When you fall in love with a champion you play the **** out of them, but eventually things get stale and old. That's why I came up with this new build. I've been loving it for the past few months and figured it was time to share.

As far as match-ups go, any champ that can prevent your passive stacks, anyone that can get on top of you with extreme ease, and anyone with high lifesteal will give you the most trouble.

Until you are at least half built, you must rely on poke and not brawling.


For the play-ability of this guide I cite my own usage of it as well as my 200,000+ Mastery Points on Tahm.

Pros

-Fun as hell
-Can burst down most squishies
-Confuse the hell out of enemies
-Great late game split pushing
-Great dueling cc

Cons

-Learning curve
-Early farming can be a challenge
-YOU are a squishy. You cannot play like you would a tank.
-Teammates may have expected a tank and received a burst mage.
-Team fight positioning can be difficult

Starting

-Doran's Shield is an option, but the build is mana reliant and personally I always start Doran's Ring.

Items Rushed

-Protobelt synergizes with Tahm's kit rather well. It increases his AP damage as well as his health for his passive. The active ability on Protobelt is a MUST for dueling and skirmishes.

-Sorcerer Shoe's are pretty obvious since it's a mage build.

Why Nashor's Tooth

-Nashor's Tooth gives you the best bang for your buck. Your auto attacks will now scale with AD, Health, and AP. It also gives you much needed CDR and Attack Speed.

First Choice

Recommended to buy at least one of these at some point after Nashor's Tooth. Can be skipped if poke damage is preferred to solo burst.

-Guinsoo's gives you higher burst because it decreases the time spent on stack building. Adds more burst to your burst.

-Lichbane if you would rather limit your auto attacks and focus damage with Tongue Lash. It's nice, but rather underwhelming.

-Wit's End gives Magic Resistance as well as increases attack speed and damage. You don't need to defend if you kill them fast enough.

Second Choice

These are all preference and usually depend on whatever you feel you are lacking. They can also be used to replace previous section's item if poke damage is preferred to solo burst.

-Deathcap's extra damage is rather nice and one of my more preferred choices for late game.

-Void Staff if the enemy team has been building magic resist.

-Luden's Echo gives a nice boost of speed as well as a damage increase.

-Abyssal Mask for increased magic damage as well as a healthy stat increase.

-Rylai's Crystal Scepter if your team needs more peel. Tongue Lash serves high damage and single target slow or spitting something with Devour gives moderate aoe damage and slows any enemy hit. It's health is also a help for scaling and survivability.

-Liandry's Torment is a nice compliment to Tahm's whole kit. It will proc with both his Tongue Lash as well as when enemies are Devoured. It's health is also a help for scaling and survivability.

Final Build

I tend to choose Guinsoo's Rageblade because of the dueling potential if caught out alone. Not only this, but it makes picking off priority targets with your cc easier in teamfights. Deathcap and Void Staff are much more game dependent.


Original Concept Build

This was my first attempt at AP Kench. It is much tankier and does much less damage. Overall it is still a semi-decent build, but I essentially used it as a stepping stone to explore further and ended with my much more fun and experimental build currently featured.

Devour

The bread and butter of Tahm's kit. Level it fast to decrease it's cooldown and damage without increasing mana cost. Your best poke and wave clear is to spit minions at the back line of caster minions.

Tongue Lash

With an AP build will do FAR more damage than most expect it to. It is your single best damage source for close range fights.

Thick Skin

CAN BE MAXED SECOND if you are having trouble, but it will only scale with health. If you max it before Tongue Lash you have better sustain in lane, but between Teleport and Abyssal Voyage, traveling between lanes is easy.

Abyssal Voyage

Great for ganking, but even better for split pushing. Balance it with Teleport in the late game to essentially push 2 lanes before having to escape.

Masteries are changing soon, but until then:

Ferocity Tree

Fury over Sorcery because you want stacks as fast as you can.

Feast for sustain.

Natural Talent will help your AP scalings and increases the potency of your auto-attacks.

Battle Trance because your long range poke can be a really issue for people once you have enough mana/mana regen.

Piercing Thoughts because this is an AP build.

Deathfire Touch because Tahm only has single target abilities and it makes them burn like gonorrhea.

Resolve Tree
Everything chosen here is to synergize with Tahm's native kit.


Deathfire and the Ferocity tree were chosen over Thunderlord's and the Cunning tree because they give a more reliable damage output for Tahm and his kit.

Works well in Bronze and Silver elos, probably don't use it above that unless you are rather confident in your abilities to unbench.