Counter Guide

How to Beat Lissandra

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Playing against Lissandra is still one of the most frustrating matchups in the game, largely because she gets to decide when it ends.

She is played almost entirely in the mid lane, so this guide focuses there. Her crowd control is relentless, and Frozen Tomb means she can walk into your team and then simply refuse to die for the duration. Beating her is about making the lane too long for her to reach and too expensive for her to trade in.

Matchup Snapshot Lissandra, the Ice Witch

Where You Meet HerMid Lane

Damage TypeMagic

Why She Is FrustratingCrowd control on every button

MobilityGlacial Path [E]

Biggest ThreatFrozen Tomb [R]

Hardest CounterHwei

What a Counter Needs

Range that comfortably beats her 725 unit poke
Magic resist or magic damage reduction to blunt her burst
A way to punish her once Glacial Path is committed

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Lissandra on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Lissandra

Hwei1,086 games56.6%
Viktor2,807 games55.4%
Xerath1,760 games54.7%
Zoe682 games53.5%
Anivia658 games53.2%

Picks Lissandra Beats

Akali2,397 games44.6%
Ryze964 games46.1%
Yasuo4,248 games46.5%
Ekko1,122 games47.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Lissandra. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 59,683 Lissandra games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Lissandra Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

Ring of Frost [W] roots everything around her on a short cooldown, which makes any attempt to walk her down expensive.
Frozen Tomb [R] self-cast makes her untargetable and invulnerable while healing, so she survives engages that would kill any other mid laner.
Cast on you instead, Frozen Tomb is a point-and-click stun with no counterplay once she is in range.
Iceborn Subjugation turns nearby dead enemies into Frozen Thralls that slow and then detonate, so she keeps generating pressure in a won fight.
Ice Shard [Q] passes through its target and keeps going, so she clears waves and pokes the champion behind them in the same cast.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

Her range is genuinely short. Ice Shard reaches 725 units, which is well inside what a real artillery mage operates at.
Glacial Path is slow and telegraphed. The claw travels visibly before she can teleport to it, so her engage is readable.
Her damage is entirely magic, which makes a single early magic resist item disproportionately effective.
Frozen Tomb is a 120 second cooldown at rank 1, and she only gets one of them per fight.
She has no escape once Glacial Path is used. Committing the claw to engage leaves her with nothing to get back out.

Countering Lissandra

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

Out-range her outright. Anything that threatens from well past 725 units gets to farm and poke without ever entering her threat radius.
Blunt the magic damage. Her burst is entirely magic, so a passive reduction or an early magic resist item changes every trade.
Punish the committed engage. Once Glacial Path is spent she has no way out, which is the whole window.
Force out Frozen Tomb early. A defensive ultimate she has already used is 120 seconds of her being an ordinary mage.

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

Playing a Bad Lissandra Matchup

Hold the wave near your own tower. Lissandra needs to close 725 units to threaten anything, and a short lane means she has to walk into your tower range to do it.

Watch for the claw, not for her. Glacial Path comes out before every engage she makes, and the moment it does you know whether to step back or step up.

Buy a magic resist component earlier than usual. Her whole kit is magic damage, so there is no physical threat to hedge against and no reason to split your defensive build.

Bait Frozen Tomb with a fake commitment. If she burns it defensively, you have two full minutes where she cannot save herself or lock down your carry.

Best Lissandra Counters

These three beat Lissandra from three different directions: out-range her, out-trade her at her own range, or make her damage type irrelevant.

Xerath Out-ranges Her Completely

Xerath is the cleanest answer to a mage whose reach stops at 725 units. Arcanopulse is a long-range beam that lets him farm and poke from well outside anything Lissandra can respond to, which means the laning phase happens entirely on his terms.

Shocking Orb is the punish. It stuns at range, and the stun duration grows the further the orb travels, so it is at its strongest exactly when Lissandra is trying to walk up or commit Glacial Path. Rite of the Arcane then threatens her from most of the way across the map, and Mana Surge keeps his mana topped up through a long poke lane.

Viktor Wins the Trade

Viktor beats Lissandra at close-to-medium range, which is where she wants the fight. Siphon Power damages her and grants him a shield while empowering his next attack, so every trade he initiates costs him less than it costs her, and the shield specifically blunts the Ice Shard poke she opens with.

Gravity Field is the answer to her engage. Dropping it on top of Glacial Path's landing spot slows her and then stuns her outright if she stays, which turns her committed engage into a free kill. Arcane Storm also interrupts channels and hits a wide area, punishing a champion who has to be near her target to do anything.

Kassadin Ignores the Damage Type

Kassadin counters Lissandra structurally rather than tactically. Void Stone reduces the magic damage he takes and her entire kit is magic, so the poke phase that beats most mid laners into a bad recall simply does not accumulate against him.

Null Sphere stacks a second layer on top with a shield that specifically absorbs magic damage, and it interrupts channels. Once Riftwalk is online the matchup inverts entirely: Frozen Tomb has a 550 unit range and Kassadin is not standing still long enough for it to matter. Survive the early game and he wins the lane outright.

Itemizing Against Lissandra

Lissandra deals magic damage exclusively and lands it through crowd control, so tenacity and magic resist do all the work here:

Mercury's Treads is the first buy, since almost all of her damage arrives attached to a root or a stun. Banshee's Veil can absorb the Ring of Frost root or a Frozen Tomb outright, and Kaenic Rookern gives a large magic shield to anyone building health.