Counter Guide

How to Beat Lillia

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

You can't catch Lillia, and when she's ready, your whole team falls asleep at once.

She's a nightmare to chase. Every spell she lands makes her faster, so the longer a fight runs the further out of reach she gets, and the burn she leaves on you is what her ultimate uses to put you to sleep. It's a real problem and you're right to want an answer. The answer is that her speed only lasts while she keeps landing spells. Stop her casting, or play something that doesn't care about being slowed, and she's a jungler with a short hop and a 325-range attack. For how she's doing this patch, check our solo queue tier list.

Matchup Snapshot Lillia, the Bashful Bloom

Where You Meet HerJungle

Damage TypeMagic, with some true damage

Why She Is FrustratingToo fast to catch, and she puts you to sleep

MobilityStacking speed and a short hop

Biggest ThreatLilting Lullaby [R]

Hardest CounterFiddlesticks

What a Counter Needs

A silence, fear or stun, because her speed comes from landing spells
A way to stay on top of her that her slows don't stop

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Lillia on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Lillia

Fiddlesticks513 games53.4%
Briar1,426 games53.3%
Kindred658 games52.1%
Master Yi2,163 games51.7%
Rengar643 games51.6%

Picks Lillia Beats

Hecarim1,014 games43.0%
Sejuani793 games44.9%
Warwick1,602 games45.5%
Rammus1,110 games45.8%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Lillia. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 48,079 Lillia games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Lillia Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

She speeds up as she hits you. Each spell she lands gives her a stack of movement speed from Blooming Blows [Q], up to four of them (missing the enemy doesn't count).
Her burn scales with your health. Her abilities leave Dream Dust, which burns a share of your maximum health over three seconds. Tanks don't get out of it by being tanks.
Lilting Lullaby [R] reaches the whole map. Every champion she's dusted gets drowsy and then falls asleep, and the hit that wakes them up does extra damage (it counts turrets and big monsters as wake-up hits too).
Swirlseed [E] keeps rolling. If it misses, it rolls on until it hits a wall or a target, slowing and revealing whoever it finds (sometimes from off screen).

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The speed falls off. If she stops landing spells, her stacks start dropping one at a time.
Her dash is tiny. Watch Out! Eep! [W] hops her up to 350 units and can't cross walls.
The sleep isn't instant. You're drowsy for a second and a half before you drop, and Cleanse (or a Quicksilver item) removes both.
Her ultimate has a long cooldown, 150 seconds at rank one, and it's useless on anyone she hasn't hit recently.

Countering Lillia

You don't need all of these. One's enough to change the fight:

Stop her casting. A silenced or feared Lillia gets no new stacks, and without them she's a melee-range jungler (her attack range is only 325).
Ignore the slow. If you can't be slowed, Swirlseed [E] stops working as an escape tool and she's in trouble.
Save your cleanse for the sleep. Her teamfights are built around the Lullaby, and taking it off one carry can decide the fight.

Already in the game without one? It's still winnable.

Playing Into Lillia Without a Counter

Don't chase her through the jungle. She's built for exactly that fight, and every spell she lands on you while you run makes her faster still.

When you go drowsy, you've got a second and a half before you fall asleep. Use it to walk away from her team, because the sleep hurts most when somebody's there to hit you.

Fight her near walls when you can. Her hop won't take her over them, and a Lillia pinned against terrain has run out of room to run.

Best Lillia Counters

We've picked three that beat her in different ways. Play whichever fits your pool.

Fiddlesticks Stops Her Casting

Lillia needs to keep casting, and Fiddlesticks takes that away. The center of Reap [E] silences for 1.25 seconds, and Terrify [Q] fears her outright. If Fiddlesticks has been unseen and out of combat for a couple of seconds, any damaging spell it lands fears as well, so an ambush from fog locks her down before her speed has a chance to build.

Crowstorm [R] blinks Fiddlesticks into the fight after a channel, and a root won't interrupt it. Once it lands, Reap [E] and Terrify [Q] are right there while she's inside the crows (and she's got nowhere fast to go).

Master Yi Can't Be Slowed

Highlander [R] strips every slow off Yi and makes him immune to them for seven seconds (longer if he gets a takedown). Lillia kites with Swirlseed [E] and her own speed. Against Yi, only the speed's left, and he's got plenty of his own.

Alpha Strike [Q] makes him untargetable while it bounces, and the Lullaby's missile won't land on a target that goes untargetable while it's in the air. It takes timing, but a Yi who sees her ult coming can skip the nap.

Rengar Pounces From Brush

Speed doesn't help against a leap that's already locked on. From a bush, Rengar's basic attack becomes a long jump onto his target, and Thrill of the Hunt [R] camouflages him, finds the nearest enemy and lets him make that jump without brush. Empowered, Bola Strike [E] roots instead of slowing, and a Lillia who can't move is in his range for as long as it lasts.

Itemizing Against Lillia

Almost everything she does is magic damage, so Mercury's Treads are the easy boots. Force of Nature gets stronger after eight magic hits from champions, and in a long fight with her you'll get there. Quicksilver Sash removes the drowsy or the sleep outright (the upgrade, Mercurial Scimitar, does the same on a fighter). Kaenic Rookern suits the laner she ganks, since its magic shield is up again after fifteen seconds without magic damage.