Counter Guide

How to Beat Aphelios

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Aphelios is five champions on a timer, and only one of them is dangerous to you right now.

He's the most complicated champion in the game to play and yet one of the simplest to play against, and a lot of people never take advantage of that. The weapons rotate on a schedule he can't fully control, so his lane has genuine weak minutes built into it. Those minutes are yours. What you can't do is treat every second of the lane as equally dangerous, because that hands him the whole early game and he's not a champion you want to meet later.

Matchup Snapshot Aphelios, the Weapon of the Faithful

Where You Meet Him Bot lane

Damage Type Physical, and the shape of it keeps changing

Why He Is Frustrating Sometimes the range is absurd

Mobility None, no dash or blink of any kind

Biggest Threat Moonlight Vigil [R]

Hardest Counter Samira

What a Counter Needs

Something that closes distance on a champion who can't leave
The patience to read which weapons he's holding
Early game strength, because the late game is his

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Aphelios on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Aphelios

Samira1,313 games52.8%
Jinx6,545 games52.5%
Twitch1,317 games52.5%
Yunara4,112 games52.2%
Miss Fortune3,251 games52.0%

Picks Aphelios Beats

Vayne985 games46.0%
Lucian2,402 games47.2%
Ezreal3,646 games48.0%
Zeri1,155 games48.2%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the bot lane against Aphelios. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 57,308 Aphelios games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Aphelios Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

One of his weapons out ranges everything. When it's up he can hit people who can't answer, and a lane played carelessly in those minutes bleeds health for no reason at all.
He never runs out of options. There's a weapon for wave clear, one for a duel, one for a siege and one for a fight in a corridor (four of the five), and he gets to pick which problem to solve.
His late game is close to the top of the roster. Given items and a team that protects him, there isn't much that beats him in a straight fight.
The ultimate is an opener and a finisher. Moonlight Vigil [R] hits a group and marks them for whatever weapon he's holding, so it's worth much more than the damage number suggests.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't move. There's no escape anywhere in the kit. Every gank that arrives with any crowd control at all is a kill, and every fight he's caught in is one he doesn't walk out of.
The weapon rotation isn't his to choose freely. Granted, he can plan it, but he can't skip it, so there are real windows where the tool he needs simply isn't in his hands.
The early levels are weak. He's a scaling champion pretending to be a lane bully in the minutes when the range weapon happens to be up, and the rest of the time he's beatable.
He's entirely dependent on his team. Take his support out of the fight and he's a squishy marksman with no way out standing among people who want him gone.
Complexity costs him tempo. A misplayed swap is a whole trade lost, and that happens far more often than it does on a champion with four buttons.

Countering Aphelios

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Aphelios comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Look at what he's holding. The single most useful habit against him, and it's free. Two of the weapons are a threat and the rest (the other three) are an opportunity.
Bring somebody who starts fights. He has nothing to press when a fight begins on top of him, so an engage support is close to the ideal draft answer.
Ask for the early gank. There's no easier target in the game before he has items, and every minute you wait is a minute he's using.
Force the game to resolve before it gets long. The scaling is real, so a team that keeps taking objectives is beating him at the only thing he can't answer.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Aphelios Matchup

Play close to your tower during the long range windows and step up when they end. The lane genuinely has two states, and treating them the same is how a matchup that should be even turns into a losing one.

Take the trades when the weapon in his hands is a wave clear tool rather than a fight tool. He's choosing between farming and fighting more often than most marksmen, and the choice is visible.

Ward for the fight rather than for the gank. He's not going to leave once it starts, so the useful information is where his support is standing (his jungler matters less).

Best Aphelios Counters

Catch him, blank his shots, or simply jump on the most immobile carry in the game.

Pyke Catches Him

Hunting a marksman with no escape is what he's for, and there is no marksman with less escape than this one.

The reset is the part that decides games. One kill in a bot lane against a champion who can't disengage tends not to stay one kill for long.

Samira Blanks His Shots

Blade Whirl [W] destroys incoming enemy projectiles while it spins, and most of what Aphelios fires is a projectile. The one weapon it can't stop is Severum, whose attacks go straight through.

Wild Rush [E] then closes the gap on a marksman with no dash of his own. She wants the fight at close range, and close range is where he has the fewest answers.

Rengar Jumps On Him

A jungler who arrives from above on a champion with no dash is finishing a fight that never happened.

It keeps working later too. Aphelios has to be positioned somewhere useful in a team fight, and useful and safe aren't the same place for him.

Itemizing Against Aphelios

All four are aimed at basic attacks, because almost everything he does arrives as one:

Plated Steelcaps is worth taking early and it's worth taking on more than one person (his damage is spread across a whole team rather than concentrated on whoever he's laning against). Frozen Heart is the best of the armor items here because his output depends heavily on attack speed, and cutting it cuts the weapons that matter most. Randuin's Omen is the version for the front line and it's specifically good against the sustained damage window his ultimate sets up. Guardian Angel belongs on whoever he's aiming at rather than on whoever is fighting him, and buying it before the game reaches the point where he one shots people is much better than buying it afterward.