Counter Guide

How to Beat Rammus

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Rammus doesn't really have a counter. He has a condition, and if your team doesn't meet it he's one of the least frightening champions on the board.

He's the most conditional champion in the game. Against a team built on attacks he's close to unbeatable in a straight fight, because standing still and doing nothing is a legitimate way for him to kill people. Against a team built on spells he's a slow jungler with a taunt and almost no damage of his own. That gap is enormous and it's settled in champion select more often than in the game. What's left for the players already in the matchup is narrow but reliable: don't attack him, don't stand where he can taunt somebody important, and remember that he can't actually finish anybody by himself.

Matchup Snapshot Rammus, the Armordillo

Where You Meet Him The jungle

Damage Type Magic, most of it from being hit

Why He Is Frustrating Your own damage is the thing killing you

Mobility Very fast in a straight line, and slow otherwise

Biggest Threat Defensive Ball Curl [W]

Hardest Counter Cho'Gath

What a Counter Needs

Damage that is spells rather than attacks
Range, so the taunt lands on nobody who matters
Patience, because he isn't the one who ends the fight

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Rammus on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Rammus

Cho'Gath1,105 games55.4%
Lillia1,110 games54.2%
Amumu870 games53.9%
Zac442 games52.3%
Trundle586 games51.4%

Picks Rammus Beats

Rengar604 games41.4%
Kha'Zix742 games41.9%
Kindred557 games42.5%
Talon883 games43.0%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the jungle against Rammus. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 40,210 Rammus games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Rammus Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He punishes the thing marksmen are for. Defensive Ball Curl [W] makes attacking him actively harmful, so the strongest member of most teams has nothing to do while it's up.
The taunt removes a player from the fight. It isn't a stun that can be traded through. Whoever it lands on spends the duration walking toward him and doing exactly what he wanted.
He arrives from an absurd distance. Powerball [Q] crosses most of the map, so the gank that looks impossible becomes a gank that happens twice.
He doesn't need anything. No items, no lead, no farm. A jungler whose contribution doesn't scale with gold is a jungler you can't put behind.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't kill anybody. To be fair, his damage is real, but it's slow and it needs you to be helping. A fight where nobody attacks him is a fight where he's a taunt and a slow (and nothing else).
His engage is a straight line. The ball is fast and it's completely predictable. A slow, a wall, a minion or a step to the side, and the gank ends with a jungler standing in your lane out of options.
Armor isn't a general purpose defense. He builds to survive attacks, and the magic damage on the other side of the map goes through it as though it weren't there.
He's bad at a fight he didn't start. There's no follow up in the kit. If the taunt lands on somebody unimportant, his team is fighting four against five for the next few seconds.
He's slow once he stops rolling. Outside the ball he can't chase anybody, so a target that walks away calmly is a target he doesn't get.

Countering Rammus

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

Stop attacking him. This is most of the matchup and it costs nothing. Every attack into the curled version of him is damage delivered to yourself, and simply walking away is a winning play.
Bring spell damage. Magic goes through the build he made, and a team with two real sources of it is a team he can't stand in front of for very long.
Break the line before he arrives. The engage is a straight roll with a long approach. A ward and a sidestep are worth more than any item against it.
Let the taunt land on the wrong person. Whoever is standing furthest forward is the one who eats it. That should be a decision your team makes.

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

Playing a Bad Rammus Matchup

Ward the entrances and leave the pit alone. Everything good that happens to him starts with a long approach nobody saw, and the ward that catches the approach is the useful one.

Fight in the open. His damage and his taunt are both worth much more in a corridor where nobody could have stepped aside, and the same fight in a wide space is one he contributes very little to.

If your carry is taunted, don't follow them in. The taunt is his play, and the mistake that turns it into a lost fight is the three teammates who came to help.

Best Rammus Counters

Do your damage with spells, from a place his taunt doesn't reach, against a champion he has no way of finishing.

Karthus Damage He Cannot Reflect

Nothing he does is a basic attack, so the single best thing Rammus offers is switched off for the entire game.

The taunt also costs him almost nothing. A champion who keeps doing damage after the worst has happened is the worst possible target for a champion whose plan is to occupy somebody for a few seconds.

Vladimir Cannot Be Finished

The armor does nothing against him and the damage goes the other way (a large health bar is exactly what his kit is priced against).

There's also no version of the fight where Rammus wins it. He has no burst and no sustained damage worth the name, and the champion in front of him gets health back faster than it is being taken.

Nidalee Never In Range

She fights from a distance where the taunt isn't a threat and the curl isn't relevant, and she's fast enough that the roll rarely reaches her.

She's also better than him in the early jungle, and that matters (he doesn't have a strong early game to fall back on, and there's no item that fixes it later).

Itemizing Against Rammus

Nothing here is armor:

Kaenic Rookern is the right defensive buy because all of his damage is magic, including the part that arrives when somebody attacks him. Mercury's Treads is aimed at the taunt (the only thing in his kit that genuinely decides a fight), and shortening it turns a lost carry into an inconvenienced one. Zhonya's Hourglass belongs on whoever he keeps rolling at, and it works particularly well here because the two seconds it buys are two seconds where he's already spent his engage and can't leave. A Control Ward is on the list instead of another item because his ganks live or die on the approach, and seeing it coming is worth more than surviving it.