In this section i will provide a short (or long) explanation on each rune + when you take it and finally a rating out of 10 for each rune after considering Keystones first • Lethal Tempo This is the DEMON PERFORMANCE™keystone, since our passive An Acquired Taste has on-hit damage lethal tempo makes tahm kench accend , and since i am all about that DEMON PERFORMANCE™it was very close for me to pick it over grasp but the resolve rune tree is very strong. Worth noting here that for aram's / nexus blitz etc i always pick lethal tempo because Grasp of the Undying falls off. 9/10 if max score is the optimal then this is 1 step away from becoming meta , also the precision tree is very strong for thomas kench. Smaller runes
•win rate
•play rate
•value
•practicality
• Phase Rush Personally i do not play this rune , but a large portion of the tahm kench community does pick it sometimes. It is very useful for an escape tool in hard lanes like olaf where you need to kite his ultimate in order for it to run out. Worthy to note here that Phase Rush removes a large portion of slows and that includes the self-slow from our ult Devour. 7/10 (loses win rate since it is picked vs bad matchups and the sorcery tree is not great).
• Triumph is the definition of noob trap so i will have to give it a 0 / 10 . Triumph is useful when an enemy dies so for toplane (most of the early game you are 1v1) it does nothing, but even when you kill your laner VERY often you couldnt care less for some extra hp (unless you get ganked right after, but what are the chances). Where this rune shines is in teamfights, but it is not worth in my opinion to have a rune that only saves you a death every 5 games on average.
• Legend: Alacrity This rune is great, nothing to say here :D like it more than other options in this row 9/10
• Last Stand This rune should be your only option in the precision third row ,very often you can be intentionally on low hp and stay there for a while with your Thick Skin and healing from Tongue Lash. 9/10
•We dont mess with Domination tree so ill skip to Sorcery for Phase Rush rune set.
Nimbus Cloak or Nullifying Orb should be your choice for the first row. Both are fine , the win rate for nullifying is higher but i personally like nimbus for the Ghost + nimbus combo 6/10 for both.
• Transcendence or Celerity for second row. Stats say transcendence has a very small edge over celerity but both have ok synergy with Tahm Kench 5/10.
•Time for the gigachad Resolve tree
Demolish should be renamed to demolish me daddy with the amount of work it is pulling every game! I cant stress this enough how much this rune enables our champion. EXTRA GOLD + TOWER DAMAGE SCALING WITH HP i could not design a better rune . Lastly it makes you a threat on sidelane since you can take tower anytime instead of tickling it. ∞ / 10 honestly it should have been a keystone.
• Shield Bash Here comes the juice of the guide , this is the BIGGEST NOOB BAIT IN THE ENTIRE GAME 0/10 , WHAT am i saying you should be instantly DEMOTED the second you pick it over Demolish or Font of Life in 95% OF CHAMPIONS. The reason it is such a bait for tahm kench is : you would assume that since we have a MASSIVE shield with Thick Skin this rune will be great right ?! Yea, no the numbers on this rune are honestly so bad that you could double the damage it deals and it wouldn’t matter NEVER PICK IT UNLESS INCREDIBLY BUFFED
• Font of Life This rune is great and my rune of choice when playing either support or adc tahm kench (with senna) it provides a heal that scales with hp and our champion stacks hp so don’t need to say anything else 9/10.
• Second Wind INCREDIBLE RUNE all 3 runes in this row are amazing it doesn’t matter what you pick 10/10 . Best vs poke or in general if you don’t like waiting 12 mins for conditioning
• Bone Plating INCREDIBLE RUNE all 3 runes in this row are amazing it doesn’t matter what you pick 10/10 . Best vs all in champions
• Conditioning INCREDIBLE RUNE all 3 runes in this row are amazing it doesn’t matter what you pick 10/10 Best of general value
• Overgrowth 10/10 gives hp we scale with hp end of story
• Revitalize another great rune in Resolve helps with our shield and heal from q and e but slightly weaker than the rest 9/10
• Unflinching Amazing rune take it over Overgrowth vs a lot of cc 10/10
• Lastly the MONEY RUNE TREE $$$ Inspiration
• Magical Footwear Should be your only choice in this row and even if it had better runes as rivals i would still pick it , gives more speed and free gold 10/10 free is love free is life.
• Minion Dematerializer Is my choice when the matchup requires EARLY boots instead of waiting till minute 12 for your Magical Footwear.For example early boots are needed (from the top of my head) vs Tryndamere , Yone , Darius , Illaoi since either Plated Steelcaps counters them too hard or in the case of darius and illoi it helps dodging their e Apprehend and Test of Spirit that will cause most of the harm. Also this rune helps with the non-existent wave clear of the champion 10/10
• Biscuit Delivery Biscuits heal you for a lot of hp when you are already low hp ( i am going to ignore the mana they give cause i almost never have mana issues). That being said the problem with biscuits is that only once every 3-4 games do you find yourself in a situation where not recalling and resetting is better cause you can bait a fight with biscuits. For this reason i prefer Approach Velocity cause it activates on every q that lands, providing value throughout the entire game , every game.
• Approach Velocity This should be the only option in last row it gives you speed when you hit q , w or even when
HAVING REDBUFF and the redbuff thing actually matters alot, for example if you have redbuff , you attack them once and they flash you can catch them still since they lose speed from slow and we gain speed from their slow. We never say no to free speed ∞/10.