Counter Guide

How to Beat Braum

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Braum doesn't start fights and he doesn't win them. He decides which of your spells were allowed to happen.

He's a wall with a direction. Everything he does well is about standing between somebody and the thing that was about to hit them. That's worth a lot when the enemy team lines up neatly in front of him and very little when it doesn't. He has no engage worth the name, no way to chase somebody who leaves, and not much damage of his own. What he has is the ability to make an entire fight happen on the side of the map he pointed at. Beating him means either coming from a direction he didn't pick, or making the person he's protecting irrelevant.

Matchup Snapshot Braum, the Heart of the Freljord

Where You Meet Him Bot lane

Damage Type Magic, and not very much of it

Why He Is Frustrating The spell that would have won it never lands

Mobility A jump to an ally, and otherwise walking

Biggest Threat Unbreakable [E]

Hardest Counter Zilean

What a Counter Needs

Damage that arrives as an area rather than a line
An engage that goes past him instead of through him
Patience, because his shield does run out

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Braum on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Braum

Zilean633 games53.9%
Brand1,006 games53.8%
Senna1,623 games52.7%
Soraka973 games52.6%
Alistar1,467 games51.8%

Picks Braum Beats

Yuumi1,212 games44.1%
Sona581 games44.4%
Bard843 games44.6%
Karma1,223 games44.7%

Win rates are for the champion listed, playing support against Braum. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 52,377 Braum games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Braum Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He removes the first thing you throw. Unbreakable [E] stops the projectile it's aimed at outright and cuts down everything behind it, so the opening move of most bot lane plans simply doesn't occur.
He's very hard to kill for what he costs. He builds cheap, he doesn't need a lead, and the lane where you're ahead of him still tends to be a lane where he's doing his job perfectly well.
His stun doesn't need to be his. Concussive Blows [Passive] lets his partner do most of the setup, so killing him or zoning him doesn't switch off the crowd control the way it would for most supports.
He fixes other people's mistakes. A carry who walked too far forward is usually dead. With him standing there, the same mistake costs a summoner spell and nothing else.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The shield only faces one way. It points in one direction. Damage arriving from the side or from above is damage he was never covering, and he can't turn fast enough to cover two of them.
He can't start anything. He has no gap closer that threatens anyone and no way to force a fight. A lane that refuses to walk into him is a lane he can't do anything about.
His own damage is close to nothing. He isn't a threat by himself, so the moment his partner is out of the picture he's a very durable champion accomplishing very little.
He can't follow you. If you leave, you leave. He has a slow and a jump to a teammate, and neither of those catches a champion who decided to walk away.
He has to be next to somebody. His entire value depends on the distance between him and the person he's protecting, and that distance is something you get to influence.

Countering Braum

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

Attack from more than one angle. The shield covers the line it's pointing down. Two sources of damage coming from two places means one of them was always going to land.
Use damage that is an area rather than a projectile. Anything that lands on the ground around him rather than traveling toward him ignores the single best thing he does.
Separate him from his carry. Every fight he wins is a fight where he was standing close enough to matter. Pushing him away is nearly the same as killing him and takes a lot less work.
Bait it early with something cheap. It's on a cooldown like everything else. Spend a low value spell into it, wait, then do the thing you actually came to do.

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

Playing a Bad Braum Matchup

Trade when his passive isn't stacked rather than when your cooldowns are up. The stun is the only part of the lane that genuinely punishes a mistake, and its progress is visible on your own health bar if you look for it.

Play around the second wave rather than the first fight. He's at his best in a straight confrontation and at his worst when the lane is decided by where the wave is sitting (a contest he contributes almost nothing to).

Don't walk into him to reach the person behind him. That's the exact shape of fight he was built for. Wait for the person behind him to walk somewhere else, because eventually they will.

Best Braum Counters

Come from an angle he didn't choose, engage onto him rather than past him, or make the fight about a place instead of a line.

Zyra Damage From Angles

Her damage doesn't travel toward anybody. It grows out of the ground next to them, and a shield pointed at the person casting it is pointed at nothing that matters.

She also punishes the thing he's best at. His good fights involve two people standing close together for a while, and standing close together for a while is what her whole kit is priced against.

Rell Engage He Cannot Undo

She doesn't throw anything at him. She arrives, and there's no projectile in that sequence for him to intercept.

Once she has committed, he has no disengage that reverses it. He can shield, he can slow, and none of that gets his partner out of the middle of a fight that has already started.

Alistar Nothing To Block

Every important thing he does is untargeted, so the shield simply isn't part of the interaction (there's no spell to eat).

He also solves the positioning problem directly by moving people. Shoving Braum away from the person he is guarding turns the best support in the fight into a spectator, and there's nothing in the kit that undoes being pushed.

Itemizing Against Braum

He's durable, he shields other people, and his own damage is magic, so the shopping list is short:

Serpent's Fang is the item aimed at what he actually contributes, because most of his protection arrives as shielding on somebody else and this cuts into it every time. Mercury's Treads is worth more against him than the raw magic resist suggests (the part of his kit that decides fights is a stun, and the boots shorten it). Kaenic Rookern is the buy for whoever his partner keeps aiming at, and it covers his own damage as well as the magic damage of whatever bot lane he's enabling. A Control Ward is on this list because the fights he wins are the ones nobody saw coming, and he's exactly the kind of champion who's standing somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.