Most League of Legends players have suffered the fate that comes with a well-fed juggernaut. These lane bullies can quickly rack up kill after kill and dominate the entire game. Darius suffocates new players with his incredible sustain and damage. Garen is rendered unkillable with a lead. A 400 stack Nasus is a thing of nightmares, as he one-shots carry after carry. With the rework of Volibear, it doesn’t seem that Riot wants to back away from the Juggernaut class. Handling Juggernauts isn’t an easy task, but by taking a few minor steps, you can take power away from this seemingly oppressive class.

What Is a Juggernaut?

A Juggernaut is a subclass of champion within the Fighter class in League defined by their naturally high resistances, low mobility, and high damage output if allowed in melee range. This class includes champions such as Illaoi, Darius, Garen, Mordekaiser, Nasus, and Sett. These champions are often seen as lane bullies and heavily punish players that spend too much time within their melee range.

Champion Select

While you can play any champion into a Juggernaut certain picks thrive against juggernauts. The most common counter to Juggernauts is Vayne. With a range advantage and the threat of percent health damage, Vayne can ignore the large health pools and dangerous melee threats that come with Juggernauts. Other ranged top laners also thrive against Juggernauts. Ryze is a prime example of an AP threat to deal with oppressive lane matchups. His ability to slow or root an enemy with Rune Prison (W) makes it difficult for enemy Juggernauts to get within range of him.

Wave Management

One of the fundamental reasons that Juggernauts thrive in low elo is a lack of understanding regarding wave management. Allowing a Nasus to farm without threat of a gank creates a late-game horror. A Darius afforded the room to pop Ghost and run down his opponent can rack up kills in lane. These champions inherently have a lack of mobility and have trouble roaming. As a result, they’re unable to roam in the fashion that most other laners can if they shove wave under the tower. Freezing on these champions renders them useless, as they have to overextend for farm without the mobility to make plays happen elsewhere on the map. By attempting to set up a freeze, you also force these melee champions to step up to wave clear and complete their shove. Freezing opens avenues for advantageous ganks and allows you to turn the tables on a difficult top lane matchup.

Cooldown Management

Unlike a lot of bruisers, Juggernauts often find damage in their abilities rather than just auto attacks. Also, many bruisers have long cooldowns on key abilities. As such, baiting cooldowns and playing around them is essential. Each trade must be taken with knowledge of what abilities the opponent has available to use. With most Juggernauts, one of these key abilities is all they need to turn an otherwise advantageous trade into a disaster for your laning phase. Some critical abilities to note from this class of champions are abilities like Illaoi’s Test of Spirit (E), Darius’ Apprehend (E), Sett’s Haymaker (W), and Nasus’ Siphoning Strike (Q).

Macro Implications

Unless completely shut down through the laning phase, most Juggernauts alter the way your team has to approach the map as a whole. As mentioned previously, when allowed to get in range, these champions dominate most competition. As such, it is challenging to push them off of an objective once on it. Driving them back either requires heavy poke or stepping into melee range. Poke is hard to come by in every composition, and stepping into melee range is a fast track for a gray screen. Despite their power in zoning off an objective, Juggernauts do have a glaring weakness in mid and late game map control.

The lack of mobility in the class makes fast map rotations impossible. Their general lack of reliable engagement or crowd control makes it very difficult for them to force fights on contested objectives. Abilities like Sett’s Facebreaker (E), Garen’s Decisive Strike (Q), and Mordekaiser’s Death’s Grasp (E) aren’t reliable enough forms of engage to start 5v5 team fights and often result in the Juggernaut just being kited away. Due to this weakness, look to trade objectives when you can when facing a Juggernaut. If you choose to contest, make sure your team beats the Juggernaut to the objective. Once a juggernaut has arrived at a spot on the map, their zone of control prevents an easy retake.

Summary

Juggernauts pose a lot of problems for any team and newer players in particular. However, by understanding their inherent dueling power and what cooldowns provide that power, you can survive their laning phase. Then by following proper wave management against these champions and making the right decisions on rotations, you and your teammates can easily manage any Juggernaut pick. Abusing their lack of mobility in numerous ways slowly chokes these champions out of games. Slowly but surely, your ability to shut down these titans of the top lane will translate into easy wins and smooth LP gains.