Rakan

[THREATS]
Rule of thumb is that every support with tools to interrupt your engage or your dashes will be dangerous in laning phase. At the same time, against engagers, catchers and hook champs, you excel at counter engaging.

Every mage support -or double mage bot lane- will try to poke out of existence, so pay attention to your positioning and buy boots first if you find it hard to dodge skillshots.

Tank supports and high mobility adcs will often try to engage your adc when you engage theirs. You can hold your E to get back to your adc and peel them, but try to focus the same enemy as them, or you won't get enough CC / damage to win the trade.

Rakan has both a very flexible playstyle and very flexible build paths, so try to realize what's hard for you to play against, and then adjust your build or playstyle to compensate that.

Did you know that Rakan is the only champion that has 3 points at 3 skills by the client classification? You can do it!

Poppy

Even though she doesn't have a super high pick rate, I currently permaban Poppy.

Her AoE ground (W) interrupts any dashes, which makes your W and E completely useless. You can't get in nor out.

You can wait until she wastes it, but since it provides her movespeed, she will usually use it to engage and stun your adc, and you won't be able to help for the duration of the spell (2sec). It's quite a long duration in which she will permastun your adc.

If you are the main engage and she is focused you won't be able to do much in teamfights either.

It's not impossible, but you should play safe, peel with Q and try to get an early advantage.

Mel

She's being played both as a support and an apc as of late.

Her root (E) can completely negate your engage, and she has it on a similar long cool down. Can be tricky to play around. She has a lot of range in her Q and can punish squishy adcs a lot, so it's quite bothersome to play against her.

Her W can reflect your Q, which will result in her healing her adc, but that's not a big issue since it's your weakest ability.

Her W does NOT NEGATE CC! So find a good window to engage and hold it until she wastes her E.

Pantheon

If Pantheon uses W (the point and click stun) on your adc, you can technically use your own W on top of him, but Pantheon's combo of W + AA + Q (the spear) + E (the immunity shield) is very quick and can do much or all of the damage to your adc (or you) before you can react.

Similarly, if he waits for your W, he can point and click you mid-air to negate your engage, stun you and do a massive amount of damage. If he does this while you engage under tower you're 100% dead.

You can still R and W Pantheon through his shield because he's only immune from the front, and you can even trigger Q heal, although it won't deal damage.

He can also roam very efficiently so ping the hell out of your own lane and your midlaner's to let them know they should be careful.

TRACK PANTHEON'S ULTIMATE. With this I mean that if you see him ult at for example minute 10:00, write in Team chat "Pantheon R 12:30" to let them (and yourself) know he won't have R until that minute. His R is super strong if he finds a target unnecesarily pushed into the wave. (You can activate "Timestamps" in Settings so that will show you the time on each message too).

If you take into account his normal build+runes ability haste, it will be:

~2:30 level 6 (with 20AH),
~2:00 level 11 (with 40AH)
~1:45 level 16 (with 60AH)

If you go even in lane you'll absolutely outscale his value in teamfights

Caitlyn

[Caitlyn as ADC]
If Caitlyn holds her net (E) until you W into her, she will dodge your ability, hit you with the net, hit you with an empowered auto, place a trap under your feet, hit you with another auto, and you'll be 2HP before you can E away. Your W is too telegraphed and slow and it gives her enough time to combo you.

But that's about it. She is super mana hungry at early game, so you can capitalize off that if you realize she is spamming abilities.

Depending on whether the support provides enough CC or not, you will have to play safe, or bait her E, or time your engage extremely well when she is locked down in her Q animation.

Ultimately you'll have to knowledge check her, and see if she is ready to counter you. Then play according to the support.

Janna

Her tornado (Q) interrupts your W & E, and her movespeed makes it difficult to catch her off guard. If she misses the Q, she can R to ruin your engage and your ult.

Play for bush prio, so she has less time to react, and get lens early to avoid getting warded.

Lulu

She will hold her W to polymorph you when you engage, or will speed her ADC up to dodge you.

Kinda tricky to play against with her slow and constant peel for the adc.

Look for plays whenever she wastes her W.

Soraka

Her E (the big circle) silences you and has no cast time. It's also HUGE, and If you stay there enough you'll get stunned. That's the biggest threat, so bait it out, focus the adc and buy early grievous wounds (oblivion orb, no need to fully build Morello until last item).

After that, she peels a lot more than you. Soraka's W heals an ally but takes HP away from her. The trick being that if she hits a lifesteal (Q) just before healing (W), she can get 90% of that HP cost refunded.

If she hits her abilities you're down to just peel with Q, short trading with W + AA + instant E back and baiting out spells. It's a hard lane so try to roam and get an early advantage.

Renata Glasc

I believe this is ultimately a knowledge matchup. There are a lot of tools for Renata to counter you, but not many people play Renata in low elo and if they do, they have to know how to play against you (also not many people play Rakan in low elo).

Renata can Q you (the stun and pull) to cancel your engage mid-W which negates your engage.

In teamfights, your dream scenario is to catch enemy team clustered with your R after a main engage goes in, but if you don't have another engage teammate, you rely on having Flash available and Renata can still use her R (the wave that makes your allies fight themselves) and counter-engage you.

If she roams when you do, she can easily W a dying target for a comeback chance, ruining your 2v2 potential.

Having said that, her base movement speed is low and she can't really push waves, so you have the advantage in roams and should try to do it often.

You should also take advantage of her very long cooldowns in Q and W early game. You do have very long cooldowns on W and E as well, but try to look out for when she misses her Q or wastes it to trade or engange.

Taric

Insufferably high peel and also a tank. Hard to get your adc ahead unless you get an early kill.

He'll try to E (stun) you whenever you step into his adc and can ruin every all-in you make if he gets ahead.

Try to roam to get an advantage somewhere else or play around his cooldowns.

Expect his ult when getting into a big fight and be ready to disengage.

Elise

Since she's an assassin, she's got a lot of damage and she can dodge your W with her Spider E (when she goes up and isn't targetable). Engaging her is hard and she finds it super easy to jump on your adc and destroy them. Her human E can stun you in the middle of your W and she has quite the poke for an assassin.

Try to go even in lane and don't let her get an advantage. If she doesn't win early, you will eventually outscale in later teamfights value-wise.

Zoe

Zoe has a LOT of damage and can safely poke from behind. She can dodge your engage with R (the teleport) and will put you in a compromise every time she hits her E (the sleepy time).

If she hits you with E, you can just W away to try to dodge the incoming Q, but you leave your adc a bit stranded. If she hits your adc, you have to body block the Q but risk getting double engaged by the adc.

Ultimately, you have to try to go even in lane, play safe or get an early advantage.

Seraphine

Seraphine is a bit of a middle point between a mage and an enchanter. If she builds full enchanter (Helia, Moonstone, Rylai, Redemption) she can be quite bothersome by keeping her adc alive, while also getting some poke and hard CC in.

If she goes full AP (torch, archangel staff, rylai) she becomes a poking death sentence and the game becomes dodgeball. If you dodge you win, if you get double E stunned, R charmed you are gone.

PLEASE NOTE that if she builds Rylai, her E will automatically stun you without needing to be double! (Because of Rylai's passive and how E works)

You might want to go Merc Boots for the tenacity if you are going to lose feats of strength.

Alistar

His headbutt (W) is a point and click dash that pushes you away, so he can deny your engage pretty easily. He heavily out-tanks you, so if he plays aggressively your adc could be in big trouble.

Play safe until you get an advantage, peel with Q, don't get headbutted, hard focus enemy ADC.

Brand

If he knows how to play, he will hold his spells and mana for whenever you try to engage and he'll blow you up, or at least he'll stop your engage.

Very hard to play against unless he makes a few mistakes and you can get a lead on him and get your adc ahead.

Otherwise, like any other mage, you need to play around his cooldowns and spell combos.

Thresh

Thresh is always a dangerous champ to go against, especially if he has some experience. He is way tankier than you and has more playmaking potential pre-6.

He will almost always try to catch your adc, since if he tries to hook you, you can just E away to dodge him. You can also use your first E to take the hook from your adc and the second one to escape.

If he misses his hook (Q), try to take the advantage and punish his adc by engaging on them, but keep in mind that if he times his push (E) correctly, he can cancel your W.

His passive gives him armor and AP by collecting souls dropped from minions, so he scales pretty well into the midgame.

Going even in laning phase would be the safest bet, since you are a lot squishier than him. After 6 you can look to make riskier plays.

Morgana

This matchup really depends on the player. If she wastes her spells, you can absolutely put a lot of pressure and engage often. But if she holds them to wait out your engage, you might be reduced to a Q-poking-bird. I recommend putting 1 or 2 points in Q before W if that's the case.

Morgana's stun (Q) is a very slow spell, so it can be really easy to dodge with your E or W, but if she hits you, she will destroy you. You have to practice baiting it out and only then engaging. Her Q is also blocked by minions so you can bait forward, and then E backwards to your adc.

Her W (the magic circle that burns you) reduces its own cooldown the more it keeps damaging enemies or minions. It might come more often than you expect, so step out of it.

Her anti-CC shield (E) negates your W knock-up and your R charm, and lasts for 5 seconds at every level, so that's a pain in the ***. You have to make sure you wait it out before engaging. It has a very long cooldown (26s-16s), so take advantage of that.

A note: Morgana's shield can be broken with any ability that deals enough MAGIC damage, but more often than not, Rakan won't have enough. If your adc has magic damage, you might be able to break it, but it's not too common.

Neeko

Neeko's stun (E) goes through minions and can fully interrupt your engage. Also, her clone (W) can block your Q, but you'll get the heal anyways so feel free to hit it every time since your Q damage is very low. Lastly, always count how many minions are in the wave, there should be 3 melee, 3 ranged, and sometimes 1 cannon. If there's 4 of any, it's Neeko shapeshifting. You can also press tab and check Neeko's portrait. If it's highlighted but you don't see her in the map, then she's blending in as someone else. You can play dumb to bait her abilities, but keep in mind that she'll throw her stun the first chance you give her, so be extremely careful about that.

Other than that, keep in mind that she has a lot of damage, and that her ult preview won't be shown if she's transformed as someone else.

Lux

Lux will always try to full combo you or your adc. If she lands Q, E, R she will deplete that health bar.

To avoid this, try to prevent her from getting a lead. Be very focused to when she uses her spells to try to punish her on cooldown.

Also try to win early bush control so that she can't get you off guard with her Q.

Other than that, it's like any other mage support, keeping adc alive and finding the correct timing to engage enemy adc will be the most important part.

Luckily her kit is very easy to understand so after a few matches against her you will be able to get into her mindset and know her tricks. After that it's all about engage timing.

Lucian

[Lucian as ADC]
He can dash (E) to dodge your W and force you to be aggressive. If he coordinates well with the adc, that might get you in trouble.

Try to take advantage if he dashes forward, since his dash has a long cooldown (although it can be reduced with his auto-attacks, so don't try this after middle game bc he will have more attack speed).

Maokai

Both his root (W) and knockback (Q) will cancel your engage. He will wait for your W to root you and push you back into his adc, so try to play around his cooldowns.

His R will also cancel your engage, you can outrun it with your mobility, but you're probably better off blocking the ult for your adc. (Yes, Maokai's ult can be blocked, but make sure your adc knows that too).

He is tankier than you and his E

Nami

Most played support on the last patches (25.10 to 25.17), so expect her often.

Her bubble stun (Q) is quite telegraphed, but a big threat if your adc doesn't have mobility (or has bad reaction time). If you E your carry you will only get stunned with them. Try to bait this ability by faking a straight line and then punish her while she has it on cooldown.

Nami's W allows her to poke and heal even while afar if their adc gets close, so if she plays with an adc that likes to engage like Samira or Nilah, be extra careful of the W. It's point and click so not much to do here else than spacing properly.

E is a buff that gives slow to the target's basic attacks, mostly used on their adcs to get an advantage over yours while engaging, try to wait until you see the bubbles around the character to E your adc.

The big knockup wave (R) is also pretty telegraphed and not a huge problem if you are able to dodge it, at least during laning phase. Be careful that she might want to use it when the jungler is near, so don't get too comfortable if you dodge it, as you might be getting zoned.

This matchup will depend a lot on the adcs, but since the peeling is insufferable and very strong lately, I'd recommend playing safe if you never played against her, then get more aggressive as you understand her kit.

Sona

A very good support as of 25.16. Makes it very difficult to engage and finally kill the adc since she can heal, give movespeed, give damage, stun.

It's difficult, but not impossible. Try to punish if she misses the ult or is low on mana.

Tahm Kench

You usually have the advantage here, since dodging his engage (W) is pretty easy for you. If he engages on your adc, try to render him useless by using your W and letting your adc fall back to safety.

He has insane survivability with his health and shield, so try to NEVER focus him unless he is the last one standing.

You win by putting his adc at a disadvantage while avoiding his tongue poke (Q). You should have an easier time than him peeling for your adc.

Zilean

If Zilean puts a bomb on you and you E to your adc you can be a threat and disrupt the lane a bit.

His speed ability lets him and his adc walk away from your W too, and if he uses it to slow you down, your R might go nowhere.

You need to play hide & seek with this guy if want to engage.

(Remember that his W resets his other abilities so try to capitalize if he uses double bomb for example)

Annie

Bard

Fiddlesticks

Heimerdinger

Hwei

Karma

LeBlanc

If you want to understand this champion you need to play it yourself. She is an assassin, so low health, high burst damage, high mobility, but the thing is she has too many deception abilities. You will end up ulting a clone or an empty bush, so go on practice tool or watch a video tutorial, because words can't properly explain how confusing this champion can be.

Once you go against her a few times you get the hang of it, but chances are you won't ever see a LeBlanc support, but the moment you do and you don't know what she does, you might as well abandon the lane and perma gank mid.

PRO-TIP: If you ignite her when on low health, her clone won't have the fire animation, so you can pinpoint who's the real Leblanc easily.

Leona

Bad thing about Leona is that her engage ignores minions, so she can go all-in at any time with ease, and she is basically indestructible with a lead.

Good thing is that she has to come to you or your adc, so you hold your W for when she tries to engage; if she succeeds you disengage with W; if she fails, you engage the adc.

Pro-tip: don't ward when she's seeing you, she can AA, Q, AA and destroy a ward in literally 1 second.

Pro-tip 2: ward when she's seeing you, but on purpose. A Leona player cannot resist the urge to destroy a ward, so you can purposely make her see you putting a ward far away from the lane to get her off her adc and make her waste Lens. Doesn't always work but if I were a Leona I would gladly let my adc die for that sweet ward combo instakill.

Milio

Milio's bouncing ball (Q) can completely deny your engage, so be absolutely sure that he's already used it, or if you're extremely sure he won't react.

His W heals and adds range to his adc's basic attacks, so if enemy adc is high range like jinx, kog'maw or caitlyn, keep in mind they can harass you even further.

His E shields and has 2 charges, kind of like you but without the mobility.

His R removes all CC from nearby allies and heals for a bit.

So basically, he can peel and heal more than you, but since he's an enchanter, he doesn't have the engage nor the mobility.

If you play around his Q and your adc strengths, you should be fine

Nautilus

This champion has hook (Q), a stun (passive on autoattacks), a slow (E), and a point and click knock-up (R). It's a CC machine, but has 0 mobility. You can dodge his hook easily, but the rest is point and click. It's generally considered more favorable towards Rakan, but you need to focus

He can wait your engage to point and click you to stun you with his passive, so try to force him to make a mistake without getting too risky.

This is a skill match-up where it really comes down to mistakes and how the adcs play. Might be a stalemate if no one wants to commit.

If you're unsure, peel with Q until he makes a mistake.

Senna

Shaco

Shaco support players usually play 1 of 3 strategies and you should try to recognize it and play accordingly.

General tips first: don't W if you suspect there might be a trap, since it will cancel your engage. Keep in mind that traps also block projectiles, so your Q might also get blocked. Lastly, try to always leave him for last, since he can easily dash out and become invisible (Q) when he sees you engage. Shaco's are always unpredictable so he might dash forward to engage on your adc, so be ready to react.

Regarding the strategies:

Strat 1 is just full AP, burn and AH. His fear boxes (W) scale with AP, so they will deal most of the damage. He will also get a bunch of AH to have his boxes a lot faster, so rush Oracle Lens and be very cautious of not engaging on top of a trap or you'll be absolutely cooked.

Strat 2 is AD Shaco, probably lethality, sometimes critical strike. His boxes don't do much damage but his autos, his point and click dagger (E) and backstabs (passive) will destroy you and your carry. He will probably try to dash and become invisible (Q) and ult on top of your adc when he reappears, in order to attack with both his and his clone autos. Just W them both and get back safely under tower with E.

Strat 3 is double jungle. Although since 25.09, no other roles than jungle can take Smite, he could take Unsealed Spellbook, which is getting buffed (25.10). In this less common strat, Shaco will not participate in laning phase, and will try to mess up your jungler first camps and levels. And with double smite (if he has Spellbook) he will get his jungler ahead. There's two ways to go around this, first is just try to stomp the lane 2v1 and then roam as much as possible (keep in mind that enemy adc will have more XP, since they won't be sharing it with Shaco). Second is trying to get a cheeky kill on Shaco early on with your jungle, but since that requires some more communication, more XP loss and to be close to your jungle, I wouldn't suggest to try unless in duo with them.

Shen

Swain

Sylas

Twitch

Twitch as support is a bit insufferable. Especially with his invisibility surprise attacks. The thing with double adc lanes is that they are both squishy and you should build tanky so that your adc can blow them up, but the surprise factor of Twtich often leaves you short time to react, and you need to choose who to engage, which can be difficult when he appears out of nowhere.

Early Oracle Lens and Control Wards can help. Ask your adc to bring Lens too after 1st back.

If you manage to survive or get a lead early, he will probably roam elsewhere so ping your mid laner, ward really well and try to stomp the lane.

Bottom line is, if you are focused and paying attention, you can win easily. If he catches you or your adc off guard he can snowball hard.

Ashe

Ashe support means double AD on the lane, but lack of hard CC, peeling or tanking.

When you play against double adc lanes, you need to capitalize on the fact that they are both very squishy.

You can build armor boots, prioritize armor items like Trailblazer or Frozen Heart and try to help your adc to explode both of them by tanking everything.

Depending on the lane, you would benefit from Swiftness Boots, since she slows a lot with Q and W, and it could also help dodge her R.

If she builds AP, she is useless until late game, where if anyone gets hit by the ult, it's bye-bye for them. On the other hand, that and spamming W are the only things she can do on AP, so lane should be pretty easy (check items to see if she's going AP).

Blitzcrank

Braum

Galio

Malphite

Pyke

Rell

Xerath

Yuumi

The shields she gives are insufferable, but 2 champions in 1 means you can technically W and R both of them at the same time.

If the adc gets a lead, she will also get a lead because of how easy it is to get assists with Yuumi, so don't allow that to happen. In other words, don't die and don't make risky plays until you have a clear advantage.

After that it should be very easy.

Zyra

Anivia

You will never encounter this champion as a support, but since it has some CC, might as well add her.

You can E and W over her wall (W), and also to dodge her stun (Q) or get out of her ult (R).

That's pretty much it.