How to Counter Any Champion

A simplified index of tips and tricks to help players get around their most hated adversaries.

• Learn the damage triangle. In short, Tankiness tends to beat Burst, Burst tends to beat DPS, and DPS tends to beat Tankiness. This can be applied in many ways.

1. For example, if you are playing Draft Mode, you can easily counter a lane by picking part of a damage triangle that precedes the opponent's. A Burst Carry ADC like Graves, when paired with the right support, will leave a DPS Carry like Vayne or Kog'Maw in living hell for the entirety of the laning phase if you use Graves' strengths correctly.
2. You can also apply this concept to buying items. A neat example to this principle is the interaction between Flat Penetration and Resistances. Due to how most items with Flat Penetration are designed, they do spectacular against enemies that never stack Resistances but fall off far faster than other items in their category as the target builds into Tanky stats.
3. Finally, you can apply this concept with Champion Abilities and how you use them. Not all champions have all 3 elements in their kit, but the vast majority of champs have access to at least 2. Learn which parts of your champions execute on which parts of the triangle, and it can help you outplay your opponents through skillful use of your champion's abilities. Cowsep is a fun example of this, overcoming Yi's traditional weakness to Burst via Meditate and Alpha Strike usage.

• If you care to watch the video, Cowsep also briefly mentions another rather valuable element to being able to take down a champion: Watch the opponent's abilities and wait for anything they can use to threaten you to go on cooldown. This is a laning and siege breaking trick, mostly, but the application is amazing if you have a strong grip on how long most cooldowns are on most champs. The explanation is simple really. If the opponent blows a cooldown on, for example, the minion wave, that's a cooldown that can't be used to threaten you. In other words, if you see the enemy waste an ability that they now can't use on you, take the initiative and try to start a fight then. It's a fantastic tool to level the playing field if you're behind, and a dangerous threat to opponents that think the two of you are of equal footing.
• Don't try to fight the champion with what they're good at and what you're bad at. It annoys me to no end when people try to rush head on into combat against a Juggernaut, commit to sieges when under attack by long range siege champions, or try to team fight the enemy team's wombo combo comp. There is no point if we assume the enemy team is equally as skilled as you to willingly handicap yourself in that manner. Figure out what your champion does well that the opponent doesn't and emphasize on it. Almost all melees will lose the poke/sustain war against a ranged champ but they almost always stat check ranged champs hard in melee combat. You'd be insane not to take advantage of that fact and time your engages well to get the maximum damage onto the opponent in trades.
• As a followup to one of the first few points, DON'T build the exact same items game after game after game. It's okay to have a gameplan. It's okay to have default powerspike items. Hell, it's okay to have random gimmick items for your champs if you want it or actually know how to use it . Just please don't get into the habit of never changing your build. You have two Last Whisper upgrades and one of them is far better suited for killing Mundo than the other. I mentioned how Flat Penetration doesn't work against high resistances, consider not getting a against Tanks and Tanky teams. Don't keep going full damage if you're playing a Fighter Champion and you fell behind in the Early to Mid Game. There's rhythm and rhyme to these things and it really should be obvious.

If anyone cares to throw in other tips, please go ahead and post. I only ask that you try to make it as general as possible so nobody can complain that "x tip is so champion/game specific it doesn't even help the majority of the time anyway". Otherwise, spread the word. What have you learned to deal with enemy champions and counter them back?