Help Support

Our Growing Community



Go Ad-Free
Mobafire League of Legends Build Guides Mobafire League of Legends Build Guides

Kennen Build Guide by PsiGuard

Psi of the Storm

By PsiGuard | Updated on September 13, 2019
201 Votes


I liked this Guide
I didn't like this Guide
Commenting is required to vote!

Thank You!

Your votes and comments encourage our guide authors to continue
creating helpful guides for the League of Legends community.

Runes: Kleptomancy

Magical Footwear
Minion Dematerializer
Cosmic Insight

Taste of Blood
Ravenous Hunter

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+15-90 HP (lvls 1-18)


1 2
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash


LoL Summoner Spell: Teleport


LeagueSpy Logo
Top Lane
Ranked #35 in
Top Lane
Win 51%
Get More Stats

Hi, I'm PsiGuard and welcome to my Kennen guide. I've been playing League of Legends since November 2010 in Season 1 and the highest rank I've achieved is Diamond III in solo queue. I have experience against Diamond, Master and Challenger players through solo queue, ranked teams and tournament games.

When I started playing this game, I really had a thing for energy champions. I bought Kennen shortly after his release and played him a lot, especially in ranked when I was climbing to Gold in season 2. He's been a staple top lane pick for me for a long time and is always a comfortable fallback when I need a ranged top laner. His reliable laning phase and excellent flanks and team fighting make him a very strong and fun champion to play.

Before we begin, I'd like to give a big thank-you to Jovy for her awesome graphics and help with coding this guide (as well as my other guides). Be sure to check out some of her other work at her signature shop and her own guides!

About Kennen /// Runes /// Spells /// Abilities

Ability Sequence /// Item Build /// Laning Phase /// Warding

Wave Management /// Late Game /// Conclusion

Kennen is a solo laner whose range and energy abilities allow him to put pressure on a lot of top lane matchups. He has solid base stats for early pokes and trades with autoattacks, plus fairly low cooldown offensive abilities. Kennen is also very safe, with Lightning Rush as well as stuns from Mark of the Storm giving him a way out of ganks and unfavorable fights. After laning phase, Kennen can use his range and safety to pressure side lanes with Teleport to support his team, or he can look for flanks or Flash engages to win skirmishes and team fights.

Kennen's strengths are his reliability and strong team fighting. He has a well-rounded kit for a ranged top laner, with a strong escape and no resource issues. While he does have some losing matchups, in most cases Kennen can at least go even early game, and can always support jungle ganks with his mobility and crowd control. Once the laning phase ends, a Kennen with AP items can crush squishies and lockup tanks with a timely engage while his team moves in for a few seconds of free damage.

As for weaknesses, Kennen isn't a great duelist, unless you build items like Blade of the Ruined King and Frozen Mallet, which I will not cover in this guide. With AP items, Kennen loses a lot of 1v1 pressure past the early game unless he's very ahead in gold and XP. From behind, he can also struggle to kill priority targets alone and often relies on his team's followup to win fights. With so much of Kennen's usefulness in team fights being front-loaded, there isn't a lot of room for outplay once your initial cooldowns are blown. Especially against a very tanky team, you may find that the enemy team can weather the storm of your initial engage before easily killing you and your teammates.

Kleptomancy is currently the most reliable keystone for Kennen. Your range should allow you to harass or trade with most champions and you'll be banking up extra gold and items to help you get your items faster. Try and get two basic attacks off after using an ability while harassing. You can also use an ability right after you launch a basic attack for a guaranteed proc.

This saves you some gold and offers a little more mobility over regular boots. You won't be able to buy Boots of Speed early game but you can just build Hextech Protobelt-01 components instead. Perfect Timing is also viable if you expect to use the Stopwatch at around 10 minutes, but it's not as efficient a rune as Magical Footwear.

Since there are only 3 charges now, this is more of a wave clear enhancement tool rather than being very useful for early pushing. You can use 1 charge on each minion type.

Nothing special to say here, just the best rune in slot for this champion. You can make use of the CDR for spells, summoner and items so you'll get good value out of it.

Increases your sustain in lane which gives you more staying power and kill threat. Even if you're playing against a melee champion, it's good to stay healthy (plus you'll be taking some damage from minion aggro).

This rune is a bit weak early but it'll help keep you healthy later in the game, especially in split push scenarios. Just clear the minion wave with Lightning Rush and Electrical Surge for a bunch of healing. You'll also heal a lot off of spamming Thundering Shuriken once this rune is fully stacked.

Teleport and Ignite are both viable options here. Teleport is much safer since your team will have the extra safety and flexibility late game from your ability to clear a side wave with Teleport available to join a fight. It's also a bit more forgiving early game since you can use your first Teleport to recover from a bad trade, a death or poor wave control. TP has a long cooldown though, so some players (especially in certain matchups) may have more success with Ignite. I suggest trying out both options and see if you're more comfortable with one. If you think you won't win your lane with Ignite, run TP instead for the late game.
Flash is a core spell on most champions in the game and Kennen is no exception. In addition to the flexibility it adds by allowing you to dodge skillshots, hop walls and escape death, Kennen can also make huge plays by comboing Slicing Maelstrom with Flash for unexpected engages. Flash is a great way to ensure you get ideal positioning to damage and stun the entire enemy team, plus it's always useful for safety in lane. I recommend you take both Flash and Teleport every game.

Kennen's abilities add Marks of the Storm to opponents which last for 6 seconds. The marks are consumed at three stacks, stunning the opponent for 1.25 seconds while restoring 25 Energy. If the same target is stunned more than once within 6 seconds, the stun lasts only 0.5 seconds.

This ability gives you a huge advantage over melees (in addition to your autoattack range) because most gap-closers are super telegraphed. For example, if a Riven starts using her Broken Wings and Valor to get close, you can hit her with a spell rotation and stun her while you escape with the movement speed from Lightning Rush. Against ranged champions, the stun can give you opportunities for free damage while your opponent can't attack or use spells.

If at any point you have a mark or two on your opponent during the laning phase, you have more pressure to move up and contest more CS. If your opponent has two marks and you have Electrical Surge ready, you have access to a guaranteed stun, so you should be zoning until the marks wear off. When possible, try to apply a mark or two before you go for an all-in with Slicing Maelstrom as it'll let you stun your enemy much faster.

Having an innate stun also gives you great team fighting and gank reception. Even if you don't have the damage to kill someone outright, the presence of your teammates can lead to many more kill opportunities simply because you can stun the enemy twice with your full combo. Successive stuns have a reduced duration of 0.5 seconds though.

Worth noting that the stacks all fall off at once, but if you apply another mark, it'll refresh the remaining duration back to the max value. So for example, if you mark your target once, wait 5 seconds, then mark them again, they'll have 2 marks for another 6 seconds. Staggering individual marks is a good way to maintain pressure and force your opponent to lose CS while they wait for the marks to fall off.

Kennen throws a fast moving shuriken towards a location, dealing 75 / 115 / 155 / 195 / 235 (+75% of ability power) magic damage and adding a Mark of the Storm to any opponent that it hits.

This ability is pretty spammable, with the cooldown and energy cost going down with rank. The three main uses for this ability are for poke, applying Mark of the Storm, and snagging last-hits. The range on this ability is fairly long, so you can last-hit safely against dangerous enemies and secure some extra CS under tower if you can't secure it with a basic attack.

Since this ability is blocked by minions, the amount of pressure you have on your opponent will depend on your positioning. Using the side lane bushes rather than standing behind your ranged minions will give you more opportunities to land Q, leading to a potential stun. If you stand behind your minion wave all game, you will likely have trouble landing this ability and won't have much pressure 1v1 apart from some light autoattack harass.

Since this ability applies Mark of the Storm, you should also consider it a major component in your personal defense. If your Q is on cooldown, you are more vulnerable to engages since you can't easily stack up three Marks for a stun. Against champions with strong gap-closers like Irelia, you must have Q available to cast if you are to approach the minion wave or you may find yourself taking a full combo without being able to stun your enemy and escape.

Thundering Shuriken is also a good way to check bushes or fog-of-war over walls. You'll hear a distinctive sound when it hits. Also a good way to harass Teemo if he's sitting stealthed in a bush.

Passive: Every 5 attacks, Kennen deals bonus magic damage equal to 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 (+60 / 70 / 80 / 90 / 100% bonus Attack Damage) (+20% of ability power) damage and adds a Mark of the Storm to his target.
Active: Surges electricity through all nearby targets afflicted by Mark of the Storm and all enemies caught in Slicing Maelstrom, dealing 60 / 85 / 110 / 135 / 160 (+80% of ability power) magic damage and adding another mark.

This ability is probably the hardest to master in Kennen's kit since both components are a little quirky. For the empowered autoattack, you'll need to keep an eye on your stacks and try and use your empowered autoattack to harass your opponent rather than just to last-hit a minion. Sometimes using Thundering Shuriken to last-hit while your empowered attack is ready can be a good way to maintain pressure. Without the stack of Mark of the Storm from the empowered auto, you won't be able to stun your target unless you're in melee range and touch them with Lightning Rush, which is very dangerous. The empowered auto is also your only surefire way to harass through minions.

The empowered attack is not consumed when attacking structures, but you will charge up stacks by attacking them. Hitting Wind Wall won't consume the attack either, which is pretty nice when facing Yasuo. The empowered attack it not blocked by spell shields and can't be dodged or blocked by Aegis Protection. Fiora can completely block the damage with Riposte, but a Mark of the Storm will still be applied.

As for the active, it has a limited range and will be available to cast whenever a marked target is within range. This can screw you over a bit if you've marked a minion (say, from using Lightning Rush to go for an all-in on your opponent), apply a mark to your target, then press W but you're not in range of the target champion. You'll just zap the minions you marked and lose that ability for trading. Not nice. :(

Another quirk with the active is that it can go on cooldown even if it doesn't do anything. It has a short cast time, and even if all available targets die by the end of the cast time, the ability will still go on cooldown. This is mostly important when last-hitting, since if you miss a last-hit on a marked minion with the W active, you'll still put it on cooldown, which sucks. :/

In lane you'll pretty much want to use the active to harass your opponent every time you can. One exception would be to delay the cast in order to extend Mark of the Storm's duration. For example, you might use the empowered auto to apply a mark, autoattack minions for 5 seconds, then cast Electrical Surge to refresh the mark duration and apply another stack. Before the marks fall off in the next 6 seconds, you should have another empowered autoattack ready to zone with. This can let you stun your enemy while only using one spell.

Finally, this ability can be used in combination with Lightning Rush to damage waves of minions. You won't be one-shotting ranged minions until you have quite a bit of AP, so it can be helpful to prep the wave with autoattacks before using this combo, in order to ensure you don't miss CS. If you need to hold Lightning Rush for safety, you can just spam Thundering Shuriken to push instead.

One last note: you can use Electrical Surge as long as you have a valid target in range. The target doesn't need to be visible, so you can use this to hit enemies that are invisible, camouflaged, in bushes or in fog-of-war. Since you can also hit Thundering Shuriken and Lightning Rush on stealthed targets, this makes you pretty effective against stealthed enemies if you know roughly where they are and can land a Q.

Kennen gains 335 movement speed and the ability to pass through units for up to three seconds, but he is unable to attack. Lightning Rush deals 85 / 125 / 165 / 205 / 245 (+80% of ability power) magic damage and adds a Mark of the Storm to any hostile unit he passes through; deals half damage to minions.

Kennen is refunded 40 energy if he passes through an enemy while using this spell, but can only gain this effect once per cast.

Lightning Rush can be cancelled early by reactivating the ability. Kennen gains 40 / 50 / 60 / 70 / 80% attack speed for 4 seconds upon exiting Lightning Rush

This ability has a huge energy cost and a fairly high cooldown, so you'll need to use it sparingly. Tagging at least one enemy will restore 40 energy, which is really important if you want to be using other abilities within a short time frame. Even if it's just a minion or Scuttler, always tag a target by running into them with Lightning Rush on when possible.

This ability doesn't deal much damage, especially since we leave it at rank 1 for most of the game, but it does apply a Mark of the Storm to every enemy you touch. If you can tag a couple champions with an extra mark in team fights, it can give you an extra stun you might have otherwise missed. In 1v1s, you may need to use Lightning Rush to proc your third mark and stun your target in order to escape and create distance again, especially if they're already in melee range of you.

Apart from its damage and marking effects, this ability also increases your movement speed but leaves you unable to autoattack for the duration. You can reactivate the ability to cancel it, allowing you to use basic attacks again, but ending the movement speed bonus.

Unfortunately, you need to wait a second after casting before cancelling the effect, so keep that in mind if you're trying to use a quick E and then fit in another autoattack. It doesn't feel as smooth as I'd like, but early cancels are really important to make sure you can keep autoattacking, especially if you have an empowered autoattack you need to use. Due to the attack speed steroid, using E for a quick reposition (maybe tagging the enemy champion with it) and then cancelling the ability can give you an edge in 1v1s. In team fights, you won't have much time to autoattack anyway, so feel free to leave it on for the full duration.

Feel free to use this a couple times to get to lane faster. Since you don't use mana, you can return to lane without using Teleport quite a bit faster than most other champions just by using Lightning Rush a couple times as you're running.

Kennen summons a magical storm around himself for 3 seconds, dealing 40 / 75 / 110 (+20% of ability power) magic damage to all enemies within range every 0.5 seconds. Slicing Maelstrom deals 10% increased damage with each successive strike against a target, up to a maximum of 150% damage with one strike. Kennen also gains 20 / 40 / 60 bonus armor and magic resist for the duration.

This ability seems pretty straightforward, since you basically need to just turn it on and run close enough to your target(s) to get your damage and stuns off. Note that the damage is significantly higher per target if you're able to hit successive strikes. This means an ult that hits 6 times is going to do more than triple the damage of an ult that hits 2 times. Try and keep your target(s) in range. Usually it's not too hard since you can stun them.

Slicing Maelstrom is the easiest way to proc Mark of the Storm on multiple targets (such as in team fights) without running through them with Lightning Rush, which is both difficult and dangerous. Once your enemies are marked at least once, cast Electrical Surge to deal extra damage and stun them early. Try and cast W before using Zhonya's Hourglass whenever possible, since it's likely your enemies will exit W range by the time you come out of Zhonya's.

Your play-making honestly kind of sucks without this cooldown, so you may want to think twice about giving up CS to Teleport to a fight if you don't have your ult ready. This isn't a concrete rule, but generally it's best to have your ult ready before looking for group fights. Having Flash available is even better.

One thing to note is that this ability does have a cast time. It's fairly short, but long enough to make a Flash-R combo look super slow and leaves you wide open to disengage or simply enemies Flashing out before they're stunned. For this reason, you should ALWAYS use R-Flash instead. Cast R and then immediately Flash towards your targets. This makes it much harder to react since the brief cast time is almost unnoticeable and your ultimate will be active the moment you enter range of the enemy team. I generally recommend using Lightning Rush after R-Flashing because it'll leave you with a little more duration on the movement speed, rather than some of it being wasted during the R cast time.


I put the QEW start in the cheatsheet because it's the safest option since it gives you mobility at level 2 to disengage from trades or evade ganks, but your level 2 and 3 skills are very situational. If the enemy jungler won't gank you at level 3 (maybe you had vision of them going towards bottom, the minions are close enough to your tower or the enemy top + jungler don't have enough crowd control to catch you), you can take W second since it improves your 1v1 pressure. Always get all three abilities by level 3.

I max Thundering Shuriken first for the extra base damage, lower energy cost and lower cooldown. While the reliability of Electrical Surge makes it an attractive option to max first, W max only really shines in situations where you're not under threat and you can't harass with Q due to minion block. It's actually more reliable to have the low cooldown Q for defense and poking power, even if you can't always harass with it. Also, the empowered autoattack from Electrical Surge doesn't gain much bonus damage from rank, so it doesn't hurt your harass very much to leave W at rank 1 for a while.

Slicing Maelstrom is obviously maxed as soon as possible, with points at levels 6, 11 and 16. After Thundering Shuriken, I always max Electrical Surge as it's your most reliable damage ability in team fights and the cooldown lowers a lot with rank. Lightning Rush is maxed last since you usually just use it once per fight for the movement speed to get in position.

This is your standard start for lane pressure. Even though Kennen is kind of a mage, early game most of your harass comes from your autoattacks. Start Doran's Blade in any matchup where you have a range advantage and the enemy doesn't have any damage-over-time effects or guaranteed harass. The early bonus AD will switch your adaptive stats from runes to AD, giving you a lot of early basic attack damage to work with until you start buying AP.

This is a situational start that's a bit more defensive. Doran's Shield gives more reliable sustain, particularly against damage-over-time effects like Hemorrhage and Toxic Shot. Against any champion that's going to chip away at your health ( Gangplank, Jayce, Malphite), this is a good item to start with. Keep in mind that the lack of AD will make any adaptive stats give you AP, so your basic attacks won't hurt as much early game.

Always start Warding Totem since you'll need the vision to defend against early ganks. You can also use the early ward to gain vision of the enemy jungle or defend your own jungle entrances. I keep Warding Totem throughout most games, since top laners have no other easily accessible ways to provide consistent vision aside from Control Wards (which you should also be buying).

Farsight Alteration is sometimes a good option since it allows you to check dangerous areas from afar, without risking yourself. Generally I leave the ADC and maybe mid lane to pick this up, but sometimes they won't buy it or you just need an extra Farsight on your team to check baron . Either way, it's an option to consider for some games.

Hextech Revolver is a pretty significant power spike early game since you can reliably harass your opponent with the bonus damage every 40 seconds. Early ability power also makes your trades stronger. Overall a very powerful item early that you should usually be looking to get as soon as possible.

Protobelt is another nice power spike and provides everything you'd want in the early game: HP, AP and CDR. You can use the active to get a little closer to enemies with your Slicing Maelstrom active, deal some extra damage in all-ins and sometimes just clear the wave quickly. Keep in mind you cannot use Flash during the dash and it's a little clunky, so don't rely on this for any sort of ultra-quick gapclosing shenanigans.

I buy Sorcerer's Shoes in the vast majority of my games. Since team fights will usually consist of R-Flashing into a group of enemies and then using Electrical Surge and Zhonya's Hourglass, defensive boots aren't actually a huge priority for Kennen. Sorcs give you a nice boost to your overall magic damage, especially against squishy targets. If you're not sure what boots to buy, just go with these; they're always good.

These boots can be helpful against champions that are virtually guaranteed to stun or snare you, like Ryze, Lissandra and Twisted Fate. Point-and-click CC can shut down your engage or make you easy to pick off for free. I generally wouldn't buy these just for the magic resist.

A little extra armor can go a long way if the alternative is getting one-shot by a Zed or Rengar. Most of the time you should be able to get away with just buying Zhonya's Hourglass, but don't be afraid to pick up tabi if you're in danger of getting bursted by AD assassins.

Flat magic penetration is always great for burst damage, and Kennen has the luxury of diving into the enemy team, which means you'll almost always be dealing damage to the enemy backline in team fights. Oblivion Orb is a great power spike for mid-game, but the full Morellonomicon can also be super helpful against heavy healing champions like Vladimir and Dr. Mundo. If you're laning against one of these champions, I recommend rushing Morellonomicon as your first complete item in order to reduce their sustain.

You should expect to buy Void Staff most games. Not only do most teams have a front line or at least champions who will buy magic resist items like Maw of Malmortius or Banshee's Veil, but your enemies will also gain magic resist just from levels (and sometimes runes). Get Void Staff after Hextech Protobelt-01 and Zhonya's Hourglass if the enemy is building magic resist, otherwise you can finish Morellonomicon if you haven't already and pick up a Spellbinder or Rabadon's Deathcap for more raw damage.

Deathcap gives a lot of burst damage, but it's often overshadowed by cheaper items like Zhonya's Hourglass and Void Staff that are more crucial to your success. This item often needs to be delayed until the final purchase, but you might find some games where you're swimming in gold and buy this just to snowball.

Spellbinder is a cheaper and earlier powerspike than Rabadon's Deathcap which makes it great for snowballing. I mostly build it when I won't need a Void Staff since the enemy team has no magic resist items. Use the active right as you enter a team fight with your ultimate. The movement speed will also help you get into position a little faster.

This item is essentially core, since in the vast majority of games, you'll need the active to get the full effect of your ultimate in team fights. For a fairly squishy ranged champion, you need to get really close to multiple enemies to be effective, so having Zhonya's to drop aggro is crucial. You can also use the active to avoid predictable spells like Death Mark or Chum the Waters which is nice.

Banshee's Veil is your go-to item for magic resist. Keep in mind that this item is generally going to give you less damage than the alternatives, but if the MR or the spell shield is important, don't hesitate to buy it when you need it.

A situational item that's useful against tanky opponents. It can be hard to find a place to slot this in your build, but in some cases the extra sustained damage can pay off in team fights against 3 or more enemies with high health pools. The burn will also extend the duration of Morellonomicon's Grievous Wounds effect, making the two items a nice combo. I don't really recommend buying Rylai's Crystal Scepter with this as it simply hurts you too much to sacrifice another item for it.

In most matchups, the early game is in Kennen's favor. At the very least, you should be aiming to be even in CS and remain high on health to be ready to help your jungler or receive a gank. In any matchup where you have a significant early advantage (most melees), harass often with autoattacks, especially when you have a W-empowered attack ready. The best time to harass is when the enemy walks up to last-hit a minion. It takes some practice to get good at harassing aggressively without overstepping or missing CS while you're attacking, but once you do you'll have a lot of pressure on most champions in early laning.

The most important thing to do when harassing is to walk into the bush after each autoattack to drop the minion aggro. There is a massive difference between harassing while you're standing in the middle of the lane and harassing when you can instantly drop aggro in the bush. If you drop aggro constantly, you'll remain at nearly full health while applying a ton of pressure to your opponent. Don't underestimate the importance of this technique.

Generally you'll want to hold your Lightning Rush and just use autos and Q to harass and last-hit. If you get ganked or engaged on, that's the time to use your E and disengage. Don't be afraid to lose some CS while you wait out the 10 second E cooldown in order to be sure you don't die. If you can, remain in experience range and snag one or two CS with Q while you're waiting on the E cooldown.

If you're pushing or the enemy has great engage, ward preemptively before attempting any risky positioning to apply pressure to your opponent. If you die to a gank when your Warding Totem is off cooldown, it's your fault. Don't whine to your jungler for ganks or counter-ganks because you don't need them. If you play properly, you should be extremely difficult to gank and if you're ahead enough you can actually 1v2. Drawing jungle pressure to your lane is a great asset to your team because you can get ganked without dying and your allies will have some free time to pressure their lanes without fearing the enemy jungler.

That said, it's great if your jungler does have time to come up and help, as Kennen's gank reception is quite strong. Burn Lightning Rush to close the gap and try to tag your opponent with it if possible. You should be able to get a stun off especially if your jungler has any CC of their own. Post-6, your engage with Slicing Maelstrom is basically guaranteed to burn an enemy Flash and may result in a kill regardless, as long as you have the numbers advantage (or a major advantage 1v1).

Warding is a very complicated topic so I'm just going to go over some basic tips and ward positions for playing top lane in the early game. As the game progresses, you may need to start placing vision in the enemy jungle if you're winning or in your own jungle if you're losing map control. Winning or losing, always buy Control Wards to help your team control vision around key areas, particularly baron and dragon .

You might use your first ward at level one before minions spawn. Placing a ward at the enemy top-side buff can help your team determine the enemy jungler's starting location, while placing a defensive ward shortly before the enemy team invades your jungle can inform your team if and when they leave, and whether or not they stole a camp. Save the ward early if you can, but don't be stingy if you have a good opportunity to place one down.

You'll want to use a ward once you're level 2 to avoid a jungle gank if the enemy jungler is clearing towards top side. If your team determined their starting location and you know they won't be top side soon, just save the ward and play aggressively for a minute or two. Whenever you push your lane, ask yourself, "Could the enemy jungler or mid laner be here?" If the answer is "yes" or you're not sure, place a ward to spot potential ganks.

An early Control Ward in a spot that you can defend is super helpful for your own safety and to clear a gank path for your jungler. If you're pushed to tower and can't defend the ward position, just allow the enemy to clear it. If you haven't placed it yet, wait until you have the wave in a position where you can defend the ward.

Below are some common ward locations for top laners on blue side and red side. You won't be able to keep all these areas warded at all times, but you can place a ward at one of these spots if you're in danger of being ganked from that angle. Remember to keep in mind the strength of the enemy jungler, as champions like Evelynn and Nocturne can bypass normal ward coverage.

Blue side ward locations Red side ward locations

Last-hitting will freeze the wave, or slowly push it if your opponent is not last-hitting (generally because they're not in lane). Obviously last-hitting minions is important to gaining gold, so you'll always want to last-hit when possible. If you're pushing, make sure you still get the last-hits on the minions.

When you harass your opponent, the enemy minions will aggro you for a few seconds, or until you leave vision (usually by ducking into a bush). That time when the enemy minions are going after you, they're not hitting your minions, so it pushes the wave. Make sure to drop minion aggro when possible in order to ensure you don't unintentionally push the wave too hard.

Generally I recommend last-hitting and harassing with the minion wave roughly in the middle of the lane. This gives you the best chance at harassing your opponent often since there aren't too many minions that aggro you, but you also aren't pushing hard to their tower, allowing them to hang back safely without losing much CS.

Under tower, melee minions will be low enough to last-hit after they take two tower hits. For ranged minions, you'll need to autoattack them once to prep them, let them take a tower shot, then autoattack again for the last-hit. If you have a Electrical Surge empowered autoattack, you can just use the one autoattack to last-hit a ranged minion after 1 tower hit. Always watch your own minions to see which of the enemy minions they're targeting, as it can mess up normal last-hitting routines. If you push a wave to tower, usually the last ranged minion will get damaged by your arriving minion wave, so you might need to just kill it with Q before it takes a tower hit.

Freezing the wave means you have fewer minions than the enemy, which means the wave pushes towards you, but you keep it from entering your tower range. In most cases, this means making sure the enemy minion wave has only 1 or 2 more minions than yours and just last-hitting. I don't recommend freezing very often on Kennen since it makes it difficult to harass the enemy, but there are a few situations where it can be useful.

If you are sure the enemy jungler is on the top side of the map, it can be safer to freeze the wave, rather than risk dying to a gank. This is especially the case if your Flash is on cooldown. Be wary of tower dives though.

If you have a major advantage in your lane and can all-in and/or your jungler can gank for you, it can be beneficial to freeze because your lane opponent will have to walk all the way up to your minion wave, leaving them vulnerable since they're so far from the safety of their tower. Their larger minion wave will also kill your smaller wave pretty quickly, so for most melees this means they can't safely get any last-hits.

The last situation where freezing can be useful is if your enemy is out of lane, but you don't have enough time to push your minion wave to the enemy tower and deny CS. Instead, you can freeze the wave and allow the enemy minion wave to kill your minions while the enemy laner is away. This is usually best done when the enemy recalls shortly before you return to lane. You won't have much time to push your minion wave (especially if it's a siege minion wave) so you can just last-hit and deny CS that way. Don't just push your wave just because the enemy is gone, as sometimes you'll just give them a big wave to farm under their tower.

Pushing is almost always beneficial if you are safe enough to do it. The main things to worry about are ganks from the enemy jungler, mid laner, or possibly support. Use what map knowledge you have to determine whether you can safely push. Do you have wards spotting potential gank routes? Does the enemy top laner or jungler have strong engage or not? Has the enemy jungler been spotted somewhere on the map, or are they dead? If you're safe from ganks, you can usually push for advantages, though you may want to last-hit and harass a bit before pushing a larger wave into the enemy tower.

Pushing gives you several advantages. First, it makes it easier to harass, since you won't take any minion damage and there won't be enemy minions to block your Thundering Shuriken. Second, you have the opportunity to damage the enemy tower. Destroying the first tower of the game nets a significant amount of bonus gold, so this can be very important. Third, you have better agency to roam to the river, top-side jungle, or Teleport somewhere to support your team and make plays. Generally the jungler who has the most pushing lanes is the one who has the most map control.

One particularly bad time to push is when you're at a serious 1v1 disadvantage. For example, if you're against an Irelia and she's killed you already and hit her Trinity Force power spike, you'll be putting yourself in a dangerous position by pushing the lane. She could all-in you or simply freeze the wave near her tower and deny you CS until you get close enough to last-hit, in which case she'll kill you. Luckily, you can last-hit from a pretty safe distance with Thundering Shuriken, so you can usually break freezes and avoid getting zoned too hard, but it's still dangerous.

Since you're (likely) a wielder of the mighty spell Teleport, you'll be responsible for catching whatever minion waves are farthest from the next objective. In the early and early-mid game, this usually means you'll be top lane until the dragon is dead. If dragon is down, you might need to be bottom instead so your team can better pressure the rift herald.

One exception is when towers fall, as it can be beneficial for you and your bottom lane to swap positions. Generally your bottom lane is going to be better at pressuring towers (since there are two of them) while you'll be pretty safe farming longer lanes where a tower is down.

Apart from making sure you're in the right lane, make sure you show up to the right fights. Teleport is a tool to be used for flanks and to show up to skirmishes and fights around objectives. You should not be using it mid-game just to grab a bunch of CS. The only time I'd consider teleporting to a turret past the early game would be if the turret was at risk of being destroyed (or if an ally was being dived by enemy champions).

Generally, the mid-game is pretty chaotic and a lot of things can happen depending on team compositions and even what level of play you're playing at. As a rule of thumb, you should be picking up waves that are going to hit your towers and pushing them out. When you have Flash and/or Teleport available, look for opportunities to engage fights and make plays to help your team take down more towers and epic monsters.

Late game is usually centered around baron and elder dragon control, so once again you'll be clearing waves at your turrets while your team heads to objectives. Don't push all the way to the enemy side of the map (at least not while enemies are missing) since you're generally going to be more effective in team fights. You can split-push bottom if 4 enemies are at Baron, for example, but you shouldn't keep mindlessly pushing when a lot of enemies are missing and you could just group with your team to control vision around an objective.

If your Teleport is down, you'll probably have to group more. You still don't want to leave huge waves to die to turrets, but minimize the amount of time you're away from your team. You never know when your teammates might get caught, and it's your responsibility to do the best you can to minimize the chance of a 4v5.

Flash is a huge asset to you and your team this late in the game, so if you need to wait 30 seconds for it to come off cooldown, you might need to be patient. I've had games where we came back after a huge deficit because we intentionally gave up an extra tower in order to buy time for my Flash to come up. R-Flash is very hard to react to and usually your best chance of winning late game 5v5s, but if you don't have Flash, you can try to find an angle to flank from, or simply stay with your team if your team has the better engage or better poke. Slicing Maelstrom makes for a strong counter-engage too.

In general, if you're able to stun multiple enemies and/or the enemy backline, you'll have a pretty good chance of winning most team fights. Time Zhonya's Hourglass with the moment the enemy team starts to focus on you and make sure you get it off before you're stunned or silenced. You don't need to instantly use the active every fight (like a Fiddlesticks might) but instead you can take a moment to get in position to hit as many high priority targets as possible and cast your W. If you can fit a Hextech Protobelt-01 active here, that's good too. If not you can always use it after your Zhonya's expires. Try to hit an enemy carry with the bolts when possible because the damage is usually fairly negligible against tanks.

Generally I recommend prioritizing baron nashor over a single inhibitor, but if you can take multiple inhibitors (especially the bottom one), do that and then put Control Wards around baron. It'll make it very difficult for the enemy team to contest since they'll have to defend their base. Remember to be patient and wait for super minion waves to push in and force an enemy to deal with them before starting the objective.

Thank you for reading my Kennen guide! I hope I was able to help you become a better jungler and a smarter player. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions, comments or criticism. I read all comments on my guides even if I don't respond to all of them. If you appreciated my guide or approve of my build, feel free to hit the green upvote button up top.

A special thank you to those who have supported my guides with votes, suggestions and advice that have been instrumental in bringing my guides to the level of quality they are today.

A very special thank you to Jovy for her wonderful graphics used in this guide as well as her help with coding all my guides. All the fancy headers, table of contents and most of the other graphics you see in my guides are from her. Be sure to check out some of her other work at her signature shop and her own guides!

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter for stream updates and other League of Legends content.