Counter Guide

How to Beat Nocturne

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Paranoia [R] is the only ability in the game that turns your monitor off, and the reason it feels unfair is that it mostly is.

Losing to Nocturne rarely feels like losing a fight. The screen darkens, your team disappears, and a champion arrives from a direction you had no way to check. That's a genuinely miserable experience and it's worth the ban slot. That pattern is what keeps him a respected jungle pick on our solo queue tier list. The useful thing is that the pattern has a shape, and once you can see the shape, most of the deaths stop happening.

Matchup Snapshot Nocturne, the Eternal Nightmare

Where You Meet HimJungle

Damage TypePhysical

Why He Is FrustratingThe screen goes dark and you're already dead

MobilityVery high with the ultimate

Biggest ThreatParanoia [R]

Hardest CounterRammus

What a Counter Needs

A cheap ability to throw at Shroud of Darkness [W] before your real one
A way to break the Unspeakable Horror [E] tether, or the range to never be in it
Enough survivability to make the Paranoia [R] dive a bad trade rather than a free kill

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Nocturne on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Nocturne

Rammus1,904 games54.6%
Briar3,617 games52.2%
Udyr1,123 games51.8%
Wukong3,681 games51.7%
Shyvana3,659 games51.5%

Picks Nocturne Beats

Zed1,270 games43.2%
Qiyana1,999 games43.5%
Rengar1,486 games44.1%
Nidalee1,220 games45.1%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Nocturne. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 107,398 Nocturne games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Nocturne Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

Paranoia [R] strips your vision and removes your allies from the map. Then it launches him onto anyone nearby (up to 4000 units at rank 3).
Shroud of Darkness [W] blocks the next enemy ability outright and doubles his attack speed if it lands. Your best crowd control tool often just disappears.
Duskbringer [Q] leaves a trail that lets him move through units and gives him move speed and attack damage while he's on it.
Unspeakable Horror [E] tethers you and fears you if you don't break it, and breaking it means running away from a champion who's currently faster than you.
Umbra Blades [Passive] heals him on a rotating basic attack and the cooldown drops as he keeps attacking, so his clear is safe and he's rarely low.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The spellshield is one ability and 1.5 seconds. Any cheap throwaway cast pops it, and then your actual crowd control lands on a champion with nothing left.
He has no ranged threat without the ultimate. Outside Paranoia [R] he has to walk to you like anybody else.
Unspeakable Horror [E] needs him inside 425 units for the full duration. Anything that moves you, moves him, or slows him breaks it.
Paranoia [R] is a 140 second cooldown at rank 1. Between casts he's a melee jungler with no engage against a team that's grouped.
He's built for isolating one person. Against a team that stays together, the fear and the darkness stop being an advantage and start being a 1v5.

Countering Nocturne

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

Bait the spellshield first. Throw your cheapest ability the moment he presses W. The one that matters lands 1.5 seconds later on an empty champion.
Stay grouped when his ultimate is up. Paranoia [R] targets a champion near where he lands. Being near four other people turns the play from an execution into a fight he loses.
Break the tether with movement. Unspeakable Horror [E] is a range check. Dashes, flashes, and anything that moves him away all end it.
Track the 140 seconds. The window after Paranoia [R] is the window to take an objective, and it's much longer than most teams give it credit for.

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

Playing a Bad Nocturne Matchup

Buy a Quicksilver Sash sooner than you think you need one. The fear kills you more than the damage does, and removing it turns his all-in into a duel he didn't want.

Ward for the approach. Paranoia [R] removes ally vision but it doesn't remove your own wards, so the map still tells you where he was standing when he pressed it.

Turn and fight rather than running in a straight line. Running is what Duskbringer [Q] and Unspeakable Horror [E] are both built to punish, and the trail he's chasing you along is the thing making him fast.

Force the fight at a wall or a choke. Nocturne wants an open field and a single target, and neither of those things exists at a dragon pit with five people in it.

Best Nocturne Counters

Each of these takes away a different part of the same play. Nasus takes the chase, Kha'Zix the duel, Shyvana the payoff.

Nasus Cripples the Chase

Wither [W] is a 700 range single target slow that hits move speed and attack speed at the same time and worsens over its duration. Nocturne's entire pattern is arriving on one person and staying on them, and Wither [W] removes both halves of that in one cast that he can't spellshield after he's already committed.

The rest lines up neatly. Spirit Fire [E] shreds his armor from a safe distance while Soul Eater [Passive] keeps Nasus topped up, and Fury of the Sands [R] turns the isolation fight Nocturne wanted into a duel against a champion who just gained health, resistances and attack range. If Nasus is even slightly stacked, that fight isn't close.

Kha'Zix Wins the Solo Fight

Kha'Zix is built to punish exactly the situation Nocturne creates. Unseen Threat [Passive] marks isolated targets, and a Nocturne who has just ultimated into your jungle away from his team is the most isolated champion on the map. Taste Their Fear [Q] is also a cheap point-and-click cast (the ideal thing to throw at Shroud of Darkness [W] before anything else).

Leap [E] breaks the Unspeakable Horror [E] tether by range rather than by cleansing it, and Void Assault [R] turns him invisible with a move speed burst (which ends the chase Nocturne was relying on). Between the two he never has to fight on Nocturne's terms even after being ultimated onto.

Shyvana Too Thick to Delete

Nocturne's whole plan is to remove one champion quickly, and Shyvana refuses to be removed. Scalemail [Passive] stacks defenses off takedowns on champions and large monsters, Inferno Aegis [W] shields her and detonates around her, and Dragon Form heals her off that same explosion.

Dragon's Descent [R] is the reversal. It's a long leap that makes enemies along the path flee, which cancels the isolation Paranoia [R] set up and drags the fight back toward her team. A Nocturne who ultimates onto Shyvana usually finds himself standing in the middle of four people with his cooldowns spent.

Itemizing Against Nocturne

Nocturne deals physical damage in a single committed dive, and the fear is a bigger part of the kill than the damage is:

Quicksilver Sash is the item that actually changes the matchup, because removing the fear turns his all-in back into a fair duel. Plated Steelcaps and Randuin's Omen both cut the attack damage his doubled attack speed is meant to deliver, and Randuin's slows the chase afterward. Zhonya's Hourglass buys the two seconds your team needs to arrive.