“Fasting Senna” has fast arisen to become one of the most dominant strategies in League of Legends, with pro players and casuals alike taking it up in spades. We’ve broken down why it’s become so popular, and why it’s so strong.
Senna’s design as a support-marksman hybrid has led to a massive shakeup in the bot lane dynamic. While she can thrive as either, Riot have been angling to balance her as a support to try and keep the AD carry role fresh.
However, the recent rise of Fasting Senna has seen her branch out into becoming a true hybrid — a support who plays like an AD carry — and her playrate is skyrocketing.
Fasting Senna was popularized after Patch 10.3 changes to the support-marksman hybrid gutted a lot of her AD carry power — at least in lane. Her passive, Absolution, was nerfed to only drop souls at a rate of 1.67% when she killed a minion — as well as losing her guaranteed cannon minion soul.
However, at the same time, the spawn rate of souls from minions she didn’t kill increased from 20% to 25%. Given the free gold she earns from her passive with boosts to her basic stats, Senna players devised a way to keep scaling like an AD carry without having to farm.
After the strategy was discovered, it didn’t take pro players long to pick it up. Fasting Senna was first played in the TCL in Turkey by Royal Club’s Anıl ‘HolyPhoenix’ Işık, and spread to other regions like wildfire.
It has since been played an additional 50 times, and has become more popular than your traditional Senna support or AD carry build. It’s also made Senna a high-priority ban target, often getting locked away alongside the likes of Aphelios and Miss Fortune.
“It’s definitely a good strategy, it’s really strong against anything, because you can pick Senna early and you are so flexible because it works with so many other champions to pair her,” said Excel Esports support Tore ‘Tore’ Hoel Eilertsen in an interview with Inven.
“Whenever you have a champion that can be played in so many roles, they are usually very strong,” the Norwegian star added.
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While it hasn’t taken over in solo queue yet, with many players still opting for your regular support Senna, the soul changes have seen a sharp spike in Senna’s win rate. It climbed from 48.66% in Patch 10.2, to over 52% on the current Patch 10.5, according to stats site Champion.gg.
The Fasting Senna strategy works well in conjunction with a tanky frontline support like Tahm Kench, Nautilus, or Taric. During the laning phase, the support will focus on farming, taking Doran’s Shield or Doran’s Ring instead of a support item to start.
The Senna, playing as an AD carry, has to take Spectral Sickle to keep her gold generation up, as well as give wards for the team.
Focusing on poking during lane, the Senna can rack up almost as much gold as she normally would by farming, while also getting the maximum amount of stacks to hyper-scale into the mid game.
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This means that by the time major fights start breaking out around Baron or Dragon, Senna could have upwards of 80 souls, giving her a massive range and damage advantage over other AD carries who will traditionally need 2-3 items to carry.
Big fan of KT running a voli with fasting senna. Doesn't have to be Tahm and certain combos work really well when you can funnel them some gold early. Morgana/Galio/Ornn are some that I've seen that seemed pretty good.
Get creative with it
— Renato Perdigão (@Shakarez) February 29, 2020
While Fasting Senna can struggle in lanes where her tank support gets bullied, like mage or enchanter support bot lanes, her healing can help her tank sustain the poke and get through the laning phase relatively unscathed.
The strategy doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, so feel free to try it for yourself in solo queue. Take Glacial Augment as your keystone, be sure to rush Umbral Glaive for vision denial, and otherwise build like you’d build AD carry Senna — minus the Muramana.
We’d recommend doing so with a duo partner so you can be sure you’re on the same page as your support, and if you can master it, you’ll be climbing in no time.