Counter-picks

[Mr. Zhu]

A place to share thoughts on serious counter-picking. Planning for it to be a full-on compendium, so list both the obvious and the not-so-obvious, along with rationale. The intent is for this to be a constructive way to dismantle the 'There's nothing to do about this champ, he/she is just plain OP' attitude, which is almost always incorrect. It's also an indirect way to have an elaboration on a champ's strengths (the part of a champ that counters another champ) and a champ's weaknesses (the part of a champ that makes them counter-able).

For example:

Nasus is hard-countered by Garen. Garen's early-game damage is insane, and his spin essentially negates Nasus' Wither. Nasus has to buy a significant amount of early armor to stay in lane, which delays his philo and sheen. Until he gets the armor, he can only farm with Spirit Fire.

Don't mean to be a dick head, but that's wrong.

Garen's is not at all a hard counter to Nasus, because of Nasus's amazing sustain on that 14% lifesteal. Their relationship at top lane at worst I would call it co-existence, at best I would call it Garen waiting to become useless against Nasus. Garen doesn't do enough damage to Nasus at early levels unless he takes ignite as a summoner spell and I argue that Nasus's ult actually counters Garen's ult because of the sudden health increase.

Let me analyze this further for you. As Garen, if you're using your Q and Spin to harass, you automatically push your lane towards Nasus's tower. Last hitting off tower is hilariously easy for Nasus so unless you tower dive, Nasus will get the farm. If I start with boots 3 pots on Nasus or clothe armor 5 pots, good luck trying to get me out of the lane because it won't happen. Also I think you may have misunderstood how Spirit Fire works on Nasus, you don't ever use it to farm... Ever.

It's a known fact that Nasus's only counter is someone with high poke, and eventually these counters will become irrelevant the more the Nasus farms. By the time Nasus is level 13 or 14, no one will be able to push him out of a lane and it's just pure fact. I know this through observation through countless games of playing on Nasus. If you would like to testify this, I would be more than glad to play on Nasus vs your Garen.

Now to contribute to this thread.

Top lane: Pantheon vs GP. Pantheon hard counters GP because of his early game damage and his hilarious passive that basically negates GP's very costly Q. It is almost a guaranteed won lane if you send Pantheon against a GP.