The League of Legends community lives for outplays. Players hope to perform them, watch highlights of professionals pulling them off on the biggest stages, and scour social media every day to find the latest and greatest outplays.
As League has evolved over its now over-decade-long run, champions have gotten more and more complex. The latest product of that is K’Sante, one of the most dynamic tanks in the game on Patch 13.1. It didn’t take long for players to show off their skills with the hero of Nazumah, and one particular League streamer did it live in an impressive outplay.
Streamer Chukway certainly knows his way around K’Sante and is ironically rocking the summoner name “ksINTe” as he styles on two players under his own tower. A majority of League players tend to panic when a Nunu pops into their lane pushing a giant snowball headed straight for them. But Chukway didn’t. He absorbed the initial damage while kiting back to his tower using the damage reduction from Path Maker (W) to keep himself alive. Then, things got wild. The Kled pulled him back only to knock Chukway further under his turret with Charge (R), leaving him two measly hitpoints from death.
There was the smallest of margins between a gray screen or an outplay, and this K’Sante player emphatically chose the latter. Chukway dashed to gain a much-needed shield as Kled dismounted, dropping aggro over to the Nunu who was at the full might of K’Sante. Chukway ulted on top of Nunu, breaking into K’Sante’s “All Out” form, making sure to distance himself from Kled while securing the kill on Nunu with help from the turret. Now with a huge damage boost and extra health from the Triumph rune, K’Sante quickly dashed onto Kled to complete the one-vs-two outplay under turret.
Chukway let out an emphatic, banshee-like screech in celebration—and boy, did he earn it. He went from two hitpoints to a double kill under his turret and straight into Reddit glory after posting the clip on the site.
The biggest takeaway from this play, however, comes from the community’s reaction. Scattered in the hundreds of comments are fans questioning if K’Sante is actually a tank, with a couple of users coining the term “tank assassin.” That’s a very amusing oxymoron, but with how K’Sante is built, it has a bit of truth to it.
K’Sante, in his normal form, behaves a lot like a standard crowd-control-oriented tank with tons of ways to disrupt enemies and lower the damage he takes like a true frontliner. It’s when K’Sante pops his ultimate and goes into that “All Out” form that his kit is overclocked. Those slow dashes now become lightning quick like Irelia and K’Sante unsheathes his blades, making those abilities designed to crowd control turn into huge damage dealers.
Regardless of how “broken” League fans find his kit, there is no denying that K’Sante is a unique champion and one that holds incredible highlight-reel outplay potential. Chukway is the hero of League Reddit for now wielding the champion, but don’t be surprised if a ton more plays like this pop up on social media and even in the biggest professional games to come.
