A Kappaling's guide to Kuzenbo Solo

Your starter item will be Guardian's Blessing. The extra gold and early protections from this item are extremely valuable.



Shoes of Focus - The Reason you would build these over Shoes of the Magi is that you want to spam your abilities. Without the bonus Mana from these shoes, you will run out quickly, even with your blue buff.


Your second item if you are against Physical characters will be Breastplate of Valor. Mana, MP5, and CDR to help with ability spamming, and fairly hefty Physical Protection.



Your third item will be Void Stone. This item will make you tankier against mages, but also increase your damage output along with your magical allies.


Your fourth item will be Hide of the Urchin. This will give you moderate defenses of both types to further enhance your tankiness, but also provides a decent amount of health and mana. Once it evolves, the shield passive will aid you in being a nuisance to the enemy backline.


Your fifth item will be Hide of the Nemean Lion. The bonus reflect will pair well with Shell Spikes and gives a lot of Physical Protection. Perfect for countering Hunters with Crit builds.



Your final item will be Oni Hunter's Garb. This will boost your magical protections a solid bit, and gives a moderate amount of health. The main reason for this is the Damage Mitigation it provides, which pairs well with Water Bowl and will keep you alive when harassing the backline.

OTHER BUILD OPTIONS

Pestilence in place of Oni Hunter's Garb for Antiheal

Midgardian Mail if they have multiple auto-attack based Gods, or if the enemy ADC is still difficult to deal with.

Stone of Gaia if they have a lot of knockups, pushes, or pulls.

Spirit Robe if they have a lot of Hard CC that's being focused on you.

Genji's Guard is a valid replacement for Oni Hunter's Garb, but your cooldowns are already nearly non-existent during teamfights, so I feel it's not worth over the mitigation Oni Hunter's Garb provides.

Kuzenbo can make use of a variety of relics, but when being played as a Solo Laner, you will want to stick to these:
Teleport Glyph will always be your first relic, and it's pretty self-explanatory. In case you are new to Solo or Conquest in general, Solo laners nearly always take this first. The reasoning being that the Solo lane is pretty short, especially compared to duo lane. If you back to base and don't have teleport, you will likely miss an entire wave, and the enemy solo laner might have time to invade your Mana buff or back harpies.
Your second relic will nearly always be Shield of Thorns. This is the perfect relic for this God. It pairs beautifully with Shell Spikes and Hide of the Nemean Lion to reflect even more damage at the Hunter, but its upgrade also halves all lifesteal from hitting you. It is also great against returning large amounts of damage against burst mages like Scylla, Kukulkan, Poseidon, and Zeus. If timed right, they can kill themselves from full health if you take their entire combo very quickly. Poseidon and Zeus are especially prone to this, as they dump their kits instantly.
Another solid option is Blink Rune. Using this to blink into a teamfight and use your ultimate to disrupt everyone, or using it to appear behind an enemy squishy and pushing them into your team can both turn a teamfight in your favor.

Kuzenbo can make use of other relics such as Heavenly Wings or Horrific Emblem in Support, but for Solo you generally want to stick with Shield of Thorns and Blink Rune. However, Cursed Ankh is an honorable mention. Go for this if your current antiheal isn't enough and shutting down their healing will provide more benefit than the bonus reflect. Also, the upgraded passive of 20% bonus damage can be very potent.

Kuzenbo is unique from most Guardians in that he is a brawler. At times, he feels more like a Warrior than a Guardian. Before the game starts, look around the jungle to spot a potential invade from the enemy team, or your enemy laner also looking around. Kuzenbo actually has a strong level 1 fight, so if the enemy decides to engage in a 1v1 in the Jungle, you usually win. NeNe Kappa doesn't hit insanely hard on impact, but his basic attacks plus slow on top of your own basic attacks add up very quickly at level 1. You can half health the enemy or more before he dies, and the enemy normally won't have the damage output to kill him quickly.

In lane, look to poke with NeNe Kappa. If given the chance, you nearly always want to Sumo Slam enemies through their wave. It does a bit of damage to the minions, plus deals 240 base damage at the first rank to your enemy. If they venture too close to your tower, look to push them in, as this can lead to an early kill against an unsuspecting player.

If the enemy wants to brawl, once you've used NeNe Kappa and Sumo Slam, pop Shell Spikes. If you're hitting your enemy, their minions will be aggroed onto you, and you can use their damage to reset your cooldowns, allowing you to spam your opponents. Once Shell Spikes has a few levels, you can push someone through the same wave twice in a matter of seconds.

First off, Kuzenbo is generally not played like a typical Guardian. His entire goal is to get into the enemies backline and disrupt. The most common and usually effective method of doing this is to Push the enemy carry using Sumo Slam as far out of the fight as possible. Should they try to fight you, you can win using your reflect via Shell Spikes and high base damage. Slam, Ult, and bodyblock. Keep the hunter (Or whoever is the main issue for your team to deal with) away for as long as possible.

Pros
- High Base Damage
- High Reflect Damage
- Extremely low cooldowns
- Very disruptive
- Enemy to all Hunter players
- Very difficult to Gank
- Thiccer than a bowl of Oatmeal



Cons
- Lack of reliable peel
- Can sometimes push enemies out of your teammate's abilities.
- No Sustain
- Hard countered by Cripples