It’s blades, fists and tongues in this week’s Meta Watch. We’re patiently waiting for MSI as we take a small break in professional play, with the exception of EU Masters.
While that’s going on, here are three more champions and how to stop them.
Irelia – 5 Movement Speed
Face it, you’ve lost to Irelia in lane. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Irelia is an extremely oppressive laner that only needs 5 stacks on her passive to win almost all matchups in both midlane and toplane, and when out of control, can win the game by herself. She’s extremely hard to beat in the laning phase, but there are some fundamentals you can use to survive these lanes.
The concept is simple: If she’s slowpushing, you give up minions and stand back, waiting for the wave to come into you. Then, you slowpush back into her, building up a huge wave she can’t come into. This cycle repeats, you can think of it as playing ping pong. This concept keeps you safe in most matchups.
If you’re looking to kill her in lane, well, there’s not too many options for you. The golden counter is Volibear, but for midlane, it’s harder to find a consistently winning answer. Her biggest weakness is teamfighting around objectives, because it can be extremely difficult for her to stack her passive when there’s no minions around. If she’s not ahead with kills, she can’t perform, so survive in lane, and break her ankles later on, she can’t dance without them.
Sett – JoJo Mama
When the two-punch man enters the toplane, you know you’re in for a bloody fight. Sett excels at early trading and prolonged fights, and functions like Darius in many ways. However, there’s a reason we haven’t seen him being picked up too much lately, he’s quite easy to counter.
Aatrox, Ornn, Urgot, Mordekaiser, Malphite. When facing Sett, you’ll have many options as to what to pick. The concept is always the same: Take a champion that has some way to slowly poke him to lower healths, then all in him with bigger muscle to win the fight. His passive only really kicks in once he’s low, so if he’s low enough, try to take him down in one clean all in.
Sett’s biggest issue is simple. He’s supposed to be strong in long fights because of his passive, but the numbers aren’t high enough to beat the competition. His immobility leaves him vulnerable to ranged poke, and playing Sett into ranged in general is an extremely long nightmare, as his only good engage option is flash and running in at mediocre speed.
One final tip: When frontlining, don’t position yourself in a way that lets Sett ult you into your own backline. His ultimate scales with the enemy’s max health, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Always remember the golden rule: He can’t beat the poop out of you without getting closer.
Tahm Kench – “From suffering, my banquet is born.”
Bench the Kench has been a controversial pick in the last few years. Sometimes he seems extremely strong, and well, most of the time he isn’t seen anywhere. He’s still the king of both the river and what he excels at: Stopping single target engage and peeling for his AD Carry.
His devour alone is usually what makes people pick him up. When he’s only got one target to protect like the AD Carry, he can easily stop huge engage attempts and reengage with strong slows and stuns. However, that’s his only true good quality. What’s the answer to this? Simple, not engaging at all.
Other tank supports have some kind of mobility or ranged tools to engage, Tahm Kench doesn’t have anything like that. This makes him extremely hard to play against teams that aren’t engaging into him. Keeping distance and poking Tahm Kench down is the golden rule when facing him.
Picking enchanters into him is the easiest way to win games. He can’t hurt you in lane, so you’re free to scale up to the lategame. Combine this with some long range artillery, and Tahm Kench will wish he hadn’t queued up that day. In his own words, “nothing escapes hunger”, so never enter his territory, and you won’t ever have to escape.
Conclusion
Now that we have given you another three champions to work with, it’s time we weather the EU Masters storm while we wait for MSI to kick off in May, and you can be sure we’ll be ready when that happens. Good luck.
Also read:
- 5 Support champions to help you climb out of low ELO in League of Legends
- League of Legends: How to play Gwen
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Image credit: Riot Games
