LCS Picks: P1 Inori's Full Damage Rengar
[SPOILERS BELOW] In this article, we analyze Phoenix 1 Inori's Jungle Rengar pick & his item build.
In a shocking turn of events, Phoenix1, currently tied for 8th place with NRG Esports, pulled an upset onto the previously undefeated Team Solo Mid. The best of 3 went 2 wins in favor of Phoenix 1 and 1 in favor of TSM. One of the key factors in Phoenix1’s success in the series was due to their jungler, Inori’s exceptional play throughout the series.
In game 2 of the series, Inori pulled out a pocket pick and one of the most popular picks in solo queue, Rengar. Rengar has previously seen play in competitive play but Inori built a bit differently than what’s normally expected of the champ in a competitive setting. Instead of building bruiser/tank Rengar, Inori opted for a full damage build backed up with Sterak’s.
In this article, we'll be looking into the Rengar pick ; how it worked, how it fit into Phoenix1's team composition, and the item build.
Rengar's an odd pick. He's a high risk, high reward champion that requires knowledge of enemy movements to be able to properly intercept the squishy targets on the enemy team. A successful Rengar will mostly be capitalizing on the squishiest members of the enemy team rotating towards their team right before they plan to group. The idea behind full damage Rengar is to be able to snowball the game hard and end the game prior to getting to late game. Once you reach late game, Rengar's capabilities to get picks starts to wean off as the enemy team starts focusing on grouping and builds defensive items to avoid being picked off instantly.
Additionally, in competitive, Rengar can't fit into every team composition. For the style of play Inori went for, it was necessary to pick into a composition without high CC. In this case, Inori picked Rengar in the second to last rotation in champ select against a team that had very little instantaneous CC. The only instant CC on the enemy team comes from Trundle's pillar, Gragas body slam, and Gragas ultimate. In addition with four enablers on his team in team fights, Inori had a composition where Rengar would work perfectly. Enablers being defined as champions that force a team fight; Braum ultimate, Sivir ultimate, Rumble ultimate, and Malzahar ultimate.
Now let's look into Inori's item build on Rengar. In this game, Inori started with 10% cooldown reduction at level 1. This is due to the setup of his mastery & rune pages. His rune page consisted of 6x flat cooldown reduction glyphs & 3x scaling cooldown reduction glyphs. In his masteries, he opted for 12-18-0 with 5 points in Intelligence in the Cunning tree. Intelligence grants an additional flat 5% cooldown reduction. The first item that Inori rushed was his Skirmisher's Sabre & Lucidity Boots, putting him at 20% (a little extra due to his scaling cooldown glyphs). The point of this is that he opted for a very fast cooldown rush to ensure his ultimate is up very frequently. Rengar is a champion that plays around the stealth, speed, and ferocity that his ultimate provides. In the early game, his ultimate had about a two minute cooldown at rank 1. Following his Lucidity boots, Inori built Tiamat for additional burst. Tiamat is an item that has incredible synergy with the champion due to being able to use the Tiamat active mid air as Rengar. Afterwards, Inori completed the Warrior enchantment, providing an additional 10% cooldown reduction, allowing for more capability with playmaking on the champion. Following that, his next item of choice was Youmuu's Ghostblade. Youmuu's is able to used while stealthed while Rengar allowing him to easily catch up to targets out of position, increases his burst due to increasing attack speed, providing armor penetration which is Rengar's second favorite stat, and another 10% cooldown reduction putting him at 40% (45% once he hits level 18 with his scaling cooldown reduction glyphs). His last two items were Ravenous Hydra to grant him lifesteal & Sterak's Gage to provide some defensive stats when jumping into the enemy team.
The overall build is solid for the rush of cooldown reduction and burst. In solo queue, it's more common to continue building more damage such as crit chance for more burst. Though in competitive, having pseudo tankiness in the form of Sterak's is very useful since it makes it harder to just turn and burst you if you misplay on an engage.
Check out his match history.
The last thing we're going to be discussing is Inori's method of playing Rengar. Rengar is notorious for his capability to engage but also to counter enemy plays. This applies in three ways:
1) Rengar engages onto an overextended enemy as they overcommit in a team fight. This happens multiple times in this game. An example of this would be when Bjergsen flashed for Mash on Taliyah & Inori engaged on him, saving Mash in the process and bursting Bjergsen down.
2) Rengar counterganks. This is a strategy that Dandy applied very effectively in Season 4 when he played on Samsung White. Rengar provides incredible burst in his early levels, even before level 6. One strategy is to mentally track where the enemy jungler is and then sit in a bush waiting for them. When they commit for the gank, you hop out and burst them down.
3) Rengar's ultimate. You don't necessarily have to use Rengar ultimate to engage. You can use Rengar ultimate to dissuade engages or even push enemies away from objectives. The ultimate pops up as an exclamation point to the enemy team signifying that Rengar is stealthed nearby. It's very common for players to get nervous and start playing differently when that happens.
I hope you guys enjoyed. This may be a series that I'll be continuing so let me know if you want more insight into unique LCS picks!
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