Picture this, you are 45 minutes into the last game of your promos. Your team is five thousand gold ahead and going to win soon. Suddenly, a key member of your team gets engaged on, whether it be pulled over a wall or permanently stunned until they see the dreaded black and white screen. What happened? It was a clutch engage or hook from the enemy support. These types of champions are vast from a giant robot to a big bird man, each with their own special tools to get crucial picks and have a surprising presence in the meta for a very long time.

Engage in a team composition is almost essential to be able to win a game. This can be in just about any role but support has many champions who can accomplish it. The easiest way to describe these types of champion is to split them into two sections, forward engagers and hook champions.

To start with forward engagers, we have champions like Leona, Alistar, and Rakan. Your job with these champions is to move forward and engage onto your enemy for your team to kill them. As for hook champions like Blitzcrank, Thresh, and Pyke, you want to get picks onto your opponents and gain advantage that way. These kind of champions win you the lane or even the game if played properly. Unfortunately, this can also be true if they're on the enemy team. So let’s see some counters to champions like this.

There are a surprising number of counter-picks to such champions in the support role so let’s go over a few of them. For starters, when it comes to engaging champions there no counter quite like Janna. Her kit is very resilient to this and is a very dangerous counter-picks to those kinds of champions when practice is put into her. For starters, her Passive (Tailwind) give slight advantages to dodging enemy skill shots due to the increased movement speed for herself or allies moving towards her. Her Q (Howling Gale) is one of the major disengage tools in her kit. This allows her to knock up the enemy engage support coming towards her and stopping them in their tracks. Her W (Zephyr) is less of a disengage tool, more of a poke ability. However, if an engage champion is low HP, they probably will not engage, which makes this ability actually quite good against them.

Not only does it deal damage, it also slows the damaged champion for 2 seconds. This ability also makes her harder to engage on since while it's up, she os granted even more extra movement speed. Her E (Eye of the Storm) is the defensive shield in her kit. This ability is good due to Janna usually building enchanter support items such as Ardent Censer and Athene's Unholy Grail, increasing the size of the shield given. The cooldown time for this ability also decreases once per cast when Janna either knocks up of slows an enemy champion. No ability is quite as effective for disengage however as her ultimate (Monsoon). Janna knocks back all opponents and heals all of her teammates. Not only does this shut down engage, but it also heals her team to allow them to turn and engage themselves.

Another champion quite effective into engage is Lulu. Her entire kit is based around protecting her team and halting engages. To start off her kit, we have her Q (Glitterlance). This skill shot ability applies a 80% slow over 2 seconds on any opponents hit, slowing down anybody running towards her. Her W (Whimsy) is debatably the best ability in her kit against engage beside her ultimate (Wild Growth). When used on an enemy, they become a cute little critter for up to 2.25 seconds, stopping them from attacking or using abilities. Not only that, if an opponent isn't in range of the ability, she can target an allied champion to grant them a movement speed increase. Her E (Help,Pix!) is her shield ability. With how you usually build Lulu, her shield size is significantly increased which is quite crucial for survivability.

Not only does it apply a shield, but it moves her passive (Pix, Faerie Companion) over to the chosen ally champion. This increases the chosen allied champions attack power by having Pix firing shots with the damage depending on your AP. Last off her ultimate is what makes Lulu truly a great counter engage support. The chosen ally champion is enlarged and is granted bonus health for a limited time. This also knocks up opponents around your ally as well as slow them if they're nearby.

When it comes to countering hook champions, two particular champions come to mind. For starters, there is Morgana. We're going to start with the most essential part of her kit against hooks, her E (Black Shield). This ability grants a magic damage shield to Morgana or an ally which grants immunity to all crowd control until the shield is broken. This ability completely shuts down any hook and even most engages. She has a few other powerful abilities in her kit which shut down engage such as her Q (Dark Binding). This skill shot is a root that can last up to 3 whole seconds. This will shut down any opponent moving towards you and leave them completely stuck. If the enemy does manage to engage on her, her ultimate (Soul Shackles) comes in handy. When cast, chains are attached to all enemies in range. This will slow them all by 20% and after 3 seconds stun them for 1.5 seconds.

Another very strong but somewhat underplayed champion is Zilean. His pick rate in the support role has been low recently but in a meta filled with engage, he is quite a strong pick. The major ability from his kit which helps against engage is his ultimate (Chronoshift). For 5 seconds, an ally of your choice is affected so that if they die they will resurrect with a certain amount of HP, scaling with his AP. His E (Time Warp) is also a very strong kiting tool, either slowing enemies by up to 99% or gaining movement for himself or his allies by up to the same amount. The last major ability in Zilean's kit is his Q (Time Bomb). Zilean throws a bomb to target area, attaching itself to any unit it hits. Using his W (Rewind), Zilean can then recast his Q, stunning any enemies in the radius.

There is also one other option to countering engage champions, not being in the lane altogether. Roaming around the map and getting the rest of your team ahead is also a pretty good way to shut down that kill potential in the bot lane. The support most known for roaming is Bard. Due to his passive, you aren't in the lane for a good part of the laning phase. His passive (Traveler's Call) is the main reason for this. Bard will leave lane quite often to go off and collect his chimes to power up his Meeps. Another excellent roaming tool he has is his E (Magical Journey). This ability lets you gank lanes at awkward angles for opponents such as over the raptor pit or through the wall by the gromp.

Our other example of roaming supports is actually higher up in the engage slot. Alistar is a very effective roaming support as well as engage. If your lane matchup isn't a good one for the minotaur, you can purchase some boots of mobility and roam around the map gaining advantages for your other lanes. His W(Headbutt)/Q (Pulverise) combo knocks up an opponent and lets your allied laner move up and engage as well. Not only does he have that, his E (Trample) will stun your opponent. To wrap it all up, Alistar's Ultimate (Unbreakable Will) makes him extremely strong at turret dives due to the significant reduction of damage to him as well as the cleanse of all crowd control.

To wrap this all up, high engage supports have been prominent in the League of Legends meta for a very long time. They are very strong in most team composition but also have some pretty easy to learn counter-picks which entirely shut them down. Hopefully, this gives you enough variable options to be able to outplay the meta of engage and win some games.