I always go for offtank kennen. Like most people have said, haunting guise is first item. Then I go for merc treads, then rylai's. That's the core. Afterwards is a little more situational. I'll do Zhonya's hourglass against physical/bursty team or abyssal sceptre against magic team. Next a deathcap. If the game is going into the extra innings I'll grab a warmog's for giggles.

I used to rush the warmog's first. It gave me excellent staying power in lane but mid game damage suffered greatly. The proposed sequence allows you to evenly build your survivability and damage without seriously crippling either.

Also, I think the main justification for building offtank is that although Kennen is a ranged champ, half of his abilities require him to functionally be in melee range. Can't throw a glass cannon directly into the fray and expect it to not break...

I'm confused. When I stare at kennen all I see is tank. The claims I've heard in this thread are as follows: can be stopped from initiating with cc and has unreliable cc.

If I recall the 4 true tanks in the game by community standards are rammus, shen, amumu, and ???? (want to say malph or cho but can't remember for sure).

on the initiation issue, rammus initiates with his power ball. last I checked that can be stopped with cc (oh and if you say can be solved with any flash, ghost, cleanse, or some other summoner spell/item active so can kennen). Shen has an ult which takes you into an already initiated combat or a dash taunt that is short range and could be stunned prevented anyway. amumu has bandage toss which is a skill shot initiation which can be difficult in of itself. My point is that his initiation compared to them seems no worse.

the second argument is that his cc is unreliable. At lvl 6 six with only six marks of the storm from ult I can see people arguing that his cc could be challenging to pull off in a team fight. With proper use of his other three abilities I think he would have just as much reliable cc or more then shen or rammus (not amumu with his 9+ seconds of cc though).

The main issue I see to him tanking is that he has a low hp value which would make him relatively squishy even for a tank potentially.

TL;DR at the end for all of you who happily do as your told and don't bother to ask the question "why?"

My main has been Kennen for nearly three months. I've tried a few strategies with him, and of course learned quite a bit through trial and error (immediately followed by getting mauled).

Kennen's stuns are fight-changing and have potential for initiation. The problem with playing a tank Kennen is that tanks initiate. Initiators take aggro and get CC'd, focused, etc, and are expected to survive and continue to be effective. If Kennen lightning rushes first (which is, in my opinion the most effective initiation, in most, but not all circumstances), he can potentially mark every enemy champion, before they have a chance to scatter (because people scatter when a ball of lightning charges directly into their group). Following with slicing maelstrom, Kennen is perfectly set up to stun every enemy character with electrical surge, and finish off a player with thundering shuriken+auto attacks, or use thundering shuriken to apply a third, stunning mark if one of the first three marks somehow misses.

There is a major problem with Kennen initiating as such. If Kennen is stunned or otherwise CC'd while lightning rushing in, he loses most (if not all) of the first marks that would have been easily mass-applied to the enemy team. While slowed, Kennen is very easy to avoid, and the enemy team will have time to scatter, making it practically impossible to mark more than one or two champs. The second step, slicing maelstrom, then only applies one mark on each enemy, at best two on a small number, while the goal is to put second marks on as many champs as possible, if not all. The third step, of course, only gets a second mark reliably applied, while it could (and should) have landed the third marks/stuns. In this scenario, only two enemies reliably get stunned: one by thundering shuriken, and one by a charged autoattack (assuming one is available). This is such a waste, because Kennen can stun the entire team if he maneuvers correctly.

Of course, if you use the flash+ulti initiation that's not a problem, but you still must use lightning rush to apply the second marks, and when your ulti goes off the enemy team is unlikely to stand still inside your bubble. When they scatter, you have to decide whom you will lightning rush, and will not likely apply the second mark to every (or at least the majority) of the enemy champions. When you surge, then, fewer enemy champs will get stunned, and you have no escape (because rush is on cooldown) when the enemy team's stuns fade.

As such, Kennen is a poor initiator. He has to have all the CC applied to other characters so that he can lightning rush mark as many of the enemy team as possible, because once the ulti pops, anyone he has not touched with lightning rush will not get stunned when lightning surge is used.

I don't think Hourglass is a good item for Kennen. In order to ensure the maximum number of enemies get stunned, Kennen needs to be able to move his ulti bubble to mark any enemy champions that may be standing outside it when popped, such as Ashe or other ranged champs. If the enemy cluster is close enough to me, I will ulti+lightning rush at the same time so that I can get the stuns off that much sooner, and while rushing, chase anyone who may not be inside my bubble, to make sure they get a mark. Once I have marked everyone, I surge, and the stuns land. Hourglass requires me to be perfectly placed when I pop my ulti, and if anyone manages to escape the bubble before being marked, or are not inside the bubble already, I have failed to stun them when I finally am able to surge. Two seconds is plenty of time for people to get out of range.

TL; DR: Do not initiate. Wait for CC spells to go off on your teammates. Make sure melee champs have decisively engaged. Lightning rush to mark as many enemy champs as possible. Pop ulti and maneuver as necessary to place second marks on as many champions as possible. Lightning surge to apply third marks/stuns. Finish players off with auto attacks and thundering shuriken. Survivability items need only keep you alive along enough for you to get in, blow your load (of spells, you pervert), and get out. Do not stand still. Ever. That means no Hourglass.

Also most tanks have stat growths that make them good tanks. Look at Shen, he starts with higher hp/5, armor and health, his growths for armor and health are greater than Kennen's too. It's not a major factor but means that an off-tank Kennen is reliant on his items to become tanky, which can lead to disastrous results when you can't get the farm because 1) you really shouldn't be a solo lane if you plan to be the tank 2) your team had a bad start and you really don't contribute anything to help turn the situation around because you lack the items to do so.

Kennen doesn't make a good hard-tank. The purpose of a tank is to be able to save an ally from damage/death when you want/need to. While kennen can stun, it's far less reliable than a typical tank's disables.

However, this makes kennen a great initiator if you build a bit of defense on him.

I fear I got a little carried-away with my post. The gist of it is that if Kennen initiates, he gets everyone looking at him. Either he gets CC'd and cant place his marks, or he gets focus-fired and dies, or, with lots of survivability items, inflicts minimal damage and only short stuns.

i dont really agree with kennen being a tank. i've only been playing him exclusively since i started playing LoL a month or 2 months ago, and i've read all the guides and tried different builds. but i finally found one that was most effective with the timing for damage output. if you look at his entire arsenal of skills, you'll notice that the primary objective of those skills is to attack. his secondary skill is stun. Even then, stunning is only for a short while, long enough for you to do enough damage to either kill or let your entire team kill everyone. AP kennen with magic penentration is effective enough. later on you can also get Zhonya hourglass for survival. Kennen as a tank, i strongly disagree. If he were to tank, he would have more cc skills or more hp from the start. but unlike many characters, i found that kennen is unique for having 4 skills of attack(including ultimate), not to mention ignite expands that to 5 attack skills.

That's absolutely fine. He just needs a bit of a build up for it. Ignore the ignorant masses, tanky Kennen is what most people do.

I play Kennen as a tank fairly regularly.

He is a beast tank. Great CC. Whomever says he cant stun on demand doesnt know kennen.

Try it before you knock it.

Ive built pretty tanky kennens, but I always get stuff that will help my damage. Such as Rabadons, abyssal scepter and rylais. After that your damage is pretty good, and building tanky items (Banshees, Zonyhas Hourglass, Warmogs, Frozen Heart, randuins omen) will help you be a good damage absorber.