[14.14] Kai'Sa ADC In-Depth Guide by misterfirstblood (2024)

[14.14] Kai'Sa ADC In-Depth Guide by misterfirstblood

By misterfirstblood

Introduction

Hello guys, I'm MisterFirstBlood from EUW and today I'm gonna show you how to play Kai'Sa.

Pro's and con's

+ Main Damage Ability can be casted while moving/attacking
+ Invisibility
+ Mixed Damage (scales with AD and AP)
+ Can reveal Champions
+ Long Range Follow up
+ Playmaker

- 525 Attack Range
- Waveclear
- Ultimate deals no Damage
- Weak when fighting near to a minion wave
- Needs items to upgrade her Abilities which makes her weak when falling behind

Abilities

PASSIVE: Second Skin

Caustic Wounds:
Kai’Sa’s basic attacks mark enemies with Plasma, dealing increasing bonus magic damage. After a few successive attacks, the Plasma ruptures for a burst of damage based on the target’s missing health.
Nearby allies’ immobilizing effects add stacks of Plasma.

Living Weapon:
Kai’Sa’s symbiote-suit adapts to her chosen attack style, evolving her abilities based on permanent stats gained from shop items and experience level.
Items

Q: Icathian Rain

Kai’Sa releases a swarm of missiles evenly distributed among nearby enemies, with additional hits on the same target dealing slightly reduced damage.

Living Weapon:
With enough bonus Attack Damage, Icathian Rain fires significantly more missiles.

W: Void Seeker

Kai’Sa fires off a beam of Void energy, revealing the first enemy hit, dealing magic damage, and applying stacks of Plasma.

Living Weapon:
With enough bonus Ability Power, Void Seeker deals more damage and partially refunds the cooldown on champion hit.

E: Supercharge

Kai’Sa charges up, briefly increasing her movement speed but losing the ability to attack. After charging up, Kai’Sa whips out the big guns to increase her attack speed for a few seconds.
Basic attacks reduce Supercharger’s cooldown.

Living Weapon:
With enough bonus Attack Speed, Supercharger briefly grants true invisibility while charging up.

R: Killer Instinct

Kai’Sa dashes at extremely high speed with long range to a location near an enemy champion marked with Plasma and briefly gains a damage-absorbing shield.

Items

First of all: I had to do a lot of maths to find the perfect itembuild for Kai'Sa.

So what you need to get your Upgrades is:

to upgrade your Icathian Rain

to upgrade your Void Seeker

to Upgrade your Supercharge

When playing Kai'Sa as AD Carry you should ignore the Void Seeker upgrade for atleast 4 items.

Your runes like Legend: Alacrity or stats you get from going in trees like Precision doesn't affect the count by the way.

The only things that count beside your items are your level up stats. You will get
15% Attack speed and 9 AD at level 10
20% Attack speed and 12 AD at level 12
25% Attack speed and 14 AD at level 15

So for example if you want to have both upgrades at level 13 you need to buy ~80% attack speed and ~90AD.

The best item build path to activate the upgrades as cheap as possible while still granting valuable stats looks like this:
Statikk Shiv OR Kraken Slayer + Guinsoo's Rageblade + Nashor's Tooth

Your AD and Attackspeed requirement should be fullfilled right now, now its time to go for some AP Items to finalize your build. Cryptbloom or Void Staff are great options for a W based poke build while Zhonya's Hourglass is rather defensive and can save you a lot of deaths since it synergies pretty well with your R ability

Runes

Press the Attack has a pretty good synergy with your stacking ability. The other runes are pretty common and generic choices since they are outstandingly the best ones since a good while now. Presence of Mind Coup de Grace and Legend: Bloodline to name them. The Sustain granted by Presence and Legend is very valuable and makes your laning phase way easier.

As for your second tree Inspiration offers you Biscuit Delivery and Magical Footwear for sustain and to save some money. Thats handy, because as earlier you hit your stat breakpoints, the earlier your abilitys upgrade.

Tips and tricks

Second Skin Passive
It's the opposite of Miss Fortunes mechanic. Keep attacking the same target to get the most damage out of your passive.
If you own Runaan's Hurricane you can apply plasma to multiple targets at the same time, it's not like vayne that if you change the target all stacks are gone.

Icathian Rain Q
Try to clear the enemies minions before using it to maximise its outcoming damage to champs.
When you get engaged by a tank in a 2v2 for example try to get closer to their adc before using Q, so their adc receives more damage than their tank.
You can cast Q while moving, so you can trade enemies and lasthit at the same time, or take lasthits with Q and auto attack enemies when they go for a lasthit. That a simple mechanic that makes you win trades.

Void Seeker W
W doesnt really scale pretty well with AD but even with 1 point in it it deals a lot of damage and is is still very important to prepare your ult. The fact that it applies plasma on enemies allows you to use your ultimate to engage or escape from a bad position. Also you will need less auto attacks to trigger the last stack of plasma and deal a lot of damage.
You can reveal the most annoying champs to play against with W Void Seeker ; Vayne, Twitch, Rengar Evelynn.
Since you don't have to manually aim your Q and have a reveal on W I would say Kai'Sa is a big counter of Vayne.

Supercharge E
E is a steroid that boosts your attack speed after charging up. Make sure not to use it among a fight because Kai'Sa will stop attack while she is charging. When you were at your base, use it as often as possible to get back to lane faster with its bonus movement speed .
Your ultimate goal is to benefit from the invisibility that you get after purchasing enough attack speed. You are able to make big outplays and do a lot of funny escapes and kills with that upgrade.
Always use it before a fight is about to begin and juke your enemies with your invisibility.

Killer Instinct R
First of all; An ultimate which doesn't deal any damage sounds lame for an AD Carry. But trust me - This ability is powerful in its own way.
To be fair: You will have to land your W Void Seeker to make really crazy stuff with it, but this 2 spell combo allows Kai'Sa to be the first ADC who can follow up and help teammates on other lanes like galio shen or twisted fate. So you can not just save teammates with it, you can pick up kills and your enemies botlane will not be fast enough to follow you. So always take a look at your jungle and midlane. You can also chase running enemies with Void Seeker + Killer Instinct and execute them and secure kills. Even in hectic teamfights where you cant benefit from your Void Seeker range its a useful tool which protects yourself AND allows you to reposition yourself, which allows you to do a mistake without dying in lategame.

Summary

Kai'sa is one of the strongest duelists in the game and offers physical damage as well as magical damage and is able to destroy tanks too within seconds.
In my opinion it is one of the most flexible and strongest champions you can imagine and even if the AP Build where you were able to snipe people all over half the map from 100 to 0 within seconds, i still highly recommend you to blind pick and main her in rankeds if you are experienced with her.

Thank you!

Thanks for paying attention to my guide. My English is not the best so if you find mistakes feel free to correct me.

Greetings
misterfirstblood