Tahm Kench is a heavy tank champ that was released for play in League of Legends in July of 2015. Initially, he was offered as a strong choice for support, but some folks also figured out how to use him in solo-lane play. At the height of his hype, both TeamSoloMid’s Kevin "Hauntzer" Yarnell and SK Telecom T1’s Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok specialized in their personal use of Tahm Kench in 2016 and 2015 respectively. Even more recently, Team Vitality Jakub "Jactroll" Skurzynski has been famously using Tahm Kench to provide a hefty serving of pain upon his foes all across the board in the Eurpoean League of Legends Championship Series.
Even still, this gourmand of everything moving is a less-than-likely pick to see around the board. It’s something we find strange, because Kench still has more than a little trouble to serve up for anyone unprepared to be fed upon. We’ve put some tips and considerations together for Tahm to guide the unsophisticated into their own state of culinary pride, but we’re not focusing on The River King’s support qualifications. We’re focusing on how to make a feast of the top lane.
Why Tahm Kench?
So why pick Tahm Kench among the veritable buffet of top-laners already available? There are a few good reasons, one of which has already been mentioned. Tahm Kench is a top lane pick few are prepared for because of how little action he sees at most tiers. According to Champion.gg, which supplies stats for a number of different stats, as of League of Legends Patch 8.5 Tahm Kench has a 0.52% pick rate for top lane, sitting as the #40 overall top ranked champion among all recorded champions picked for top lane play. Some of your opponents may have plans in place for dealing with Tahm, but few are probably practiced in the matter.
That’s not all though. Tahm Kench has some very unique mechanics that make him both beefy and dangerous in one-on-one action. Most importantly, the bulk of his damage doesn’t build off of attack damage or ability power. It based on Tahm Kench’s maximum health and the health of his enemies. What does that mean? It means that if you want to, you can simply build all tank and not worry about damage items on Kench. Not only does the beefy fish get beefier, he’s also actively becoming a greater threat to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught by him.
And speaking of getting caught, that’s what makes up a third consideration for Tahm Kench. A good portion of his abilities are hard crowd control. Tahm Kench can slow his enemies to a crawl or stun them outright with his Tongue Lash or swallow them alive and carry them into terrible situations with his Devour, which also does damage based on their maximum health. The rest of Tahm’s kit is built towards sustaining this already hefty fish for the long haul in a fight or moving himself, and a team mate if they wish, to wherever they need to be to make plays. All of these things together make Tahm an unconventional, yet considerable threat to any champion that wanders too close to him. It’s enough that he still shows up in discussions of counterplay and strategy on the League of Legends subreddit even in 2018, despite his relatively low pick ratio. As Reddit User and Diamond V-tier itzNukeey puts it, “Kench counters any melee champion.”
That's a lofty claim, and we're going to find out why later in the guide.
When Not To Pick A Tahm Top Lane
Honestly, there are very few fullblown counters to Tahm, which is why we went with reasons not to grab him in the champion select screen. Against matches like Fiora, Tryndymere, Nasus, and others who have to get close to attack Tahm, you can trade, stun, devour, and win duels with fairly simple play. It’s ranged champs and tricksters with good disengage and escapes that you have to look out for. Gnar, Teemo, and Quinn are a terrible burden to bear in a Tahm Kench top lane. If they’re even half smart, you will never get close enough to do all of the things you need to do in a solo fight. They will keep Tahm at tongue’s length all day and never let him get in a snack edgewise.
You might also consider being careful against champions with incredible natural and early minion wave clearing like Renekton. Tahm is an incredibly strong duelist, but his wave clear is some of the weakest in the game. There are builds to offset this, but you need to consider how hard your opponent is going to make it for you to get the gold Tahm needs to build something like a Sunfire Cape or Iceborn Gauntlet.
Finally, if your team is lacking in area-of-effect damage or crowd control, you may want to forgo Tahm in favor of a champ that can pressure multiple targets better. Tahm’s reliance on landing all of his offensive abilities on one target means he has limited pressure in the late game when it comes to team fights. That said, if you see nearly any melee champ on the other end of the field and your team is well-rounded for ranged abilities and in need of tankage, Tahm is the fish fit for the job.
How To Build Tahm For Top Lane Takeover
As with any build guide, you have to start at the runes. For what he can do, Tahm has a few different great options you can go for with him. Most players take Tahm’s health factor to heart and go for tank runes and extra health to build up a tanky Tahm that will do the most damage per hit, which is not at all a bad strategy. For this route, you would start Resolve. Grasp of the Undying is a stellar primary choice for keeping Tahm comfortably fit in lane. Landing a special hit off of Grasp heals you, does extra damage, and permanently increases your maximum health by five. Even if you land just 20 Grasp blows in a game, that’s a comfy 100 extra health for your Tahm to utilize in both attack and defense.
For Tahm Kench, Overgrowth in the fourth slot of Resolve is another must have. It permanently increases your health by a percentage when a certain number of minions die near you. As you might recall, Tahm has a bad waveclear. Overgrowth is a good way to ensure that as long as Tahm is in lane, he’s building what makes him dangerous. Even if you fall behind in level, Overgrowth and Grasp will help you ensure a wealthy health pool for Tahm into the late game. Tahm will also get the most gains out of Overgrowth because you’ll be stacking max health on him anyways. To round it out, Demolish in slot 2 and Conditioning in slot 3 are our picks for the middle slots of the Resolve rune for their ability to lend extra turret damage and permanent armor and magic resist respectively, but you can be a bit more flexible with these middle runes.
Another fine choice for Tahm Kench revolves around stacking his passive. Once again, the folks on the League of Legends subreddit lend a hand in helping your top lane Tahm game along. This time, the Precision route of runes is suggested, and very specifically subreddit user DannarHetoshi has helpfully said that “Lethal Tempo is really solid.”
Here’s the idea behind it: Lethal Tempo boosts your attack speed by a hefty percentage for a few seconds after your initial attack on a champion. What that will do is allow you to build Tahm Kench’s passive, which allows him to either stun foes with his Tongue Lash or Devour them for percentage damage, in a much swifter manner. Stack this with movement speed or other runes that help you chase down or stay atop your foes and you’ll be lashing and gobbling them up lickety split. For this route, we recommend Triumph to restore your health after kills and give you some extra gold to spend, Legend: Tenacity to help you power through any crowd control and stay on target, and Coup De Grace to hammer your opponents even harder when their health gets low. With this in tow, you won’t be building as much health, but you will be getting the most out of Tahm Kench’s offensive abilities with greater ease.
For your secondary runes, we recommend routes that take advantage of impaired enemies, which is what you’ll want to do all the time anyways. Our favorite secondaries have been the Domination tree with Cheap Shot to pile bonus damage onto movement impaired foes or the Inspiration tree with Approach Velocity, which gives you bonus movement speed for moving towards an enemy champion whose movement you have impaired - wonderful for all the Tongue Lashes you’ll be handing out with Tahm Kench.
The Right Tools For A Culinary Banquet
Building items for Tahm Kench is probably one of the easiest considerations out of anything you’ll do with him. Simply put, build health and defense, but also build everything that helps you go fast and makes your enemies go slow. A Doran's Shield and health potion are almost always a good starting call. If your top lane opponent is magic-based, consider Spirit Visage early to boost your health and also boost recovery of lost health. Otherwise, Dead Man’s Plate is an easy go to for the movement speed you’ll build up using it, as well as the bonus damage and slow you’ll drop on a foe when you bop them with a built-up Plate. Either way, you’ll want to get Spirit Visage eventually regardless for some magic defense and health recovery.
Frozen Mallet is also practically a must have for the massive maximum health gains you get from it, as well as the slowing effect it bestows upon foes you hit with every basic attack, good for keeping them in range of all the punishment you'll deal out. Outside of that, there are a few options to consider. If you worry that you need to do more to push waves or lend a little extra damage in team fights, Sunfire Cape is extremely viable. If you’re facing a team that relies upon high attack speed and damage, consider Randuin’s Omen or Thornmail, and consider rounding out your massive health pool with Warmog’s Armor. You can build magic or attack if you really feel saucy, but with Tahm built the way he is, you’ll be able to kill and pressure foes well enough, even if you just build defense all game long.
For those who really want a little extra oomph out of their attacks, Rod of Ages will give you that, plus those extra health gains we all know Tahm Kench loves, but for the most part, stick to defensive items when you can.
How To Feed On Delicious Top-Laners
For the most part, your game with Tahm should consist around finding ways to get to, stay near and harm your opponent greatly, especially if they have to be close range to return the favor. Tahm’s passive (An Acquired Taste) does the bonus damage off of his maximum health, but it also stacks three points that will allow him to really hurt whoever is foolish enough to stand in his way. Always level up your Q (Tongue Lash) first. Tongue Lash doesn’t just slow enemies, it gives you one of the three stacks of Acquired Taste that will lead to you stunning a foe if you hit them with another Tongue Lash or allow you to Devour them for percentage damage. Tongue Lash also has a relatively low cooldown, so it’s something you can nearly spam whenever you’ve got a lane to your opponent. Just be aware that Tongue Lash is also a skill shot that stops at the first thing it collides with. Be sure you’ve got the clear space to hammer your opponent with it.
Once you hit level 2, and always when a Tongue Lash level-up is unavailable, level your W (Devour). Now your game should consist of lashing and attacking your opponents enough to swallow them up and do the most damaging attack in your kit. Devour is terrifying. They will always see it coming, but if you’re doing it right, they will never be able to stop it. What’s more, there are a number of clever uses to this attack that make it even more potent. Once a foe is swallowed, you can carry them for a couple seconds before spitting them up. That means you can carry a victim back to the middle of your advancing minions. The minions will all turn their attack on the enemy champ and do even more damage to them alongside you. Meanwhile, carrying a devoured foe under an awaiting tower will open them up to turret fire, which can be devastating. Finally, if you see your team coming, you can always carry a foe to them or drop them on a crowd control ability your allies have cast, like Veigar’s Event Horizon ring stun.Whatever you do, setting up for Devour and using it at the right time will be where you triumph or fail in most skirmishes.
E (Thick Skin) is going to be where your tanky Tahm toughs out the most abrasive situations. Take this ability third. Passively, it allows Tahm to take damage and gain grey health in its place. When Tahm stops taking damage, his remaining green health will increase as his grey health decreases until they even out at a centerpoint. That said, with the press of the E button, Thick Skin can be activated to turn Tahm’s grey health into solid grey health for a few seconds, at the cost of losing it all when those seconds are up. This activation can provide a much needed cushion against a maelstrom of incoming damage while Tahm makes an escape or a kill.
Finally, we must talk about Tahm Kench’s most tactical ability - his Abyssal Voyage (R). After a short channel (in which one team mate may jump in his mouth and join him), Tahm Kench can teleport long distances in only a second. For the laning phase, this might act only as a helpful second teleport to help you stay in lane and pressure your top lane opponent. After all, having two teleports between Tahm’s R and a Teleport Summoner Spell is never inconvenient. That said, once lane phase is over, that’s where Abyssal Voyage becomes paramount. You can use it to bust into the middle of a team fight, appear next to an unsuspecting lonely opponent, or cut off the escape of a fleeing foe, to name a few uses. Wherever you use Abyssal Voyage, balancing the decision between use of your teleport or this potent ultimate is going to be a most hefty call that can turn the tide of the battle in the blink of an eye.
Once laning phase is over and depending on how you did, likely your best plan of action for Tahm is to be a sheer nuisance in the team fights. Devour becomes even more important here for its secondary use. You can swallow a team mate and carry them away from danger. If you see an ally being targeted by hard crowd control, especially if they are a carry, lift them out of danger and escape or plop them safely out to continue attacking your spent foes. Just as well, you can also choose to try to Devour tanks or assassins that are trying to pressure your carries. Either stun them out and let your allies take over or try to eat them up and murder them thoroughly before they can ruin your dinner. As another viable strategy, you can make it your goal to go right for enemy carries and pressure them with the threat of becoming your next meal. Whatever you decide, Devour and the tank you get from Thick Skin will likely be the lynch pin of your contribution to the team game.
But don’t take it from just us, check out this video guide created in 2016 by Hauntzer of TeamSoloMid. The video may be dated as far as items, runes, and some other light aspects go, but the tips Hauntzer has for use of Tahm’s abilities are still pretty thoroughly intact and he has very some useful ideas on how you should lane and play the team game in any given match.
The River King Is Only As Hungry As You Are
That wraps up our guide to Tahm Kench. With these tips and notes in mind, you should be able to build a basic game can overpower most up-front fighters and leaving them starving into the late game. This poor salty catfish doesn’t always get much love these days, but in the right hands and under proper circumstances, his appetite can be the most devastating factor on the field. Tahm has invited us to feast and served us and others well many a time. Maybe he’ll do the same for you too.
Want to read up on even more potent League of Legends play? Check out how this Rengar used the best of a unique situation to dance between foes and net a double kill.
