Nautilus doesn't burst you down. He roots you, pulls you, slows you, knocks you up and stuns you, and by the end it doesn't matter who did the damage.
The complaint about Nautilus isn't that he kills you. It's that you get to play roughly one second of the fight he starts. Every single ability he owns is crowd control, including his passive, and the chain is long enough that the damage is somebody else's problem. That's a legitimate thing to ban, and it's also a very specific weakness once you look at what happens when the chain doesn't start.
Check out our top Nautilus counters below for more information on how to beat him!
Counter Guide
How to Beat Nautilus
Nautilus doesn't burst you down. He roots you, pulls you, slows you, knocks you up and stuns you, and by the end it doesn't matter who did the damage.
The complaint about Nautilus isn't that he kills you. It's that you get to play about one second of the fight he starts. Every ability he owns is crowd control, including his passive, and the chain runs long enough that the damage becomes somebody else's job. It's why he's a permanent resident of the support section on our solo queue tier list. That's a fair thing to be sick of, and it points straight at his actual weakness: what happens when the chain never starts.
Lulu- Tenacity or a cleanse, because the chain is the champion and cutting it in half halves him
- A body or a projectile block for Dredge Line [Q], which stops on the first thing it touches
- Enough range that his 1150 unit hook is the only tool he ever gets to use
Nautilus Overview
Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous
- Depth Charge [R] is unavoidable once cast, knocks up everyone it passes on the way, and knocks up and stuns the target at the end of it.
- His first attack on you roots you, for free. No skillshot, no setup, and nothing you can dodge.
- Dredge Line [Q] reaches 1150 units and pulls you both together, or pulls him to a wall when he'd rather leave.
- Trading back during the engage rarely works, because he's shielded through it and his attacks are burning you the whole time.
- Walking out afterwards isn't an option either. The ground he leaves behind hits three times, and every wave slows.
Weaknesses: Where You Get In
- Dredge Line [Q] is a slow projectile. It stops on the first thing it touches, and it's the only long-range tool in the kit.
- He's slow. Against a bot lane that never lets him start, he has no way to catch anybody.
- Mana. The full chain is expensive and a couple of missed hooks leaves him unable to threaten anything.
- His damage alone is low. Without a follow-up he's a very long sequence of crowd control attached to almost no kill pressure.
- Tenacity cuts the chain in half. And the chain, not the damage, is the entire reason the champion works.
Countering Nautilus
Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Nautilus comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:
- Body-block the hook. Dredge Line [Q] stops on the first unit, and standing behind the wave costs you nothing at all.
- Buy tenacity earlier than the build guide says. Every link in his sequence is duration-based, so cutting durations cuts the whole thing rather than one part of it.
- Punish the miss. A missed Dredge Line [Q] is 14 seconds at rank 1 with no other way for him to open. That's the window to take the wave or the plate.
- Answer Depth Charge [R] with a cleanse, not with movement. It follows you. Nothing about repositioning helps, but removing the stun at the end of it does.
If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:
Playing a Bad Nautilus Matchup
Stand behind your minions rather than beside them, permanently. It's a boring habit and it removes most of what he does.
Give up the level 1 and level 2 aggression entirely. Titan's Wrath [W] and the passive root make his early all-in stronger than it looks, and there's nothing to gain by contesting it.
Save your escape for Depth Charge [R] rather than the hook. Getting pulled is survivable. Being knocked up at the end of a chain that already landed isn't.
Ask your jungler to path away from bot for the first clear if the lane is losing. Nautilus plus a jungler is a guaranteed kill, and denying the second body is easier than winning the 2v2.
Best Nautilus Counters
The three answers here are an interrupt, a support he can never actually catch, and enough healing that the chain simply doesn't add up to a kill.
Lulu Turns Off the Engage
Whimsy [W] cast on Nautilus turns him into a critter that can't attack or cast for the duration, which is the most direct way to end a crowd control chain that's still in progress. He's committed, he's next to your carry, and now he's a squirrel.
Wild Growth [R] is the answer to Depth Charge [R] specifically. It knocks nearby enemies into the air and hands the target a large amount of bonus health right as the shockwave arrives, so the sequence that was supposed to end in a kill ends in a healthy carry and a Nautilus with no ultimate.
Rakan Never Gets Caught
Nautilus owns exactly one way to start a fight, and it's a slow projectile that stops on the first thing it touches. Rakan is the champion least likely to ever be that thing. Battle Dance [E] flies him to any allied champion and recasts for free, so the hook line he's standing on is a line he can leave after Nautilus has already committed to it.
That same button is the peel. When the hook does land on your carry, Rakan arrives on top of them with a shield attached, and Grand Entrance [W] knocks Nautilus into the air before the follow-up chain gets going. Fey Feathers [Passive] keeps handing him a shield for free on top of it, so the poke that's supposed to make the next engage lethal never accumulates.
Soraka Heals Through the Chain
Astral Infusion [W] drops to a 2 second cooldown at rank 5, which is faster than Nautilus can produce damage on his own. His chain is long, but the damage attached to it is modest, and healing that outpaces it turns the whole engage into a stalemate he loses on cooldowns.
Equinox [E] is the underrated part. It silences everything standing inside it and roots whatever is still there when it expires, so a Nautilus who has just used Dredge Line [Q] to pull himself into range finds he can't cast Riptide [E], Titan's Wrath [W] or Depth Charge [R]. Wish then undoes the poke damage that was supposed to make the next engage lethal.
Itemizing Against Nautilus
Nautilus deals magic damage, but the thing killing you is duration rather than damage, so build for that:
Quicksilver Sash is the item that changes the matchup outright, because removing the Depth Charge [R] stun removes the window his team was counting on. Mercury's Treads does a smaller version of the same job on everything else in the chain, Banshee's Veil blocks the hook once per fight, and Force of Nature gives a frontliner the move speed to close on a support who can't escape.
Where Nautilus 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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