Weird Picks #59: Inescapable ASPD Tahm Kench

A traditional Tahm Kench is immensely tanky and near impossible to kill. This beast from the deep excels in pulling enemy champions out of the fight and spitting them out in awful positions where they find themselves surrounded by crowd-control and quickly taken out.

However, an alternative build to Tahm Kench changes him from a pure front-liner to a duelist, specializing in running down enemies and split-pushing a solo queue team to victory.

Depending on your playstyle, this second build may be more to your liking. If so, read onwards...

Introduction

A traditional Tahm Kench is immensely tanky and near impossible to kill. This beast from the deep excels in pulling enemy champions out of the fight and spitting them out in awful positions where they find themselves surrounded by crowd-control and quickly taken out.

However, an alternative build to Tahm Kench changes him from a pure front-liner to a duelist, specializing in running down enemies and split-pushing a solo queue team to victory.

Depending on your playstyle, this second build may be more to your liking. If so, read onwards...

How to Play

Runes: Attack Speed Quints, Attack Speed Reds, Flat Armor Yellows, Flat Magic Resist Blues
Masteries: 12-0-18, Grasp of the Undying Masteries
Abilities: Q, W, E, then prioritize R > Q > W > E
Core Items: Boots of Swiftness, Frozen Mallet, Phantom Dancer, Deadman's Plate, Statikk Shiv, Spirit Visage

Why It Works

Impossible to Escape

This combination of items gives Kench in incredible amount of innate movespeed, which allows him to close in on any champion with ease, even if they have a blink. Additionally, if you can secure a cloud drake or two, even a Kassadin will have a hard time staying out of range. Once you catch up, Frozen Mallet allows you to stick to targets with ease.

Split-Push Monster
For the most part, Kench has trouble clearing waves without using his devour. This means that he often has to choose between quickly clearing a wave or holding on to an important cooldown for dueling. With this build, Kench receives a large amount of waveclear in the form of damage and Statikk Shiv. By selecting this strategy, he can save his damage spells for incoming enemy champions rather than minions.

Extra Damage Source
On a team with Kench as the sole tank this may not be an issue, and players may choose to go a more traditional build instead. However, on a team full of decent front lines, shifting the build up a bit allows Kench to be much more of a sustained threat rather than a pure sponge. Despite lacking a few core items like Sunfire Cape and Warmog's, he is still a glutton for punishment as a result of his massive shield.

Potential Pitfalls

Low Spell Scaling
By building in this manner, you do take out a good deal of your spell burst damage. Kench's only scaling stats are health and AP for damage, meaning that the AD you build will only be effective when you are auto-attacking. Since you are unable to auto while holding a champion in your belly, auto-attack enhancers are less effective on him than on other tanks like Nautilus or Shen.

Team Fight Difficulty
As mentioned earlier, Kench does rely on staying alive during the course of his Devour and holding key enemies away from the fight. This build is much more oriented towards 1v1 fights and split-pushing. Therefore, the strategy that you need to incorporate will vary as a result of this unorthodox build.

Conclusions

Building Tahm Kench with this much movespeed and attack speed allows him to continuously snowball through a lane and make his opponent's life miserable. However, during teamfights you may have a good deal of trouble staying alive and performing to Kench's maximum potential.

Suggested Rating: Tier 2 or 3

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