Senna, the Redeemer, has been a very successful addition to the League of Legends roster, with Lucian’s returned wife being a welcome addition to the champion pool of many a support and bottom lane carry player. This bot lane hybrid has mainly focused on the building of two stats; attack damage and lethality with a playstyle focused on maximizing her passive’s potential to increase attack damage and attack range all in the purpose of maximizing Senna’s offensive potential on top of her defensive healing capacities to make her a damage threat. However, what if I told you that there is a sleeper way to play Senna that is very much potentially hidden OP.

Now for those of you that know me, you know that I am always one for playing the weird and wonderful things in the support role, from the AP mages of Vel’Koz to the beefy tanks of Maokai I will always try to play the off-beat picks. Therefore, when Senna was seeing play as a lethality support across almost every professional league, I saw the potential for a bit of the unorthodox and so I came up with Reverse Nuke Senna.

What is Reverse Nuke Senna

Reverse Nuke Senna is a switch up of what Senna wants to do in a game of LoL. So, as previously mentioned Senna traditionally wants to be a lethality-based threat focused on doing damage with a secondary focus on healing her team. However, Reverse Nuke Senna flips these two goals round so that Senna becomes focused on healing her teammates in teamfights with the damage output being lower in priority.

The Rune Choice

Now, almost every Senna main you meet nowadays will tell you that the optimal rune keystone is Glacial Augment, and they would be right if you were playing normal Senna, but you’re playing Reverse Nuke Senna, and that means your rune setup should match. Instead of taking Inspiration primary, you go down the Resolve tree primary and take the following setup;

- Grasp of the Undying – Senna makes surprisingly good use of this rune as she can proc it with ease thanks to her good range on her basic attacks and it can be even activated by her Q, Piercing Darkness, plus the bonus HP plays well into the upcoming rune choice.

- Font of Life – Now this must seem unusual, however, given the core item build that this variant goes, FOL is put in a position where it can be highly effective (not to mention that it can be activated by Senna’s W, Last Embrace).

- Second Wind – Now this line is flexible and really up to personal preference on which of the three runes you wish to take, but Second Wind is the rune that fits the extended team fight setup best.

- Revitalize – Since this entire setup is focused primarily on the healing capabilities of Senna’s kit and this setup core item selection, taking any other rune than Revitalize in this slot makes no sense

- Biscuit Delivery (Inspiration secondary) – As a support, this rune provides so much value in terms of sustain and permanent mana that it is too valuable not to take.

- Magical Footwear (Inspiration secondary) – Saving the 300 gold on tier 1 boots speeds up Senna’s progression to her key item power spikes. This alongside the bonus movement speed makes Magical Footwear the ideal choice here.

The Item Build

The standard default build for Senna currently (patch 10.17) is Muramana into a plethora of lethality items such as Umbral Glaive and Edge of Night, but again, this isn’t standard Senna. So, what do you build when running Reverse Nuke Senna? Well it’s as follows (in order);

- Spectral Sickle – Reverse Nuke Senna is an AD support who is looking to trade at regular intervals, Spectral Sickle is the support gold generation item that synergises most here and is the obvious choice.

- Athene’s Holy Grail – This where things start to get weird, but this item gives Senna so much of what Senna benefits from, the mana regen/CDR is immense and Senna does have some AP scaling in her kit. However, what makes AHG so strong here is the Dissonance passive which gives a stacked heal on a heal/shield after doing spell damage (which she can proc off her passive soul pull) which turns Senna’s minor heals into MAJOR heals (Reverse Nukes if you will).

- Frozen Mallet – Ok, so now your heals are big, so how can you bring more to the table? The answer: Utility and Survivability AKA Frozen Mallet. But, remember OUR RUNE CHOICES? Was there one that heals allies if they attack enemies that we slow, like say FOL? I think so (and to make this even better FOL scales with HP, which FM and Grasp both amplify).

- Boots of Swiftness – Cheap, good MS stats, and slow resistance. Speaks for itself.

- The last two items – Your last two items are entirely situational and should really change every game depending on what your team needs but you do have a wide choice not limited to but including: Infinity Edge, Executioner's Calling/Mortal Reminder, Black Cleaver, Redemption, and more.

Conclusion

So, there we have it, Reverse Nuke Senna, the off-beat way to play the Redeemer in the support role. Now, as always, I will warn you not to take a new pick into ranked and this is the same here, even fi you have played Senna before I would still advise playing her in some normal with this setup before you take it into ranked. With that I once again leave you with the thoughts of GL, HF, and GG.