Ambessa

Detailed Tips

1. 01

   Level 1 Q Start - When playing into Ambessa, try to avoid her damage from her Q’s and look to push the wave without taking too much damage. Renekton’s Q waveclear allows him to easily reach level 2, providing Renekton the ability to skill W or E to allow him to heavily trade against Ambessa. Once chunking out Ambessa, we can play for a potential level 2 or 3 kill if it’s available.

2. 02

   Play For Level 2/3 Kill Angle - Due to Ambessa’s mobility, the kill angle may not always be there against Ambessa. However, a way we can make use of our level 1/2 trades is our ability to force a wave bounce against her. If we are able to crash the 2nd minion wave, then allow her 3rd and 4th wave to push back towards us, this will help us create room to easily force a fight and potentially kill her. Ambessa’s overall weakness is playing in a frozen or extended wave state, taking away her ability to escape to safety. Try to always keep the wave state on your side if you want beneficial trades, as Renekton’s early game completely surpasses Ambessa’s ability to do much.

3. 03

   Respect Ambessa’s Short Trades - One of Ambessa’s strengths within the Renekton match up is her ability to force short trades. If Ambessa has a safe wave state on her side of the map or a giant minion wave, Ambessa can force her trades with W and grasp, allowing her to jump onto Renekton and mitigate against his incoming damage, as well as using her Q to help her whittle down Renekton’s HP while utilising her dashes to avoid any direct confrontation with Renekton. Ambessa’s short trades must be punished or avoided, which Renekton can do within a handful of ways. If Ambessa tries to engage with W, try to utilise your empowered stun immediately onto her shield, as it will instantly break her shield and punish her hard within the process. If Ambessa tries to go for Q trades, try to use your dash to avoid taking her Q damage or use your movement to side step her Q2, to make her lose her additional damage.

4. 04

   Respect And Avoid Ambessa’s Q - Ambessa’s Q1 allows her to deal damage in a cone, while her Q2 allows her to extend and slam her damage within a line. Ambessa’s Q does a lot of damage, utilising her target’s maximum HP as additional physical damage. When fighting Ambessa, try to use your dashes to avoid her Q damage, or look to use your movement to wriggle in and out of her Q positioning. Once Ambessa doesn’t have her Q damage, Renekton can simply brute force a heavy trade onto her, punishing Ambessa’s 14 to 10 seconds Q cooldown.

5. 05

   Abuse Renekton’s W Shield Break - Renekton’s W can instantly break Ambessa’s shield, allowing her to completely lose out on her ability to mitigate against Renekton’s damage. Try to make sure you’re always holding fury for an empowered W if Ambessa is constantly dashing towards you, as you will be able to easily counter her W as soon as she uses it.

6. 06

   Play Around Ambessa’s Dashes - Ambessa’s passive allows her to constantly dash after using each ability, providing her with a disgusting amount of mobility through each ability. While this can be annoying, Renekton’s playstyle into Ambessa consists of playing to counter attack her. Each time Ambessa engages on Renekton, Renekton should adequately hold his dashes until she has a limited amount of dashes left. For example, if Ambessa does E > AA > W > AA > Q1 > AA > Q2 Disengage, she will only use her last Q2 to space away against you, allowing you to constantly be in range to use your damage and follow up her Q2 with your own E. Overall, it entirely depends on how Ambessa is using her dashes, but each time she uses an ability it puts each of them on a 10 second + CD earlier on, allowing you to hard punish her back.

7. 07

   Play Wave On Your Side - Playing the wave on your side essentially means playing wave states on your side of the map, via abusing wave manipulation tactics or freezing on your side of the map. Simply use this to help you combo on your laner, taking away any space from them being able to trade you back (This also helps prevent the enemy running you down with their extended or sustained movement speed abilities). You can also use this wave state to run down your opponent with your abilities up, helping you obtain kills a lot easier vs stalemate or ranged match ups. Look to do this when your opponents are below 50% HP, or potentially make a mistake to provide you an all in opportunity to run them down.

8. 08

   Heavy Trades - Being that Renekton carries a lot of high damage, Renekton is able to just jump on his target nearly at will. Whenever your laners present you with the ability to jump on them, simply take the opportunity to burst them as much as you can. If you didn't kill them already from that, use your options of freezing or your tower diving ability to help you finish off your opponent.

9. 09

   Respect Ambessa’s R - Ambessa’s R isn’t so much a powerful tool into Renekton, due to her overall lack of strength within the match up not really allowing her to use it as much other than a way of an escape. Ambessa’s R will mainly be used against squishy targets, allowing her to skirmish pretty deep into her isolated or back line targets, providing her an easy way to assassinate. With that said, you shouldn’t really be scared of her R herself within the lane, although if she does have multiple allies near her you should still try to use your E or movement to help dodge her R cast. Within skirmishes or teamfights, you should try to block the R for your team by standing directly behind them, as Ambessa’s R only works on the furthest target of her R cast.

10. 10

    Build Eclipse, Black Cleaver or BoTRK - Go Eclipse for consistent power through mid game and damage mitigation with the shield. / Go Black Cleaver for additional CDR and other versatile stats for utility based gameplay. / Go BoTRK to one shot and snowball with a damage focused build.

11. 11

    Mid Game + Teamfighting Tips - Ambessa’s overall objective is simply trying to use her R to look for gigantic engages, allowing her to easily assassinate any squishy carries or isolated targets. Ambessa’s overall dueling ability improves massively through the mid to late game, due to her low CDs and high damage she’s able to deal. As Renekton, Ambessa’s overall weaknesses are still prevalent against Renekton, making her still an easy champion to duel in the side lane as long as we’re building Renekton offensively. Our job within the game is trying to avoid Ambessa’s R engages, by standing near our carries to help CC and lock down Ambessa, or preventing her engages by previously spam pinging her positioning and back pinging our team mates. Ambessa without R is incredibly useless vs Renekton, as her way of engage is completely telegraphed, preventing Ambessa from being able to effectively play her role within the game.