Counter Guide

How to Beat Kog'Maw

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Kog'Maw is the most dangerous champion in the game and the easiest one to kill, and both of those are true at the same time.

He's an experiment in trading everything for one thing. He has no dash, no blink, no defensive spell of any kind, and a range that outclasses almost anybody once his damage is running. In exchange he needs four other people to build a fence around him, and a fight where that fence stays up is a fight nobody on your side survives. So the matchup comes down to the arithmetic of the fence (outplaying him in a duel barely comes into it): who's holding it up, whether they can be moved, and whether anybody on your side has a way to be standing behind it.

Matchup Snapshot Kog'Maw, the Mouth of the Abyss

Where You Meet Him Bot lane

Damage Type Mixed, and a percentage of your health

Why He Is Frustrating You die from a range where nothing can be done

Mobility None whatsoever

Biggest Threat Bio-Arcane Barrage [W]

Hardest Counter Yasuo

What a Counter Needs

A way to reach the back of a fight
Enough burst to finish before his team reacts
A reason to fight before he has items

Patches 26.17-26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Kog'Maw on Patches 26.17-26.18

Best Picks Into Kog'Maw

Yasuo408 games51.5%
Viktor430 games51.2%
Jinx3,956 games50.9%
Xayah733 games50.6%

Picks Kog'Maw Beats

Aphelios785 games43.4%
Kalista530 games44.0%
Draven721 games44.2%
Ezreal2,145 games44.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the bot lane against Kog'Maw. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patches 26.17-26.18, Silver and above, 38,072 Kog'Maw games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Kog'Maw Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

The range isn't a small advantage. Bio-Arcane Barrage [W] puts him outside the range of most of the things that would otherwise be hurting him, which changes what a fight even looks like.
Health doesn't protect anybody from him. A percentage of a health bar is a percentage, so building large against him is close to no protection at all.
He doesn't stop when he dies. Icathian Surprise [Passive] means killing him at the wrong moment is still a problem, and, somehow, a lot of otherwise clean fights still end with everybody stepping backward.
Everything runs through him. A team built around him plays a very simple game, and simple is hard to disrupt: they stand in front of him and he does the rest.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't move. There's no escape in the kit and none coming. Anybody who arrives on top of him is having a conversation he can't take part in.
He's weak for a long time. The early game is genuinely bad. He has no way to fight back and no way to leave, so the lane that pressures him at level two is a lane he can't recover.
His range is a decision he has to make. It costs mana and it runs on a timer, so there are stretches where he's a very fragile marksman with ordinary reach standing somewhere he chose while he wasn't.
Everything depends on other people. Move the champion protecting him and you have moved him. That's a much easier target than he is.
He can't punish being pushed. A lane sitting on top of his tower forces him to farm from a place where he has no answer to anybody arriving from the river.

Countering Kog'Maw

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

Attack the fence. The champion keeping him alive is usually easier to reach and worth more to remove (he stops working entirely the moment nobody's standing in front of him).
Fight early and fight often. The version of him that ends games needs items and time. The version in the first fifteen minutes needs help crossing the lane.
Bring somebody who can get to the back. A dive, a hook, a leap over terrain. Any of them, as long as it doesn't require walking through four people first.
Don't group up in front of him. His damage is priced against health bars standing in a line at long range, and standing in a line is a choice.

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

Playing a Bad Kog'Maw Matchup

Push the lane rather than trying to trade in it. He has no way to answer a wave sitting on his tower and no way to leave when somebody comes to visit, and both of those problems are created by the same decision.

Watch the timer on his range rather than his health. The dangerous version of him only exists in stretches, and the lane gets decided in the gaps between them.

If a fight starts and nobody can reach him, leave. A fight against a protected marksman that nobody has a plan for is just a slower way of surrendering the objective.

Best Kog'Maw Counters

Reach the back of the fight, or fight before there's anything worth reaching.

Camille Takes Him Out Of It

Her ultimate does the one thing his team exists to prevent (separating him from everybody protecting him).

And once that's happened, there's nothing left. He has no way to leave, no way to survive a duel and no way to make her wait.

Blitzcrank One Hook Ends It

The hook is a complete answer to a champion with no escape, and it works in lane long before either team has anything to build a fight around.

It also solves the fence problem in a different way (pulling the wrong person still pulls somebody out of the group he was standing behind).

Kha'Zix Finds Him Alone

He's looking for exactly what a protected marksman occasionally becomes: somebody standing on their own for a few seconds in the wrong part of the map.

The burst also finishes rather than chips. Against a champion who has no way to disengage, damage arriving all at once is worth a lot more than the same amount arriving slowly.

Itemizing Against Kog'Maw

His damage is mixed and it arrives as attacks, so the answers are split between the two:

Plated Steelcaps is the boot for anybody who has to stand in front of him, because the delivery mechanism for everything he does is a basic attack. Frozen Heart is unusually strong here for the same reason, and the attack speed it takes away is taken away from the one champion whose contribution is all measured in attacks per second. Kaenic Rookern covers the other half of his damage (the part that scales with your health rather than against your armor). Randuin's Omen belongs on whoever is trying to reach him, since the walk toward him is the part of the fight that decides it and this shortens the amount of damage taken on the way.