Items & Builds

Item starts are pretty basic when it comes to Renekton, so I won’t really talk much based on what I presented in the video above. But to keep it short, Renekton chooses his item starts based on his overall match ups or playstyle choices. In any playstyle where Renekton wants to go aggressive, utilising summoners like ignite looking to snowball heavily within the start of the game, Renekton can use Doran’s Blade to help him stat check his opponent through his damage to help funnel his early lead.

When it comes to taking Doran’s shield, this is usually paired with Second Wind to provide Renekton with additional sustain based benefits, allowing him to deal with poke or ranged attacks. Renekton typically takes this into slower paced or disadvantage style match ups, where Renekton will play off using this setup to steadily help him out sustain and survive against his counter match ups, or use it to further stat check and out sustain his winning match ups. Overall, you can take Doran’s into every match up, just due to how strong it was by design in comparison to Doran’s Blade.

Other start items can include items like Cull or Long Sword and refillable, however I personally think they are too weak of starts to really benefit Renekton’s aggressive nature playstyle. Playing to scale as Renekton by gibbing your first few levels feels absolutely horrible to me, unless you’re able to play it into tank match ups where your early objective can be to crash the first 4 waves, followed by a reset to rush towards your first item. Overall, I personally don’t like it as it doesn’t feel consistent, which makes it too volatile where any little play in or out of our hands can really backfire on us.

With that being said, I will now show a little tier list on which starting items I believe are to be the best into certain match ups.

In this section, I will cover and rate all of Renekton’s main items within this tier list. This tier list will put items through an S to D rating, going from Renekton’s best to absolute worst items. This page is completely subjective, however from playing all these items on Renekton I personally believe they are rated pretty adequately due to the following reasons I will provide for them. My opinions may change from patch to patch, as it overall depends on any changes and meta shifts that occur within the game.

Before I explain each tier list I do want to go over what every letter simply entails, as some people might get the wrong idea based around the letter, as for example; if an item is in B tier that doesn’t mean it is bad for Renekton, however it might be too situational to have a consistent use for Renekton, leaving it in the tier for a reason. With that said, here are my letter explanations.

S

S tier simply means this is the absolute best set of items you can play on Renekton. Each item offers really strong and insane powerspikes, while having a lack of any major downsides, allowing them to provide Renekton with some of the best and more rewarding items you can purchase on him. Each item is very consistent, allowing you to build them in the majority of your games, as well as being able to be built amongst many other playstyles themselves.

A

A tier items are super great on Renekton, all items here synergise really well and can be built nearly game to game. These items may include a slight downside towards their item costs or components, sometimes making it very difficult to play at a consistent level. Playing these items can provide Renekton with many strengths and benefits, however when building these items it’s very important to maintain your leads and try not to throw before or after you get them.

B

B tier items are pretty decent on Renekton within situational circumstances, which can be used to help provide Renekton alternative strengths within a game. For instance, when playing for split pushing based playstyles, Renekton may be able to go Hullbreaker, Triforce or Ravenous Hydra, as all these provide various different benefits through each passive and stats. When building one of these items, they may force Renekton in a specific build or playstyle, which takes away the overall ability to build each of these items through specific games. Items within B tier may also just be as good as within A tier, however under the circumstance that they’re too niche or have drawbacks with their gold cost, itemization or situational requirements. Bloodmail and Titanic are items that can be good within a late game bruiser build, however they require a lot of gold and the condition the enemy lacks health to really get away with it. Spirit Visage can be a great item when paired with healing or shield based champions or items, however whenever you lack these conditions Renekton simply doesn’t utilise Spirit Visage at nearly the same strength. With that said, make sure to build each item within the right circumstance to have a potential power spike to help you close out a game.

C

C tier items are by far some of Renekton’s most underwhelming choices from game to game, as each item is completely superseded by items he can purchase above this tier. Each item ‘can’ work, however their overall effectiveness in being able to be relevant through the game is completely underwhelming or pointless. What leads these items in being kept at this tier, is the complete lack of synergy towards Renekton’s kit, or the fact these items are too meme or gimmicky to be considered. For example, while an item like Kraken Slayer could work with Renekton’s W, the overall ability to try and fit this item is more gimmicky and leaves Renekton in more uncomfortable situations to itemise around rather than providing a positive outcome. Some items such as Umbral Glaive and Knight’s Vow aren’t exactly bad, however with them spanning away from Renekton’s main roles as a bruiser or damage based champion, these simply take away a slot that would be more worthwhile for another item instead.

D

D tier are by far the worst items Renekton can possibly itemise into, as each item is completely troll or lack way too much synergies to be built within any game. Renekton once again can use the items to an extent, however being that they’re just overall bad items or items that don’t really work too well in practice, these are simply left at the bottom of the barrel for Renekton to ignore. With that said, simply don’t build any of these items as they’re just trash on Renekton. Mercurial Scimitar, while potentially being a C tier item, is essentially here with just how worthless it actually is, so don’t build this on Renekton whatsoever as Tenacity item options are just way better.

This is by far one of Renekton’s best items you can buy, simply due to the fact that it’s able to pack the punch Renekton needs to snowball, as well as having the perfect components and item cost to aid your overall snowball high pressure playstyle. This has been a debatable item through the Renekton and top lane community, however it’s undeniable that the stats, damage and utility you get from a 2900G item in Eclipse is absolutely massive, even if it is pretty boring and slate to play as Renekton. An underrated strength Eclipse provides is that it amplifies Renekton’s ability to take crazy trades with the 167 shield, allowing him to mitigate against most damage including tower shots. Each short trade taken with Eclipse amounts up with the 6% max HP damage, allowing him to eventually kill off his target or force easy recalls. Renekton’s skirmishing and teamfighting power with Eclipse is also pretty great, as the shield enhances his tankyness with items such as Sterak’s Gage, while keeping his heavy damage playstyle in play with the rest of his items he can buy. Overall, Eclipse is a core foundation to providing Renekton the consistency he needs to dominate a game, allowing him to play as either a bruiser or a full damage carry.

Black Cleaver

Another excellent item that allows Renekton to enhance his overall teamfighting power, making him into a complete raid boss once he builds Sterak’s Gage. Sterak’s is so great due to the fact you’re ability to synergise the item with your bruiser playstyle, allowing you to create a giant bonus shield from the Sterak’s based around your bonus HP, which is provided from your items and ultimate HP. Sterak’s also provides up to 63 AD at level 18, providing Renekton with heavy attack damage, as well as 20% additional tenacity against enemies incoming CC. Overall, this item is absolutely fantastic as a 3rd item, as at that stage in the game it allows you to dive deeper into fights, while having a heavy amount of HP and damage to help burst and front line for your team. Sometimes you can build Sterak’s 2nd after your first item, however it depends on how strong the enemy team is, as these situations may force you to heavily skirmish and teamfight for early mid game objectives, providing an angle for Sterak’s 2nd.

Death’s Dance is an absolutely underrated item, as it allows you to become absolutely unkillable as Renekton, providing Renekton heavy damage to help him out duel his opponent, as well as further enhancing his overall tanking ability. Death’s Dance stat line is also absolutely crazy, as it allows him to reduce 30% of all incoming physical and magic damage, as well as providing him 50 armour, 60 AD and 15 ability haste. Overall Death’s Dance is absolutely nuts if you’re able to buy it, as the 3300 gold cost is the only factor that slightly holds it back from being an entirely broken item. Renekton can build this item whenever in his build, as he’s able to rush it into heavy AD champions such as Aatrox or Illaoi, providing Renekton with heavy damage as well as an unkillable passive. Personally I prefer building Death’s Dance either as the first item into harder melee match ups, or 4th item after Sterak’s Gage. Another underrated aspect about Death’s Dance, is that it counters champions like Aatrox even harder, due to its ability to hold back damage dealt healing passives, hard countering Aatrox’s ability to heal the health he wants to within the match up. Death’s Dance also allows Renekton to commit even harder for kills, as each kill completely resets the DD’s bleed passive, removing any damage taken and instead healing Renekton by 75% of his bonus AD in the process.

Profane’s recent buffs changed my overall perspective on the item, as for the longest time since its damage active nerf Riot managed to lower the cost by 350 gold, making it one of Renekton’s quickest item power spikes he can receive within the early stages of the game. Profane is specifically for full damage Renekton builds, where Renekton plays as an assassin using red trinkets and fog of war towards his overall advantage. Profane is insanely great into squishy comps or match ups, allowing Renekton to completely one shot people with the many choices of combos and animation cancels he can implore within his playstyle. For me personally, I usually prefer getting Profane 3rd or 4th item to round off my full damage builds, alongside having items such as Eclipse, BoTRK and Serylda, providing Renekton one of the highest DPS ceilings within the entire game out of a champions combo. Make sure to check Renekton’s animation cancels and mechanics if you’re considering going Profane within a full damage build.

Ranidun’s in my opinion is absolutely GOATED as an item, due to fact that it provides 30% resistances against critical strike damage, making it absolutely necessary against any compositions where champions abuse crit builds to play their champion (Yasuo/Yone, Crit ADCs/Junglers). Not only does Randuin's decrease crit damage, but it also provides Renekton with additional teamfighting utility power from its 70% movement speed slow, allowing Renekton and his teammates to easily stay on top of the enemy within fights. One of Renekton’s biggest natural counters is high mobility based champions, making Randuin's an absolutely solid buy to easily stick onto his enemies and allow him to pop off within late game teamfights. Randuin's also provides 75 armour at 2700g, allowing him to easily purchase it and round off the rest of his bruiser style build.

Kaenic Rookern

Kaenic is my first and best choice when it comes to playing against heavy AP and AP burst reliant comps. Kaenic’s stat line is absolutely crazy when you factor it being an anti AP item, as it provides you 400 HP, 80MR, 100% base HP regen, as well as providing you a 15% maximum HP shield, which is also increased if Renekton uses his R. This item is absolutely necessary if the enemy has any AP champions that can completely one shot you, as AP damage is Renekton’s biggest weakness within the game prior to the point of buying this item. Once Renekton does have Kaenic magic damage no longer becomes an issue (Unless you’re Gwen), providing Renekton with the ability to front line even harder, while synergising with all his HP based items around his bruiser build.

BoTRK is one of my favourite items within the entire game, as this item allows Renekton to completely hone in towards his full damage one shot based playstyles, making it insanely fun and vital for one hitting any important targets within the game. BoTRK also synergies really heavily with Renekton’s kit, due to runes like PTA and Last Stand, allowing BoTRK to deal even more damage based on the overall % 's of damage. Renekton’s W can also heavily abuse BoTRK, as the 9% current HP damage can be proc’d across multiple Renekton W hits, providing absolutely heavy damage towards full HP and heavily HP stacked targets. While BoTRK is really great on Renekton, the main problem from buying each game entirely comes from how risky it actually is. Renekton’s lack of HP and resistances through BoTRK rush within his first two items, becomes a giant risk through the early stages of mid game. Renekton’s teamfighting becomes completely volatile, as he’s unable to tank the damage necessary to help him win potential 50/50 fights, forcing him to rely off his flash for fights to one shot, or splitpush within the side lane until he amasses more damage and items through his playstyle. In lower MMR, this isn’t so much of a problem compared to higher MMR, which inherently puts you and your team at a disadvantage if you’re not fed or strong enough within that stage of the game. Another issue worth talking about is BoTRK’s mediocre item components, forcing Renekton into weird overstays to get the components he needs, or putting him at a big disadvantage through stats if he falls behind. BoTRK really needs to be played well if you’re going to have success, but I still recommend tanking BoTRK into HP stacking tanks like Sion or Cho’Gath, however building after that completely depends on your overall motives of the game.

Stridebreaker is another great item that highly works with Renekton’s kit as a first or second item purchase. Stridebreaker’s diverse stat line and active makes this an absolutely fantastic item into ranged and high mobility compositions, allowing you to easily cripple and overpower your targets within 1v1’s, skirmishes or teamfights, providing Renekton with a heavily utility focused role within the game. As good as Stridebreaker can be when playing as a utility front lining diver, Stridebreaker’s insanely high cost makes it one of Renekton’s absolutely unappealing and inconsistent items. 3300g for a low to mid range set of stats, entirely relying off of Renekton’s base damage and the overall situation around him, doesn’t always provide the consistency Renekton wants to have as a rush item, entirely forcing him to play off his teammates to have giant success (Which in solo queue is very hit or miss).. While Stridebreaker can be good into ranged champions, champions such as Vayne, Varus, Gnar, or other advantageous picks against Renekton provide him with the lack of damage to deal with these champions, leading him to be outscaled within the side lane if he doesn’t already have a giant lead over them. When it comes to building Stridebreaker 2nd, this performs a lot better compared to a first item, as you’re able to maintain the power of an Eclipse or BoTRK rush, while allowing you to create teamfighting and catch power with the stridebreaker within the mid game. Overall, if the cost wasn’t so bad I would rate this item as S tier, but being 400 more gold than Eclipse completely takes away from Renekton’s mentality to play as a snowbally bruiser pick, thus downgrading the item and leaving it more of a situational buy when ahead vs ranged than if I was even or behind.

Ghostblade

Ghostblade historically was another absolute insane item, allowing Renekton to rush as a first item with the help of having AD, movement speed, lethality and CDR, providing Renekton the playstyle to heavily one shot his opposition while ahead, on top of allowing him to roam and completely control the game if he played good enough to do so. Ghostblade is still pretty great for this, however the lack of haste and overall damage passive entirely limits the item's potential of what you can do with it as a first item, compared to 2nd or 3rd where it is more appropriate to buy. If I’m buying Ghostblade it’s most likely because I’m doing JOAT, which provides me 3 different stats to help me reach my stats, however being that JOAT is not as great currently I simply skip out on this item even if I’m doing full damage builds with Renekton. While I could lower Ghostblade, I still think the overall stats and utility it provides for 2800g is insanely great vs squishy compositions, providing Renekton with the mobility to easily catch up and get into range while having the touch of death within his kit.

Personally this item is very situational and hit or miss for me, as when I pair up Black Cleaver with Shojin as a first and second item, these items allow me to have absolutely insane skirmishing power with the high amount of haste it provides, while allowing him to easily access my opponents with my mobility from Black Cleaver, E dashes and CDR boots upgrade if I’m able to purchase that alongside these items. Typically I’m only building Shojin if I’m ahead with Black Cleaver rush into tanks, as the additional % damage with Shojin on top of my ult damage allows me to easily melt tanks and easily apply my empowered E shred to kill them even quicker within a fight. I will also say that while Shojin is great for this, I do think the item is massively overrated on Renekton, as the % damage passive doesn’t really do a lot with the rest of Renekton’s abilities, as his W for instance only is applied on the first hit of W rather than the rest of his hits, alongside Black Cleaver also providing way more stats as a haste heavy item in comparison to Shojin. Black Cleaver as an item also provides way more damage and utility compared to Shojin, due to the overall shred stacks I’m able to abuse on my opponents to lower their armour, as well as out DPS within the process. Overall I don’t think I get too many memorable experiences with Shojin in most other builds compared to when I pair it Black Cleaver itself, so I leave it as more of a situational snowballing item into tanks than anything else.

Another one of my favourite items to buy on Renekton due to its ability to instantly apply 35% armour penetration onto my targets, in combination with being an absolutely deadly item when playing full damage playstyles on Renekton. Typically I like building Serylda as 3rd or 4th item, as this helps me negate any high base or armour stacking targets, while allowing me to abuse items such as BoTRK, Eclipse or Profane into massive one shots. When buying this I typically aim to play full damage Renekton, where I play off my red trinkets and use fog of war to look for my one shots. This item also allows me to easily handle any targets within the side lane, allowing me to be a massive side laning threat towards the enemy team. When compared with Black Cleaver, Black Cleaver takes slightly longer to apply my total damage, as I need to use my W or abilities to fully stack the carve passive before I’m able to apply any affective damage towards my target. Serylda on the other hand lets me instantly have the armour penetration, allowing me to instantly nuke targets in any way that I want. While Serylda is great for full damage, when compared to Renekton’s bruiser playstyle, Black Cleaver provides the utility and stats needed to be a consistent and beefy champion, allowing Renekton to make more committed plays across different bruiser builds to have success, while Serylda gates him as playing more of a cunning and flash reliant playstyle.

Mortal Reminder is another great alternative to Serylda’s Grudge, as this item can provide Renekton just as great capability to help him shred armoured targets, as well as also providing grievous wounds to lower all his targets healing. While this item is very situational, there are a lot of uses for it to actually be great, with the fact that its build path does also provide Renekton with additional damage in the form of Crit, as well as it also just being straight up better than its other anti heal counterparts. Overall, I’m a giant fan of this item when playing full damage Renekton into sustain based champions or compositions. When debating against Serylda or Mortal Reminder, I will probably edge Serylda being more of an effective snowball option in comparison. However if the enemy does have multiple sustain based champions or items being built, I will choose to build this instead for more value.

Edge of night’s purpose on Renekton allows him to hone in heavily on his full damage playstyle, making it a great last item choice when avoiding any major CC based abilities that can shut him down. This item is exclusively for when your role is to one shot any major carries, so make sure to build this last while looking for the perfect opportunities to strike on those targets. Edge of Night’s overall success completely depends on the user, as this entirely depends on how good you are at keeping the passive up, as one mistake of losing the shield can completely cost you a teamfight within the process. Make sure you’re trying to always keep it up and waiting for the right timings to flash one shot a carry.

Jak’Sho is another one of Renekton’s great tank item buys, allowing him to utilise his HP pool from his bruiser items, on top of amplifying his armour and magic resist the longer a fight goes. Whenever Renekton is massively ahead within the game, he can round off his build by purchasing Jak’Sho as a 4th or 5th item, allowing him to become a giant stat stick of a champion that can completely soak up any incoming damage and front line heavily with his team. While Jak’Sho is very good, the reason I listed it as an A tier item compared to an S tier, is simply how ineffective it can feel if one damage source is more prominent than the other. Jak’Sho’s main role of an item is to amplify both defensive stats against damage, however Jak’Sho isn’t good if one damage source can easily burst you down before you gain the additional resistances, as the item fails to use any damage mitigation passives to help you survive longer before you’re able to make full use of the passive. Overall, while it’s great when ahead, you really need to buy Randuin's or Kaenic to fully make use of it within the later stages of the game, as enemies will consistently melt you from their scaling damage and nullify your damage soaking aspect of your kit.

While I don’t build Force of Nature as much anymore, if Kaenic was heavily nerfed or removed from the game I’d simply start building Force of Nature to compensate for the loss of the item. Force of Nature is massively overlooked within this climate of the game, as the item is left as a second choice rather than a first choice, as its role of stacking MR passive through a fight against MR damage is similar to the problem of what Jak’Sho has, where champions can easily burst you down before you’re fully able to fully make use of it. Force of Nature is most certainly not bad however, for 2800g you’re able to have 55MR on top of 70 BONUS MR, allowing you to have up to 125 additional MR within a fight, alongside having 10% movement speed from the base and steadfast passive being stacked. Force of Nature is still great vs heavy AP compositions where the enemy lacks heavy burst damage, but instead against consistent AP damage to help aid Force of Nature’s stacking passive through a fight.

Hexplate’s recent buffs have made it a considerable item towards Renekton’s build paths, making it a great catch and anti kite style item within skirmishes and teamfights. Experimental Hexplate’s passive also allows Renekton to enhance his fighting potential with his ultimate, allowing him to gain 50% bonus attack speed on top of 20% bonus movement speed through the usage. While Hexplate seems absolutely crazy and somewhat viable, I somewhat have trouble actually debating where to actually put it within my build, as Renekton spikes a lot harder with other alternative items over Hexplate as a first and second item. Ideally, you could have it as a second item if the enemy lacks armour and are primarily ranged, however you could also build Stridebreaker, which does actually lead to an interesting debate on what’s actually better. Stridebreaker, while seemingly a more comfy and teamplay based choice, is actually a lot worse if you look at the stats. Hexplate’s 3000g makes it a worthy contender to actually buy it over Stridebreaker’s 3300g cost, allowing you to also have 30 ultimate haste to have more frequent R uses, as well as having 8 seconds worth of active stats to help you win a teamfight or skirmish. Stridebreaker’s active, you’re able to AoE apply a 35% slow for 3 seconds, while also gaining 35% bonus movement speed for each champion hit for 3 seconds, overall providing less additional stat power through the course of time. Hexplate’s components are also way better in hindsight, as having a tunneler and phage provides you with beefy stats through the item purchase, providing a smooth bruiser powerspike. One downside to Hexplate, is that you’re entirely ultimately dependent to use the stats, making it slightly awkward in the event of not having R, which is practically rare anyways within the mid to late game. Overall, I haven’t tried enough Hexplate yet as a second item prior to writing this, but the stats and ideology itself makes it actually a pretty superior purchase potentially, but I need to study how it feels in game before making that abundantly clear through this write up. I will soon elevate or keep it at B tier depending on how the tests go, so make sure to review back through the next patches.

Quite honestly when I was thinking about the placement I was thinking of rating it down to C tier, however I’d only rate it B because of Renekton’s ability to synergise the item off his high HP builds and his R. Overall Titanic Hydra does not quite make the mark in most meta builds, mainly due to the fact Titanic is so expensive and lacks the overall versatility in stats to keep up with items such as Stridebreaker and Profane. While Titanic is practically a waste of gold, there is a case where you can build it with Overlords if you want a high HP and damage based build, which is absolutely crazy if the enemy lacks any HP shred to deal with Renekton’s HP stacking. Furthermore, I think this item is more for fun than anything seriously contemplating within a game.

Another great situational item is Guardian Angel, as this item allows you to make more committed plays in riskier games. Guardian Angel’s overall role hasn’t changed for many years, making it pretty consistent and stable if you want to purchase it as a last item. The main problem I have with Guardian’s Angel, is that it’s primarily good into AD champions with the additional armour, while making it a more of a risk into the majority of AP champions. Most often I also find building other items like Death’s Dance a better purchase, due to the item’s damage mitigation and powerloaded stats within the later stages of the game. Overall, it’s definitely a good item if you want to play for 1 committed flash style play, on top of using the Guardian Angel passive as a second wind to come back within a fight.

Trinity is more towards being a JOAT item, making it pretty necessary if you want an abundance of stats to help you through reaching your stacks, while amplifying your all in ability with the sheen proc. Trinity’s purpose is mainly towards full damage style builds, where you prioritise playing against squishy based compositions, giving you an alternative item choice than BoTRK. Trinity is listed within B tier mainly due to it feeling limited within most other playstyles, more so being an alternative choice to BoTRK, which 9/10x I’m usually buying over Triforce. Overall, this is just a more fun item if you want to play it with JOAT, which helps you easily reach the stacks you’re looking for while having Nuclear one shot W power to effortlessly kill your enemies with.

Hexdrinker as an item is the only beneficial item worth having as an offensive magic resist AD item, as its upgraded item version Maw of Malmortius has way weaker and suboptimal stats compared to any other tank magic resist item. Overall I’m not a big fan of Maw, due to the abundance of nerfs and changes it has received over the years, making it a pretty suboptimal choice compared to Kaenic and Force of Nature. Usually when I complete Hexdrinker to Maw, it’s mainly due to the fact I just want to keep the AD stats and MR shield to not waste my gold spend from Hexdrinker. All in all, I’m way better off going Eclipse into the same match ups I’m going hexdrinker early, as the completed stats from Eclipse give me way more power to do something within my the game than having Maw of Malmortius and trying to survive.

Definitely worth a try if you’re interested in a completely different Renekton build.

Hullbreaker is another crazy item you can play on Renekton, as its overall viability comes from Renekton’s high HP to help scale the damage passive, as well as Renekton’s W allowing him to easily chain Hull stacks against his target. Hullbreaker also serves an alternative purpose such as a Hullbreaker on Irelia, where both champions can become incredibly stat checky, as well as having the damage and pushing potential to become a threat within the side lane. Hullbreaker’s additional mobility also provides him the ability to run down his enemies, as well as using it to help play against kite based champions. While Hullbreaker seems strong, building it as a 2nd item only seems like the main build slot, which unfortunately sacrifices a lot of other potential great buys you can build on Renekton. Overall, this is more gimmicky than it being OP, allowing you to craft a completely different playstyle if you’re more focused on wanting to side lane within a game.

Sundered Sky since its release has always been an item associated with certain Renekton builds, however in my opinion I’ve always found Sundered Sky a very overrated and quite honestly terrible item. My main issue is just how minimal the stats feel as a first item, making it quite underwhelming in comparison to Eclipse or Black Cleaver. Overall I find Sundered pretty clunky on Renekton, as Renekton doesn’t have the drain tank or damage modifier based stats to make Sundered any better. The only times I prefer Sundered as a viable item, is building it 3rd item into heavy melee based comps after Eclipse and Cleaver, but even then I’d always rather go Sterak’s or something better for the game.

Dead Man’s is another underrated buy on Renekton, as Renekton can utilise the stats really well in being able to chase down any of his targets, while making him feel very tanky in the process. Usually Dead Man’s is a pretty good buy into any mobility based comps as a 4th or 5th item to round off your general bruiser builds. The main issue with Dead Mans’s from becoming a meta item, is the fact other tank items are simply better, as well as Slows overall providing mass utility for your teammates and yourself to easily reach other champions.

I personally have never liked Spirit Visage as an item, mainly due to the fact that it doesn’t really enhance Renekton’s sustain based playstyles as much as it does with other champions. In the past, Spirit was great with items like Goredrinker or omnivamp Ravenous Hydra, allowing Renekton to heal his HP bar back almost instantly whenever he is low. Spirit Visage by itself doesn’t really accomplish much within Renekton’s kit, as Renekton’s Q doesn’t heal enough to make use of the Visage passive. When compared to other magic resist items, Visage doesn’t really pack a punch to survive incoming magic damage, making it one of the worst choices you can have in comparison to what you can get.

Zeke’s provides Renekton a quick powerspike when behind, allowing him to easily pick up a utility based item in Zeke’s to help provide additional teamfighting power when playing from weakside. Zeke’s purpose isn’t to give us any insane stats, but instead it provides the utility and cheap item cost to help pilot through difficult situations within the game. I only recommend buying this when we are completely destroyed in lane, to which we can use Zeke’s to apply additional damage and slow towards teamfighting with our team.

Ravenous is another terrible Hydra item when compared to the rest, due to its high cost and mediocre stat line that forces us heavily into a side laning play style. When compared to the rest of its competitors in items, Ravenous’s role is supposed to play into a duelist based playstyle, relying on the lifesteal and cleave passive to help us outsustain our enemies. The main issue this has for Renekton is just how ineffective that is, as Renekton’s playstyle consists of using his abilities to play off towards his healing and high damage. While Renekton’s W can apply lifesteal, it barely heals enough to make full use of it, instead making you very squishy and wasting your overall item buy when you could have spent it towards Profane or Stridebreaker for their own desired roles as a Hydra item. Just like Spirit Visage, what used to be a decent item is heavily overshadowed by many other of its contenders.

The 3in1Warrior special itself has a place within B tier as a situational based item. When playing late game fights with full build, buying Zhonya’s doesn’t lose you out on much damage compared to anything else you could buy, as the stasis effect after doing a flash W combo is pretty effective in the right games when you need it. Overall, this item is extremely situational when you’re ahead, as it allows you to make risky plays to help you avoid any instant killing abilities, providing you time and a second wind to get back your cooldowns and survive a fight. Zhonya’s 50 armour also allows this to be viable, providing additional defensive capabilities to keep you alive with a fight. I’d more so only build it in a full damage build, as I can completely rely on items such as Eclipse, BoTRK, Serylda and Profane as my main items of choice for damage.

Overlord’s is another fun playstyle that allows Renekton to convert any additional HP into AD, allowing him to become a complete raid boss of a champion. Bloodmail is super strong if the enemy lacks any HP shred scalings, allowing you to run rampant within the game with the ability to potentially reach up towards 600AD with some luck from dragons and building AD and HP items. As fun and crazy as this build is, within most games you won’t be able to fully use the benefits of Overlords due to how expensive a build of this capability really is, making it quite a rare buy when you’re able to buy it. Another issue Bloodmail has is that it takes away from any core item slots, making it a very risky purchase if all things go wrong. If you do build it, make sure to build it 3rd or 4th to help round your build out.

Voltaic is a pretty underwhelming item when it comes to lethality itemisation, as the purpose of Voltaic is to apply the 99% slow onto your target, allowing you to apply all your damage and nuke your target. The issue with that on Renekton, is that he’s not actually able to fully utilise the slow as most combos already force Renekton to W instantly after Renekton uses E, making the slow pretty pointless when you’re already applying CC with your W in that frame. Most times if you give time towards enemies with dashes, they’re able to also jump out of your range with the slow present, denying you from building up towards an empowered W. Overall this item provides more clunky moments than positive ones, hence why I rate it at a C tier with all things considered.

This item is practically worthless to complete on Renekton, as it forces you into mediocre stats that don’t really apply anything towards your completed build potential. Losing out the ability to build a better item always leaves you feeling very understated when playing Chempunk, and with Renekton’s late game identity building an item that makes you useless even faster or more so makes it a pretty bad purchase overall. I can only recommend this item being good if you just want to hold grievous wounds for your team, as that’s ultimately what you’re playing for if you’re the one chosen to build into this item.

Hubris is a bait snowball item for Renekton, as Renekton doesn’t possess the capabilities to reliable snowball with it as do other champions such as Draven or Qiyana, with their high range and burst damage. Renekton’s damage is too focused on being single target close range damage, taking away the ability to easily stack up Hubris to dominate and make the item valued. When building Hubris, champions are usually forced to build this first item to really make it valued, when in reality if Renekton does that most other champions simply outscale him at that part of the game, due to his missed opportunity to go real snowballing and utility based items that will help him with the rest of the game states.

An absolutely god tier item for Renekton back in its day, unless you’re Neryth I don’t see this item ever being valued on Renekton due to its absolutely terrible synergy and reworked stats. This item simply has no value in Renekton’s kit other than being an AD stat stick that potentially helps with clickbait full lifesteal videos. Avoid buying this item and just build a real one instead.

Another subpar item that doesn’t really achieve much compared to what else you can buy on Renekton. Compared to a lot of the other C tier items here, Kraken does actually work with Renekton’s ability to easily stack the passive through his W and auto attacks, allowing him to quickly chain damage onto his targets if he is super fed. However, despite my community being Kraken Slayer hivemined by various people (Galigator), this item is practically very terrible when compared to other alternative items that have attack speed. Kraken’s squishy and lack of scaling stats, also make it a pretty terrible item through the later portions of the game, making it less desired in the grand scheme of item choices.

Perhaps a giant missed opportunity if you buy it, as the overall purpose of the item doesn’t really provide Renekton that much when compared to other lethality items. In theory, Renekton could potentially go full damage and finish his build off with Opportunity, however the item forces you to instantly dip away, taking you completely out of the fight and tunneling you into more of a squishy playstyle than something that can provide you additional utility and purpose within a fight. While this statement can already be counteracted by the overall purpose of what full damage Renekton is, there’s simply way better items you can buy that will already give you additional damage to one shot, while giving you more versatility in what you’re able to do for the game.

Complete and utter despair on Renekton, that’s basically the only real thing you need to know as Renekton. This is an item I wanted to work so badly, but for whatever reason it just doesn’t due to Renekton’s actual lack of utilisation with the healing passive. While Renekton can be good at soaking damage and sustaining through the fight, this usually comes from his high HP and shields he can obtain within the game, allowing him to tank and be relevant within later stages of the game. Despair however always feels very marginable, as Renekton either gets one shot before he can use it when purchased, or it feels too small to really notice a difference. Renekton’s playstyle is better suited to get raw damage or defensive stats against certain damage sources than being a drain tank, hence why I find this item just really useless when compared to many other tank style items you can buy.

Probably one of the worst grievous wounds items you can buy, as outside the high armour the overall lack of HP and just emptiness the item feels, makes it a pretty useless item to really complete after having bramble vest early into some losing situations. In my opinion, I find Thornmail to be more noob bait than anything good, as any other armour tank item is allowing you to fulfill more of a purpose than what Thornmails provides. The overall thorns passive also barely does anything when enemies also acquire shields, heavy lifesteal or healing based passives, making it a complete waste of a passive in modern league of legends. Do keep in mind that the grievous wounds passive is also kind of useless to work with, as most champions with healing ranged abilities like Aatrox Q completely bypass the ability to have to auto attack a thornmail user. Overall this item is just pretty trash and I don't recommend building it.

Another clickbait style item that just completely feels useless to rush in the majority of top lane match ups. Rushing giants belts as Renekton should arguably be a bannable offence, as these completely lose out your overall snowballing and damage potential into any winning match ups. Hearsteal will only benefit as a first item if your laner is literally a walking bacteria, so make sure to assess that within the first minute of the game if you’re truly willing to rush it as an item. Overall this item just does feel good to rush, and even if you do get to stack the passive the item just gets hard countered by any HP shredding items and abilities.

Compared with Zekes, Knights Vow can be a pretty decent purchase to get from behind to help your teammates. However, most of the time you’re more likely to get Zeke’s than Knights Vow, making it a better suited option in comparison to Vow. When already behind, Vow forces you to take damage away from your teammates with its knighted passive, which barely does anything in the grand scheme of things anyways if you’re weak, so you’re practically killing yourself faster when you’re already heavily gold starved and weak from the situations occurring within the game.

Serpent’s Fang on Renekton is highly misunderstood in my opinion, as most people consider this being pretty good due to Renekton’s AoE ability and the fact it provides decent stats to help Renekton maintain damage with its 2500g cost. I don’t disagree that it’s entirely bad, but I just always struggle to come to terms with buying it when I already have a shield break passive on my W. With playstyles like W max also existing, the need to go Serpents is a lot lower in my overall opinion unless the enemy has a giant shielding composition where my AoE is needed to apply the shield reaver passive. Most typically these comps are most likely to have an Ivern, Karma and some other shield based champion on the team. All in all, this is super situational and pretty useless outside of that.

Collector is simply just a meme bait item that takes a slot up in a crit Renekton style build, which already is pretty bad in the process with how critical strike actually works on your W. Overall, this item has no place in a real build and it’s more of a fun item than anything seriously worth considering.

Just like Collector, Infinity Edge is just a meme based build item that allows your crit based playstyle to deal more damage, allowing for some sick ass execution style crits on your enemies. While this is all fun and great, crit damage is often way lower compared to % shred and flat lethality based builds, which all provide a way better and more versatile way of playing Renekton. If Renekton’s W truly worked to apply crit on all hits, crit Renekton would be viable and potentially broken off that alone. With the item also costing an arm and a leg, this is simply too volatile to be a normal purchase on Renekton.

Probably the worst last whisper item out of the 3, due to its linear lack of versatility through stats and weaker state compared to its other counterparts. In a full crit style build, even going Mortal Reminder is typically better with its utility and stats, allowing you to counter healing reduction as well as having a high amount of damage. Overall, I find this a pretty whatever buy unless I’m trying to get the most damage possible with the 40% armour penetration within a fun full damage Renekton build.

This is entirely a support Renekton item, allowing him to spend 2300g to get pretty decent stats, while providing the utility to help deny and easily control vision. As a solo laning item, this simply feels too weak to feel like it’s really doing anything within the earlier stages of the game. I could only see this being decent as a last item if you’re unsure what else to provide, while providing a cheap power spike to control late game vision points to help you win the game.

This item would make anyone lose their Wit’s End if they’re truly building this over BoTRK or any other decent attack speed item on Renekton. This item’s only redeeming factor is its ability to have decent on hit damage as well as tenacity, allowing you to deal with CC within side laning duels within certain stages of the game. This item just doesn’t really provide much as a good alternative magic resist item, hence why it’s in C tier for its ability to be more meme than anything spectacularly good.

All this basically does is allow Renekton to increase his W range by an additional 35% bonus range, being 236 in total. This is completely busted if you’re missing a screw loose in the head, so make sure to hard abuse this if you care about big W range!

Rageblade is pretty whatever when it comes to Renekton’s overall utilisation, due to the fact it doesn’t really provide Renekton a consistent or feel good playstyle compared to most other builds. Renekton with high attack speed is also pretty weak, due to his W animation not speeding up in combination with high attack speed playstyles, overall nerfing him in the process of playing this playstyle. Renekton’s W can apply phantom hit, however it doesn’t really do much else other than look demented for other people to see.

Navori doesn't really provide Renekton with any considerate gain, as his cooldowns don't really lower enough at a consistent rate to make it any more useful with lower cooldown based builds. Overall this is quite overkill, failing to provide Renekton significant gain compared to any other items he is able to purchase.

Back before it's changes when it used to have 70AD, 10% lifesteal and 35 magic resist, this item was a complete behemoth for skill expression for Renekton, allowing him to deny any major ultimates (Could cleanse fizz ult, Zed R, Trundle R and any other similar affects and abilities) and CC based abilities. Qss could also cleanse knock ups partially, allowing Renekton to cancel out the knock up with his E or flash. This was insanely broken, however there's a limited amount of access where Scimitar ever feels good, making it a completely worthless item to build nowadays.

Truly homelessness at its full peak, purchasing this allows Renekton to form the trifecta of Renekton's Useless Gauntlet, creating him a giant powerspike of uselessness!... Real talk, I’ve tried this item when I’ve been in really terrible situations, however it doesn’t really provide you enough to obtain a powerspike, nor does it really save your teammates as hard as you would think, as it completely depends on levels to get a bigger shield, which if you’re behind is most likely to be a lot lower. Overall, I think Zeke’s or Knight’s Vow are a much better option, so try to dodge this and any chances you have at being behind as Renekton.

Yeah, now we are discussing Muramana…That’s it. RENEKTON DOESN’T USE MANA STUPID! There was a time however where Renekton’s abilities would stack tear, allowing him to stack up towards Muramana, however the item would never complete as Renekton had no mana abilities to finish off the passive.

Shieldbow is one of Renekton’s worst item choices, mainly due to the fact it doesn’t provide any substantial power spike towards Renekton’s core builds choices. Shieldbow is meant to fit in between as a defensive and crit style item, however Shieldbow is just a completely inferior item to Sterak’s Gage by design, as the capped Shield doesn’t compete with Sterak’s HP shield scaling that Renekton can boost with his R and item choices. Overall, if you’re already going Crit Renekton, Shieldbow is just an extra poor choice on an already poor item build.

Essence is another trash item, simply being that it’s a mana restoring item that Renekton does not use. Personally I’d dig it if Essence Reaver gave mana burning as a stat, allowing you to burn enemies' high abundance of mana a lot easier.

Axiom is truly one of the worst lethality and general damage items you can buy on Renekton. Most lower MMR players typically bait themselves into buying this as an item for damage Renekton, however while you can burst your opponent down to lower your R CD, it’s just a matter of why build this when you already have a 60 to 40 seconds R within the late game, allowing you to already have a single R through every major fight that happens within that point of the game. With that said, this is just a waste of an inventory space, as well as Renekton being able to build way more impactful items that can help him.

Hollow Radiance doesn’t really provide any benefits towards Renekton’s kit, as this item is designed as an MR alternative to sunfire, which is completely useless on Renekton’s overall kit by design. One of the item flaws in theory, is the fact you’re buying an item to help you wave clear a lot easier with the passive, while Renekton already has a ton of wave clear within his kit, making it pretty useless to have in the process. This item is just straight up bad, so make sure to never buy it on Renekton.

One of Renekton’s classic trifecta of items with Ravenous Hydra and Spirit Visage, making Renekton of the most OP damage and tank champions within the entire game back in the day. However, being that we are in season 15, the time where those items were good was actually 11+ years ago, simply making it a shadow of its former self. Sunfire Cape is just a terrible item these days, as rushing straight up tank items are just really bad for your overall scaling and stats within the game. I can only recommend Sunfire being an absolute essential if you’re going Burn Build Renekton, so make sure to build it first if you’re going this build.

Another classic item that Renekton used to run over 11 years ago, however Warmog’s has been terrible on bruisers forever, so just dodge the idea of playing it and just never look back.

When it comes to boot choices, Renekton’s boot choices come down to whatever is best for the game. Typically within most games, Renekton will look to either buy Mercury Treads or Plated Steelcaps, as both of these boot choices allow him to negate core strengths against on hit damage or enemies CC timers. Renekton’s other alternative choices come down towards Renekton’s snowball choices, as Swiftness boots can provide Renekton with additional movement speed and slow resistances to easily stay onto his targets, as well as CDR boots providing Renekton less cooldowns to use his abilities and summoners, providing heavy snowballing potential with his leads. Overall boots completely depend on your preference and the overall situation in the game, but to clarify when to build them I will provide some examples underneath.

When playing Plated Steelcaps, make sure to primarily build these into your laner if they’re auto attack focused, or rely on using hit damage to overpower you within fights. Plated Steelcap’s plating passive, reduces all basic attack damage by 10%, which affects normal or empowered style attacks, which works on attack damage and ability power scaling auto attacks such as Jax W. Overall these are great to rush into these styles of champions to negate their strong all in power, as well as providing you movement speed to kite out and escape their damage.

When playing Mercury Treads, make sure to primarily build these into your laner or enemy compositions when they have an abundance of CC abilities that are core to shutting you down. The magic resistance of the boot doesn’t matter as much as the tenacity, as they provide Renekton the ability to easily break out of CC and dive against enemies. Sometimes when playing against AD laners, the enemies general composition may feature lots of heavy CC, making it a hard decision to rush within the laning phase. Instead Renekton should make a decision to hold boots for the mid game, or build Plated Steelcaps then look towards getting the tenacity off Sterak’s Gage.

When playing Swiftness Boots, make sure to build them into heavy slow based comps to allow you to easily stay on top of your targets. Swiftness boots can also be used as a snowballing option to help provide you more mobility to stick onto squishies. However, as a boot choice, I started not building them as much due to their heavy nerfs and the changes towards their feats of strength upgrades, changing the total % movement speed to additional AD based on movement speed. Overall I think they’re probably my last choice, as I’d rather opt into Ionian boots if I want to hard snowball games, as well as abusing movement speed on their feats of strength upgrade.

When playing Ionian Boots, you should try to build these as soon as you finish feats of strength, as their upgrade allows Renekton to completely dominate and snowball games much harder than normal. The main reason he’s able to snowball games a lot harder, is mainly due to the additional CDR gain from 10 to 25 Haste, as well as dealing damage, healing or receiving shields provides 10% additional movement speed, allowing Renekton to maintain access onto his targets. These boots provide Renekton additional haste to consistently apply damage and snowball the rest of the game, allowing him to easily close out and dominate games in the process. To elaborate why finishing them off after completing feats is so important, is mainly due to the fact that if we lose feats we simply lose out on a ton of value of being able to complete them, making Ionian boots a waste in the process compared to its other boot counterparts. Overall these boots are S+ tier if you’re looking to hard dominate games.

Now that I have covered all of Renekton's individual items, I will now list some exemplary builds that you will be able to play with Renekton. All of these item builds will detail each build's specific purpose, as well as telling you what to take with it in regards to keystones, as well as when to do it on Renekton.

This build specialises in Renekton's core itemisation paths, providing him some of the most consistent and versatile builds you can play as Renekton. These builds focuses on Renekton's bruiser playstyle, where his intentions are to either snowball early with builds such as Eclipse rush, or build into utility based items such as Black Cleaver into armour stacking opponents and Stridebreaker into ranged opposition. Both builds can be played with PTA or Conqueror, as both simply depend on the match up or the players preferred keystone. This build is great if your focus is to create and maintain a giant lead through the early to mid game, while providing various aspects of utility and resistances towards certain enemies within a game. If the enemy has crit win conditions, Renekton can build Randiun's to completely counter their incoming damage, otherwise if the enemy has high burst magic damage then Renekton can go Kaenic Rookern. Jak'Sho is a good item to also round off builds if you're super ahead, so make sure to build it when you're confident in your ability to keep dominating a game. The main weakness of these style of items, are the lack of burst damage involved through the later item choices, as these primary focus on Renekton's diving and frontlining potential as a bruiser. When behind, build some of these items can also feel hard due to the gold cost of trying to reach those powerspikes.

This second bruiser build adds some alternative options that enhances Renekton’s damage and bruiser playstyle, allowing you to meet the best of both worlds when it comes to being a strong duelist based bruiser. A lot of these builds feature items such as Blade of The Ruined King, or more focused stat enhancing builds to help you deal with champion classes such as tanks, duelists or ranged champions. Within the builds, I have also featured Hexplate as an experimental item through these builds, which I believe is possibly just as good as Stridebreaker as an alternative, despite it being more of a duelist heavy option than Stridebreaker’s teamplay utility. Overall, these are just options if you’re planning to play in side lane and scale through the game with more offensive focused builds. Each one of these builds can be played with either PTA or Conqueror, however I’d lean to taking PTA when going BoTRK builds rather than ones without it, which are aimed more towards Conqueror . Overall I’d recommend trying this out if you want to have more damage within the mid game, where you focus is to play as more of a damage bruiser carry.

These builds allow Renekton to reach his highest damage possible, allowing him to make use of his 225% AD ratio W, alongside abusing his crazy high burst animation cancel combos, allowing him to ultimately make use of these full damage builds to help him one shot and eliminate any targets he’s able to touch. Full damage Renekton requires a different playstyle approach than bruiser, as Renekton’s squishier HP leaves him more susceptible to being punished from his mistakes, making it very important to have the right approach and correct usage of mechanic ability to pull off this playstyle. When playing full damage, you must also think as an assassin, utilising fog of war towards catching your enemies as well as using red trinkets to help deny vision and create additional flanking opportunities. Full damage Renekton is an absolute machine of a playstyle, as not only can you instantly nuke targets, but it provides Renekton with much high scaling through the game with the ability to 1v1 most champions within the later stages of the game. One of the biggest weaknesses however is how flash reliant you potentially are with Renekton, forcing you to play a bit more one dimensionally against heavily ranged compositions. Overall full damage Renekton has a lot of benefits, but the lack of being able to be in the frontline can also be a giant disadvantage, meaning you must play optimally to either close the game out early, or switch up your build to play around your teammates.

Furthermore, that’s practically it from builds. Each potential build and playstyle is insanely fun and effective in the right games, so make sure to try each of these out and find out what builds you actually prefer the most. There is no right or wrong way to build Renekton, as it comes down to preference at the end of the day, so I hope you find your preferred build and that you do extremely well with it!