Path of Champions Guide: Kai’Sa

Kai’Sa: Path of Champions Guide

Kai’Sa is a Void monster on the ladder, but how is she in Path of Champions? She can be a bit tricky as in ladder decks she heavily relies on decks packed with keywords so she can flip quickly and start executing the enemy with her number of keywords and stats – not to mention Supercharge helping close out games quickly.

In your base path of champion deck, you don’t have the same options for quickly evolving Kai’Sa which makes your decisions in drafting cards for Kai’Sa’s Path of Champions runs more critical than other champions in Path of Champions.

In this guide, I will be going over what you should think about when making decisions about what to buy from shops, what powers to choose from, as well as general tips to help you have stronger and more fun Kai’Sa runs!

For more tips and tricks, check out our other Path of Champions guides.

In this article we will go over:

• General Gameplan
• Champion Relics
• Support Champion
• Pick a Path – Shops and Champion Item Chests
• Passive Powers
• Rerolls
• Additional Tips

General Gameplan

As mentioned earlier, Kai’Sa is all about keywords and getting enough keywords to Evolve and throw out a ton of Icathian Missiles through the use of Second Skin sharing all positive keywords with Kai’Sa.

Some keywords are already in your decks such as Spellshield, Overwhelm, and Quick Attack. Although Payday can hit Tough or Challenger – it isn’t very reliable so I don’t think of my deck as having these keywords.

The same goes for Voidling as they are randomly generated keywords that aren’t always reliable.

Due to Kai’Sa having Quick attack on her naturally – Quick Attack is a keyword that you never draft a card because you want that keyword.

Not all wanted keywords are created equal though. A unit that gives you Elusive or Scout are premium as these keywords allow you to end games or put a lot more pressure with Kaisa.

Lifesteal is also amazing and for me personally is my most favored keyword as keeping high HP into each round and not requiring a healer allows you to cut weak cards in your deck as well as allows the possibility of getting S rank for your run. (Once you use a healer, you can only get an A rank at best).

Due to Kai’Sa natural Quick Attack – Challenger feels quite good on her as well so that tends to be my 4th most prioritized keyword due to being able to make favorable trades and keep my Kai’Sa safe while still attacking.

For this reward, despite Mountain Goat is a very strong 2 drop option – Shadow Assassin is a snap pick as it allows me to more easily give Kai’Sa elusive plus a draw isn’t a bad thing either.

Choosing a Champion Relic (1st Slot Common)

As we said earlier, naturally our deck doesn’t have as many keywords as we’d like. Hopefully, relics are able to help this out a bit. If you have the option to play a relic that has a keyword it can greatly help your Kai’Sa level up.

I had the option between Regeneration and Challenger. I picked Regeneration as that one is harder to come by naturally and it makes my Kai’Sa more resilient overall. Challenger is certainly a defendable choice as well though.

If you don’t have the option of an additional keyword – consider giving Kai’Sa more stats to keep her alive easier and allow her to close out games.

Support Champion

There is no surprise what I’m going to tell you here – pick champions with keywords. Kai’Sa is the star in the show in your deck and all your decisions revolve around her. This includes the champion you decide to play her with.

Quinn is a solid option as the gives Challenger and Scout which are two fantastic keywords on Kai’Sa. Another strong champion would be Zoe as she has the Elusive keywords and on top of that, her Supercool Starcharts are able to create units that have additional keywords such as The Serpent and The Charger that give challenger and Overwhelm respectively.

My personal favorite is Viktor as he is already part of a meta Kai’Sa deck and with him, I always get to level up Kai’Sa even if my deck is a bit awkward.

In this case, Viktor is always the pick as he has an unlimited number of keywords he can give to Kai’Sa.

Pick a Path – Shops and Champion Item Chests

Layering keywords on Kai’Sa is important, and in order to do that – that means we want to interact with as many shops and Champion Item Chests as possible. This means that we will want to be mindful when deciding which path to choose in our runs.

For example, if we have the option to head in the direction of a Champion Item Chest over a Spell Chest. This is because we hope to give Kai’Sa an additional keyword or stats as we want anything we can get to buff her up more.

Although I didn’t get an option for an additional keyword I have two decent options. I can either buff Kai’Sa by 2 health or give myself a draw option. It is important to note that which champion you choose you get an extra copy of it.

Getting an extra copy of Kai’Sa is nice. In this case, I already had 3 Kai’Sas and had buffed her once already. I liked the idea of adding draw to Viktor as there were cases where I found Viktor but I hadn’t found Kai’Sa. With this, selection the hope was the draw would help me get closer to Kai’Sa in some instances.

However, if I was given the option to add a simple keyword such as Fearsome to Kai’Sa I would choose that every time as the Evolve progress is too important to pass up.

In shops, you will want to draft cards with keywords you don’t already have to benefit Kai’Sa. However, you also want to take cards that are generally strong as well – don’t pass them up just because they don’t have a keyword. However, be careful not to buy too many cards like this as they will dilute your deck and may halt your Kai’Sa level-up progress.

In this shop, I took Sonic wave as it always gives me Challenger but also because Poro Snax may summon a Poro which has a keyword that I don’t have already.

At a minimum, I add one new keyword to my Evolve keyword, but with the Poro Snax attachment in some cases, I might add two keywords to the count! Be on the lookout for Poro Snax attachment in general as it can add keywords and can help stabilize your board by chump blocking your opponent. Free blockers are always good!

Although this isn’t specific to Kai’Sa we also want to pick a path that interacts with high-value characters such as Smooth Soloist who would give you the option of adding an additional hero power. It is important to note though that Epic powers cost 400 gold.

Generally, you will want the Epic hero power as they are extremely high value. Evolution, Sharing is Caring, and Manaflow are all exceptional and will make your run all that much easier.

If you can’t afford an epic power, it is still worth it to get one of the rare of common powers as they impact your board every game which makes you stronger each round you play compared to a single card that you may or may not draw.

Smooth Soloist offers additional powers for a price, but she is always worth interacting with assuming you have the minimum of 200 gold to pick up a power.

In this spot, Evolution is absolutely bonkers as it gives so many stats to Kai’Sa as well as several of her followers.

Passive Powers

Now that we are here, we might as well talk about passive powers. What is good and worth taking and what should you avoid?

Generally, most Epic hero powers are a snap pick as they are overturned compared to the Rare powers.

However, there are solid options even in the commons as some of them give keywords. One of my personal favorites is Crush. Crush gives Overwhelm to all units.

This helps level up my Kai’Sa and also capitalizes off of Evolve giving additional stats. On top of this, when Kai’Sa levels up and throws out her Icathian Missiles she chips away at all the blockers and the Overwhelm allows the other units to capitalize off of Kai’Sa’s Icathian Rain better.

I also don’t mind Dragon’s Rage or Duelist as they give Fury and Challenger respectively which helps level up Kai’Sa easier.

The best Rare power by far is Welcome Gifts which is when you summon an ally, and grant it a random keyword. No surprise why this is a strong power!

Rerolls

This brings me to rerolls as you get 2 free ones each game. Personally, I don’t like rerolling my initial powers as generally unless you high roll getting an epic option – the rares and even common powers are pretty comparable to each other.

Generally, I have found using reroll tokens on shops to be decent as I get to reroll 6 options in order to find the keywords I am looking for.

I also don’t mind using it for some encounters such as Smooth Soloist as the pool for Epics is limited and you always reroll into Common, Rare, and Epic when you interact with her. Being able to reroll an Epic power is high value.

There is an argument for rerolling your secondary champion if none of them have keywords to help Kai’Sa or they aren’t a generally good champion that you can play. I think this is unlikely, but it is possible for there to be niche scenarios where a reroll might be necessary.

As well as after combat rewards – if all 3 options are literally untakable then you will want to reroll. Although you get to reroll 6 cards at shops – after combat you are required to take a card. At a shop, if there is nothing good then you can just skip the shop and move on. You really don’t want to be stuck with a dead card in your deck.

Here all 3 of these powers are okay. Sharing is Caring is a snap pick for me as you are building your deck around solid keywords.

Domination isn’t bad normally either just because once you have evolved your units, they are overstated and can gain value from attacking extra.

Flexible Gameplan is lower on my list but it is pickable as drawing and avoiding clunky hands are still valuable. You would never reroll this because there are so many other spots where a reroll will be more valuable. You are also not guaranteed to reroll into another Epic power.

Additional Tips

When playing with Voidling especially early in your run it is critical for you to play Voidling only when it has a keyword that your deck doesn’t already contain.

Generally, Lifesteal is the best hit but any keyword not already in your deck is playable. It is the only way you can ensure you have a chance of leveling up Kai’Sa at the start of your run as Payday is inconsistent.

This also means that once you have a life steal unit – you don’t want to trade it or lose it before being able to play Kai’Sa and using Second Skin to give Kai’Sa lifesteal as well.

Obviously, if you die if you don’t trade then you have to make the trade, but always be thinking about how you can share your valuable keywords with Kai’Sa as usually Kai’Sa is easy to protect and is able to close out the game for you. Being able to heal up to full health before winning is quite helpful for the next round.

If you are looking for the S rank – the time it takes you to finish a run doesn’t seem to matter as much as it did before. This means that it can be worthwhile being patient to find a Lifesteal unit and heal back to full health because it makes your future fights easier as well as makes it so you don’t have to take health at healers.

Once you do this, you can only get an A rank at best. On top of this, cutting a dead card at the healer is impactful. Make sure that if you are cutting a card before the final boss – if you don’t have a cuttable card offered in the first group of cards, make sure to use any remaining rerolls to try and find one of your weaker cards to cut.

Hopefully, you found this guide helpful and it made you think about your Kai’Sa Path of Champion runs in a little more informed way!

Thanks for reading,
Silverfuse

If you enjoyed this guide, check out our past and future Path of Champions guides.