Ksenia Guide

This is a guide for people wishing to git gud at Ksenia on Awesomenauts circa 4.(whatever it is now)
There is only one guide I've found for Ksenia and it doesn't have the best success rate imo, but others might prefer it.
She's not the most popular character but if you know how to play her you can really destroy people and have tonnes of fun bursting noobs down with crazy damage.

Ksenia as a Whole

Ksenia is one of the squishiest characters in the game along with Froggy G, but like Froggy G she can do some serious damage especially if you play her right and last to the late game.
She's described as an Assassin but I think there's more to her than that - the best way to play Ksenia is a sort of chaser and poker as realistically it's hard for her to completely 1v1 anyone without some setup from allies.
Ksenia can very easily burst characters down, but she can also die very easily so it's a good idea to just stay back, chip away at the enemy's health and force them to retreat - helping your team push as well as not dying yourself.
Don't think you can sneakily vanish roll over someone and backstab them to death because they can literally just turn around and oneshot you because you're so squishy - always stay back unless you KNOW you can kill them or it's the late game and the damage you dish out is too high for you to care about the damage you recieve.

Reccomended Builds

There are a few builds that you can roll with as Ksenia - there's the crazy pushing power of Froggy Afro, there's the Pure Scissor Build where you focus around taking people out with your scissors... obviously... and there's the knockback build - although it's not an entire build its essentially just using knockback.

Since you no longer need to buy the base abilities any more, you can start with buffing them right away. A safe start is go straight for lifesteal on the AA, and then Piggy Bank for Virtual Girl. Virtual Girl is definitely a must pick, it's up to you whether to get the lifesteal straight away, it's just very helpful for sustaining in the early game.

There's now two ways to go with Ksenia - AA or Scissors?
If you have a good team and are confident they can get kills and distract or CC enemies while you push the other lane then go for double Froggy Afro without hesitation (also pick this if you're not very experienced with Ksenia and her scissor throw, because buffing the scissors will be a waste of time if you can't aim them well). If you've played Ksenia a fair amount and are confident in your aim then go for double Laser Bladed Scissors (Base damage increase for Scissors) and double Bobcat (Every third AA hit gives increased damage to next Scissor) before you move onto Vanish etc. You'll probably also want The Gorge and the Beautiful for the scissor build (Faster scissor regen in stealth) so you can get scissors back and spam even more. I also think that range on scissors is incredibly useful so you can seek out the enemies as they try to run, but if you're confident in your burst or the enemies aren't particularly mobile then it's fine to pick anything else.

After those necessary prerequisites, filling out the rest of the buffs are extremely dependant on the situation. If you've gone for The Gorge and The Beautiful, that works very well paired with Steal Feathers so you can have very quick vanishing and scissors, making you incredibly mobile with quick vanishes, extra utility from more often silences and more scissors available too. However this would be if you're very confident in your ability to utilise Ksenia's abilites to thier full potential.
If you feel the need for slowing the enemies so as to help teammates catch them or catch them yourself, then go for the caltrops paired with the longer roll as well as the slow on your scissors - the utility of a slow is very useful to everyone on your team in securing kills so don't overlook it.
If the game has really lasted so long that you end up maxing out your upgrades, the last ones you fill out with will be up to you based on the situation.

Gameplay

This is just an extra section meant to add little tweaks to your style of play as Ksenia as there is an obvious right and wrong way to play her and it is hard to get it right.

There's little things probably mentioned before such as jumping and moving backwards as you attack droids so you avoid taking damage and regain health from lifesteal or just simply kill droids - maybe to regain scissors or buff your scissors with every third hit.
Don't be afraid to Vanish roll just to move forward or travel quickly - it won't ruin the entire game, you'll just have a short cooldown to wait for. But don't Vanish roll for the hell of it because you might get ganked as soon as you're out of stealth.
You can use scissors on droids or creeps - don't be afraid: you have more than one.
Always use your scissors on those annoying buzzard droid things - you shouldn't attempt to AA.
Stay away from groups of enemies even if they're pretty low and you think you can take them because they may well have no cooldowns to wait for and be upgraded to high heaven and completely nuke your ass - just saying. Otherwise you can engage :D

How to Treat Each Enemy

First thing's first you should note that you CANNOT and SHOULD NOT, EVER engage Coco.
That is all you should need to be told.

Let's go from easy to hard.

Other Ksenias who haven't read any guides - especially this one - they will be easy to take on.

Raelynn is pretty easy to face because you can roll through her snipe aim path nicely, especially with Virtual Reality Hairdryer (Further Vanish Roll). But don't try to roll through time rift... because you can't... and you will get ganked easily.

Vinnie & Spike are very easy to kill because they lack mobility especially if they thought they could take you out with a Spike Dive and you haven't died - you can easily nuke this silly bastard. Although that smoke bomb SERIOUSLY impairs your vision so be careful.

Ted McPain does not invoke any pain and is a terrible character - dodge his airstrikes and you can easily get a free kill.

Yuri by himself is freaking easy to kill - you don't even have to get close to him and put yourself at risk from his mines you can easily just burst him down. However if his team is around him then do not engage. Added note that you shouldn't engage if he's camping somewhere and surrounded by mines.

Derpl is fairly easy pickings if he's already used his nuke and you have others with you to help nuke him down - otherwise he's very deadly to a squishy Ksenia... or most characters for that matter.

Leon CAN kill you quite easily if you're too low, but otherwise you can do a lot more damage, you can silence, you can vanish roll away - generally Ksenia can kill Leon. Nice tip is that you can use Leon's clone to get buffed scissors or extra scissors with every third hit.

I'll be honest I'm still figuring out if it's even possible to counter Yoolip, so just be careful around him.

The other new characters I haven't played against or as them enough to even know what they do and how to counter them, so you're on your own for that I'm afraid.

Everyone else is a bit of a pain for you unless they don't know how to play their character right like - a nooby Skolldir, Voltar or Genji for example can make for great haircuts.

Characters like Penny, Skolldir, Froggy G, Scoop, Swiggins and Skree or any other character with some form of crowd control is not a character you want to try and 1v1 because if you end up being stood still from a stun or snare you are easy pickings.

Check out http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=518145328&searchtext=Ksenia if you want more detail on some other characters and their difficulty etc.

[kaikopo]

Nice guide

[Pluto]

Problem is, if a ted gets knockback shotgun, leon gets silence tounge, yuri gets slowing timewarp, or vinnie gets silence cloud, then youre screwed as ksenia. othwise, first decent guide in a while.

[Splizard]

Nice guide ;) Ksenia is pretty awesome in the latest patch!