tower so he can't leap towards your allies.
• Avoid engaging Rengar when he already has 2 or more Ferocity, as when he uses all 3 of his basic abilities he will be able to cast one empowered spell as well.
• Beware if Rengar is jungling as he has great ganking potential with Thrill of the Hunt - in addition to his high damage output and burst capabilities, Bola Strike and Phage or Frozen Mallet prevent his target from escaping.
• If Rengar uses Thrill of the Hunt while your team has sight of him a distinctive sound can be heard. Otherwise you will receive no warning of the ability's use, unless Rengar comes within 1450 range of enemy champion.
  • This also works if you are in sight of a bush that he uses Thrill of the Hunt in.
• Rengar relies heavily on perfect surprise attacks and burst to take down his target, stunning him and getting out of melee range will stop his momentum and ruin his initial attack.
• Placing a Control Ward near your lane can prevent Rengar from ganking you with Thrill of the Hunt. Placing one when Rengar uses Thrill of the Hunt to run can prevent his stealthy escape.
• Traps such as Noxious Trap can punish him for entering bushes, hindering his ability to leap at you. Additionally, he is particularly susceptible to Blinds, as almost all of his damage is autoattack reliant.
• Rengar doesn't trade very well at low Ferocity, so if you can keep him at a distance and poke him constantly you will make him much more vulnerable in lane. However, be wary if he has maximum Ferocity, because in early laning a Savagery > Savagery combo can take more than half your health.
• Rengar's damage, burst and sustain relies mostly on his empowered abilities. Aim to engage Rengar when he is low on Ferocity stacks so that he cannot heal back any damage ( Battle Roar) or counter burst you ( Savagery) or nullify your engage abilities using his strong CC ( Bola Strike's root)
• Rengar cannot function well in large-scale teamfights, as he is an assassin focused on picking off lone targets. Grouping late game and focusing him can make his ability to fight significantly lower.
  • However it can only happen if Rengar builds glass cannon. Some Rengar players especially Jungle Rengar players would probably require to build tank items on him in order to compensate Battle Roar and Battle Roar. It is very important to keep him underfarmed in order to hinder a Fighter Builld Rengar in teamfights.