Counter Guide

How to Beat Varus

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Varus hits you from a distance where nothing you own can hit back, and then he does it again in eight seconds.

He's a marksman with no dash, no blink and no escape of any kind, which sounds like a weakness. It rarely is, because almost nobody gets close enough for it to be one. The lane is a slow bleed. He takes a chunk, you back off, the wave crashes, and forty minutes later people are still arguing about which of those chunks was the one that lost it. The matchup turns on whether you have a way to be next to him, because when you are, he has no plan at all.

Matchup Snapshot Varus, the Arrow of Retribution

Where You Meet Him Bot lane

Damage Type Physical, plus on-hit magic damage

Why He Is Frustrating You get poked out before anything happens

Mobility None whatsoever

Biggest Threat Piercing Arrow [Q]

Hardest Counter Yasuo

What a Counter Needs

A way to get on top of him without walking the whole distance
Enough early damage to punish a long cooldown
Someone who can hold him still, because he can't move

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Varus on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Varus

Yasuo477 games58.1%
Tristana2,807 games54.1%
Twitch1,174 games54.1%
Miss Fortune2,978 games53.8%
Smolder1,045 games53.8%

Picks Varus Beats

Lucian1,906 games48.3%
Ezreal3,152 games49.0%
Draven719 games49.1%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the bot lane against Varus. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 46,755 Varus games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Varus Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

The range is genuinely absurd. Piercing Arrow [Q] reaches across most of a lane, so he can play the entire early game without ever being in a position to be punished.
The root spreads. It's a team fight ability that starts fights he shouldn't win, and it's one of the few ways an immobile champion picks the moment instead of reacting to it.
He shreds health that isn't his to shred. Stacking health against him works badly. The build he takes for that is the one most people forget to check for before they commit to a front line.
He's fine as a poke lane and fine as a fight lane. The same champion can sit back and chip or step forward and all in, so reading the level 2 and level 6 windows is harder than it should be.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't leave. Nothing in his kit moves him. Once somebody is standing next to him, the only remaining question is how long it takes.
The big cooldowns are long early. The window right after he's used the arrow is a different lane. That's the moment to walk forward.
The escape is somebody else's job. He's completely dependent on his support for safety (which makes him one of the best targets in the game for a jungler arriving at the right time).
Charging costs him movement. Winding up the long-range option pins him in place, and a champion with no dash who's also standing still isn't a hard target.

Countering Varus

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

Bring a support who starts fights. Poke wars against him are the version of this lane you lose. Engage support turns the whole matchup around (he has no answer to being reached).
Walk at him when the arrow is gone. The cooldown is the lane. Every trade taken in that window is one where his best tool isn't in the conversation.
Ask your jungler for the level 3 or 6 gank. There's no easier gank target in the game. He has no dash to burn and no way to reposition once the gank has started.
Buy Quicksilver before the ultimate becomes a problem. The root is what turns a fight he was losing into one he wins. Taking it off the table takes most of his team fight with it.

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

Playing a Bad Varus Matchup

Hold your ground closer to your own tower and give up the CS you can't safely take. A missed minion is cheap. Standing at the far edge of the wave to collect it is how the poke war ends up one sided.

Track his charged arrow rather than his health bar. He's most beatable in the seconds after he's used it, and that window comes around often enough to build a whole lane out of.

Change what your support is doing before you change what you're doing. A lane that pokes back against a champion built to poke is a lane that's agreed to play his game.

Best Varus Counters

Beat him by being on top of him, by walling off the arrows he has to fire anyway, or by simply being somewhere he can't reach. One each.

Leona Gets On Top Of Him

She goes all in on somebody with no button to press in response.

The chain of crowd control is longer than his health bar is deep, and none of it can be dodged by a champion whose fastest movement is walking.

Yasuo Walls The Arrows

Almost everything Varus fights with is a projectile: the charged arrow he pokes with and the tendril that roots your team. Yasuo's wall destroys both for four seconds, his basic attacks too (and it's back every 17 to 25 seconds, depending on rank). That's a long time in a fight Varus wanted to open with a root.

Catch the tendril on the wall (it roots for two seconds and spreads to anyone standing next to its target) and the engage his team was waiting for never starts.

Kai'Sa Goes Where He Can't

She has a way out of the position his root just put her in, and a way into the position he most wants to avoid (somebody standing next to him).

She's also comfortable giving up the early lane and coming back later, and giving up the early lane is what makes his poke stop mattering.

Itemizing Against Varus

One of these is the matchup and the other three are what you buy against any marksman who lives on basic attacks:

Quicksilver Sash is the one that changes games, because his ultimate isn't a damage spell so much as a permission slip for his team to kill whoever it caught, and taking the root off means the fight goes back to being about who's stronger. Plated Steelcaps is worth rushing in a lane where most of the chip damage arrives as attacks rather than as the arrow everyone is watching for. Frozen Heart is the right answer for whoever is standing in front of him in a team fight (it takes the attack speed his on-hit build depends on). Randuin's Omen is the version of that for a game where he's already ahead, and it's better on the tank than on the person he's aiming at.