Counter Guide

How to Beat Rakan

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Rakan doesn't win the fight. He starts it, from somewhere you weren't watching, and then he leaves before the bill arrives.

He's the rarest thing a support can be, which is an engage champion who also gets to change his mind. Most champions who start fights are committed the moment they move. He isn't, and that asymmetry is why the lane feels unfair even when you're ahead. So the question is never how to survive his engage. It's how to make him spend it on nothing.

Matchup Snapshot Rakan, the Charmer

Where You Meet Him Support

Damage Type Magic, and not much of it

Why He Is Frustrating He engages without committing

Mobility Extremely high, with a condition

Biggest Threat Battle Dance [E]

Hardest Counter Senna

What a Counter Needs

Something that survives the opening move without needing to react to it in time
A way to hold him in place, because everything he does assumes he gets to leave
Enough damage in a short window to punish a champion who builds almost none of his own

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Rakan on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Rakan

Senna1,066 games54.2%
Swain778 games53.6%
Sona480 games53.1%
Morgana1,228 games52.4%
Leona1,686 games52.2%

Picks Rakan Beats

Tahm Kench613 games43.7%
Karma969 games44.9%
Pyke1,509 games46.1%
Nautilus2,150 games46.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, playing support against Rakan. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 36,711 Rakan games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Rakan Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He picks the angle. He can start a fight from a brush, from over a wall, or from behind you, and none of those approaches look the same to the person being engaged on.
He's allowed to be wrong. A bad engage from most supports is a death. From him it's somehow just a dash back to his marksman and a shrug.
Shields keep arriving. He hands out protection on a short cycle and gets some for himself for free, so the burst you were counting on to kill him lands on padding.
His crowd control chains. A knock-up into a charm is enough time for two other people to finish something, and he doesn't need to land either one himself to win the fight.
Distance isn't a defense. Vaulting a wall costs him no more than walking across open ground, so the safe-looking side of a lane is just as reachable as the risky one.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

His escape needs somebody to escape to. Battle Dance [E] is a dash toward an ally, so a Rakan who's alone is a slow, fragile champion holding a movement ability he can't use.
He's made of paper. Nothing about his build fixes that, and a support who dies at the start of a fight has contributed a knock-up (and that's all).
The engage announces itself. There's a wind-up before he lands (short, but real), and it's enough for a shield, a blink or a spell shield to be up before he touches anything.
He does no damage on his own. A Rakan who lands everything and gets no follow-up has traded his whole kit for a slow.
He hates being the target. Turn the fight onto him and everything he wanted to do to somebody else stops happening.

Countering Rakan

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

Separate him from his marksman. Standing so that the dash home is long, or that there's nobody at the other end of it, turns his best ability (Battle Dance [E]) off without anyone pressing a button.
Hold your defensive tool for the landing. He's committed on the way in and free on the way out, so the shield or blink you spend early does nothing and the one you spend late saves the fight.
Ward the walls. He arrives over terrain more often than through the entrance, and a ward two steps into the wrong place sees none of it.
Kill him first when he's in reach. Unusual advice against a support, and correct here, because he's the reason the enemy bot lane gets to fight at all.

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

Playing a Bad Rakan Matchup

Play the lane a bit further back than feels necessary. The extra distance doesn't stop him, but it adds a second to the arrival, and a second is the difference between a summoner spell you used and one you wasted.

Don't chase him. Ever. The chase is the fight he's best at, and the champion you're chasing gets faster while you don't.

Push and take the plate. He's a support who wants a fight, so a lane with no fights in it is a lane where he's contributed nothing and you've taken gold.

Best Rakan Counters

Three ways to beat a champion whose whole game is arriving: blank the arrival, undo it, or make him stay for the part he was planning to skip. One counter each.

Morgana Blanks The Opening Move

A spell shield on the right person turns his entire opening into a movement ability. He lands, nothing happens, and the fight he started is now a 2v2 where the enemy support does no damage.

She's also the only one of the three who protects somebody else, which matters because he rarely picks you. Hold it for the person he's looking at rather than the person holding the button.

Senna Undoes It Afterwards

Senna doesn't stop the engage either. She answers it once it's landed: Piercing Darkness [Q] heals every ally in the beam and hits Rakan in the same cast, and Dawning Shadow [R] is a beam across the whole map that shields every ally it passes through.

Then there's his way out. Rakan's plan ends with Battle Dance [E] back to his own carry, and Last Embrace [W] roots its target and everyone standing near it. A Rakan who stays one attack too long gets stuck in the fight he meant to leave.

Leona Makes Him Stay

Attach to him and the escape plan stops mattering. She has more crowd control than he has ways out of it, she survives the fight he starts, and she wins the version where both supports die because his marksman lost their frontline and hers didn't.

Itemizing Against Rakan

Two of these answer his crowd control and two answer the reason he's hard to kill, which is a strange split for a support matchup and the right one here:

Mercury's Treads shortens everything he lands, which turns a chain into two separate problems instead of one long one. Quicksilver Sash is for The Quickness [R] specifically, since a charm you can cancel is a charm that cost him his best cooldown for nothing. Serpent's Fang attacks the shields rather than the health bar, and against a champion who hands them out on a cycle that's where the fight is actually decided. The Control Ward is for the wall he keeps coming over.