League of Legends: An Interview with KarasMai – Best Kayn in the World

KarasMai’s Unique Itemization on Kayn

KarasMai often stresses in his videos and on stream that the ability to carry games relies on how one itemizes. He has multiple builds for any given scenario in a game. He actually pioneered several build paths for both of Kayn’s forms.

1. KarasMai was the first to abuse Sorcerer’s Shoes (+45 movement speed and +18 magic penetration) on the Shadow Assassin. Recognizing that the Shadow Assasin’s passive of magic damage during both the first three seconds of combat and for three seconds when Kayn exits his Umbral Trespass (R) could be amplified by a little bit of magic penetration, KarasMai took advantage of this to delete enemy backlines even easier. He briefly flirted with the idea of taking an even stronger magic penetration item such as Void Staff (+70 ability power and +40% magic penetration) or Morellonomicon (+70 ability damage, +300 health, +15 magic penetration, and inflicts grievous wounds), but after testing these items, he deemed the items to be too expensive for not enough of a damage increase.
2. Inspired by a match in the LCK, Karasmai created a build path for Red Kayn that focused on an assassination type play style. Opposed to the standard build of Warrior enchant Stalker’s Blade (+60 attack damage and 10% cooldown reduction) into Black Cleaver (+40 attack damage, +20% cooldown reduction, and +400 health), KarasMai rushes Duskblade of Draktharr (+55 attack damage, +10% cooldown reduction, and +21 lethality) and Lord Dominik’s Regards (+45 attack damage and +35% total armor penetration) after his jungle item. This allows him to essentially deal true damage at the early to middle stages of the game because of this armor penetration.
3. After the Absolute Focus (gain adaptive force while above 70% health) rune was dumpstered, KarasMai sought a new build to give his Shadow Assasin the same amount of burst damage that Absolute Focus used to provide. He turned to an unlikely rune for a new source of damage: Transcendence (gain adaptive force for every percentage above the cooldown reduction cap). KarasMai builds his Warrior enchant Stalker’s Blade (+60 attack damage and 10% cooldown reduction), Black Cleaver (+40 attack damage, +20% cooldown reduction, and +400 health), Duskblade of Draktharr (+55 attack damage, +10% cooldown reduction, and +21 lethality), and Youmuu’s Ghostblade (+55 attack damage, +10% cooldown reduction, and18 lethality). This build path pushes him to the 40% cooldown reduction cap. From here, KarasMai builds more lethality or attack damage items with cooldown reduction in order to abuse the Transcendence power.
4. Conqueror Rhaast is KarasMai’s signature invention that has caught fire in all elo’s of League of Legends. Conqueror is defined on the League of Legends Wikipedia as follows. “Upon entering combat, generate one stack every second for 4 seconds. After reaching 4 stacks, your next basic attack against an enemy champion consumes all stacks to grant 6 − 35 (based on level) bonus attack damage for 3 seconds and converts 20% of your damage to champions to true damage for the duration.” This rune is particularly powerful on Rhaast due to the fact that he is a sustain attack damage champion. Rhaast often leads the charge in fights and is in combat for an extremely long time. This makes the true damage from Conqueror on Rhaast’s auto attacks very powerful.