Counter Guide

How to Beat Malphite

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Malphite doesn't really beat you in lane. He makes lane pointless, and then he presses R once and your team fight is over before it started.

There's a specific feeling to a Malphite game where you win every trade for ten minutes, nothing sticks, and then one engage out of the fog ends the match. He gets harder to hurt and harder to survive from the same stat, which is a genuinely unfair way to build a champion, and it's why he never drifts far from the top of the top lane section on our solo queue tier list. All of that is true. It's also the exact place where his answers live.

Matchup Snapshot Malphite, Shard of the Monolith

Where You Meet HimTop Lane

Damage TypeMostly magic

Why He Is FrustratingYou can't hurt him and he ends fights alone

MobilityOne long ultimate

Biggest ThreatUnstoppable Force [R]

Hardest CounterTahm Kench

What a Counter Needs

Damage that ignores armor, since armor is the stat his whole kit is built around
The range or the reset to make his walk-up cost him something
A way to answer Unstoppable Force [R] that doesn't require you to already be far away

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Malphite on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Malphite

Tahm Kench966 games55.5%
Mordekaiser3,394 games55.1%
Sylas2,982 games54.8%
Cho'Gath2,112 games54.4%
Shen1,330 games53.7%

Picks Malphite Beats

Vayne1,778 games38.2%
Gnar1,970 games42.3%
Fiora1,781 games42.4%
Jayce5,126 games43.5%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Malphite. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 92,499 Malphite games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Malphite Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Ground Slam [E] scales its damage with his armor and cuts the attack speed of everyone it hits, which means his defensive item is also his damage item.
Granite Shield [Passive] absorbs damage worth 10% of his maximum health and recharges out of combat, so poke that doesn't kill him doesn't stick to him.
Unstoppable Force [R] is a 1000 unit knockup on a champion who otherwise has no mobility at all, and it's very rarely used from a direction you're watching.
Seismic Shard [Q] steals move speed rather than just slowing, so he speeds up as you slow down and the gap closes twice as fast.
Thunderclap [W] adds aftershocks in a cone to his basic attacks, which turns his short melee window into meaningful damage.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

Mana. Early Seismic Shard [Q] spam empties him quickly, and a Malphite out of mana is a melee minion with a shield.
Armor is the wrong stat against half the roster. His resistances do nothing about magic damage, and Ground Slam [E]'s scaling is irrelevant to anyone who isn't attacking.
He has no escape. Unstoppable Force [R] is an engage tool, and after it he's a slow melee champion with 130 seconds of nothing.
Ranged top laners genuinely beat him. Before level 6 he has no way to close a gap and no way to punish being poked.
His impact is concentrated in one button. Track the ultimate and you know exactly which fights he can and can't start.

Countering Malphite

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

Bring magic damage or true damage. Armor stacking is the entire champion. Anything that routes around armor turns a tank into a large slow target.
Fight when the ultimate is down. 130 seconds at rank 1 is an enormous amount of map you can take while he can't start anything.
Don't group in a line. Unstoppable Force [R] is scored by how many people it catches, and spacing costs him most of the value.
Punish the mana bar. Force him to use Seismic Shard [Q] for the wave, then take the trade while he can't afford Ground Slam [E].

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

Playing a Bad Malphite Matchup

Stand behind your wave, not beside it. Seismic Shard [Q] is 625 range and it's his only tool for starting anything before 6, so denying that one cast denies most of the lane.

Buy boots earlier than usual. The Seismic Shard [Q] move speed steal is the mechanic that turns a bad position into a lost trade, and flat move speed answers it directly.

Give up the wave rather than the plate when he hits 6. He wants a long lane and a target with cooldowns down, and holding a wave near his tower gives him both.

Watch the fog line before every objective fight. He has one button, it starts from out of vision, and the entire game is decided by whether anyone had eyes on where he was standing.

Best Malphite Counters

Malphite loses to three things that have nothing in common: a stolen ultimate, a wall of turrets, and a duel he can't leave. Pick whichever your team can actually play.

Sylas Steals the Ultimate

Hijack [R] gives Sylas a copy of Unstoppable Force [R], and he can hold it for up to 90 seconds before spending it. The knock-up Malphite's team built its fights around is suddenly on both sides, and the stolen copy scales off Sylas's own stats.

The lane suits him as well. Kingslayer [W] dashes in and heals for more the lower Sylas is, so a Malphite who wins the first exchange doesn't get to keep the lead for long.

Heimerdinger Owns the Lane Space

Heimerdinger fights the version of Malphite that has no way to reach him. Hextech Micro-Rockets [W] reach 1325 units and his turrets hold the ground in between, so a melee champion with a 625 range slow and no dash is being asked to walk through a firing line to do anything at all.

It's all magic damage too, which means the armor he's building is doing nothing about it. CH-2 Electron Storm Grenade [E] stuns him on a direct hit if he does commit, and UPGRADE!!! [R] turns that into a stun with an area slow attached. He can still ultimate into a team fight later, but the lane itself isn't a contest.

Mordekaiser Takes Him Out of the Fight

Realm of Death [R] banishes Malphite with Mordekaiser for seven seconds, somewhere his team can't follow. Cast it before a fight starts, and the one champion who was going to open it is stuck in a duel instead.

That duel leans Mordekaiser's way. Indestructible [W] stores part of the damage he deals and takes as a shield he can spend whenever he likes, and Death's Grasp [E] pulls Malphite back in if he tries to walk off.

Itemizing Against Malphite

Almost all of Malphite's damage is magic, which surprises people who file him under armor tank. Build accordingly:

Mercury's Treads reduces the follow-up crowd control after the knockup, which is where the deaths actually happen. Wit's End gives magic resist and on-hit damage at once, which fits anyone still trying to kill him. Kaenic Rookern's magic shield eats an entire engage for a frontliner, and Maw of Malmortius gives a carry a lifeline that triggers on the burst rather than after it.