Supports are often the key to winning the laning phase in the duo lane. A smart pick and ban phase with thought-out counters can give you a slight edge over your opponent. In this guide, we will look at the current members of the Guardian class and see how they counter one another.

Ares

Geb is countered over time by Ares. The Shackles force him to either waste the shield on himself or not be able to use his Roll Out ability. Also, he can’t cancel Searing Flesh with his Shockwave since Ares is knockup immune while casting it.

Ares’ Shackles technically counter every support with a movement ability, but Bacchus is the Guardian who is most affected by it, since his jump is his main source of damage early. Ares is also immune to knockups while casting his Searing Flesh, just in case he doesn’t land the cripple. Sobek’s pluck is also severely affected by Ares’ cripple, forcing Sobek to be much less aggressive as he normally would.

Finally, Ares hard-counters Athena. On a basic ability level, they are quite even: Athena’s dash is prevented by the Shackles and Ares’ fire is cancelled by her taunt. But the main advantage comes with their ultimates. As soon as Athena uses her ultímate, Ares can use his. This will effectively cancel Athena’s ult, since she will teleport and then quickly be pulled back by Ares’ ult.

Bacchus

Bacchus doesn’t really counter an excessive number of Guardians. His main easy-target it Geb, since Bacchus is immune to knockups with his 3 and can cancel Geb’s “Roll Out” with 2 different abilities. The fact that he has 2 abilities to cancel things like Khepri’s pull means that the enemy will find it very hard to wait for his abilities to be down.

Cabrakan

Although Cabrakan isn’t often seen in the support role, he does counter one Guardian pretty hard: Ares. Cabrakan has anti-slow and movement speed in his first ability, pretty much cancelling Ares’ chains. He also has two stuns to stop Ares’ Searing Flesh and his second ability is charged pretty fast since Ares does a lot of tick damage. Also, Ares can’t cancel Cabrakan’s Tremors so an “Ult, 3” combo could be potentially devastating.

Fafnir

While Fafnir is extremely strong as of patch 1.15, he doesn’t counter any Guardian directly due to his utility being directed towards ADCs (His silence added to his attack speed steroid). I believe he’s CC immune when channeling his ultimate, so he could potentially be a soft counter to Ares’ ult.

Geb

Geb soft-counters every Support except for Ares due to his cleanse. It’s especially useful early on against Fafnir as his stun is 1.5 seconds long at level 1.

Khepri

Khepri’s pull can cancel several channeled abilities such as Ares’ Searing Flesh and Bacchus’ Belch of the Gods, but he has no direct counter against anyone. You could potentially argue that his ult counters Ares, since Ares’ ult tends to be followed by a lot of burst damage from things such Scylla ults, and in a way you would “assure yourself” a successful Khepri ult.

Kumbakharna

Kumba is another god who doesn’t particularly counter anyone. Similarly to Athena, his CC can cancel a bunch of channeled abilities. The only specific advantage he might have is his CC immune ult, which has a relatively low cooldown at max Rank (70 seconds) and hence could potentially be useful against characters such as Ares.

Terra

Her only hard countering tool would be her knockup immunity which would be useful against Guardians such as Geb and Bacchus. Besides that, there is little more to be said.

Ymir

Ymir’s whole kit can counter Ares quite well. His walls completely block Ares since he has no escape, his freeze can cancel both the Shackles and the Searing Flesh. His CC immune ult can be used to avoid the pull from the Ares ult and then damage Ares when he comes back down.

Athena, Sobek, Sylvanus and Xing Tian are all extremely similar in the sense that the only way they counter Guardians is by using their CC to stop channeled abilities such as Cabrakan’s “Tremors” and Bacchus’ burp, nothing excessively specific. It's important to remember that Xing Tian cannot stop Ares' Searing Flesh due to the fact that Ares is immune to knockups during it. Also, Sobek's Pluck applies in fact a stun before the knockback, so he can use it to cancel Kumba's Groggy Strike, but not Terra when she is knockup immune.

All the Guardian channeled abilities that can be cancelled.

Even if some of these counters are extremely general and nonspecific, having these things in mind during the pick and ban phase could make laning so much easier for you and your ADC. Little things such as being able to cancel Khepri's pull to bigger things such as pulling Athena back with Ares' ultimate all affect the outcome of the game.