Malphite doesn't really beat you in lane. He makes lane pointless, and then he presses R once and your team fight is over before it started.
There's a specific feeling to a Malphite game where you win every trade for ten minutes, nothing sticks, and then one engage from fog ends the match. He's a rock that gets harder to hurt the more armor he buys, and his damage gets bigger at the same time. That combination is real, and it's also the exact place his answers live.
Check out our top Malphite counters below for more information on how to beat him!
Counter Guide
How to Beat Malphite
Malphite doesn't really beat you in lane. He makes lane pointless, and then he presses R once and your team fight is over before it started.
There's a specific feeling to a Malphite game where you win every trade for ten minutes, nothing sticks, and then one engage out of the fog ends the match. He gets harder to hurt and harder to survive from the same stat, which is a genuinely unfair way to build a champion, and it's why he never drifts far from the top of the top lane section on our solo queue tier list. All of that is true. It's also the exact place where his answers live.
Fiora- Damage that ignores armor, since armor is the stat his whole kit is built around
- The range or the reset to make his walk-up cost him something
- A way to answer Unstoppable Force [R] that doesn't require you to already be far away
Malphite Overview
Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous
- Ground Slam [E] scales its damage with his armor and cuts the attack speed of everyone it hits, which means his defensive item is also his damage item.
- Granite Shield [Passive] absorbs damage worth 10% of his maximum health and recharges out of combat, so poke that doesn't kill him doesn't stick to him.
- Unstoppable Force [R] is a 1000 unit knockup on a champion who otherwise has no mobility at all, and it's very rarely used from a direction you're watching.
- Seismic Shard [Q] steals move speed rather than just slowing, so he speeds up as you slow down and the gap closes twice as fast.
- Thunderclap [W] adds aftershocks in a cone to his basic attacks, which turns his short melee window into meaningful damage.
Weaknesses: Where You Get In
- Mana. Early Seismic Shard [Q] spam empties him quickly, and a Malphite out of mana is a melee minion with a shield.
- Armor is the wrong stat against half the roster. His resistances do nothing about magic damage, and Ground Slam [E]'s scaling is irrelevant to anyone who isn't attacking.
- He has no escape. Unstoppable Force [R] is an engage tool, and after it he's a slow melee champion with 130 seconds of nothing.
- Ranged top laners genuinely beat him. Before level 6 he has no way to close a gap and no way to punish being poked.
- His impact is concentrated in one button. Track the ultimate and you know exactly which fights he can and can't start.
Countering Malphite
Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Malphite comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:
- Bring magic damage or true damage. Armor stacking is the entire champion. Anything that routes around armor turns a tank into a large slow target.
- Fight when the ultimate is down. 130 seconds at rank 1 is an enormous amount of map you can take while he can't start anything.
- Don't group in a line. Unstoppable Force [R] is scored by how many people it catches, and spacing costs him most of the value.
- Punish the mana bar. Force him to use Seismic Shard [Q] for the wave, then take the trade while he can't afford Ground Slam [E].
If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:
Playing a Bad Malphite Matchup
Stand behind your wave, not beside it. Seismic Shard [Q] is 625 range and it's his only tool for starting anything before 6, so denying that one cast denies most of the lane.
Buy boots earlier than usual. The Seismic Shard [Q] move speed steal is the mechanic that turns a bad position into a lost trade, and flat move speed answers it directly.
Give up the wave rather than the plate when he hits 6. He wants a long lane and a target with cooldowns down, and holding a wave near his tower gives him both.
Watch the fog line before every objective fight. He has one button, it starts from out of vision, and the entire game is decided by whether anyone had eyes on where he was standing.
Best Malphite Counters
Malphite loses to three things that have nothing in common: a parry, a wall of turrets, and a blind. Pick whichever your team can actually play.
Fiora Parries the Ultimate
Riposte [W] parries all incoming damage, disables, and negative effects for its duration, and if what she parried was an immobilizing effect, the stab that follows stuns rather than slows. Unstoppable Force [R] is a knockup. A Fiora who holds Riposte [W] turns Malphite's entire team fight contribution into a stun on himself.
The lane phase is just as one-sided. Duelist's Dance [Passive] rewards her for hitting vitals with healing and move speed, which beats a champion whose plan is to out-sustain trades, and Grand Challenge [R]'s percentage health damage doesn't care how much armor he bought. His only real answer is to sit under tower and hope his jungler visits.
Heimerdinger Owns the Lane Space
Heimerdinger fights the version of Malphite that has no way to reach him. Hextech Micro-Rockets [W] reach 1325 units and his turrets hold the ground in between, so a melee champion with a 625 range slow and no dash is being asked to walk through a firing line to do anything at all.
It's all magic damage too, which means the armor he's building is doing nothing about it. CH-2 Electron Storm Grenade [E] stuns him on a direct hit if he does commit, and UPGRADE!!! [R] turns that into a stun with an area slow attached. He can still ultimate into a team fight later, but the lane itself isn't a contest.
Teemo Blinds the Trade
Blinding Dart [Q] is the mechanically cleanest answer to Thunderclap [W] there is. The aftershocks come off his basic attacks, so a blind removes both the attack and the ability damage attached to it, and Malphite's melee window is short enough that missing it costs him the whole trade.
Everything else lines up the same way. Toxic Shot [E] and Noxious Trap [R] are magic damage that his armor doesn't touch, Move Quick [W] keeps him from ever closing the gap, and mushrooms on the approach lanes mean the one direction he can walk at Teemo from is already covered.
Itemizing Against Malphite
Almost all of Malphite's damage is magic, which surprises people who file him under armor tank. Build accordingly:
Mercury's Treads reduces the follow-up crowd control after the knockup, which is where the deaths actually happen. Wit's End gives magic resist and on-hit damage at once, which fits anyone still trying to kill him. Kaenic Rookern's magic shield eats an entire engage for a frontliner, and Maw of Malmortius gives a carry a lifeline that triggers on the burst rather than after it.
Where Malphite Actually Sits Right Now
Counter picks age with the patch, so check the current numbers before you trust a matchup:
- League of Legends Solo Queue Tier List, updated every patch
- Tier List Changelog, for what moved and why
- How to Beat or Counter Series, for every other matchup guide
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