Top 10 Champions You Cannot Run Away From

Flash is up and your health bar is fine, and the fight is already over. These ten champions turned running away into a formality.

Most fights in League end because somebody decided to leave. That decision is the single most powerful thing a losing player has, and these ten champions were built specifically to take it away from you.

Top 10

Champions You Can't Run Away From

No Escape

Flash is up and your health bar is fine, and the fight is already over. These ten champions turned running away into a formality.

We're counting down from the ones who simply move faster than you to the one who takes the entire map away (and leaves you alone with him).

#10: Udyr, Who Never Stops Moving

Udyr doesn't have a dash or a leap, or any gap closer worth the name. What he has instead is a stance that gives him a long burst of movement speed on a short cooldown (with a stun waiting at the end of it), so the chase is a permanent condition rather than a burst of speed you can outlast. Walking away from an Udyr doesn't work because he never runs out of the thing he's chasing you with.

#9: Hecarim, Who Turns Speed Into Damage

Hecarim converts movement speed into attack damage, so every item that helps him catch you also makes catching you worth more. Then Onslaught of Shadows [R] arrives and sends you running in a direction he chose (it hits you with a charge on the way). Worse, a Hecarim who's behind still moves faster than you do, so a lost early game turns into a mid game where he decides which fights happen.

#8: Vi, Who Does Not Take Inputs

Cease and Desist [R] locks onto a target and carries Vi to them, and no amount of clever movement changes the destination. Flashing doesn't shake it. Walking through a wall doesn't shake it. The ability simply resolves. Vi removes the entire skill expression of escaping (no dodge or juke helps, and no positional read does either). There's only whether your team arrives before she lands.

#7: Camille, Who Builds a Room Around You

The Hextech Ultimatum [R] drops a wall of hexagons around a single champion and takes everyone else out of the fight. Camille doesn't have to be faster than you. She has to reach you once, and then the game becomes a one versus one that you didn't agree to, in a box your team can't enter. Most lockdown gives the target a few seconds of vulnerability. Camille's gives her a private duel with a champion built to win private duels.

#6: Jarvan IV, the Original Walled Garden

Cataclysm [R] has been ending careers since 2011 on exactly the same principle. Jarvan lands on you and terrain appears. The exits are gone. The flag and drag pulls him to you first, so the setup and the trap are the same combo (and it all costs him one ultimate). Every champion added since who traps a single target is working from this template, and the original still gets picked because a wall doesn't care how much mobility you bought.

#5: Nocturne, Who Takes the Lights Out First

Paranoia [R] strips vision from the entire enemy team and then lets Nocturne fly to any of them from most of the map. You can't run from something you can't see arriving, and you can't group up when the screen went dark before you knew a fight was starting. The fear on landing is almost redundant at that point. Nocturne wins the chase before it begins, because nobody knows it's happening.

#4: Skarner, Who Takes You With Him

Impale [R] doesn't stop you from leaving. It picks you up and moves you somewhere worse, and you spend the trip unable to press anything. Skarner is the rare champion who doesn't need to win the fight where he found you, because he can simply relocate you into his team. Being suppressed is bad. Being suppressed while the scenery changes and five enemies come into view is a different feeling entirely, and it's Skarner who sells it.

#3: Warwick, Who Smells You From Across the Map

Blood Hunt [W] shows Warwick every wounded champion on the map and gives him a large amount of movement speed toward them. Then Infinite Duress [R] suppresses whatever he catches. Between the two, low health stops being a state you can retreat from and becomes a flare. Backing off after a rough trade is the standard, correct response to almost every situation in League. Against Warwick it's the exact input that summons him.

#2: Master Yi, Who Ignores Your Answer

Highlander [R] makes Master Yi immune to slows and lasts longer with every takedown, so the standard tools for kiting a melee champion don't work exactly when they matter. Alpha Strike [Q] makes him untargetable for the duration, so the standard tools for bursting him down stop working too. A snowballing Yi is the clearest version of this list's premise: your team has a correct answer to him, but it takes coordination to deliver (and the window closed when he got the first kill).

#1: Mordekaiser, Who Removes the Map

Realm of Death [R] doesn't slow you, root you, wall you in or catch up to you. It deletes the option. You and Mordekaiser go somewhere else. Your team's gone, and so is your escape route (the terrain you were planning to use went with them). Every other champion on this list is beating your movement or your reaction time. Mordekaiser is beating the concept, because there's nowhere on the map to run to and, for the next several seconds, no map. Winning is the only exit, and the champion who chose to open the door was fairly confident about that part.

Conclusions

Disengaging is a skill, and it's the one that separates a bad game from a lost one. Each of these ten attacks a different piece of it. Udyr and Hecarim beat your movement speed and Vi and Skarner beat your inputs. Camille and Jarvan beat the terrain you were running toward, while Nocturne beats your information (Mordekaiser beats the map itself). Learning the matchups on this list mostly means learning to make your decision earlier than feels necessary, because by the time leaving looks like a good idea, these champions won't let you.

Every ranking we've argued about is collected on the Top Ten Thursdays hub.