Counter Guide

How to Beat Urgot

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Urgot walks forward, and that's it. That's the champion. It works because there's usually nothing you can do about it.

He's a top laner who fights by standing near you and never stopping. It sounds crude, and it's extremely difficult to play against. He has a shield up, he's shooting the whole time, his damage scales off the health bar you were planning to buy, and at some point a fight you were losing slowly turns into one that ends instantly. The way out is range, or a way to make several seconds of his attacks land on nothing. Everything else is a slower version of losing.

Matchup Snapshot Urgot, the Dreadnought

Where You Meet Him Top lane

Damage Type Physical, and it scales off your health

Why He Is Frustrating The fight never actually stops

Mobility One dash, and then he's committed

Biggest Threat Fear Beyond Death [R]

Hardest Counter Kayle

What a Counter Needs

Range, or a dash that keeps working
A way to negate several seconds of basic attacks
Enough movement speed to leave a fight he wants to continue

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Urgot on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Urgot

Kayle690 games53.6%
Gwen465 games53.3%
Malphite1,388 games53.2%
Olaf723 games53.1%
Heimerdinger402 games53.0%

Picks Urgot Beats

Volibear714 games43.4%
K'Sante462 games45.0%
Jayce717 games45.1%
Darius1,886 games46.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Urgot. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 36,595 Urgot games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Urgot Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He fights and tanks at the same time. The shield goes up with the damage, so there's no window where he's choosing between surviving and hurting you.
Health is a liability against him. The instinct to buy more of it makes the matchup worse (a trap most people walk into once per game).
The execute ends fights that weren't over. Fear Beyond Death [R] converts a losing fight into a won one, and it does it from far enough away that backing off isn't always enough.
The mid game is very strong. Once he has an item or two he can walk at almost any top laner and win, and the tower he takes for it makes the next lane worse too.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He's slow, and he gets slower. Doing his damage pins him down. A champion who can move faster than him during that window is having a completely different fight.
The dash is his only commitment and it's one way. Once it's used he's in the fight until the fight is finished, and there's no second escape behind it.
Range beats him cleanly. He has to close, and closing costs him the only mobility he owns. A ranged top laner who respects the dash range is very hard for him to touch.
He can't chase anybody who left. Disengaging works (imperfectly, and at a cost), which is more than can be said against most bruisers.
He fades against real carries. The window where he's the strongest champion in the game closes, and a team that survived it usually finds the late game easier than it looked.

Countering Urgot

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

Have range, or have a way to keep dashing. One dash and you're caught. A champion with repeated mobility can be near him and leave repeatedly, and that's the only version of this fight that's comfortable.
Turn off his basic attacks for a few seconds. Most of his damage arrives that way. Anything that blinds, dodges or blocks attacks removes more of him than any defensive item does.
Buy armor instead of health. His damage is calculated off the health bar, so armor is doing real work and health is helping him. This is the purchase people get backwards.
Play the late game. Give up the side lane and take the objectives. He's the best champion on the map for a stretch and then he isn't, and the stretch ends.

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

Playing a Bad Urgot Matchup

Farm from max range and give up the CS that requires standing inside his. Granted, it's a genuinely miserable lane to play patiently, but patience is the answer, because everything he wants requires you to be nearby.

Save the summoner spell for the dash rather than for the execute. Once he's committed and you're gone, he's standing alone in a lane with nothing to hit and a long walk home.

Ask your jungler to punish the push rather than to gank the fight. He shoves hard and plays a bit too far up while doing it, and that's a better window than any fight you'd start yourself.

Best Urgot Counters

Never be reachable, outscale him, or stack enough armor that his damage stops deciding the fight.

Quinn Never Reachable

She has range, a blind and enough movement speed to leave a fight he's committed to, so she covers all three of the things he needs to go his way.

The map pressure is the other half. He's slow and she isn't, so every time he wins the lane he's still losing the thing that happens next.

Kayle Outscales Him

Kayle gives up the first few levels and gets something better back. She turns ranged at level 6, her attacks start to splash at 11, and at 16 her range grows again.

Disdain [E] is his one real way to close a gap, and it's a straight line she can step out of. Radiant Blast [Q] slows him from 900 units while he walks, so a lot of his trades end before the shotguns ever get to fire.

Malphite Armors Up

Everything Urgot does is physical damage, from the shotgun legs to the chem-drill, so armor answers all of it at once. Malphite is built out of armor, and the bonus armor from Thunderclap [W] triples whenever Granite Shield [Passive] is up.

That shield comes back after a few seconds out of combat, so his short trades keep running into a fresh one. Ground Slam [E] also hits harder the more armor Malphite owns, which means the defense he bought is his damage too.

Itemizing Against Urgot

One of these is aimed at the ultimate and three at everything before it:

Plated Steelcaps is the correct first pick up in the lane, and you should take them earlier than usual (the bulk of his damage arrives as attacks). Quicksilver Sash is the answer to the execute (Fear Beyond Death [R]), and buying it before the game reaches the point where that matters is much better than buying it after it's killed you once. Frozen Heart earns its spot on the armor alone, since Purge [W] fires at a fixed rate that its attack speed slow can't touch. Randuin's Omen suits a front liner who has to stand near him for a long time, and the slow attached to it is a real problem for somebody who's already the slowest champion in the fight.