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If you are making an assertion, please use the format from the OP.
Champion we're analyzing
Counters
~ Reasons
It'll be easier to read and we can tell the difference between someone making a statement and someone asking a question.
Providing reasoning/evidence is important. It's borderline pointless to just say "X counters Y". You're not explaining your stance at all. What skills are you using, how are you laning/positioning yourself, etc?
This thread should encourage all of you in LiquidParty to occasionally host some practice games and try out specific solo matchups. Then come back and report your findings. We can have players of various skill levels try out the matchups to get a better understanding. |
United States37500 Posts
Unlike most other gaming genres, winning a game in MOBAs (specifically League of Legends in this case) is rarely an effort of a singular individual. Even in solo queue, 5 players need to play at a cohesive level to increase the likelihood of victory.
There are several roles in LoL and playing these roles successfully puts your team at an advantage, eventually enough to seal the game as a win. The role that allows for the greatest team impact, without depending on the team itself, is obviously the solo top and solo mid lanes.
The purpose of this thread is to talk about the various matchups in solo lanes. Knowing what heroes are good/bad against champions the enemy has already picked will put you ahead of the game. Some games, even at the highest level, boils down to team comp.
Should we somehow exhaust all the possibilities of solo lane champions, we can delve into jungles and/or bot lane later. I'm choosing to focus more on the solo lanes first because they have the least variables.
Things to consider:
- Hard counter, matchups that are heavily favored for one champion over the other. Examples are Rumble vs Jax and Nidalee vs Kassadin. In both situations, the former champion has a distinct advantage over the latter.
- Soft counter, matchups that are slightly favored for one champion due to their kits. However, player skill and ability can easily balance the matchup or overturn the lane to favor the better player.
Cassiopeia has a minor advantage over Annie in lane. It's much easier for good Cass to zone the Annie with QE combo than vice versa. However, one could argue that a good Annie will focus on last hitting with her Q and long range auto, ignoring/avoiding Cass until level 6. Once Annie has Tibbers, the dynamics of the lane change greatly since Annie now has the potential to OHKO with Flash Tibber and dumping QW, Ignite.
- We are assessing champions for early game/laning phase/until the first tower is down. What happens during late game/team fights is slightly outside the scope of this argument.
Pantheon is amazing vs most Ranged DPS. However, it's rather difficult for Panth to translate his early game success into late game power and it's one of the main reasons he's not picked more often. But we don't care about Panth's awful scalability. What we want to know is that Panth pretty much dominates most Ranged DPS not named Corki.
- For the sake of argument, assume no ganks are coming. We have all played games where your team's jungler somehow manages to not gank your lane a single time in the first 15 minutes of the game. Assume it's that kind of situation.
- Lastly, we measure advantage and success in a champion's ability to zone and outfarm his enemy by a significant amount.
AD Carries
AP Carries
Cassiopeia
Hard Countered by:
~ Kassadin:
Void Stone passive makes Kass rather hardy against spell based harassment.
Null Sphere can counter Cass from maximizing her Twin Fang DPS.
At level 6, Kass with Rift Walk makes it nearly impossible for Cass to land both her poison AOEs
Soft Countered by:
Tanky DPS
Udyr
Hard Countered by:
~ Teemo:
Udyr relies on standing near the creep wave, shrugging off harass with Turtle and life stealing also with Turtle. However, Toxic shot DPS can whittle through early levels of Turtle very easily and make taking darts vs Turtle leech very unprofitable for Udyr. Up until level 3 Turtle stance and/or Wriggle's, Udyr will take more damage from poison than he can life steal back hp.
Very difficult to catch Teemo, even with Bear. Teemo can respond with Move Quick active and strategically stand behind shroom.
Blinding Shot can cause the initial Tiger Stance DPS to miss.
Soft Countered by:
~ Jax:
At best, Udyr can turn the lane into a farm war against Jax but he can't afford to go offensive. If Udyr attempts to 1v1 Jax, he has to deal with Dodge procs, Counterattack stun, and Relentless Assault makes Jax stronger by the second. A smart Jax will consistently jump on Udyr when there's a full creep wave. Jax will draw creep aggro and it will increase his Dodge procs a lot more. If he lands the Counterattack on Udyr, Jax can fit in another 1-2 auto attacks off.
Things only gets worse for Udyr once Jax finishes his Cutlass. Another burst harass every minute that also slows.
Cho > Yorick
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I can't really think of any one champion that hard counters another exact champion (mostly from my lack of experience), but I do know a few champions that get shut down by a type of champion (Melee, AP, Stealth etc).
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Vlad is hard countered by Caitlyn. He can't harass her without taking a few auto attacks and he heals for next to nothing early. If the Cait plays properly and just aggressively zones him say goodbye to gold much less xp. I once zoned a Vlad so hard in mid as Cait he hit 2 when I was 6.
I really don't see any plausible way to deal with that matchup. Even having a jungler help out isn't going to cut always since he can't hang out at the lane 24/7. Thankfully people have adopted the support/carry bottom lane and I haven't run into this in a while.
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^tbh, that just sounds like a combination of vlad vs. anybody and anybody vs. cait (which i guess you could call a hard counter, but i really wouldn't). i'm more interested if there's anybody that counters cait, because i can't really think of one. always a bitch to lane against one for me.
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Yorick could be atleast soft. With regrowth + pot spam ghouls to heal and then ghouls go after cait while you stay in safe distance and take less dmg per ghoul sent after cait.
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i disagree that jax is a soft-counter to udyr. we thought about it quite a bit last night, talking with ObamasLeftHand (1.9k Udyr and Jax player), and we decided that jax's mana costs were too high relative to the shield strength and low mana cost of turtle stance. even not factoring in the heal from turtle OR the mana regen from turtle, we don't see how jax can win the lane at all. he'll burn a ton of mana just breaking udyr's shield and drawing creep aggro, only to have udyr just auto attack a bit and get it back. jax will run dry of mana (or has to lose a lot of his rune power by speccing mp5) and then udyr just bosses the lane.
at best, jax will turn it into a farm-fest, which true, is favorable for jax. but there's no way jax ever beats udyr. a smart udyr will win the lane every time
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Jax wins once he hits 6. His ultimate simply does more damage than udyr can handle.
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I guess I don't consider it a counter but I always pick Soraka against Karthus. 3 second silence destroys his dps and then soraka ult vs karthus ult rox my sox
Edit: it looks like you're looking more at lane counters t.t, #1 bad poster
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On July 27 2011 01:50 Two_DoWn wrote:
Jax wins once he hits 6. His ultimate simply does more damage than udyr can handle.
i don't think that's true though. udyr will likely have a level advantage going into jax's ult, which by the way deteriorates extremely quickly. if udyr stuns jax after his first or second hit with bear, and then turns around and walks away, jax is going to either (a)use leapstrike and precious mana to close the distance just to ult-hit a turtle-stanced udyr, or (b)lose his ult. if udyr is far enough ahead (possible, but not super likely if he stops for wriggles on the way to real items) then he's just going to stand and fight jax and crush him. yes, jax is the 1v1 king, but udyr is ALSO the 1v1 king and kicks in on his first hit, not his 10th. toss in the fact that udyr will likely run exhaust, and jax will likely run ignite, and i *still* don't see jax winning this at level 6+
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On July 27 2011 01:59 sRapers_ValkS wrote:
I guess I don't consider it a counter but I always pick Soraka against Karthus. 3 second silence destroys his dps and then soraka ult vs karthus ult rox my sox
Edit: it looks like you're looking more at lane counters t.t, #1 bad poster
Never thought of this, actually. Does silence work in his "dead but still fighting" state so that you can prevent the inevitable "ult and pick up 4 kills after teamfight?"
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he's untargettable during his post-death state, so no, you can't silence him then
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On July 27 2011 02:24 HyperionDreamer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2011 01:59 sRapers_ValkS wrote:
I guess I don't consider it a counter but I always pick Soraka against Karthus. 3 second silence destroys his dps and then soraka ult vs karthus ult rox my sox
Edit: it looks like you're looking more at lane counters t.t, #1 bad poster Never thought of this, actually. Does silence work in his "dead but still fighting" state so that you can prevent the inevitable "ult and pick up 4 kills after teamfight?"
Nah, that's why she has ult.
Also need confirmation on Sion>Yorick.
I admit I hit post before reading the OP through, I assume this is both referring to laning phase and teamfights, please appreciate the effort since I fucked up my masteries while writing this-.-
Teemo>Singed is a classic counterpick.
Janna/Brand>Annie/Amumu because of counterinitiation.
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Not sure if this is a real counter, but I've gotten my ass completely handed to me as cass by sololane yi.
You go up to Q them. They alpha, (so your thingy misses), alpha hits you for like a million damage, then he trollfaces away and maybe you land one E in his back as he backs up a tidbit. Repeat twice or 3 times and you've got to b or he can go for the kill.
But yi's such a strange hero that he's probably not ever worth banning.
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Tanky DPS
Dr. Mundo
Hard Countered by:
~ Tristana:
Rocket Jump prevents Mundo from doing any reasonable damage to her unless she gets needlessly aggressive.
Her level 6 burst (especially with the Explosive Shot active) is enough to reliably kill Mundo.
~ Pantheon:
In the harass war, Spear Shot is much easier to hit than Cleaver, and does comparable damage.
In a straight up fight, Pantheon's passive will block like 2/3 of Mundo's attacks.
If someone ganks the lane, Pantheon has a stun and Mundo doesn't.
~ LeBlanc:
Mundo simply cannot get close to her, between her blink and her snare.
Mundo cannot cleaverspam while silenced.
Her burst and mobility make level 2 aggression impossible and trades past that unworthwhile.
AP Carries (or tanky AP if that's a separate category now)
Swain
Soft Countered by:
~ Garen: (this may even be a hard counter)
If Swain uses Laserbird, Garen can DEMACIA! and spin2win, clearing the slow and boosting his speed sufficiently to catch up to Swain.
The silence prevents Swain from using Laserbird/Torment after Garen pops Judgment.
Garen's passive gives him better regeneration pre-6.
Swain is forced to level Nevermove, which has an atrocious 18 second cooldown at level 1. Garen can bait a Nevermove, or even absorb it, and zone Swain until it's back up.
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Jarvan is hardcountered by brand and garen. Yi is hardcountered by mordekaiser. Teemo/Singed counter jax. Cho counters malz and WW.
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Vladimir:
Hard Countered by:
Swain (with blue)
Zones out vlad pretty hard, great sustain with a blue buff... There was a DH game where Fnatic picked Swain to counter Regi playing vlad iirc, and it worked in such an epic fashion that it amazed me.
Confirm/Deny that this can work in non-pro games?
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On July 27 2011 03:12 HyperionDreamer wrote:
Vladimir:
Hard Countered by:
Swain (with blue)
Zones out vlad pretty hard, great sustain with a blue buff... There was a DH game where Fnatic picked Swain to counter Regi playing vlad iirc, and it worked in such an epic fashion that it amazed me.
Confirm/Deny that this can work in non-pro games?
Nah its all on player skill. At least it used to be so at DH, since then swain got nerfed and vlad fell out of favor so it should still be even.
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Mordechowder rapes Yorick 6-ways from Tuesday. Always minions around you say? Yes please!
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Ashe soft counters mordekaiser, rammus also good against malz/ww.
Do malz creeps even give gold anymore?
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Yeah, they still give +12 on kill. Orianna kind of destroys most ranged AD mids like ashe/cait, but good players don't put ranged AD in mid like idiots do at my elo.
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EPT
