Counter Guide

How to Beat Diana

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Diana gathers your whole team into one place and then deletes whoever was standing in the middle of it.

She's an assassin who arrives as a fight rather than as a pick, because the thing she opens with pulls several people together instead of isolating one. That makes her scary in a way most assassins aren't, and it also leaves her badly exposed once the sequence is spent. There's no exit. She lands in the middle of your team with a shield and a lot of confidence, and whether that was a good idea depends almost entirely on what your team did in the following second.

Matchup Snapshot Diana, Scorn of the Moon

Where You Meet Her Mid lane, and the jungle

Damage Type Magic, in one large piece

Why She Is Frustrating She arrives on top of everybody at once

Mobility A dash that keeps resetting if it's going well

Biggest Threat Moonfall [R]

Hardest Counter Nasus

What a Counter Needs

A way to punish somebody who has already committed
Range, or a reason she can never reach you
Magic resist on the people standing near each other

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Diana on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Diana

Nasus602 games58.3%
Kassadin496 games54.8%
Galio1,008 games54.1%
Lux1,144 games52.5%
Vex1,114 games52.3%

Picks Diana Beats

Orianna791 games44.4%
Akshan453 games44.6%
Locke1,520 games46.4%
Akali1,526 games47.1%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Diana. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 42,607 Diana games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Diana Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

Her opener is a team fight. Moonfall [R] gathering four people into one spot is worth more than most assassins' entire kits, and it happens before anybody has decided how the fight is going.
The dash keeps coming back. As long as she's connecting, the gap closer refreshes, so chasing her off with a small amount of damage rarely works.
She has a shield built into her rotation. It isn't a separate cooldown she has to plan around. It arrives with the damage, so the first response to her burst hits less than it should.
She clears the jungle quickly and flanks well. The version of her that comes from the side is much harder to see coming than the one standing in a lane, and she's equally happy in both.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

She's melee, and that's a real cost. Every threat she has requires her to be next to somebody. A mid laner who never lets that happen has a very quiet lane and a very good game.
Once she's in, she's in. The commitment is total. She has no way out of a fight that went badly, so she's the easiest target on the map for a team that reacts quickly.
Before six she's ordinary. The early lane is where she's actually beatable, and somehow a lot of opponents play it carefully and then wonder where the lead went.
The opener is a skillshot with a wind up. It can be dodged, and dodging it takes the sequence apart, because the rest of what she does depends on it having landed.
Hard crowd control stops her outright. There's nothing in her kit that resists it, so being held still while she's in the middle of five people is the end of her fight.

Countering Diana

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

Have somebody ready to kill her the instant she lands. The window where she's standing in the middle of your team with nothing left is short (and it decides the matchup).
Don't stand in a clump. Her opener rewards a group that was already close together. Spreading out costs almost nothing and takes most of her value away.
Take the lane before six. She has one strong phase and it starts at a specific level. The time before it is the time to build a lead she can't recover from.
Bring a wall, a shield or a way to not be there. Anything that interrupts the sequence after the first piece works, because the rest of it is a chain rather than a set of independent options.

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

Playing a Bad Diana Matchup

Hold the wave near your own tower and let her shove. She gets very little from a pushed lane except a chance to roam, and a roam is easier to ping than a fight is to survive.

Buy the magic resist component before it looks needed. Her burst is calibrated against somebody who has none, and it stops being lethal the moment it's calibrated against somebody who does.

Keep the flash for the moment after she commits rather than the moment before. Flashing away from the pull is fine; flashing out of the fight she trapped herself in is better, because it leaves her there.

Best Diana Counters

Three completely different answers: build a wall, make her come to you, or punish the dash directly.

Anivia Builds A Wall

A wall between a melee assassin and her target ends the sequence before it starts, and it's up again long before her cooldowns are.

The egg is the other half. Killing her once isn't enough, and an assassin who spent everything on a kill that didn't stick is standing in a very bad place.

Swain Makes Her Come To Him

She has to be in melee range and he's at his best with people in melee range, so the fight she wanted is the fight he was hoping for.

He also doesn't die on schedule. Her burst is designed to finish, and a target that keeps getting health back in the middle of it turns her plan into a long fight she isn't built for.

Vex Punishes The Dash

Her kit is aimed specifically at champions who close distance with a dash (a very short description of this matchup).

It works both ways round too. Vex punishes the approach and then threatens the escape, and Diana's escape is the same button as her approach.

Itemizing Against Diana

The first two are aimed at the sequence and the last two at what's left of it:

Verdant Barrier is the cheap purchase that changes the lane (a shield absorbing the opening piece means the chain never reaches the part that kills). Serpent's Fang is the underrated one here, since the shield she generates mid rotation is what lets her survive the second after she commits, and taking it away gets her killed on the dive. Mercury's Treads is the boot to take on anybody she's likely to gather up, and it beats the armor option here (none of her damage is physical). Zhonya's Hourglass is the classic answer and it stays the classic answer, since her plan resolves in about a second and standing still for two of them is enough.