Senna, the newest champion for League of Legends, is set to come out on November 10, 2019. I have played as her, with her, and against her on the PBE, so I will guide you on how to play and counter Senna so you can be prepared for when you see her on release.
First, what are her abilities? They were revealed on Twitter without explanation earlier, but now we have her full kit officially explained. In case you don’t know them yet, you can watch the Senna Reveal.
Now we know what she does, but how do you play her effectively as support?
Table of Contents
How to Play Senna
Positioning: Senna’s main poke is her auto-attack and Q. Both of these go over minions, and her Q works like Lucian’s. There is no reason to step out from behind minions unless the enemy’s ability takes advantage of that. The same goes for team fight. By the time team fighting starts, Senna should have a pretty long-range, so staying behind your allies should be easy. This also helps make sure you are hitting allies with the heal on her Q as well. The only ability that doesn’t go through minions is her W, her delayed CC. This ability excels at disengage, since getting hit by it will force your opponent to back off and separate.
Be Safe: DO NOT auto the enemy if you are at risk of getting hit with a skill shot. Senna is most vulnerable while auto-attack because of how long it takes.
Maximize Stacks: Remember, you can get a stack by hitting an enemy with 2 abilities (including auto-attacks). This can happen every 4 seconds per enemy champion, which means all you have to do is auto-attack the ADC and support twice every 4 seconds for massive profit. You can use Q to make things easier since it is AOE, then combine it with autos. Make sure to be safe while earning stacks. Senna is immobile and will easily die when caught, as with any mage support.
Global Presence: Make sure to pay attention to your teammates, as all good players do. Senna’s ultimate travels very quickly across the map, and with both a shield and damage, the ultimate can swing fights in your team’s favor.
How to Counter Senna
A lot of how to counter Senna comes down to taking advantage of how to play Senna. She might become a late-game nightmare if you don’t punish her early.
Champ Select: Putting pressure on her is important, especially in the early game. Playing a sustain champion might work great against Senna’s poke, but you’ll lose out as Senna slowly gains stacks from you lacking kill pressure. Some champions to avoid playing against her include Soraka, Janna, and Lulu. Champions that can threaten damage or even kill pressure from one skill shot are great against Senna, some examples of which include Morgana, Brand, and Nautilus.
Punish: Every time Senna autos, she will be holding still for a lot longer than a normal marksman. This makes it very easy to hit her with any kind of skill shot. Senna will want to auto to stack her passive, so make sure to punish any auto-attack she tries to throw out.
Don’t Let Her Stack: If you can’t punish her after getting hit by one of her abilities or autos, just move back. If she gets more damage on you within a few seconds, she will gain a stack that increases her AD, range, and crit chance. You want to prevent that from happening as much as possible.
Expectations For Senna Nerfs and Buffs
Senna as a lot to offer in her kit. She has sustain, poke, damage, a global ult, and she scales into the late-game better than Nasus. Similar to Yuumi, she has both sustain and damage, but unlike Yuumi, she has almost no mobility. Moreover, her mobility is only a 20% movement speed increase; that’s not going to help much. Between having no mobility and having to stand still for an extended period to auto, she may as well have a negative mobility stat. I don’t think Riot will push her weakness of being immobile too much. At most, they might remove the movement speed on her E.
I think the main focus for nerfs will be how quickly she scales. Right now, getting to a range longer than the turret’s by the end of the game is a pretty reasonable goal. Compared to Kindred, that range should not be as easy as it is to obtain right now. Senna also gains damage and crit from her passive scaling in addition to attack range, that’s a lot of scaling. Once Senna gets 100% crit chance, the damage stacking may as well be twice what it actually is. I would say that Riot should remove the crit scaling entirely because of this.
When Can You Play Senna?
Senna will hit the Rift on Sunday, November 10. She will probably be released after finals (otherwise it would discourage people from watching the World Championship where G2 and FPX will face-off in the finals). She will also make an appearance in the Worlds 2019 Finals pre-show featuring League of Legends’ new music group True Damage.
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