Learn Kai’Sa with FBI - League of Legends Champion Guide
One of the flashiest ADC champions in modern League of Legends, learn the optimization and tricks with DIG FBI!
In the past, many famous ADC players made their name on Vayne as the sort of 1v5 outplay champion with mobility, stealth, high DPS, and a low margin for error. But these days (well, patch 16.19 and many patches before), Vayne players are now in the top lane, and ADC players were given Kai’Sa, who similarly has invisibility, high DPS, and is also incredibly easy to immediately die if she decides to dive in at the wrong time. It’s just like Vayne, actually. Which, to no surprise, both are some of Victor “FBI” Huang’s favourite champions, and we’ll go right into how to play this high-risk, high-reward carry.
Why Kai’Sa?
Kai'Sa is a very fun champion overall, I would say. It has a lot of highlight potential; you're playing the inverse of what an ADC should be doing in teamfights, diving into the backline. She has multiple viable builds you can build on her, depending on the game. She's just a fun champion.
Usually, we expect ADCs to be the backline DPS that shreds the tanks first, focuses the carries when they can, and usually is hiding behind a support and a frontliner. As FBI says, Kai’Sa is the inverse; she has the ability to dive right into the backline with her ultimate, Killer Instinct. This leads to the funny scenario where you’re right in the thick of where multiple enemy carries can potentially burst you down, and you have to use your mobility and invisibility to dodge and blow up their backline before they delete you from the game for trying.
Back in the day, we used to call this “Vaynespotting” when your ADC jumps in solo and tries to 1v5 (and fail). This exact thing happens to Kai’Sa players very frequently as they can’t hesitate to jump in with Killer Instinct immediately, and many ADCs absolutely thrive off this kind of gameplay. It’s the same freeing feeling as hitting a snowball in ARAM into five people, and immediately pressing the go button and somehow making the outplay.
As for multiple viable builds, she has a traditional ADC path, an AP build, and multiple viable items in between all of them that we’ll go right into.
Itemization/Runes
FBI’s build recommendation is basically an AP build that dips into all three like a hybrid build, unlocking all of Kai’Sa’s evolves, but getting the most out of her high AP ratios without losing the Q – Icathian Rain evolve. It’s a DPS build that mixes attack speed and high burst from the missing health damage of Kai’Sa’s passive, Second Skin. You’ll want to consider attack speed runes like Lethal Tempo with this build, as it synergizes with her wanting to attack as much as possible to stack up her passive.
I think the best build path for Kai'Sa is definitely the AP route: Kraken Slayer into Rageblade into Nashor's into Deathcap/Zhonyas/Void; it's probably the strongest build overall. The strength of the build is that you have a very strong early spike with the Kraken Slayer into Pickaxe with a Cull; it gives you a Q evolve, and then you naturally just go into AP. You have pretty good mixed damage, and you're very, very strong when you get items on Kai'Sa. I would say the AP poke build is a bit too difficult to pull off in competitive play, because you have a lot of downtime where you're very weak. So if you're trying to build Manamune into Shadowflame, you're just very weak for too long into the game. I would say the former build is the most ideal.
FBI’s build in question, where as soon as you hit Kraken Slayer, you can buy a Pickaxe and evolve Kai’Sa’s Q, then transition into AP items. The last AP items (and of course, shoving boots early before we jump into this build) are situational. Item builder from Shyv.net
The other build is a poke build primarily focused on throwing W – Void Seeker until the enemy back line dies, with Manamune and Shadowflame as key items. This is more typically built when you don’t want to interact with the enemy in close range and can maintain distance long enough to poke them down. It’s particularly popular in ARAM where you can kind of just stand around and throw Ws for free all day, but in Summoner’s Rift there are many more angles where you can get caught out, and the build becomes far weaker. While Lethal Tempo can be fine with this build too, you may want to lean into the Domination tree with Dark Harvest or Electrocute for burst. However, you’ll still probably want Lethal Tempo because having some attack speed is important even for the poke build to finish the job (or Hail of Blades, in this case).
The AP poke build core. Generally flexible afterward with high-value AP items like Deathcap/Void Staff. Item builder from Shyv.net
In some situations, FBI says you can also commit to a more traditional ADC build.
Going into Terminus and traditional ADC items, that’s also fine, but I will say I believe the AP option is stronger. Though if your team has three AP champions, you may want to build AD.
Needless to say, Kai’Sa is a really flexible champion, on the likes of other hybrid scalers like Teemo and Kayle. You can build virtually anything, so to speak, and she’ll probably be able to use it in some way.
Most important thing to learn when playing Kai’Sa
The most important thing to learn when playing Kai'Sa, assuming you have the mechanics down, is just the patience around teamfighting. You don't always need to be diving into teamfights just because your damage output is really high, so it's important to get as much damage as you can onto the frontline first, then wait for your opportunity to dive the backline when cooldowns have been used.
Earlier, we described the equivalent of vaynespotting for Kai’Sa, where she dives in overconfidently and immediately dies. Basically, FBI is telling you to wait before you do that for a second. As much as it sounds obvious, it’s actually one of the harder things to practice as a carry. It comes down to knowing what can immediately threaten you, what you know you can survive and avoid, and immediately seizing the chance when it comes up.
Let’s say hypothetically, you’re up against an Orianna in the backline. You may feel like you can dodge her ultimate and outplay her with stealth, but another option is to simply wait until she has to use it, and then dive in. The gist is to wait for the enemy to drop something that can threaten you before you dive in, which makes the fight much easier to survive because they no longer have their lethal window.
But as FBI says, also focus on the frontline, because you have a lot of DPS that can take them down without needing to burn your ultimate. Kai’Sa is incredible for shredding tanks because of her missing health damage from her passive, which you can often get free auto attacks onto them safely between dodging abilities with her E, and you can use your ultimate as an extra layer of safety rather than as a diving tool. It gives you a big shield and an immediate dash for repositioning; it’s really good in general, and you’ll know that you have access to it because whoever you’re autoing will let you use Killer Instinct without needing to check if they have stacks on them.
Kai’Sa Tricks
We separated the tricks FBI explains here.
You can W as your ulting. It makes it pretty hard for your opponent to dodge your W because you're in cast animation as you're flying, so basically it does the damage as soon as you drop on them, assuming you aim it well. If you have two evolves at the same time, you can just press CTRL + Q-E, whichever abilities you're evolving, and you can evolve both at the same time. Then, while you're evolving, you can press recall as soon as you press the evolve button, and it'll cancel the animation. You can also do it with her E. So if you press your evolution button as you press E, you can avoid the downtime altogether without having to evolve your skills.
Most of the value of the latter is that you can save a few seconds to rush into wherever you need to be. It’s a small optimization that might save you a cannon minion or get you into a fight just in time. The former is a trick that lets you get your burst in much faster and easier, as her W will, in a way, immediately track onto the enemy target because Kai’Sa’s ultimate sends her directly on top of who she clicks on. It’s really difficult for players to react to immediately and dodge.
Conclusion
Please take this one piece of advice: don't immediately dive into a carry, and you’ll drastically improve your win rate.
But in all seriousness, Kai’Sa is a really versatile carry champion that lets you deal lots of magic damage with the same typical high-APM gameplay that many ADCs love. You get build variety, flashy gameplay, and the potential outplay factor that makes highlight reels.
On a sillier note, as a callback to our little discussion of Vayne and Kai’Sa being similar, pro players like former DIG top laner Photon and HLE Top Laner Zeus were seen playing Kai’Sa in the top lane for solo queue as of 16.19. Perhaps they really are the same champion in disguise, and AD carry players may be fighting for this powerful hypercarry between other roles.
We thank FBI for his time explaining Kai’Sa; check out his socials here!
