Revenge of Runaan – Comparing Kalista Builds

For years, an item has lain dormant within the League discarded. Called “worthless,” “gold inefficient,” and “noob trap,” it has collected dust, rightfully shunned in favor of superior itemization. Now, it has found itself a champion to stand for it.

Runaan’s Hurricane has been an ignored item at worst, and a niche item at best. Designed specifically for ranged champions, it has failed to establish itself as a core item or comparable alternative to Statikk Shiv and Phantom Dancer for Marksmen because of its gold inefficiency, its lack of Crit Chance, and its unique passive unable to crit. However, it has since entered into the realm of usability in the hands of Kalista.

Kalista’s third spell, Rend, is the catalyst of the Runaan’s build. Applied by her auto attacks and detonated by activating the spell, when it kills a unit the cooldown resets and it can stack infinity as long as Kalista keeps auto attacking a target. Since Runaan’s passive applies on-hit effects, it enables Kalista to apply Rend up to three targets at once, doubling to tripling the spell’s damage output. Furthermore, Kalista is able to become a pushing monster with Runaan’s since she is able to clear minion waves with Rend quickly and at no cost thanks to the mana refund on Rend making using the spell to kill two or more targets nil.

Hurricane also synergizes further with Kalista by applying her Soul-Bond health shred to every target hit, making it easier for a support to trigger the damage by having more targets. Kalista is the Marksmen Runaan’s has been waiting for.

Giving Kalista immense wave clear in the laning phase, we’ve seen her use it in competitive play with great success, debuting in NA LCS with 4 wins in her first week of play, all with variations of the Runaan’s build. But in Korea, up until patch 5.2, her debut wasn’t dominating, but subjugated. She was played several times but failed to pick up a win with the Runaan’s build until the 5.1 patch was applied to the LCK, where Kalista had received minor buffs.

Now, teams prioritize her as a strong ADC pick, but we see two different build paths in Korea: the Runaan’s build and the traditional ADC build with Infinity Edge and Statikk Shiv (the build she acquired her first win with in LCK). This begs the question: although Kalista can use Runaan’s better than any other champion, is it better or worse than building her as a traditional ADC, itemizing Crit Chance?

To compare the two builds, we must understand what each does for Kalista. The traditional build is straightforward to explain because it is no different from other ADCs. It strengthens her auto attacks by adding Attack Damage, Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Armor Penetration, and Life Steal, creating a synergistic system that outputs maximum DPS while sustaining herself through the damage she deals. Her spells Rend and Pierce also gain damage through the AD she builds.

The Hurricane Build, as already explained, itemizes Kalista to rely on her Rend. Building Hurricane first commits Kalista to extended trades, as her AS will only be more beneficial over time rather than immediately like AD is, and so she must itemize Life Steal earlier, which is why we see Blood Thirster as a second item. Then she needs armor penetration, and by this point she has three of her items complete (not counting boots), but lacks the Crit Chance synergy. With her auto attacks weaker, players continue to disregard crit as the passive from Runaan’s does not apply them anyway, and they purchase a Blade of the Ruined King to add another on hit effect to the bolts and her auto attacks. What we end up with is a hyper-sustain mobile marksmen that wants to drag out the fight as long as possible and then Rend upwards of 15 spears out of at least two members of the enemy team.

Before we look at professional games, let’s take a look at the less memorable numbers comparison of the two builds and how they amplify Rend’s damage. This table assumes Kalista is level 18 with 21 points into the offensive tree, getting 5% attack speed, 10 ad at level 18, and 4 ad up front. For her runes we assume she runs AD reds and AS Quints, giving her an additional 8.5 AD and 14% AS. We did not include Warlord’s bonus AD or First Dragon Buff bonus as those are not flat bonuses. We also looked at Kalista's Ratios and spell damage on her kit in Patch 5.3.

For the builds, we took the two standard ADC builds, interchanging Stattik Shiv and Phantom Dancer, and the usual Runaan’s Hurricane build. We did not include calculations for Ghost Blade as it isn’t a core item for either build, and we also did not include cases where Kalista builds a Mercurial Scimitar. All builds do however include the AS from Berserker Greaves. We also did not include enemy armor or enemy AS debuffs as we are taking a general look at Kalista’s Rend damage. We’ll lay the table out flat for you to see here, and then explain our findings.

We can summarize the data as such: while the Runaan’s build does yield more Attack Speed than either of the two crit builds, the extra damage Kalista gets on her Rend from the extra 80 AD Infinity Edge means that she does more damage with less Rend stacks, and that trend continues through reasonably long fights. However, each build does add a unique strength to Kalista. The traditional ADC Build lets her auto attacks deal greater damage and so Kalista can use her Rend for utility rather than as her only damage source. Meanwhile, the Hurricane build enables her to apply her Rend stacks into multiple targets. Assuming she can keep two targets in range, her Rend damage is effectively doubled, and if she can keep three targets in range, it is tripled. There are risks to that, however, which we will now discuss in comparing her playstyle with the two builds.

Kalista’s first game in Korea on the 5.1 Patch was in Week 5, when GE Tigers played her against Najin EM-Fire. Unlike in NA where Kalista is played with the likes of Blitzcrank and Annie, Korea consistently pairs Kalista with Janna to give her disengage and more mobility from Janna’s passive. As the players got into the game, MonteCristo expressed his ideas concerning Kalista’s build. “I think it (IE first) is a bad choice… Hurricane (with Rend first max) is definitely the better choice.” Funnily enough, Pray would go on to build standard ADC and completely roll over Najin’s bot lane (who was admittedly the weaker Zefa and Pure lane).

Using clever baiting and relying on Pray’s own ability, Tigers where able to get him a few kills in the early game. Although he lacked Attack Speed, meaning he had less kiting potential, his positioning and mechanics were great enough to bypass that weakness.



At 19 minutes in, Pray demonstrated the advantage of building up his AD and Crit early by deleting Watch with a Crit, a Q, another auto, and then Rending with 3 stacks in him. Watch didn’t have any armor items at this point so he was vulnerable, but the upfront damage from Kalista’s crits enabled Pray to kill him within a few seconds, rather than having to commit to a prolonged fight to stack up his Rend: as a traditional ADC, Kalista’s Rend becomes an added damage tool with a slow for utility, meaning she doesn’t have to go for huge stacks to deal her damage.

The same story plays out ten minutes later: her core items completed, Kalista is able to kite Watch and Duke by herself as her team dives Najin’s back line. Her damage in the late game was enough to melt through Gnar and Lee Sin, her crits shredding their health until her Rend could execute them. In these fights, the standard build played best for Kalista as they were scattered affairs. Only having one enemy close to her at a time, which is ideal for any ADC, her crit build was played its strengths. Had she had a Runaan’s in this game, her damage would’ve lacked as she wasn’t stacking Rend into multiple targets, nor could she strive to do so as getting close to Annie, Xerath, Ezrael, Gnar, and Lee Sin would’ve been a death wish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYXXIHtPUOc
Fight starts: 2 hours 12 min 47 sec

Another series demonstrates the scaling of the traditional ADC build. In Week 4, CJ Entus played against Samsung. Playing from behind after early deaths, Space and CJ Entus had an uphill battle to fight against Samsung. Delaying core items with a vamp scepter, Space struggled to deal damage against Samsung’s frontline at 27 minutes, and his positioning led him to be separated from his team.



However, once he completed his Last Whisper, and once he positioned outside of Samsung’s AoE, Space was finally able to do the DPS he needed to win his team the fight which would enable them to secure Baron, and later a comeback victory. Note, also, that he used his Rend early in the fight to apply the slow to enable his team to chase down the remnants of Samsung, and still output the damage needed to clean up embed.

https://youtu.be/SqbiyN94ZjI?t=2h6m40s
Fight starts: 2 hours 12 min 47 sec

Now for the Hurricane Build. While it does enable Kalista to jump around constantly in lane, kiting out the enemy ADC, it forces her to commit to longer trades should she engage them since she is building Attack Speed and not AD. However it also creates immense lane pressure with the wave clear the Runaan's + Rend combo provides, typically forcing opponents to farm under tower as they can't keep up. However, the build has it's issues in the late game, which we see in Jin Air Greenwings and CJ Entus’ Epic 79 minute battle."

Early on, Captain Jack put it to great use, creating pressure in the bottom lane with his wave clear. He almost netted a kill onto Madlife with a smart all-in attempt, using his Pierce to kill a Cannon Minion with several Rend stacks in it, carrying them over to Madlife’s Nami, then activating Rend. Madlife escaped the play with less than 100 HP, but if Jack had AD instead of Runaan’s, it would’ve been a kill for him. However, the situation may not have arisen without the pushing power from Runaan’s.

Despite a strong laning phase, Jack’s Kalista began to struggle in the mid game.
At 27 minutes, CJ went for the third dragon of the game, and Captain Jack lacked damage without a Last Whisper to Shy’s Frozen Heart and Warden’s Mail, a scenario not inclusive of either build. However, his damage output was entirely effected by his build choice: lacking Crit Chance, he lacked upfront damage, and when Shy was able to disengage from him before he could apply his several Rend stacks, Jacks’ damage was effectively nil. CJ Entus were able to take Dragon and then tank Baron with a near full health Maokai. Had Jack gotten his Rend off, or had dealt some damage through crits, the fight or at least the Baron may have been swayed in a different direction.



The point of Jack failing to get his Rend off brings up the discussion of the Runaan’s build largest limitation: it is entirely reliant on Rend damage. While one can make it easier to proc the Maximum Health Shred with multiple targets and the build incorporates several on-hit effects to increase the use of Runaan’s side bolts, if one fails to get the Rend off—which can happen due to death, the opponent getting out of range, or greed—the build doesn’t do the damage it needs to. By placing Kalista’s main damage source into a realm of human error, the risk of the build is increased.

The fight at 35 minutes only further supports the argument. Hitting her three item power spike with Runaan’s, BT, and LW, Jacks’ Kalista still lacks damage, unlike Space’s 3 item power spike in his game against Samsung. In the fight, a great exhaust from Madlife stops Captain Jack from killing him and Ambition with Rend, thus preventing the reset on it. With her spell down, she is unable to do anything to Shy’s Maokai, and Jin Air loses the fight. Granted, they were down 4,000 gold and GBM had little damage built so far, but this case Jack’s Runaan’s build only compounded the lack of damage.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/g5zfGokj8Ik
Fight starts: 39 Min and 33 Sec

The build’s reliance on Rend once again came back to bite Jack, as he failed to get 13 stacks on Shy’s Maokai to proc when he was caught in CC and died before using her spell. The damage before her Rend did nothing once again.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/g5zfGokj8Ik
Fight starts: 51 Min and 22 Sec

Still, the build did have its advantages. With its high sustain Kalista can almost never be poked down before a team fight as she will heal to full almost immediately, and the extra attack speed in the early game gives her more mobility. It is rare to see a Kalista dip below 50% health with this build, ensuring that she can achieve her goal of stacking insane amounts of rend.

The key factor which has always held Runaan’s on Marskmen back is that it is counterintuitive in its goals with an ADC’s needs. The build’s damage is increased when Kalista is able to apply Rend to multiple targets, but as an ADC one would prefer to be in range of only a single enemy as there is less risk to being caught out and killed. The build also has limitations on Kalista. It looks to maximize spell damage on Rend, but that spell is applied by her auto attacks anyway, so why not just itemize for the tried and true crit damage? Finally, the Rend damage, as we’ve calculated, does not surpass the standard build unless one were to fit in another 80 AD damage item to add on to her damage, so her single target DPS suffers for it, meaning she is required to fight in situations where she can safely attack several people at once.

The benefits of Runaan’s early can also be matched by the standard build if it adapts to build Attack Speed first. Similar to how some players would buy an AD item, then build Statikk Shiv on Tristana in the past before completing Infinity Edge, players could do the same with Kalista, thus giving her the extra mobility of the Runaan’s build with the Attack Speed and additional mobility with Statikk Shiv’s or Phantom Dancer’s movespeed bonus. We have yet to see this at the professional level, but it would be interesting to see.

As teams become more comfortable with playing with and against Kalista, our understanding of her limits with either build will become further illuminated. Until then, it is safe to say that for the first time in competitive history, Runaan’s Hurricane is a viable item on an ADC, but the question remains; will it be more powerful than a standard build?