K’sante is a top lane tank designed to be a skill expressive and powerful addition to a class that often lacks mechanical depth. A monster hunter from the secluded Shuriman city of Nazumah, K’sante uses his Ntofos as both shield and sword — shattering the massive defensive weapons into gleaming swords when he’s looking for the kill. Most of his complexity lies in the minutiae of his abilities, so let’s get started with that!

Passive - Dauntless Instinct

K’Sante’s passive is the core of his laning phase and trade patterns and taking advantage of it is absolutely critical to playing him correctly. Dauntless Instinct marks enemies — including minions and champions — after they’re hit by any of K’Sante’s damaging abilities (Q, W, and R), allowing him to claim the mark with an auto attack. Attacking a marked enemy deals bonus physical damage and % max health damage, making this a clear trading tool, especially in the top lane.

The damage from this ability ends up accounting for most of his power throughout the game, so it’s incredibly important to weave auto attacks between abilities both when trading and when clearing waves. This passive is the entire reason K’Sante takes Grasp of the Undying.

Q - Ntofo Strikes

Ntofo Strikes can most easily be compared to Yasuo and Yone’s Q’s. Normally, the ability is a short-range slam in front of K’Sante that slightly slows and deals fairly low damage. After hitting an enemy twice in a short duration, however, the third Q is a powered up, long range strike. The empowered Q travels like a shockwave with the same width as the slam but pulls enemies towards K’Sante and slows them even further. The ability is on an incredibly short cooldown, even early in the game, almost serving as a second auto-attack for the Shuriman tank.

Generally, K’Sante struggles to stick to his opponents, as he vastly prefers to have enemies come into him rather than having to chase them down. For that reason, it’s tempting to use his third Q to force enemies back into you as they run away — after trading into your Q’s and passive autos, most champions need to back off to create space — but the pull is not designed to be used at maximum range. The shockwave travels too slowly to catch an enemy and pull them in, so it’s more a fight extending tool to punish enemies before they can run away, rather than an initiation tool.

W - Path Maker

K’Sante’s W is easily the most overloaded part of his kit, as an interesting mashup of Ornn’s Bellows Breath, Poppy’s Heroic Charge, and Irelia’s Defiant Dance. The ability roots him but increases his defensive stats and renders him immune to CC for the duration of the charge. Upon release, K’Sante dashes forward, pushing and stunning any enemies he encounters depending on how long he rooted himself.

Obviously, this ability is incredibly skill expressive — you can easily avoid a Blitzcrank hooking you into his team if you’re quick, but you could also end up making yourself an easy target. Like K’Sante’s Q3, it’s tempting to use his W to catch up to enemies or engage, but this will cause an overextension without your most important defensive ability. To be used correctly, this ability must be a response to an enemy’s engage or dive, acting as an interrupt for their damage and a way to defend against burst.

E - Footwork

Footwork is the simplest ability in K’Sante’s kit, simply giving him a short dash and a shield. This is the core of how K’Sante gets his combos off, as it’s fundamentally very similar to Riven’s Valor. Other abilities can be cast during its duration, and dashes to allies are significantly longer range and shield both champions. Because of the short cooldown, the small shield is especially significant during laning phase trades.

K’Sante’s E is what lets him stick on enemies once they dive on him — the slow from his Q usually isn’t enough to keep targets close. In the laning phase, it’s advantageous to use the dash to swallow important damage during a trade where the enemy commits early. Even in shorter trades, K’Sante can sometimes dash twice, giving a good way to dash out to end with a health advantage and relative safety, or finish up the chasedown on the opponent. Dashing to allies so easily also makes him a decent diver, especially in coordinated play.

R - All Out

While kit-defining and incredibly fun, it is absurdly easy to completely run it down with K’Sante’s ultimate. It acts like a transformation ult — upon activation, K’Sante shatters his ntofos into blades, losing health, armor, and magic resist in favor of damage, as well as transforming his basic abilities to deal more damage and allow him to move faster. All Out takes one enemy champion for a ride, smashing them through a wall if they hit one, and having K’Sante appear at their arrival spot ready to dice them up. In total, it’s a significant amount of CC and, potentially, the furthest displacement possible on an enemy.

However, the ult is very easy to misuse. It’s easy to accidentally get yourself killed by culling your health and resists and isolating yourself in enemy territory. You have to be careful that the % loss to health won’t end up losing you the fight, or that the choice to isolate an enemy creates a situation you can actually win. The transformation to the rest of K’Sante’s abilities means that he loses defensive value from their effects as well, so it’s absolutely critical that the ult is used intelligently and with caution.

The Playstyle

During the laning phase, K’Sante excels at punishing long trades by virtue of his passive and rune choice. When taking into account his early health itemization, he can stay in lane for a long time and win the war of attrition against his enemy. Early in the game, though, his notable lack of damage and kill pressure mean that a majority of his laning phase is pretty passive — letting waves come into him and slowly farming up. However, especially in lower elos, his displacements (while on a high cooldown) can catch an enemy unaware and open him up to getting a kill under tower.

As a tank, K’Sante is focused on zone control, looking to deny the enemy’s engages and punish any enemies coming into his path. Importantly, he doesn’t engage for his team (the way Ornn or Sejuani would), but rather waits for the enemy to come into him and uses his damage and sustain to punish anyone who tries to brawl with him. Since his W can deny CC and push a diver out of the way, K’Sante can effectively keep his carries safe by pushing enemies off his team’s backline — as tempting as it may be to chase enemies for kills, if you stay close to your team you’ll be far more effective.

Even though his core playstyle revolves around patiently protecting his carries, K’Sante’s All Out makes him play with the complete opposite intentions. After burning through an initial round of cooldowns and losing HP during the fight, All Out lets him isolate an enemy carry and try to pick up an easy kill. Once the enemy’s engagement has been sufficiently slowed (or their dive sufficiently denied), you can allow your carries to tear the fight apart while you take an enemy carry on a wild journey.

Items

Since K’Sante is a tank, his itemization is fairly simple — building generic tank items after a core of Sunfire Aegis or Frozen Gauntlet. As I’ll explain when walking through his abilities, K’Sante excels when he can lock his opponent into extended trades, but struggles to actually lock them into those fights. Sunfire Aegis enhances his damage output in those situations, while Frozen Gauntlet lets him keep enemies slowed, within his range.

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Ability Max Order

As noted above, K’Sante’s Q is at the core of his kit — he takes the ability first and maxes it first. After maxing Q, decreasing the cooldown of his W, Path Maker, is the next objective, because having the ability to defensively deny CC twice in a single engagement can be incredibly fight warping.

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Runes

Grasp of the Undying is the unequivocal choice as K’Sante’s keystone, because it meshes far too well with his kit for anything else to be the choice. This rune and his passive are enough to make K’Sante incredibly solid — provided you can wield his other abilities correctly.

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Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide to the newest champion in League — K’Sante has a unique design with a rewarding playstyle, and I wish you luck in trying him out in your own games!