How to play AP Kai’Sa in League of Legends

Kai’Sa, the Daughter of the Void, is an unconventional AD carry that can represent both the traditional front-to-back hyperscaling AD carry and an elusive assassin that can obliterate your backline in just several seconds. 

Released in 2018, Kai’Sa’s kit revolves around stacking raw attack damage, attack speed, and ability power to evolve base spells into Void-imbued lethal weapons. Unlike Kha’Zhix, who has a similar evolution mechanic, Kai’Sa levels have nothing to do with her evolution, but she rather needs to gather 100 AD, 100 AP, or 100 percent attack speed from various sources to become the unstoppable killing machine on Summoner’s Rift.

Although it’s optimal to evolve all three spells—Icathian Rain, Void Seeker, and Supercharge— that’s rarely the case. Normally, Kai’Sa opts for an AD-heavy build centered around Icathian Rain and Supercharge so that she can output huge amounts of damage in short periods of time and kite around frustrated bruisers and tanks that just can’t catch you. Although AD or on-hit builds are typically the most optimal builds, that doesn’t mean Kai’Sa can’t go heavy AP build and completely shift her gameplay from a rapid and elusive assassin into a long-range poke mage that apparently has no cooldown on her abilities.

If you want to become that annoying Kai’Sa that won’t stop spamming her Void Seeker in ARAM, you’re in the right place because we’ll cover the ins and outs of AP Kai’Sa, together with the best runes, build, and gameplay strategy in League of Legends.

Best AP Kai’Sa runes

It’s definitely tempting to choose Arcane Comet, Electrocute, or even Dark Harvest when playing AP Kai’Sa, however, the best keystone is Hail of Blades. This is largely due to Kai’Sa’s passive Second Skin, which essentially functions in the same manner as Vayne’s Silver Bolts.

In other words, Kai’Sa’s auto attacks and Void Seeker apply stacks of Second Skin up to five times. When you reach five stacks and proc Caustic Wounds, Kai’Sa will do bonus magic damage based on the target’s missing health. Although proccing Caustic Wounds is of the utmost importance when playing AD Kai’Sa, it’s essential to proc Caustic Wounds to properly execute your targets once you ult them. 

With all this in mind, your safest bet is Hail of Blades since you can easily proc your passive on an already low HP target. 

Next, you should take Taste of Blood to have at least some healing in your kit. Other options in this row are suboptimal since, with Cheap Shot, you need to rely on your allies’ CC, and with Sudden Impact, you don’t have a rune until you ult. So, Taste of Blood is easily the best option in this row since you can proc it regularly.

Then, take Eyeball Collection. The reason behind this is pretty straightforward: more AP.

In the final row of the Domination tree, choose Treasure Hunter largely because the AP build is a gold-dependent build. You can also go Relentless Hunter if you plan on rotating often and farming up in the early game.

For your secondary tree, Precision is easily the best pick. In the Precision tree, you’d normally choose Presence of Mind for mana refunding and Legend: Alacrity.

The additional runes should be Attack Speed, Adaptive, and Armor.

After setting your rune page, it should look like this:

AP Kai’Sa build path

Since you’re playing AP Kai’Sa, you’ll need to start with Tear of the Goddess and two Health Potions. Bear in mind that you’ll now be far weaker during the laning phase, so you’ll need to pick your fights carefully. On top of that, you’ll probably struggle against your lane counters like Draven and Caitlyn even more since you won’t be able to strike them back.

After the first back, you’ll look to buy Caulfield’s Warhammer and a Long Sword to complete your Manamune as soon as possible. Once you have Manamune in your inventory, you’ll start building either Luden’s Tempest or Crown of the Shattered Queen, depending on if you need more damage or survivability during skirmishes and teamfights. At this point, you’ll have your Void Seeker evolved, and you’ll need to buy at least Nashor’s Tooth to complete your Icathian Rain evolution. 

When you have your core items—Muramana, Luden’s Tempest, and Nashor Tooth— you can buy your boots. If you’re looking to play as a poke mage, Sorcer’s Boost are the best buy. And if you’re looking to play as an AP-AD carry, Berserker Greives will give you Supercharge evolve.

For the rest of your build, you should build Void Staff to have Magic Penetration and top that off with Rabadon’s Deathcap.

In the end, your build should look like this:

AP Kai’Sa gameplay strategy

The most important thing to remember about AP Kai’Sa is that she scales hard into the mid to late game. So, she will not be as strong as AD Kai’Sa during the early game. Since you can’t output as much damage as you normally would with an AD or on-hit build, for your best, you should spend early game farming up and getting your core items: Muramana, Luden’s Tempest, and Nashor’s Tooth. Once you evolve your Icathian Rain and Void Seeker, you become a poke mage akin to Zoe that can easily dash across the map and assassinate high-priority targets. Bear in mind that Void Seeker, if hits an enemy champion, reduced its own cooldown by 77 percent. So, if you know how to hit your skillshots, you can spam Void Seeker every two to three seconds. Since Void Seeker is your main ability as AP Kai’Sa, you need to hit all of your Void Seeker when a skirmish or a teamfight breaks out, or you’ll be rendered useless.

So, your job as AP Kai’Sa is basically to sit back, spam Void Seekers at enemy champions to poke them, and eventually, use your Killer Instinct to assassinate their squishiest targets like mages or marksmen.

AP Kai’Sa counters

AP Kai’Sa has little to no counterplay since she can stand way behind her team and endlessly spam Void Seeker. AP Kai’Sa is at her weakest during the laning phase since she doesn’t have her evolves. So, you’ll need to shut her down before she comes online with her core items. The champions that are living hell for Kai’Sa are Caitlyn, Kalista, Draven, Ashe, and Miss Fortune since they can either poke down Kai’Sa and not even give her an opportunity to farm up, or shut her down with an engage support like Blitzcrank or Nautilus.