Juggernauts are an incredibly powerful subclass of Fighter, meant to be the big, beefy lads (and lasses) that are terrifying if they are able to get onto you and start hitting you. How are you able to do that as a Juggernaut though, and what are some tips to get you through laning phase? This guide will cover that! I won’t go over some Juggernauts such as Garen that are pretty easy to understand, but hopefully this will get you interested in this subclass of champion!

Darius/Illaoi - Let Them Come

In lane phase, Darius is one of the best lane bullies in the game due to his passive Noxian Might, which activates when you land five stacks of Hemorrhage on an enemy champion, and grants you a significant amount of bonus attack damage, starting from 30 at level 1. With Darius in laning phase, you want to aim to have the lane on your side of the map, rather than pushed into the enemy. The reason for this is that you have more space to chase the enemy down and get five stacks if they misposition in the lane, and it also makes you safer from the enemy jungle in lane. Darius can be very weak if you fall behind, and can be vulnerable to ganks if too pushed up. That said, he can also be the king of 1v2 once he hits level 6 (and sometimes earlier), but you have to be confident in your ability to especially hit your outer circle Q and kiting your enemies out until you can get the five stacks of Hemorrhage. I do think you should only go for those types of plays if you’re truly capable of winning them rather than hoping your enemies misplay however, and I see a lot of Darius players who know how to play their champion get stuck in places like Diamond 4/Platinum 1 because they just want to 1v9 at every opportunity and it ends up making them lose a lot of games even though they’re more than competent enough to win if played properly.

When it comes to playing fights on Darius, I think this is where a lot of lower rank players play him wrong, especially with the meta being tank supports for the most part right now. With Darius, much like in the laning phase, you want to build up your five stacks of Hemorrhage before you really start going off. Darius can function as a dive champ, but his true strength is when the enemy is walking into him. A lot of the time whenever I play Darius and the enemy has a tank support, I’ll let them try to get close to my team and then start building my stacks off of them, and since they’re a support, it’s often times not that dangerous for me to trade blows with them as long as my team is with me. Once you get Noxian Might going, that’s when you want to start looking for the enemy carries with your Flash and Apprehend.

With that said, enchanters are getting a bit more popular, so how would you pull this off if there’s no tank you can free hit for your five stacks? Truthfully, it is a bit difficult, but this is why you will see Darius players run Ghost with Flash, so that they can access more difficult targets and fights and look to stack off of them, as well as the additional pressure it offers in lane. However, I think against melee/low range heavy compositions, if you don’t really need the reposition/chase power of Ghost, you can look to run Teleport instead. I do think Flash/Ghost is a pretty potent combination in solo queue, and oftentimes it can be the best choice. In competitive, I still believe that Teleport is king, so be sure to weigh the disadvantage of having a riskier lane phase if you die and an inability to Teleport to the other side of the map if the enemy makes plays on your team bot side when taking Ghost.

Similar to Darius, Illaoi is also a pretty strong lane bully who functions well against melee/low range heavy compositions. However, unlike Darius, Illaoi requires a bit more finesse in the 1v1 to pull off, specifically with her ability Test of Spirit. Test of Spirit is your main lane control ability, and being able to consistently hit it against your opponent can make or break your lane a lot of the time. You want to be sure to set up your Test of Spirit usages with your Tentacle placement from your passive, so that you are able to maximize the damage on the Spirit you pull.

Tentacle placement is also vital to playing Illaoi well, as you want to set them up in a way where your opponents are constantly under threat of taking damage from them, but you also want them to not spawn in areas where you cannot defend them from being destroyed either. Having one or two set up on your side of the bottom half of the lane and then roughly the same amount on the upper half gives you a few options for positioning in lane, and because they’re set up on your side of the lane, your opponent now has to overextend in order to destroy your Tentacles, which makes it harder for them to trade onto you as well as makes them more vulnerable to ganks. This is also why, similar to Darius, holding the wave onto your side of the lane can be very impactful. It can get especially frustrating for opponents when you have the wave set up close to your tower and your tentacles underneath your tower, as they can’t get in range to hit you or destroy your Tentacles, and it results in you getting a lot of free poke damage onto the enemy.

However, Illaoi does function a bit differently in teamfights. While she does have the same method of wanting opponents to walk into her, she isn’t really much of a diver at all whereas Darius can speed himself into a backline if he sees an opportunity. The closest thing Illaoi can do to that is that Illaoi can do a neat little trick with her ultimate where you can press R and if you Flash immediately afterwards, you can change the impact zone of the R to be where you Flash to rather than where you initially cast it. In teamfights, I would compare Illaoi to someone like Heimerdinger or Zyra, who wants to set up her Tentacles and so that when she presses her ultimate, she has as many tentacles consistently proccing. If played well, Illaoi can delete entire teams in a matter of seconds with a well timed ultimate. Also, keep in mind that Test of Spirit counts as an enemy and will spawn additional tentacles from your ultimate, so if you have the chance, be sure to use it before casting your ultimate.

Sett - Beat Down Machine

Sett is a bit different than most of the other Juggernaut champions, due to the fact that he has a good amount of mobility. Most of the Juggernauts have a speedup or a dash of some sort, but it's rare to have both like what Sett has, the only other Juggernauts who have both being Volibear and Shyvana. Even then, he is unique in that he needs to target a champion in order to get his “dash” off, that ability being The Show Stopper. On top of that, he also has a true damage nuke that scales based on his AD, HP, and how much damage he has taken that is converted into Grit, and a stun that works if you hit a target on either side.

I say all of this because Sett has a lot going in his favor, and I think he’s currently the best Juggernaut in the game. Ever since the bonus AD ratios on Haymaker and The Show Stopper were increased, people have found out that building Goredrinker, Sterak’s Gage, and Titanic Hydra makes you output ridiculous damage in teamfights, especially with your Haymaker ability. It isn’t uncommon for Setts in higher levels of play to put out several thousand true damage a fight if they make good use of Haymaker.

Sett does have a pretty strong lane phase to boot. Your level 1 is pretty strong, although you can’t beat every champ, you can bully a great number of them if you start with Facebreaker. Haymaker is also an acceptable level 1 option, but keep in mind that you will be intending to trade heavily when you take this ability, and if you can’t land the true damage sweet spot on your opponent, you’re probably better off not starting it. I would personally recommend Facebreaker in most matchups due to the stun allowing you to get free auto attacks off, which activates your Conqueror very fast. Ideally, you want to play for level 3 in most of your matchups as Sett, this being that at level 3 you have all of your basic skills leveled up, and all of them are pretty strong in the early game and can win you trades against most matchups.

There are a few matchups that you will have a harder time in, primarily against ranged champions. Against those champions, you just want to look to farm up and make an impact when it comes to teamfighting. To be honest with you, I’ve tried numerous different things in the Gnar matchup, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the matchup is just doomed unless the Gnar sucks or you get jungle ganks. So be ready for the risk of picking Sett blind when those champions are available (or if you don’t want to deal with him, just ban it!).

Also a side note, I see a lot of people opt into Darius when they face Sett, and I don’t think this matchup is favorable for Darius unless Darius is really good. The thing with the matchup is that you just don’t opt to fight him until level 3, and you need to hold the wave close to your tower where you can short trade him without being run down by his ghost. Once you hit level 6, the matchup gets even easier, because you can use The Show Stopper to dodge the Darius outer ring’s Decimate and then give him the beat down. However, you do also need access to Haymaker due to its shield and true damage nuke. Without it, it does become hard to beat Darius. The true benefit of the Darius matchup is that Darius outscales your champion, but if he falls behind in the laning phase, it won’t matter that he outscales you because you’re so ahead of him that you can carry a game before Darius goes online.

For teamfighting with Sett, you want to look to get good angles with your Facebreaker and The Show Stopper, then follow it up with Haymaker and chase the opponent down with the help of Knuckle Down. It can actually be to your benefit sometimes to take some poke damage before you go in to get the maximum amount of damage you can get from Haymaker, as by time you get Goredrinker/Titanic/Gage, you can start outputting over one thousand true damage on your maximum damage Haymakers. You can also do a nifty little trick with Haymaker where you can channel the ability, and you can flash any time during its channel to extend the range. This is useful in catching players off guard who think they’re out of your range, or that if they flash out that they aren’t in danger anymore. The Show Stopper should be your primary way of engaging a fight, but sometimes a multiman Flash into Facebreaker can be just as effective, especially if you are then able to drag a carry into your team with The Show Stopper.

Overall, if I were to recommend any Juggernaut from the ones I cover in this article, it would definitely be Sett. That said, there is one more set of Juggernauts I want to look at…

Urgot/Yorick - The Specialists

These two are probably the most different from the rest of the Juggernaut class, with Yorick being heavily reliant on a pet system, and Urgot being technically a ranged Juggernaut (albeit, a very low range one). I think out of all the Juggernauts, these two are the most difficult to be successful on, although in Yorick’s case I think it’s more so that players don’t understand the power he brings outside of split pushing.

For Urgot, as stated previously you are a ranged Juggernaut, and a pain for melee champions to fight into because of Disdain, which flips them towards where you dashed from and stuns them, allowing you to get free hits on your Echoing Flames, which does brutal damage to tankier targets, which you’ll find a lot of in top. You are a bit of a lane bully, but primarily with Urgot you want to play for levels 6 and 9. The reason for level 6 being a bit obvious in that you gain your execute ultimate, Fear Beyond Death, which allows you to opt for all-ins against opponents with a surprising amount of burst. The reason for level 9 being so important for him is that you are maxing Purge, which at level 9 becomes a toggle ability that lasts indefinitely. This allows you to more easily use Purge and fight people off a lot more frequently, since you no longer have to wait for the CD to come back up when you want to fight people with your Purge and Echoing Flames combination. However, the most important ability to hit on Urgot is most certainly Disdain. This ability is key to being able to fight enemy champions, because if you miss it, you’ll just have thrown yourself into the enemy and it allows them to be able to trade back onto you, and makes hitting your Echoing Flames much more difficult to pull off since you can’t march around them while they’re stunned and getting a few easy hits from your shotgun legs. It is also harder for you to use this ability against ranged champions such as Jayce and Lucian, so you want to aim to rush boots and hit 6 as soon as possible against those champions. If they don’t match your boots rush, you can cheese a few kills with Flash and Disdain combined with Fear Beyond Death.

Another benefit to Urgot is that you scale pretty well with items, and once you hit around 2 to 3 items, you can output some insane damage in fights and generally one-shot most carry champions if you are able to hit Disdain. In teamfights, the main thing you want to do is get a Fear Beyond Death execute, and then look to flash into the enemy team while you finish the execute. This is due to the fear that happens on top of Urgot for 1.5 seconds that also slows the enemy, and it functions as an amazing disruption tool in fights that gives your team time to catch up to your flash and start cleaning up the fight, while also separating the enemy team and making it harder for them to regroup and continue the fight.

Outside of that, I think with Urgot it’s just primarily understanding your damage and when to dash in with Disdain, and I think most of the difficulty of Urgot comes from not understanding those two concepts well enough. Your Disdain usage will make the difference between you being a monster damage threat and intentionally feeding, so I cannot stress how important it is to land this ability and know when to go in with it.

Finally, I’ll finish this article up with Yorick, who has always been a pretty unpopular champion in League, and I can’t say I entirely blame people for not picking him up. He functions pretty strangely compared to pretty much any other champion in his class role, due to how his pet system works, and on top of that, his pet is extremely unreliable and janky since you can’t control the Maiden or Ghouls directly like you can with something such as Annie’s Tibbers. That said, I still think Yorick is pretty strong if you know how to play him, especially against low mobility champions and mages. The reason for that is due to his cage, Dark Procession, which can only be destroyed by auto attacks. This makes it really painful for mages if they get caught in it due to their innately slow attack speed, and it also is hard for champions that are immobile because they are stuck either focusing your cage while you and your team move in to kill them, or they can try to focus you at the expense of allowing your abilities to easily land onto them. As for Yorick’s laning, he isn’t too difficult to understand. There is one small trick you’ll want to do, which is that before you raise your Ghouls with your Last Rites passive, you should try to hit Mourning Mist, then raise your Ghouls. This guarantees that they’ll leap onto the target you marked, as there is a small timer after you hit Mourning Mist where they’ll still look to jump onto their target.

Teamfighting on Yorick is also pretty straightforward, as you’ll want to trap whatever frontline gets close enough to you with Dark Procession and look to melt them down with your Maiden empowered auto attacks, while threatening the backline with your Ghouls jumping onto them with Mourning Mist. Of course, Yorick is also an incredibly potent split pusher whenever he has the Maiden up and he can get his Ghouls going. Whatever you want to do with Yorick in the mid to late game, make sure that you have your Maiden assisting you, as she will make a big difference in your damage to both champions and towers, and without her your damage is much lower. You’ll want to protect her and keep her alive as long as you can when you use her, so sending her alone into the sidelane is generally not a good idea.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has gotten you to think about Juggernauts and their potential beyond smashing faces in on a surface level, and understand the complexities of a few different Juggernauts, how they vary from one another, and got a few tips in teamfighting and laning phase for these champions.

As always, best of luck on the Rift, and stay safe out there!