|||TOP||| Ganking Aatrox is pretty simple, since Aatrox players like fighting. Taking ignite is fairly useful, however if your toplaner has it already or rushed bramble you can obviously gank with heal aswell. Aatrox players like to 1v2 ganks when they get caught, so make him focus you and abuse Janna's movementspeed to dodge his Q's. Q3 deals the most damage and heals him the most so it's worth using R to displace the hitbox, or even flashing it to prevent him from healing or oneshotting you.
Ahri
|||MID||| Ahri midlane is insanely annoying to gank as Janna. She has high base MR but low base armor, so if you have an AD mid or AD ganking jungler, you can coordinate with them to burst her, especially if they have follow-up CC. After 6, if you can get behind her you can R her into your ally, then try your best to time a Q to cancel one of her dashes, as that will give her less total distance with her R. If she's close enough to you to flash over you, do not cast R as she could flash over you and get knocked into safety by your R. Be wary of invading enemy jungle for deep vision against Ahri, since she is incredibly nimble and can easily catch you if she sees you enter their jungle, even if her own jungler can't.
Akali
|||MID||| Skill matchup. A good Janna is not gonna be worried about Akali as Akali's R2 can be cancelled by knock-ups. This means you can sit ontop of the ally Akali plans to assassinate, and throw your Q between akali and your ally, which will make your Q act as a sort of anti-dash wall. If timed correctly Akali will waste R2 and be screwed. Janna R can also knock Akali out of her W, which is useful if you know where in the W she is. It's a pretty bad idea to stand in the center and R the entire smoke circle, as Akali can just run back into it very quickly. It's also a bad idea to do it if Akali has her E up, as she can often just E1 > R1 back into the circle, which is hard for Janna to counter with just Q. If she tries to E2 onto you or an ally, you can easily just use your Q to cancel it.
Akshan
|||MID||| Akshan relies on his grappling hook to engage and escape fights, and uses it to chain kill people. Janna's knockups can cancel this grappling hook which a lot of Akshan players aren't used to since their circular dash is confusing for most players.
What i've figured out is that if Akshan's grapple is rotating TOWARDS YOU, use Q. If he's rotating AWAY FROM YOU, use R to cancel the grapple but hold onto your W as you will need its passive movespeed to catchup and eventually slow him into a Q. Akshan is invisible and likes to roam around to places that can be quite annoying for Janna when trying to control vision, so make sure whenever you go to ward unsafe spaces, that you either have R to prevent him from chasing you, or that you have a teammate nearby who can rotate to protect you while warding. You can cancel Akshan's R with knockups if he's dumb enough to use it while close to you.
Alistar
|||SUPPORT||| This is a complete mirror matchup as Janna and Alistar generally do the same stuff, except Janna is able to cancel Alistars only gap closer with Q. This means that fundamentally unless the Janna messes up, Alistar's only engage tool is Q>flash. He can use flash to insec you into his team, but after lvl 6 this usually just means you get to R and insec people back into your own team, and if you have a stopwatch or zhonyas the play becomes quite troll for alistar. Most Alistar players will try to roam Janna as they pretty much can't play the laning phase against her, however Janna has higher movespeed than Alistar, so a good Janna should be able to match him and ruin his ganks. Make sure you only roam to match him though, since if he decides to stay on lane while you roam, he will towerdive your ADC.
Amumu
|||JUNGLE||| I despise playing against amumu jungle. If you're worried about his Q hitting you, throw your own Q towards him ASAP. If you do it fast enough he won't gap close far enough to R you. Consider buying a Mikael's blessing or a Zhonya's Hourglass if the enemy team has high burst to follow up on his R. Generally stay in the back line and try to avoid getting hit by his R and use your E and R to save important carries from getting bursted while CC'd, and get a Mikael if necessary.
Anivia
|||MID|||Ganking her in laning phase is quite difficult if you're in an elo where people can actually play Anivia. Her wall makes it very difficult to close in on her and get in R range, which is a problem as your goal should be to cancel her R and charging your Q to hit her reliably takes too much time. Your best bet is to try and aim a good Q before she charges her R properly, or to flash>R if she's really ahead.
Annie
|||MID||| Indescribable horror. Annie is hard to burst within Janna's relatively small CC window, so even if you catch her with a fully charged Q she will often at times just survive any burst you have and stun combo and oneshot you and make you lose your stacks. She's not super fast and her range is short so if you wish to gank her in lane, you can usually do so after lvl 6 by getting behind her and using R to push her into your ally. Make sure to check if she has her stun up, and don't drag the fight out too long if you're low since she can stun you and make you lose your stacks. Annie counters Janna really hard, and Annie players enjoy making you suffer for it. Buy Mikael's for MR, and let people run ahead of you when warding. Mikael's cleanses CC 0.2 seconds after using it, so you can use this to avoid her stun if you're mechanically good as Annie players can be quite predictable.
Aphelios
|||ADC||| Aphelios is not that scary once you understand what he does. The main threats to look out for as Janna are Calibrum (Rifle), Gravitum (Purple orb gun thing) and Infernum (flamethrower). His Calibrum extends his range, making him quite annoying with the poke he deals, however he is usually weak to all-ins with this weapon. He can technically combo his Calibrum with his Gravitum to long distance root you, however the fight is usually turn-able if he tries to do that. Don't try to take short trades into Gravitum as he guarantees it to be an extended fight
Ashe
|||ADC||| Ashe is quite painful as she denies your ability to trade in lane fairly well. If she's played with a melee support you can usually get some nice autos off on them, attempt to take bush control away and stack your support item. You have to make sure you only trade with her when you're parallel to your ADC, as her autos slow you. If you go for a E(selfcast)>AA>W trade, she can auto you back and chase till your ADC can punish. Her rundown potential aswell as her pushing power and poke is really strong, however she takes a while to scale, so all you have to do is not let her win the short trades, and hide effectively behind minions to avoid her W. Her R isn't a big deal unless it hits you from a long range. Boots of swiftness are insanely good here.
Azir
|||MID||| Azir is mainly a poke champion and only really annoying if you're laning against him. If you're trying to gank an Azir mid you will find it fairly difficult as he can spawn a soldier and dash away, however if he uses his dash offensively, similarly to a Zed, you can punish him easily. It is also possible to cancel his dash with your Q, which will force him to use R or flash to evade the gank which is very good value for a support roam. You can optionally regank the lane after this or inform your jungler. The main threat of Azir comes from his ability to knock you into his tower by dashing behind you and using his R. However, as many Janna players know, if he dashes behind you he will be screwed, as the cast animation for his R is too long and Janna can counter with her R to knock Azir into her own team while she escapes taking usually about 2 tower shots. If you come into midlane at full health you will have to missplay quite severely to lose to this champion especially since most people in average elo brackets have no clue how to play him.
Bard
|||SUPPORT||| Bard is quite annoying as his early damage surpasses Janna's by quite a bit. Whenever he has meeps his rundown potential is quite strong however Glacial Janna is completely unable to be ran down by him, and Aery is still fairly safe even pre-6, and outscales him by miles. You mainly wanna look out for Bard's ability to roam with his jungler and flank your lane with a portal. Counter-roaming a Bard really just comes down to which matchups you have on your lanes and especially in the jungle. Depending on how winnable skirmishes are, it may be best to coordinate with your jungler and dive the enemy ADC while he's solo, then split the map and gain drake control for the laning phase aswell as deep vision in enemy botside. Technically speaking Bard wins the laning phase as Janna has very weak combat stats if she doesn't land charged nado's. But most Bard players end up throwing the Janna matchup by trying to roam. It's a very mirrored matchup since both champions do similar things, however it is quite Janna favored.
Bel'Veth
|||JUNGLE||| Not much to say about Bel'Veth honestly. The Champion is super broken but Janna is excellent at peeling. You can just hyperfocus on peeling her off your carries and make her life a living nightmare. Glacial is pretty good in a game like this due to the damage reduction it provides.
Blitzcrank
|||SUPPORT||| I will be using this page as a general matchup guide for hook supports in lane. Blitzcrank specific information will be written near the end. Hook champions have two major limitations: 1. they are melee, and 2. they cannot hook through the wave. This means that they will be forced to play beside the wave and have trouble walking up to the wave without getting AA'd, and therefore will resort to playing around bushes as their main power-position. The main way we counter hook supports is by using our range-advantage to shove the minion wave, as this will create a minion advantage, which is tough to fire skillshots through, aswell as move the wave past the bushes and grant you bush-control. Lvl 1, your main objective is looking for ways to control the middle bush on the botlane, and try to shove for lvl 2. The main threat is going to be a hook, and therefore i recommend starting Q, and lining your Q in such a path that you're essentially creating a tripwire that the enemy ADC cannot pass through to follow the hook. If you get to the wave first, or the hook support is simply bad at pressuring the lvl 1, you can also use Q to waveclear. At lvl 6, watch out for Blitzcranks R. Assume he will use it in his hook sandwich, and stay out of the radius so you can shield your ADC when they get hooked. Use your R to block followup from the ADC or jungler, and hold it a bit if you're not in danger, as you can use it to heal your ADC and very often turn the fight.
Brand
|||SUPPORT||| Brand is technically in the major category, but i wanna add that Brand is usually played by autofills, and as such you can usually beat him by just out-performing in other basic support areas, like rotating to your jungler in river and keeping good vision control. If you have a long range ADC such as Ashe or Caitlyn, or a safe ADC such as Sivir or Ezreal, roaming is safe, but with a lot of immobile ADC's it's not recommended as Brand does have good towerdives. To actually play against Brand, i recommend putting points in your W, but not using it too often as you just want to hold onto the movespeed to dodge Brands skills reliably. You can start using it more often once you have full Lucidity boots. If he's paired with a defensive ADC or if he's just positioned poorly, you can usually punish him by flinging a Glacial Q tap at him and have your ADC throw poke. Your R can often save people from Brand's R since people don't really buy grievous wounds against Janna.
Braum
|||SUPPORT||| Braum is a weird one. Braum players like to facetank CC, but usually this means you just get free poke on him instead. In this matchup you can focus the support as long as you don't commit to all inning him. If you can, try to test the waters a bit, and see if the Braum is actually good. Attempt to bait out important skills such as his shield, and if you believe you can outplay him, then it's also viable to simply create fake aggression to scare him from being too aggressive into you. This could for example be done by walking up to Braum when him and his ally are spaced appart, AA>W onto Braum, then aim a Q at his ally. His ally won't even mentally register the Q. This play isn't necessarily going to net you a kill in lane, however doing consistent mindgames against champions that are normally hard matchups, will make most players insecure and frighten them off of making risky plays like towerdives or close fights.
Caitlyn
|||ADC||| If she gets fed she's absolutely terrifying as she can point n click oneshot you at a disgusting range. However, she has virtually zero kill pressure on you, and basically just exists to poke so you're free to run a scaling page and just take over the game. Unless she has a really strong engage support, her towerdives are also pretty weak which means you get to roam freely as your ADC gets solo XP under tower. If you have an ADC that can follow your Q's in lane very well, then you can often at times have kill pressure on Caitlyn if you're good with hitting charged Q's. Remember Caitlyn Q's do more damage to the first target they hit, so don't play too much beside the wave, and especially do not get caught in the crevice between your tower and the lane wall. Other than that you're fine since her R doesn't pose a threat to you at all, and her engage is super weak especially into Janna's hard disengages. Most of the time this matchup will result in Caitlyn trying to perma-push you, and ending up getting camped.
Camille
|||ALL||| Janna literally cancels everything in Camilles kit. If Camille leaves her R zone then the zone will disappear completely. If Camille is standing in the middle of the zone, then Janna's R knockback is enough to knock her out of the hexagon in any direction. Additionally you can cancel her E, however it's a bit weird. If you knock her up before her E-skillshots connect with the wall, then she will get pulled to the wall while CC'd, and if the duration of CC is short enough, she will also be able to jump off the wall into her stun when the CC' wears off. However, if you knock her up DURING one of the dashes, the dash will cancel. This can be accomplished with both Q and R.
Cassiopeia
|||MID||| You can't do much to her, but she can't do much to you. Mikaels is pretty good into her, and you can also roam nicely, since she loses skirmishes early. |||ADC||| She just loses to Glacial with Mikael rush cuz the Heal & Shield power translates to extra slow and you get to ruin her R. If you're in her miasma make sure to always face backwards since you wanna be able to R if she uses R.
Cho'Gath
|||ALL||| Run swifties to avoid his E slow, and be ready to dodge his Q's. Good Cho'Gath players will try to throw Q's from bushes which make them a lot harder to react to, so facechecking and generally entering unwarded territory is especially bad here. Cho is incredibly dangerous for Janna if he runs AP, as his silence can stop your R and his R can easily chunk 60% of your HP bar with true damage. If he's not directly focusing you then he's quite easy to peel off with charged Q and R.
Corki
|||MID||| Corki is a nightmare to deal with for Janna in my opinion. He has ridiculously high damage output, mobility and kill range. You normally survive burst champions by waiting for CC to be thrown, then holding your R in a fight. However this is not possible into Corki, as his damage is so high that he can kill you through R since you're stationary. On top of that his package leaves an AoE making standing still, once again, really ineffective. The best way to deal with Corki is to have him engage you while you have a bruiser (or any high damage champ that is hard to oneshot), and attempt to break his dash with your Q or R (hold R for exactly 0.5 seconds, as this grants additional ticks of heal compared to tapping it, and R knocks up for 0.5 seconds), then prepare to play Dance Dance Revolution with his skillshots. Having an Exhaust into Corki aswell as Mikaels or Celerity+Swifties or anything to help dodge his skills is highly recommended.
Darius
|||TOP||| Darius can become an extreme threat if you let him get 5 stacks of bleed, as his R has a 0.3667 second cast time, making it very difficult to cancel on reaction using R. If he gets 5 stacks he can Q>Flash>R onto you and oneshot you quite easily, and this combo is basically uncounterable with anything but a wellplaced Q tap. This is because Darius R is a leap, so if he gets 5 stacks and runs towards you with a Q wind up, put your Q between you and him so that he will have to flash over it, and be prepared to R ASAP if he somehow pulls it off. This is the only dangerous situation for Janna involving Darius. He is really easy to roam and kill on toplane, as he will typically try and be perma-fighting his laner and not expecting a Janna roam from base. If he doesn't have 5 stacks, you can just use Q and R to stop him from hitting his Q, and you can even flash behind him and R him into your ally if you feel the need to since Darius is so immobile.
Diana
|||ALL||| If she has no Zhonya's, make her suffer by using your R to shove her R away from your team. If she has Zhonyas, use your R to outheal the damage her R deals. Her Q's hurt, but you can cancel her E with knockups if you know what you're doing. Her E only gains a reset if she succesfully dashes close enough to the champion she has marked with Q. Since most Diana players are very telegraphed you can time your R to knock her out of E, and she'll be completely screwed. Exhaust is pretty good into Diana R if you're not confident.
Dr. Mundo
|||TOP||| If you want to run away from him, Q>R. If you want to fight a sustained fight, Put a Q down, ping the direction that you're aiming the Q in so your teammates know what you're doing. Use W (for E passive) and optionally E, then hold R to break his CC shield. Fire the Q whenever you're scared of him walking out of trajectory, or when it's fully charged.
Draven
|||ADC||| Draven is annoying because you don't really have much of a say in the game. You can roam, but he will likely dive your ADC. You can fight the lane but if you don't have a premade then it's very difficult to do much against him. Run Glacial to stop him from running you down, and take heal/exhaust after preference. Boneplating is good here aswell and remember to get grievous wounds since he usually stacks vamp and lifesteal. You can use your R to make him drop axes which will tilt him and significantly lower his DPS if you're trying to fight him.
Ekko
|||JUNGLE||| Ekko is pretty annoying since his E goes through your Q, and he can usually oneshot you if you happen to get stunlocked in his W. However, if he's not fed out of control by the time laning phase ends, then it's pretty hard for him to engage and get picks into a Janna. The tough part of this matchup is vision control, since if he can get a good W on you you're dead, but as soon as you know he's coming, he's going to have a tough time doing anything to you. Swifties are nice against his Q slow, and Mikaels is nice against the CC and to not get oneshot.
Elise
|||JUNGLE||| Pretty simple matchup. Don't get hit by her CC and you'll be fine. She has trouble picking off people when you're there so just play the vision game and keep track of where she is and she'll be kinda doomed. Elise is one of those Junglers where, she has such a hard time killing Janna, that i will go into her Jungle solo I have mid prio, and just ward it up. If she's there i'll just walk past her. If she tries fighting me Janna can drag it out for so long that mid can rotate.
Evelynn
|||JUNGLE||| She has one way of killing you, and it involves her getting a charged W on you, and then using flash>Q, which you can react to easily with your own flash, since evelynn cannot cancel the cast time on her Q with flash and has to wait the full duration. Pre 6 you can invade her and put all the wards you want and 99% of the time nobody will do anything about it, since nobody will rush boots as early as Janna and be able to catch her. Evelynn is visible while clearing camps even after level 6, so putting normal wards is completely fine inside her jungle. When Evelynn comes out of invis, her E is enhanced, and will do a mini-dash to the person she uses it on, which follows flashes and such. This dash can be cancelled by knockups, meaning if you put a good Q between you two, she will miss half her combos damage. This works because fed evelynn players will often try to kill squishies without their W. You can use R to instantly perform this kind of peel trick on an ally within your R range, if she tries doing that to an ally. The cool thing about that, is that it's even easier if she tries to stun the ally, cuz you'll be ready for it. Evelynn players will pretty much ALWAYS engage a marked target by first throwing their Q, which has a really long cast, then using the E dash. If you cancel that dash, you also avoid your ally eating a lich bane proc, which basically means you've just screwed her entire combo up as her E will now be on cooldown.
Ezreal
|||ADC||| Ezreal scales really hard but also has good early and you don't really have any tools that interact with him. Janna is really good at disengaging Ezreal and bodyblocking his skills, so I do enjoy facetanking in this lane. His E can actually cancel knockups so you have to make sure that if you plan on using R to disengage, that you wait till he burns E. A good Ezreal player can consistently E through your Q tap but a charged Q is difficult to react to. If he happens to dodge charged Q's it's off of prediction, simply body language your trade towards the support and aim a Q at Ezreal, or do the opposite and throw it at the support and watch him burn his E. Glacial is essential in this lane, as Ezreal will simply roll over you with any other page in laning phase and still outscale you if he messes it up. The champion isn't that good at towerdiving and his waveclear entirely relies on his R so roaming this matchup is definitely an option.
Fiddlesticks
|||JUNGLE||| Fiddle jungle can't really stop you from invading him, so ward him up and just be a complete nuisance to him, so your jungler can take over the game. You can clear his wards with Q, so if you know where his wards are, you can clear them from quite a long distance. You can cancel his R channel with CC, so if you see him channel it you can flash R for an instant cancel as Janna R has literally 0 cast time. I strongly recommend trying to take over the vision game early on to delay fiddle a bit, just because a fed fiddle usually means your team inherently loses the vision war, especially in higher elo brackets. He has a surprisingly hard time oneshotting Janna, so if he sucks at coordinating with his team, or if he just isn't very fed, then Mikaels isn't necessarily needed. Swifties work well against his E, since if he silences you your only way of escaping his W is running out of it. He can cancel your R with both Q and E, so watch out for that. Fiddle pretty much always uses Zhonya with his R, so don't expect to be able to knock him away if he gets it off.
Fiora
|||TOP||| Fiora is a stress game. Simply buy swifties and fight her with a teammate around you, then just fly around her like a maniac and use your W>E for enhanced E, but hold onto your CC abilities and don't use them unless strictly necessary. Fiora players spend so much mental energy figuring out when to parry stuff, that they often end up either screwing everything up in the meantime, or just throwing parry randomly, at which point you can just kill her, or CC her. You can also put a Q down, but make sure not to aim it at where she currently is. Then fire it. She will either dodge into it like an idiot, or try to parry it but it will miss her. The general thing to take away from this: Don't do something that looks efficient and logical, because that's what they're expecting. Run after her like an idiot without using spells, because it will stress her out, or throw your spells in the most dumb way possible. Janna can afford to do it because her sheer amount of peeling is so disgusting.
Fizz
|||MID||| Dodging his R with mobies is incredibly easy. If you don't have mobies, then either play all the way up in his face, since his R deals more damage the further away he hits it, or be completely out of R range. I enjoy playing up in his face, and treating him like a fiora, where i just try to stress him out. He will usually try to E your Q. I like to just wait for him to use E offensively or to dodge something my ally throws, and then use my R while he's in his E, and then hold it to tank all the damage he tries to throw at me. Make sure you W him early in the fight, as he could throw his R at you, and then go into E, meaning you can't use R since his R will cancel it too soon. This means you will need an enhanced E to survive. If you're playing with exhaust, you would normally throw your exhaust as soon as you see his R, as he cannot be in his E for his entire R cast, so you will have a window to exhaust before the damage hits. If you play heal, then you can simply get your E enhance and use heal + E to tank the damage.
Galio
|||MID||| You can cancel his dash with Q, meaning it's hard for him to knock you up. He can, however, flash>taunt you and then knock you up instantly. His R is pretty slow so you shouldn't get hit by it if you hold onto W.
|||SUPPORT||| Same as mid but also completely free lane. A good Galio will try to roam this matchup with R, and that's the only real play he has on you. If you take Relentless and mobies you can often run to the location of his roams and deny him engages there since Janna is just that fast.
Gangplank
|||TOP||| GP is funny because you can either go against Tobias Fate and get completely steam rolled or you some meta-slave idiot and run towards him full speed with mobies and R him for 0.5 sec knockup then auto his barrel and spam the chat with "AHAHAHAXDXDXDDDXDDD" to make him disconnect. You literally don't know which one you get. This one of the champions where i unironically recommend Zhonya's on Janna, if not for the active, then for the armor, simply due to GP having ridiculous damage and enchanters not having armor items otherwise.
Garen
|||TOP||| If you manage to facecheck him while you're also on 50% hp then he MIGHT kill you if you're unlucky. This guy's the most standard juggernaut in the game, you can roam him very intuitively and the fights are also too easy to bother explaining. Watch out for whether he has stridebreaker or not, as that item can surprise you. Other than that, he can't much more than run at you.
Gnar
|||TOP||| He can throw a skillshot that slows, which is slightly annoying, but other than that you should mainly watch out for his mega form, as that's the one that has flashable instant CC. His Flash>R is not reactable, but his W is. Keep him at a distance and take him seriously when he's big. I say this because when he's small gnar you should do the opposite, and it can be hard to differentiate. Small gnar is so weak you can do whatever you want around him, however he is difficult to roam, and you can't do much to him unless you're in a teamfight.
Gragas
|||ALL||| AP Gragas is quite dangerous as he can reach you with R quite easily and kill you if he wishes to target you. Few Gragas players will target you with an ult in that fashion tho, so the main thing to watch out for is Gragas using E then flashing at the end of the duration. This combo looks like he will miss, so if a Gragas blatantly uses E towards you with not enough range: panic R ASAP. Other than his flash combo you should have an easy time cancelling his E with Q and dodging his Q's. If the Gragas isn't super good you shouldn't have too much trouble against him, but buying Mikaels for MR may be worth depending on your build path.
Graves
|||JUNGLE||| His range and mobility is just too low to really do much into Janna, however his R can execute you and he does have ridiculously high burst potential if he's snowballing. He has a hard time catching you and you can usually avoid the second part of his Q, so invading him in laning phase to deepward is pretty safe mostly. Be ware that he can pass through walls with his dash.
Gwen
|||TOP||| If you want to peel her off of someone you will have to get into melee range of her since you cannot CC her without getting into her zone first. Remember her zone can move exactly once before disappearing, meaning you may be able to shove her out of her zone to cancel it and make her vulnerable to your team. The zone shouldn't really prevent you from pushing her into your ally if you attempt to gank her on toplane.
|||JUNGLE||| Don't attempt to invade without Swifties, and make sure you're in her zone before trying to CC her, as she can slow you and catch you if you miss your CC.
Hecarim
|||JUNGLE||| If he ganks you on lane and tries to E into you, you can use your Q at the perfect timing to cancel his E without getting CC'd, or delay it slightly, to get knocked by him but knock him immediately after so he ends up creating distance between you and him. The second option is good if he's bad and tries to E you towards your tower. Always save your R till after he has used his R, and use your W before shield/heal on whoever is the lowest HP. Taking Glacial, Mikael's and Exhaust are all really good here.
Heimerdinger
|||ADC, MID & TOP||| Heimerdinger is pretty annoying but not necessarily a counter. He's in the major category because Janna can't really do much to him, due to his passive movementspeed around turrets. Your range isn't long enough to kill his turrets without taking poke, and your max charge Q doesn't kill them either. Your R does knock his turrets around though, which means you can attempt to catch him in an awkward angle and get between his turret nest and him, and use R to separate him from the turrets. You can use flash to accomplish this.
Illaoi
|||TOP||| Illaoi is incredibly immobile, so ganking her on a lane is incredibly easy, however, if you get hit by her E you will get chunked quite heavily. It's really important that you have tier 2 boots when roaming this champion. Her W makes a tentacle slam at the location she auto attacks. This means that she has to be close to her tentacle nest to be useful, and for that reason a good Janna can completely ruin Illaois life with R. Exhaust + oblivion orb is really strong when roaming on Illaoi.
Irelia
|||TOP & MID||| Irelia is incredibly dangerous if she hits her E on you after getting a few items, as that usually leads to a oneshot. That being said however, getting hit by her E simply shouldn't happen with Jannas movespeed. As long as you dodge her E, she will be forced to use her E on someone else or initiate with her R. This means when she starts he Q animation you will not be stunned and can therefore cancel her dash. Irelias dash places her slightly behind the champion she dashes to, and only gains a reset if she manages to connect the dash to the marked champion. This means a well-placed Q can interupt her before she connects to you or your teammate, and she will be stuck almost in melee range, without her Q. If she's insanely fed and you're afraid of her, you can also use your R to ruin her dash reset while pushing her away from you.
Ivern
|||JUNGLE||| I'm not sure how I'd rate this matchup as it entirely depends on how good the Ivern is. However during laning phase, Janna can easily invade him and deep ward in theory, however due to Iverns gold budget Ivern players are a lot more likely to have a million controls in their jungle entrances so be ready for him to be ready for you and don't go too deep. As long as his laners aren't rotating he can't do anything to you. In teamfighting phase you can treat Daisy like any standard frontliner and just peel her off with Q and R. Ivern himself should be treated like a support, and you should not attempt to pick him off with max charge Q's.
Janna
If someone took your Janna the only appropriate play is to hover ghost cleanse nunu.
Jarvan IV
|||JUNGLE||| Jarvan can be a complete pain if you're lazy with positioning, as a lot of Janna players are. His E>Q dash can be cancelled with knockups, however good Jarvan mains are usually adept at using sweeper and controlling vision, so if you're lazy this guy will pick you from fog of war very easily. Invading Jarvan is high risk high reward as Janna can get caught off guard so easily by this champion, however if you're ready for him and he isn't ready for you, you can likely cancel his E>Q with your Q and walk right out of his jungle forcing him to burn sweeper on your deep ward.
His R cannot be avoided as Janna. Your options are using stopwatch, and running cosmic insight with lucidity to have flash up as often as possible. Full Zhonya's isn't usually necessary since Jarvan himself only traps you in his R, but doesn't have the damage alone to kill you through your E>R.
Jax
|||TOP||| Ganking him is pretty straightforward. If you come from behind he will jump directly on you, so be prepared to throw a Q. If you come from lane and try to run him down he will ward hop away, leaving no room for counterplay. Coming from behind you can cancel his hop with Q, and after 6 easily knock him into his ally. If he's slightly more fed and you're going for a sustained fight into him, make sure you R in such a way that your ally can fight Jax while still being in your R, but far enough away for his E to not hit you unless he jumps on you. The key trick here is that if he wastes it by jumping on you he will not be able to stun your allies, which means as soon as he let's down his defensive stance your team should still have full DPS. Jax doesn't burst no matter how fed he is, so if he cancels your R you can usually still just run away with Q>W after the stun runs out.
Jayce
|||TOP & MID||| You can cancel his melee form gap closer with Q if you're coming from behind him, meaning he needs to flash to reliably use his knockback. The main threat of when ganking Jayce, is him using flash>melee E to knock you into his tower. This mainly happens against Jayce mid so be aware of it and either gank when you have lvl 6 or angle yourself slightly sideways so he can't knock you into tower. If he runs full burst his ranged attacks can be a large threat to Janna but they're not that hard to dodge unless he can snipe from fog of war.
Jhin
|||ADC||| If you have glacial you can wait till his 3rd auto, and trade with him by using Q>AA>W and then disengage before he gets 4th shot. Most Jhin players will allow you to do this trade, as they expect to be able to line their 4th shot after their 3rd auto. Overall this champion doesn't pose much of a threat to Janna alone, however the supports he usually gets paired with (Nami, Sona) tend to outscale Janna quite hard. If he is paired with an engager the matchup tends to be quite simple, however trading is quite difficult if his support is an enchanter or mage, as those supports are typically adept at parallel positioning and will either burst you alongside the Jhin or buff the Jhin nulling your damage. Jhin's manner of walking up to the wave is quite predictable due to the way his auto's work, so you kind of know how he will try to last-hit the wave and when he's going to waste his Q. If you can get good at reading this, then it becomes quite easy to line up your Q's at max charge. If he has an enchanter i usually roam this matchup, as he will find it difficult to poke my ADC substantially enough to ult or dive them. If he has a mage he will lack peel and be easily gankable in laning phase so ask your jungler to path towards you as you cannot leave your ADC alone in this lane. And finally, if he is paired with engagers, you can usually win engage matchups for free with Janna and trading on Jhin is rather easy.
Jinx
|||ADC||| Very weak early game. You can easily pressure her early and trade on her pretty hard. You win damage pre first item, but she wins waveclear into most adc's so she can push lvl 2 if you leash your jungler. In engage matchups this may not be ideal so consider giving up leashing your jungler if you think it can lose you the lane. It's important to note that even though her damage threat early is incredibly weak, you want to take short trades, and Jinx can easily throw her traps behind you if you're not careful. With enchanter supports Jinx has a hard time towerdiving, so roaming is easy here.
Kai'Sa
|||ADC||| Kai'Sa has an incredibly short range, which means you can basically auto>W her for free at any time you feel like, and even throw a Q tap if you're in a lane where you can afford to waste the ability. Her main rotation comes from using 3 HoB autos then getting her remaining 2 plasma stacks with her W. This means if you hide behind minions she will be unable to perform such a trade, as she will have too low attack speed to just auto you to death. Be ware that CC from nearby champions applies Kai'Sa passive, so if she has an engage support with multiple CC's, she may be able to get her passive off without the need to use W. Kai'Sa doesn't powerspike off of lvl 6 or full items, instead she spikes off of her evolves. In lane this would be her Q evolve which she usually gets around 3k gold regardless of which item combo she uses to get it. Make sure you create a lead before that. Should you want to disengage into Kai'Sa, you'll find it useful to know that her dash does not go through CC. Most Kai'Sa players will R to the side of you, rather than directly behind you due to some Kai'Sa specific hitbox stuff i wont go into. Make sure you aim your Q diagonally so she will dash through it and stop dead in her tracks. Her Q will follow your flash, however her range is 525 units and Janna R knocks champions 875 units away and stuns for 0.5 seconds, meaning that it will be usefull to hold your R for a second, both creating distance and allowing you to tank a Q.
Kalista
|||ADC||| Put her in tiny because she's a pro-play only champion that is literally not useful anywhere outside of Korea. If you see this trollpick in your game, make sure you have an exhaust on your lane as it decreases the animationspeed of her dashes, and therefore overall attackspeed if she's moving at all, by a lot. She has trouble trading back into you when you AA>W>Q. The same is not true for her backwards/kiting dashes however. Either way she's strictly a snowball champion that looks to get ahead, so running Glacial to further ruin her dashing, and just playing a safe lane will make you auto win as she is mostly played with engagers that fair poorly into Janna. If you have an ADC with high early damage you may be able to trade on her. Make sure to put points in W, as slows decrease her dash distance. Open up trades with auto>W, then wait till W connects before you fire your Q to guarantee a hit. Spacing your combo in most matchups is risky, however in the Kalista matchup i believe it is crucial you do this to ensure she doesn't dash right before W connects, as she will dash far enough to dodge your Q. Make sure you do not roam in this matchup. If she doesn't have an engager, she will make her support into an engager with her R. Janna is perfect at disengaging Kalista, but you don't just need to be botlane for her lvl 6, you need to actually match her lvl 6 so giving up xp by roaming isn't really an option.
Karma
|||SUPPORT||| I hate this matchup. I honestly don't know what to really say about Karma. She outpokes and outdamages you by far, however her main weakness is the fact that she brings no CC to the table. She will generally out-pressure you in lane, however she is super vulnerable to ganks due to her lack of CC. Janna cannot peel a speedboosted ADC running the lane down while Karma is slowing her or her ADC, so for that reason alone you should avoid fighting the lane 2v2 at all costs. The thing is, if you're into a mechanically good Karma player, who's a bad support player. You can roam and get your topside ahead, since she has no CC and therefore can't really towerdive. However, a good support player can very easily match Janna's roams with Karma as the champion is quite fast, and on those roams you will experience the same problem of Karma out-damaging and out-pressuring you. If you have a strong early game Jungler, you should play this matchup and communicate with your jungler about what you wanna do against Karma. Whether you're a roaming player or a laning player, you need a strong jungler to put up with this character, or a teamcomp that can punish the enemy team for lacking hard CC. The reason Karma is not in the extreme category, is that if the Karma fails to put your team behind before laning phase ends, Janna should get Shureleyas, and basically function as a better Karma with hard CC.
Karthus
Karthus can go in every lane so i'll start with some general tips in to this champion and then talk about Karthus in each role. Janna overall does pretty well into Karthus as her R can push him away right before he dies, which will make his passive quite useless. A lot of Karthus players may for example flash super deep under tower knowing they will die, so that they can put their passive in a convenient situation however Janna can avoid this with her R. Janna is also really good with Swifties meaning she has slow resist and very high movespeed if she holds onto her W, making it incredibly hard for Karthus to Q her.
Janna R counters Karthus R, especially in teamfighting phase where she can easily AoE heal her entire team. Karthus deals a lot of damage, so if he gets ahead, buying Mikael's for MR is not a bad option since Karthus stacks flat pen often.
||| Karthus Support ||| Karthus support, also known as "inting karthus", is a strategy that revolves around Karthus killtrading on lane, regardless of whether he kills the support or ADC. It works due to Karthus outscaling pretty much every botlaner in the game, especially in the support slot. The main thing to watch out for is the obnoxious range on his wall. I strongly recommend buying Swifties if you're going to try and lane against him. If you're having trouble dodging his Q's, remember his Q does the most damage if it hits a single target so standing in your minion wave can be quite effective. Vice versa, if you ARE confident you can step out of the minion wave to encourage Karthus to focus you, then use your high movespeed to dodge all his damage. You can very easily just roam the game and let your ADC soak xp behind tower and let bot fall ASAP so your ADC gets a safe farm lane, since Karthus just can't really dive your ADC that well even with his passive.
|||Karthus ADC||| Karthus ADC is extremely strong early compared to most ADC's. The thing with Karthus is that he deals obnoxious amounts of damage to champs if his Q hits a single target, and most supports will stun you outside the minion wave making it appear as though Karthus is a lot stronger than he actually is. If he is played with an enchanter, he will most likely attempt to scale the lane, in which case you can either play the lane by staying inside your casters or you can free-roam as Karthus doesn't have super good tower dives without reliable CC. If he's with an engager, first of all be ware of his obnoxious W range in lane, and secondly, if it's a dash engager (Ali, Rakan), you can freeze lane and auto win by cancelling their engage with Q/R. If it's a hook champion, abuse the fact that Janna has ranged auto's and out-waveclear the enemy botlane to constantly have minions to hide behind.
|||Karthus Mid & Top|||
Karthus mid has insanely high waveclear, meaning he usually stops your midlaner from roaming and attending fights in river. He himself is however quite slow at rotating, so Janna is often able to invade jungle against this pick, deepward, and escape without causing a fight. Ganking Karthus midlane is actually not a bad idea, since a lot of Karthus players will excessively clear waves into mid tower, when all they need to do is keep the wave even. This means a lot of Karthus players over-extend on their extremely immobile weak-CC champion, and are therefore insanely easy to gank ESPECIALLY if your jungler can follow. The same can sort of be said for top, however i believe it's better to leave the lane alone if you have a tank, or simply dive him with a big push if you have a bruiser.
|||Karthus Jungle||| Karthus jungle is often played with exhaust instead of flash, which usually means as a jungler you cannot kill Karthus 1v1, which deters most junglers from even trying. However Janna doesn't really invade to do that, so him having even weaker chase is actually good. You can easily disrupt his farm by for example shooting a Q through raptors and picking up the small ones (really effective with Sorcery tree). This will cost you a few milliseconds but it's also only a play you should do if you happen to stumble upon the opportunity. The same can be done for wolves and raptors, and i'd generally encourage trying to steal whatever camp he's currently doing just to force his smite, since it will slow his clear, and there's always a chance that he doesn't have it up. You essentially are just looking to overall be a nuisance since all he wants to do is farm, and even just taking 30-50 gold worth of wolves, raptors or krugs and wasting a smite here and there can be enough to put him behind and give you a little extra gold and potentially make him unable to contest an objective or scuttle fight.
Kassadin
|||MID||| This character isn't be a big deal for Janna at all, since he's melee and his mobility is kind of lackluster into Janna's extremely consistent peel. But personally I always underestimate how safe this champion is and just how good he is at rotating to his jungler whenever i invade. Both invades and mid/top roams are incredibly hard to do when this champ is in your game, as he usually plays under tower and can easily ult over the wall to help his jungler, and if he snowballs he will spam roams on top for consistent kills which you can't really stop. Due to him having a ranged slow ontop of his dashes, you will find it hard to escape him without mobility boots active, however if he takes notice of that fact, he may waste flash to take away your movespeed. Swifties are a more consistent option if you want to run away from him and highly recommended if you decide it's a good idea to roam the game, as you rotating to a bad fight and dropping mobies active can result in you just adding to his chain kill. If you start commotion midlane and get both junglers in a fight, Kassadin will always lose, even if you have a weak early midlaner. This is because Kassadin simply cannot oneshot through Janna shielding/healing in laning phase.
Despite him being hyper late-game, make sure to always keep in mind that Kassadin roams heavily if ahead and will most certainly try to dive your ADC if you abandon lane, or he'll roam toplane constantly and prevent your roams from really being useful at all since he almost always wins 2v2 against you. All in all it's a bad idea to try to roam if he's already become a major problem. If your midlaner has high waveclear he will only be leaving lane to prevent invades, however the average midlaner in solo queue will either try to follow him or shove and punish ineffectively, both of which often result in this champ just getting way more fed than he should. I'm putting kassadin in even because realistically he shouldn't be such a big problem but everyone plays into him so poorly that he often does end up looking like a bigger problem than i think he is.
Katarina
|||MID||| Mindgames. Katarina's Q will always land in range of the position you were in when it bounced last. So when it's in the air and is about to land you will know which direction it's going to land in, meaning you can walk away from that position. However i believe it also takes into account the way you're facing. If you react to the knife being thrown at you but briefly walking in a different direction than the one you intend on escaping to, you can trick her knife into bouncing in that direction then return to walking towards your original destination and enjoy not getting spun on. If you do this properly, you can then fire a Q backwards as fast as you can and CC her as soon as she dashes to it and you'll be out of her dash range. Katarina players will often do a play where they waste their E then W>Q>R ontop of you, which will let her R till she gets a double spin and end up with a 3rd dash once the combo finishes. If you ever see a Katarina waste her dash onto a champion, use your R and Q and do everything you can to push her away from her dagger as this will leave her completely unable to play the game. You can't roam on her and she will likely catch you if you're invading, but fights involving this champion DO NOT rely on your ability to cancel her R, but your ability to prevent her from getting a dash reset when she gets greedy and uses E onto a champion. Save your Q for the ult and use R to ruin her life. Stopwatch and even full Zhonyas are very strong into her, as she is known for wasting her ult on supports.
Kayle
|||TOP||| Kayle is incredibly strong into Janna due to her ability to make a hypercarry invulnerable for a few seconds. Kayle's strength mainly depends on the carry she is paired with, since Janna can always knock a carry like Yasuo off of people, but an invulnerable Kog'Maw will run down her team. Kayle in and of herself is pretty weak and can be roamed lvl 3 with a tier 1 boots firstback and sometimes even dived. I usually only do the lvl 3 roam if i play ignite, as you and your allies tankiness isn't exactly relevant but rather the amount of damage you can deal to the enemy toplaner this early. The only time i'll roam with heal is if my toplaner is playing Irelia/Renekton/Riven or something similar and therefore have ignite themselves. Shutting down kayle early is insanely important, and I often try to encourage my team to abuse her ungodly weak early. This champ is definitely worth a dodge if she's paired with a troublesome ADC or an unusually sticky melee such as Katarina.
Kayn
|||JUNGLE||| Kayn is mainly a test of your mechanical skill, more specifically your ability to dodge. Swifties or mobies into Blue Kayn but you can get away with Lucidity into Red Kayn, as he's significantly slower and the fights against him will be drawn out regardless making you benefit from Ability Haste. Make sure you or your ADC has an exhaust into this champion, and running Chemtech Putrifier into Red Kayn aswell obviously. I think Zhonya's is pretty good into Blue Kayn but by no means required. If you have good dodge mechanics a Blue Kayn alone shouldn't make you need a Zhonya's. Pre-form he's completely useless and can be invaded easily. He also has no hope of doing a succesful gank on your lane and his dive is really weak.
Kennen
|||TOP||| Kennen is incredibly annoying to deal with as he can stun you without much counter-play, aswell as go into Zhonya's making it impossible to displace his R. He's a very powerful engage that you cannot effectively peel off, however if you stay in the backline and don't let your carries die, it's not too bad. Highly recommend Mikael's into this rodent. You shouldn't be able to roam him, but ranged toplaners automatically push so if he's really autopilot you may be able to collapse him anyway. I wouldn't count on it though. The champion holds top prio and can rotate to river skirmishes extremely well, and is just overall hard to catch. If your toplaner has good mobility you may be able to roam him, however diving Kennen is pretty much impossible due to Zhonya's + R. During the oneshot META I would've considered this champ a dodge, but after durability patch his damage isn't very high so you're fine in teamfighting phase with Mikael's.
Kha'Zix
|||JUNGLE||| Kha'Zix is generally useless into Janna as his main tool's are invisibility and a relatively slow, cancellable dash. The main struggles into Kha'Zix are that you cannot safely deepward him without making your Jungler or Midlaner come with you, as his isolate damage is simply too high. In lower elo brackets this may not be an issue, but if he sees you coming he will most certainly get the jump on you and can chunk from fog of war before you can react. Obviously if you have vision on him and he max range jumps to you you will easily be able to Q and walk away, but into good Kha'Zix players that won't happen inside his jungle. Appart from that, he's the most useless assassin into Janna, since he has no way of killing you appart from walking out of an unwarded bush invisible and hoping to be in invis range to Q before you can react, which still won't oneshot you no matter how fed he is. Janna is extremely fast and can catch up to any carry on her team, meaning if there's a 20/0 Kha'Zix on the enemy team, she can literally just stand ontop of her carry 24/7 and pretend she's Yuumi and ruin Kha'Zixs life. He's in minor threat because he can get Umbral Glaive and make warding a pain.
Kindred
|||JUNGLE||| This champion is weird to me. You counter Kindred R massively by being able to get into the middle of it, and shove everyone on the enemy team out of the circle. However, unless you have Glacial, you can't stop a gank very effectively and Kindreds point n' click slow can often make you have to waste flash. You can technically use Q to cancel Kindred Q but it's not reliably gonna hit perfectly so you'll usually only end up cutting about half of the already short dash distance into a Q-tap which knocks for 0.5 seconds, while Kindred can use her E mid-air in Q, meaning you actually end up slowed and having Kindred catch up to you if you're not running Glacial. You can put up a pretty strong defense into Kindred by warding their marks for your Jungler aswell as being prepared to rotate. You can usually beat Kindred with your Jungler present as Janna is really good for sustained river skirmishes. Frozen heart is really good here because Kindred deals obnoxious amounts of damage and the enemey team will most likely have two marksmen on it.
Kled
|||TOP||| Kled R is unstoppable so for that reason I enjoy taking Glacial or running an Armor item whenever i see him. He deals a lot of damage if he's fed, and while cancelling his E is possible, i find it quite unreliable as his janky hitbox will often let him get the reset through if you don't cancel it with R. His Q range decreases over time but remember your R takes up to 0.5 seconds before it knocks kled away by max distance. It's possible to screw it up and get pulled by Kled Q despite using R, but you still overall gain distance and can followup with a Q to run from him if he doesn't have R. Both his R and Q cancel your R so wait for him to waste them before you channel.
Kog'Maw
|||ADC||| Kog'Maw has a really big hitbox and is generally easy to Q. You have to trade around his W as it gives him range and damage, but is on a really long cooldown. Swifties might seem like a good idea at first glance since he throws a lot of artillery, but a lot of Kog'Maw players don't level their slow untill they're scared of ganks, so if he's not using the slow you shouldn't buy Swifties for Kog only. You cannot knock him back in passive with R, but you can still outheal the damage easily. Kog is usually played with enchanters, so you can roam if your ADC has sustain and isn't a champion reliant on getting ahead, but with a strong early ADC roaming is usually unnecessary into Kog'Maw.
LeBlanc
|||MID||| You can cancel her W pretty reliably as long as it doesn't come from her invis. She will still be able to dash back but her damage is ruined so even wasting R for it can be worth it since it will break chain in the process. You can actually gank LB quite easily since you'll need to go midlane anyway for a pixel control ward. If you notice her use her W you can try and put your Q on her W mark to catch her. Since LB is so squishy you kill her with ignite, Aery and E auto damage. She's a pretty standard burst assassin and the best counter to her is being good at cancelling the W and having good vision so she doesn't get easy picks from Fog of War.
Lee Sin
|||JUNGLE||| His Q2 is cancelled with your Q. This means that unless he has flash + R and plays prowlers, you can bully him for free at every stage of the game. There's nothing more fun than hanging around a fight as 30% HP Janna and eating a Lee Q on purpose just to watch him suffer as you cancel it and leave him in the middle of your team. You should however be careful of good Lee players, as they can cancel their own dash with flash and go behind you for an insec. If you're against a Lee Sin who can pull this off RELIABLY then you can simply use your R to cancel his Q instead and ofcourse stop eating the Q's on purpose. I don't feel like you need any Armor into Lee as he doesn't really do any burst to Janna when every interaction he has with her involves his Q being cancelled. Roaming and deepwarding him is insanely easy and he cannot do anything to you without his teammate CC'ing you. Glacial isn't even required however it will definitely make Lee Sin's game go from insanely hard to impossible.
Leona
|||SUPPORT||| Winnable pre-6 but lose all your agency whenever she has ultimate up. Janna wins engagers because she's too fast to get hit by hooks and she cancels almost every dash engage. But when it comes to Leona there's just nothing you can do except rush Mikael's, play Glacial and hope she's bad. With that said, you have an obnoxious amount of pressure into Leona pre-6, and with Glacial being pretty decent in lane, you can very often make her go just behind enough to not realise how big of a threat she can pose. You can block her E with your Q as its a cancellable dash, however it places her behind you which means if you do it too slowly she may be in range to stun you after your knockup. Getting the timing right and cancelling it in time is key and buying boots early is also strong.
Lissandra
|||MID||| You can self-cast Mikael's upto 0.2 seconds before Lissandra R lands to self-cleanse it. Saving teammates is way easier though so stay out of her range if possible. Cosmic Insight is a must as you cannot cancel anything with your base kit. This champion is dangerous for Janna because she cannot affect Lissandra at all, but Lissandra can affect Janna quite heavily. If she ganks your lane you have no way to turn the fight and are forced to run away basically, where as Lissandra on the other hand is never gonna be scared of a Janna gank. The matchup evens out when you get Mikael's if you have the mechanics to cast it, but in lower divisons you'll find Lissandra taking Electrocute and oneshotting Janna on repeat.
Lucian
|||ADC||| Lucian is kind of annoying due to his versatility but overall Janna doesn't struggle with him. Frozen Heart is pretty good. His range is 450 so if he doesn't have E up you can auto him for free, and this also usually means you should be trying to use Q and autos to deny lvl 2. Lucian may attempt to push lvl 2 and all-in but his proper spike happens at lvl 3 and will win pretty much any ADC Janna is paired with. Use your R to cancel his R since he can use his dash to dodge Q without cancelling his R.
His waveclear is decent and overall pressure in lane is huge so roaming can be difficult if he has an engager, but against an enchanter it is definitely viable. Be wary of his Galeforce>Collector build as he can oneshot you incredibly well.
Lulu
|||SUPPORT||| Skill matchup. This champion is very similar to Janna but the key difference between them is Janna is good at peeling multiple targets away from something and Lulu is better for shutting down a single opponent and buffing a single carry. Additionally Janna has slightly higher waveclear and engage power but lacks damage in lane. This does however mean that Janna is a much better roamer and I usually only play this matchup if I believe i can reliably play around my top and jungle or force ganks mid with jungle to create prio and 4 man botlane. Lulu essentially beats Janna as a statstick but Janna brings way more utility and opens up way more opportunities if your game sense is good enough to exploit them. Also sorry not sorry but Lulu players are elo inflated and don't know how to play the game when they notice you're not on lane so usually one or two good roams is enough to make a Lulu player start panicking and make the rest of her team tilt.
Lux
|||SUPPORT||| Lux is just a bad support champion in my opinion. You rush Swifties if she's good, and if she's not then you can get away with Lucidity even. Janna always runs Heal and ADC takes exhaust in this lane and that results in Lux not having kill pressure unless you play it seriously wrong. Lux is mostly good for denying bush control in lane and punishing melee supports, but she has no real pressure in a Janna lane aside from lackluster poke. This means she doesn't get to pop off and snowball her damage, meaning she will play a burst mage with a support gold income and end up not having any burst. You should win this matchup off the fact that you're faster at rotating around the map, warding and ganking, aswell as the fact that your Glacial Q funnily enough has more kill pressure on her, than her combo on you due to Glacial reducing her burst and her being more squishy than you for some reason. If you have a decently strong ADC early then you can even run ignite and dance her skills and make her suffer with Swifties.
Malphite
|||TOP||| He's in major because Janna really wants her team to group up and Malphite punishes that entire idea. I don't think he's a very big deal overall but the game is very out of your control due to his R being uncancellable.
Malzahar
|||MID||| Skill matchup. Mikael's Blessing doesn't work on his R, but luckily it's not really necessary. Malz doesn't do enough damage to oneshot people solo and will require followup, so you can pretty much always cancel his R if you have one of your CC's up. Remember you can remove his spellshield with autos. When walking up to face him, always put your Q down and use your auto or W>E to remove his shield and shield yourself. In the event that he targets you with R, your Q will automatically launch and cancel him, usually leading to him getting picked by your team. If your auto or W don't go through, your teammates might still break his spellshield before your Q knocks. Malzahar typically permashoves his enemy laner under tower, but a lot of Malz players will get greedy in easier matchups and stay to poke their lane opponent under tower. If this is the case, you can easily roam mid and insec him since his movespeed is quite low, making him vulnerable to ganks.
Maokai
|||SUPPORT||| This pick is technically in the extreme category, but you'll rarely see good Maokai players, so you won't actually need to dodge it. The main problem is that he beats you in every aspect except roaming and general map pressure. He has a more oppressive laning phase and controls bushes and key FOW locations that Janna players like to Q from, by using his sapplings. He also doesn't fall off, but you can't cancel his engages early on. Take Glacial if the enemy has enough AP for you to justify rushing Mikael's in lane, otherwise run Aery and play purely for scaling. If you have a rather diveable ADC you should probably just dodge it.
Master Yi
He ignores Glacial slow, but the damage reduction is still insanely useful and Glacial allows you to buy Frozen Heart second, and for those two reasons I still play Glacial almost every single time i see Yi. Anything that ruins his DPS so he doesn't insta oneshot with purely Q, makes this champion compelely unplayable against a Janna, and since he can't play duskblade anymore it's literally free. Make sure to time your knockups so that you knock him immediately after Q, cancelling his otherwise free auto. This also puts his Q on a slightly longer cooldown, making his life miserable. Frozen Heart decreases his AS, effectively decreasing his Q cooldown even further. If you're scared, just use R when he comes out of Q, as Yi rework allows him to control where he pops out
Miss Fortune
|||ADC||| Her comet build has high waveclear and strong dive, which makes roaming impossible, however Janna doesn't have the power in lane to create any sort of pressure or sustain the matchup. It's only playable if your ADC hard outscales. Keep in mind Miss Fortunes R range is considerably longer than your R range so cancelling her R without flash is very awkward. Rush Swifties and refillable. Glacial recommended.
Mordekaiser
|||TOP||| Make sure to have Swifties if he has Rylai's. MIKAEL'S DOES NOT WORK ON HIS R BUT WILL STILL BURN YOUR CD. Lucidity Boots and Ultimate Hunter often let me juke around with him easily with R, and with Swifties + W max you'll have enough speed to just run circles around him so make sure not to waste it for a slow. He's incredibly big and slow so landing charged Q's is not very difficult, and you can set up pretty interesting roams against him as long as he's behind, since he'll try to ult you instead of your toplaner. If he's ahead you shouldn't roam him, since he can just R your toplaner and kill them.
Morgana
|||SUPPORT||| Morgana E has 80 hp lvl 1 + 70% AP ratio. I highly recommend taking Aery or even Electrocute (Yes it's viable with manaflow second) to punch through her black shield with W. Also I recommend putting 5 points in W for the same reason, as morgana shield won't have more than 200 hp on 1 full item, meaning with Aery/Elec and W max you will always be able to punch through the shield. If her ADC is weak early you can also do a complete opposite strategy, and max E with Glacial, and rely on autos. I'm not a fan of this because it adds an element of randomness due to having to outplay Morgana. If you really want to play Glacial your only option is to posture your autos and W towards one target, and then fire your Q at the other simultaniously to make Morgana E the wrong person. This is just not as consistent. I recommend getting Mikael's 2nd item, as there's no reliable way to deal with a good Morgana's R engages.
Nami
|||SUPPORT||| Nami is just a hardhitter version of Janna. She does everything Janna does but better, but slower. Janna's power in this matchup is that she can outroam Nami since Nami will not have kill pressure in lane, especially after the removal of her Electrocute playstyle. Rush mobies, and outroam her since she point n click outtrades you in lane, but can't outroam you at all. If you want to play the lane (if the ADC matchup is good for example), you should take Swifties and not Lucidity and ofcourse Oblivion Orb. She has more reliable engage (her R) but you can do what she does with your Q. Whether you're good at roaming or not, you'll realise that in mid-game mobies/swifties allows you to rotate to fights and control vision more effectively. Your cooldowns lategame are also shorter, and your heals are AoE. This matchup is sort of Nami favored, but it's still a skill matchup and you can win it by understanding the differences and nuances of the two champions better than your opponent.
Nasus
|||TOP||| Nasus is easy to hit with charged Q. You can dive him with most strong early toplaners, but roaming him isn't necessary as he has a hard time doing anything lategame against Glacial/Mikael and Swifties.
Nautilus
|||SUPPORT||| Read the Blitzcrank entry for detailed guide on how to play against hooks. Naut hook has a low cast time and large hitbox, meaning most Naut players can have an itchy trigger finger, however the hitbox is so big you'll be safe with even just a singular minion most of the time. You can easily rush boots and hold W to use your movespeed to bait hooks and pressure when it's on CD. Glacial is generally pretty good here to match him in lane and to enhance your disengage potential, but you can get away with Aery if your teamcomp calls for it and the enemy ADC isn't super strong early. It's difficult to roam into Naut as he can towerdive quite well, but as long as you're staying on lane and positioning even half decently he's bound to go even. You outscale no matter which build you play but if you can get away with it Aery usually scales harder.
Neeko
|||MID & TOP||| Neeko is pretty bad into Janna as Glacial cuts her already low burst damage. Her R is crucial for her to be useful in the midgame and without Zhonya's Janna can just push her away with R. Neeko falls short against Janna after 6 and if she's not on your lane you can just avoid interacting with her until you both have 6. |||SUPPORT & ADC||| This pick is actually realy strong pre 6 into Janna, but the way you play the matchup depends heavily on what playstyle Neeko is running. If she's running ADC marksman build you just treat her like a marksman and win because she's championgapped. If she plays Comet you want to make sure you avoid her Q as she's likely maxing it. Optionally rush Swifties to accomplish this. Electrocute/Glacial/Anything else should be maxing E, so make sure you pick Glacial and run Mikael's if needed, as she can use E to set up her R which can be quite devastating when combined with a stopwatch or Zhonya's.
Nidalee
|||JUNGLE||| A good Nidalee can be quite devastating with spears but generally speaking you have too much movementspeed to be scared of her. In the event that you DO mess up, she can't actually jump to finish you so she'd need to hit you at medium range then flash Q you to insta combo, but that sacrifices a lot of damage and has to be done at relatively close range. In every other instance you can cancel Nidalee's jump and make her stuck in the middle of your team, or you can simply shove her away with R.
Nocturne
|||JUNGLE||| Use W or Q to cancel his spellshield. Make sure that you wait a little bit till he's properly finished his gapcloser, as he's unstoppable and can therefore pass through your Q, meaning and experienced Nocturne will hold the spellshield and effectively render your Q useless. Frozen Heart and Glacial are very nice into him if he has other auto attack based champions on his team.
Nunu & Willump
|||JUNGLE||| I really despise this champion because of it's ability to completely take over your game without respecting the rules. You can't put it behind, but you can deep ward after 6 as long as you have Swifties and are ready to race him. If he has Phaserush, Glacial may prove ineffective so either make sure to slow him before he procs it or just run Aery. If Nunu is running AP make sure to cancel his R ASAP as it deals more damage the longer it's charged. Be wary of bush cheese from AP Nunu.
Olaf
|||JUNGLE||| You pretty much need Frozen Heart or Zhonya's into Olaf. Invading him after lvl 6 is risky and not worth unless you have direct visual on him. You have no way of outrunning him and he will run you down. You can however countergank and play fights against him very well, as long as you're not the first person being focused, teams with Olaf typically lack CC allowing you to hold R for full duration and make him lose sustained fights.
Orianna
|||MID||| Janna doesn't really interact with mages and Orianna is no exception. Orianna just exists. That's it.
Ornn
|||TOP||| Ornn knocks up when he charges into terrain or his Q pillars. He is unstoppable during his flamebreath but not his charge, meaning you can bait him into charging and Q him to make him waste his most powerful CC. I generally don't like the idea of roaming toplane when there's a tank, since a tank can neither carry nor be put behind. If you have a really snowball-heavy bruiser that can easily kill Ornn early, it may be worth to cheese lvl 3 roam. In teamfights he can be dangerous as his R is good for catching out Janna, who is otherwise very hard to kill. In other words, he's one of the few champions that make Janna vulnerable.
Pantheon
|||ANY||| Skill matchup. This champ has one useful ability and the entire matchup relies on your ping. If you're good you can cancel his W with Q consistently. The same is doable with R but a little easier since you don't have to press twice, thus giving you shorter delay. A big problem is when good panths figure out they can flash and W to deny you the delay of his leap animation, as it gets shorter the closer he is to you. A move i particularly enjoy is cancelling his leap under tower, then flashing behind him and using R to shove him under and watch him suffer. You can technically do this without Q, but i like to open the cancel with Q as flashing preemptively can sometimes make the distance-leap-animation thing kinda awkward. If you take Glacial with stopwatch rune, you can use the stopwatch in lane while he does his W leap, to burn his CD mid fight.
Poppy
|||TOP||| Literally does nothing to you ever. You can cancel her dash with Q and R but beware that it follows flashes if you don't. You can flash out of her W. Roaming tanks on top is pointless.
|||JUNGLE||| As a jungler she poses a slightly bigger threat as she can be rough to invade if you're not confident in your ability to cancel her wall-stun, however you still block every gank from her. Make sure not to facecheck bushes from unsafe angles.
Pyke
|||SUPPORT||| Janna favored skill matchup: Pyke falls off so hard it's laughable and Glacial provides massive lockdown potential on a pyke, a champion that already struggles to keep up in damage and is made of paper. He is definitely one of the most dangerous hooks pre-6, but he falls off harder than his tank counterparts who already lose to Janna. The big secret to this matchup is just figuring out what Pyke's wincondition is, and then counter-gank him and follow him to remain even in laning phase. Pyke naturally has to take more risks and will therefore be under pressure to do something. Usually you can win this matchup literally by just waiting for him to do something dumb out of desperation to snowball. Ignite is good for keeping vision on him if he tries to escape a fight with W. Swifties are good into Duskblade as the item grants him a point n click slow. Zhonya's is life ruining for him as you can put his R on CD and put yourself in really dumb danger spots if he starts refusing to target you. Double Armor rune in rune stats is also very strong since the lane will purely do physical damage and Glacial Janna doesn't scale off of AP anyways.
Qiyana
|||MID||| I don't enjoy the idea of roaming against a Qiyana mid unless you have vision on her, as she has both CC, burst and often jungle followup to completely eradicate you in river. However, if you see her coming, she poses virtually no threat to Janna unless you're standing next to a wall. She has a cancellable dash and relies on skillshots. Fights where Qiyana tries to target you are really fun because you end up winning without throwing any spells just by playing Dance Dance Revolution in river. Remember you can knock her out of her invis zone with your R.
|||JUNGLE||| Invading a Qiyana jungle can be quite tough after lvl 6, so I don't recommend trying unless you have direct confirmation she's on the opposite side of the map. She has a pretty easy time ganking you with flash, as she can CC you and oneshot without followup. Zhonya's is pretty nice here if she's fed. Frozen Heart works too if there's other champions on her team that can justify it.
Quinn
|||TOP||| You can cancel her E and leave her stranded in the middle of your team. If you're good at keeping your teammates in the edge of your R range you can even use R to do it since a good Quinn will not E onto you in fear of you cancelling with Q. Since she's a ranged toplaner you can roam her and gank her incredibly easily, especially with Glacial. If you gank from tower she will jump towards you thinking she can gain distance. Use this opportunity to cancel her E with your Q and leave her in melee range of you and your toplaner.
Rakan
|||SUPPORT||| Rakan's engage is way too good. If he has flash and R you will get CC'd. You can cancel his W early with Q, but he can E back to his ADC and leave unpunished. Also you can only cancel the dash part of his W, so you have to partially predict it.
Rammus
|||JUNGLE||| Rammus rework can be sorta terrifying for Janna as his R makes him unstoppable and therefore lets him engage you semi-easily. Having Swifties and/or Shurelyas and holding onto your W are all very useful against Rammus as his R animation is slow and Janna can often outrun it if she's not otherwise CC'd. As long as Rammus doesn't get onto you, you can use Mikael's and completely screw over anything he tries to do. You can easily invade his jungle in laning phase as your Q cancels his Q, making it near impossible for him to chase you. If he's paired up with a Morgana, you should probably just dodge the game.
Rek'Sai
|||JUNGLE||| You can run AP to get the most out of your R healing, and use it to rapidly heal someone when Rek'Sai enters R. This is useful because her R deals mostly missing HP damage. You cannot cancel her R in any way, neither with flash nor CC. A Rek'Sai should be unable to gank you without using either flash, Prowlers or R, as her dashes are cancellable and incredibly slow. Rek'Sai's dash can be juked since it's so slow, as she will always travel a set distance and cannot cancel her burrow prematurely. This means that you can often avoid her burrowed E by walking towards her. For most champions this may seem counter-intuitive, but for Janna this is key in setting up insecs that will make Rek'Sai smash her monitor. Mechanically speaking, you can invade her and she will have a hard time laying a finger on you, however higher elo Rek'Sai players are great at using burrow to spot you coming from a mile away, so don't be lazy with jungle tracking. Stopwatch rune recommended if you choose to play Glacial. Frozen Heart can be really good, but any armor like Zeke's or Zhonya's is also fine.
Rell
|||SUPPORT||| So in theory Rell is absolutely terrifying, but in practice she has to put 10x more effort into her gameplay to deal with a Janna. Her mounted W is cancellable in every conceivable way and most ADC's can dodge it reliably anyway. Most Rell's therefore result to using their dismounted W to flip people in conjunction with Flash or Hexflash. She will need to charge Hexflash from a bush, which is very easy for Janna to cancel and due to Rell's lack of movement speed you can often even get a semi-charged Q if you already have the bush warded. Generally try to control the bushes and if you're unsuccesful just don't stand near them. You outscale her as her teamfighting requires insanely good coordination with the champion she puts her E on, and that rarely happens in Solo Q.
Renata Glasc
|||SUPPORT||| She's really weak in laning phase, and has really good basestats and scales well off of XP. You can't really put her behind and I'd argue she outscales you similar to Lulu. Roaming is a good option. When she ults remember to shield yourself, as shielding your ADC will give them AD and make their attacks hurt a lot more than yours will hurt them. If you can succesfully dodge her ult, you can often use R to outheal any damage dealt by your allies. Remember not to teamfight in closequarters like the jungle.
Renekton
|||TOP||| Renekton is quite annoying but not a real threat. His current meta build involves PTA, BOTRK and Prowlers Claw, meaning he can dash and oneshot you quite easily. However all these dashes can be cancelled with Q, except for flash. His combo removes shields completely, so using Glacial and Armor items is recommended to reduce his oneshot potential. Ganking Renekton can be very difficult since, most tops can't fight him early. He also falls off majorly, so unless you have a Darius or something really aggressive I'd say ganking Renekton shows inconsistent results.
Rengar
|||JUNGLE||| Rengar is funny, since his only real counter to your Q is spellshielding it, but if he has a spellshield you can just use both R and Q to cancel his jump. A common mistake Janna players make is trying to R him when he jumps out of a bush, which usually results in knocking Rengar back into the same bush. You can only use R if you're at his max jump range and can run out of his jump range within 0.5 seconds, otherwise you will have to let him jump onto you, walk slightly to the side to angle your knockback differently, and then R. But really just don't have your Q on CD when there's a Rengar in your game and the champ does nothing. Build Armor if needed.
Riven
|||TOP||| The only way she kills you is by using a pentacast (any combo that allows her to fire every ability at once), but these require flash to execute and Riven's range is so low that you will see it coming unless it's from a bush. Additionally she won't have the burst to kill Janna especially if she has a single cloth armor. So if you're lazy you can just tank the damage and R her away. Any other Riven combo is cancellable and reactable. You can cancel her Q3, and Glacial slow messes with her as she's forced to use dashes to get out of it. Ganking Riven is actually super easy because Riven players are insanely cocky and constantly fight to win lane.
Rumble
|||TOP||| This champion is seriously dumb. You can use Glacial to screw with him as his hitbox is massive, and AP Janna outheals his damage quite often. Rumble deals an annoying amount of damage and you can't justify building resistances into him so you just have to respect it. He's gankable with Glacial.
Ryze
|||MID||| Ryze in general is complete garbage and only played by so called "terrorists" right now, but kit vs kit wise, ignoring stats, Ryze has a very good kit to deal with Janna. You can't gank him since he's a phaserush mage. He can point n click CC you at a range. and he brings utility for his team with a massive teleport. As of now you don't need to worry about him since he's garbage, but if he ever gets buffed so average players can pick him without trolling, he will definitely be annoying to play Janna against.
Samira
|||ADC||| Samira isn't a big deal for Janna if we're talking about how the kits interact. However Samira is just so overstat that she can ball digustingly hard. You can knock her away with R as it completely ignores her W. But use it wisely, as it's also your most convenient way of stopping her R. I like to take Ultimate Hunter for this matchup, as it let's me use R more often for this exact purpose, since Samira literally doesn't have an R cooldown. Her W is on a 28 second CD level 1, so if she blocks your Q with W, then that usually just means you can go for a trade nexttime your Q is up. Glacial does wonders here.
Sejuani
|||JUNGLE||| Swifties and Mikael's are both decent here. You can cancel her Q with your Q, and usually dodge her W aswell. You cannot slow her for the first 3 seconds of combat, and during this duration she has 10% higher resistances aswell so if you can poke her before she engages that's gonna be strong aswell. Swifties are useful if you cannot dodge her W. Mikael's if she keeps using R on an important carry.
Senna
|||SUPPORT||| Senna is incredibly annoying. However she can't exactly kill you unless you decide you want to fight, since her root is so bad you can back off after getting hit by it. You wanna play with double Armor in runestats and Glacial, since you need the extra engage power to do anything if your jungler wants to gank. Aery is technically good here but if your jungler plays properly, Senna will perma-push and they should gank. If your jungler wants to play topside, you should definitely grab mobies and just do that since your chance of impacting the botlane is quite low unless you have a Draven/Samira or something equally terrifying for Senna. She outscales you quite hard but she lacks a lot of proactivity, so if you can either roam or get your jungler to gank you usually out-tempo her and win the game.
Seraphine
|||SUPPORT||| Take Glacial + Swifties and dance around her skillshots. You can often get away with running ignite here if the ADC matchup is even or to your favor. She will impact the game harder than you late, as her R is disgustingly good. Taking Mikael's can help a lot into her.
|||ADC||| This pick relies almost entirely on waveclear for safety and is also a pain for your jungler to gank. Into Seraphine ADC I recommend just taking a roaming page and focusing whatever your Junglers focusing, as staying in lane and bleeding out is usually a pretty bad idea.
Sett
|||SUPPORT||| Quite annoying but overall not a big problem for Janna. His R is unstoppable so don't let him in melee range after 6. You can knock him back in his W so use this to your advantage if your ADC is stunned and about to take a massive blow. Generally Sett does poorly into Janna in lane as long as you can gain control over the bushes as he's completely reliant on Hexflash cheese.
|||TOP||| Very easy to gank and insec. If you're coming from behind him make sure to use your R early, as his E will usually be able to stun if he's at the wave or your laner is chasing him from the other side. Generally Sett top isn't too big of an issue, however he can often go Stride + DMP which will let him chase and slow you and he has a point n click knockup. If you're not careful Sett can get the best of you.
Shaco
|||SUPPORT||| Shaco support just sucks into enchanters, especially Janna. His main tool is using his box to block skills, which he can't abuse into Janna. That means all he does is poke with E and do weak engages with Q. His roaming is subpar and he barely does damage considering he brings low utility compared to Janna.
|||JUNGLE||| Shaco jungle is just annoying. He's not a threat to Janna at all and needs to outplay 5 parallel dimensions ahead to actually touch you if you run Glacial. If he's AD, then Frozen Heart completely screws him. If he's AP he can't make plays without boxes, which you'll be responsible for clearing most of the time. Simply don't fight on the enemies vision territory and only fight in areas you've controlled. For both AD & AP, use your Q as soon as you see him, save R for his R as you wanna knock the clone away.
Shen
|||SUPPORT||| Shen is incredibly annoying and he can set up incredibly strong engages. This matchup mainly depends on whether you can disengage the engager that Shen wants to ult. Shen mainly counters pick-champs like Thresh, as he is anti-burst. Janna plays for sustained fights mainly. You should play around the max range of his E as it can be otherwise difficult to react to, especially if he uses flash. If you think his shield is a problem you can definitely get away with Serpents Fang but if you have an Assassin or Bruiser that can run the item they should. ADCs shouldn't take this item as Janna can run it due to her Glacial build not offering any scaling with items anyway.
|||TOP||| Shen top is annoying to deal with because he's not worth ganking and can't be put particularly far behind, yet he can screw with you and set up all sorts of macro plays by teleporting around the map, that you simply aren't able to do anything about because even though you're playing a roaming champion, you're still not really meant to counter the macro decisions of toplaners.
Shyvana
|||JUNGLE||| Shyvana is funny. She's unstoppable in her R dash and if she's full AP burst mage then her E does 80% of your HP from off-screen. However worst case scenario you'll have to buy Mikael's for MR, as burst Shyv relies heavily on flat-pen. Bruiser/tank playstyles are pretty average for Janna to deal with. You can run Glacial to reduce her damage and buy utilities such as Frozen Heart to lower her Attack Speed, or you can play AP Janna and laugh as she struggles to punch through your 2k healing. She can't play the game pre-6, so you can freely invade without worrying about anything and bully her with wards. Post-6 you can still do that, cuz if she ults after you she's unlikely to be able to actually chase and kill you, meaning you just doomed her to farm for another R.
Singed
|||TOP||| I don't have any fancy Janna mastermind tricks for this champion. Singed is just so dumb. He glues you to the floor then flips you into his team and you can't do anything about it. The only good counter to singed is Zhonya's and hoping he's bad/behind. You can often stop him from proxying in laning phase as he will be forced to burn Ghost to escape Glacial. You can gank him and hope he falls behind, but personally I see such few Singed players that I'm not even sure what to do with this thing.
Sion
|||SUPPORT||| This pick is mainly dangerous when the ADC offers CC, like a mage ADC or Jhin/Twitch. This allows Sion to line up really great Q's that usually win a fight. Without that though, he is easily countered by vision control and just throwing Q's as soon as he charges his Q as it will always hit before he gets a knockup. Alternatively you can use R as it doesn't have a traveltime, but I prefer saving it for his passive, as Supports typically play AD Sion, and the passive deals way too much damage. |||TOP||| Ganking him can be surprisingly easy, but not worth it if he's running full tank. Only gank if he's playing AD or some sort of Hullbreaker and you have a toplaner that can be beneficial to snowball.
Sivir
|||ADC||| Use your W to remove her spellshield and then Q her as you please. She's not very strong before 2 items and likes to permapush the lane so that you can't trade back into her. You can safely roam cuz she often doesn't have the ability to punish your ADC for being alone, unless she has a strong diving support. Her tendency to permapush also makes her vulnerable to ganks, so general rule of thumb is just play on whichever side of the map that your jungler wants to camp.
Skarner
|||JUNGLE||| He's a standard outdated fulltank. He slows you from range so get Swifties and take Glacial if you think you'll have trouble peeling him off carries. Invading him is quite easy as he struggles to catch you even with bluesmite + predator, as that usually only means you have to burn ult. You can get a Mikael's but remember it does NOT cancel Skarner R.
Sona
|||SUPPORT||| Sona is the hardest scaling enchanter in the game. If you don't have a strong early game ADC that can run them down with Glacial, then you need to roam this matchup. If neither of those are possible, then you should dodge. She's incredibly squishy so ignite has good value into her. Not much else to say since her kit is so basic.
Soraka
|||SUPPORT||| I love this matchup. Soraka has superior poke and she heals her ADC for free by landing Q. Even if you're great at dodging you cannot control your ADC and for that reason i think trying to poke her is unreliable. If you have an ADC that can all in, you should play for laning phase. And if you don't then you should roam since Soraka has virtually no poke and most certainly can't dive your ADC and her R is on a super long CD so her impact around the map is minimal. The best way to deal with Soraka is to get between her and her ADC and split them up with your R. A lot of the time ADC's will engage on half hp cuz they know they won't get bursted before Soraka heals them up again, so by splitting them appart you can often kill one of them. Throwing a Glacial Q and then using the slow to Flash behind Soraka and R to insec her into your ADC. This usually results in her death. Focusing the ADC can also work but the enemies have to be the ones engaging and wasting their spells first for that to work.
Swain
|||SUPPORT||| Swain is just funny. I honestly recommend giving your ADC a brief explanation on how to play the matchup cuz that's the biggest variable. Swain isn't different from other mages till 6. But to counter his R you need to disengage him. Janna has a pretty easy time doing that if she doesn't get rooted, so as long as your ADC isn't trying to fight the Swain R you should be alright.
Syndra
|||MID||| Syndra mid is insanely strong after rework and once she scales she can ruin your life. Since she's a mage you can't do much to her in laning phase as she's almost ungankable and your only real hope is catching her with a Glacial Q. I don't recommend playing any Mejai's build against her unless you can also fit a Zhonya's or Mikael's into the build to stop her from oneshotting you.
Sylas
|||SUPPORT & ADC||| I've been seeing this pick pop up in botlane once in a blue moon, and honestly it's not that strong. Sylas support struggles getting gold, and as an ADC he will struggle with walking up to the wave. Either way since he's a melee pick controlling the bushes is important, aswell as punishing him for walking up to the wave.
|||MID||| Sylas mid is pretty strong and he usually goes Everfrost. Swifties are good as he will essentially have 2 slows, and you wanna avoid getting rooted at all costs. You can technically cancel his W with R and Q, but it's semi difficult as you have to predict it. You can also cancel his pull on E2 with Q or R, meaning you can bait him into CC'ing you without letting him follow up on that CC. Janna R is incredibly powerful on Sylas especially since he has a ton of AP, however thankfully it is a very hard R to use, and Sylas players typically don't know how to use it for anything other than healing people. You can often gank this champ in lane since he enjoys skirmishing and fighting.
Tahm Kench
|||TOP||| Tahm Kench is fairly annoying but Janna benefits from sustained fights aswell as playing around champions that typically play well into tanks so he's not a huge issue. You can cancel his W by using Q or R. Swifties are nice as they prevent him from catching you. Make sure not to waste your W as the movementspeed is very valuable against him.
Taliyah
|||JUNGLE||| You can actually bully Taliyah a lot since she can't catch you without hitting skillshots, so invading her to plant wards is typically not very dangerous. She's a typical mage so you can't do much with her directly and she can oneshot you if she gets ahead.
Talon
|||MID||| Talon is very weak into janna as he needs 3 stacks of Passive to do proper damage. Pre-6 Talon will need to land a perfect combo, meaning you either have to dodge one end of his W or cancel his Q animation. If he's at a range his Q will be a dash, meaning you can cancel it with Q or R. Due to this Talon is extremely easy to gank pre-6 as you can usually dodge his W or cancel his Q and leave him unable to deal damage. |||JUNGLE||| Talon Jungle suffers even greater vulnerabilities to Janna than Mid. This is because he often takes ignite/smite and no flash, meaning he cannot flash to convert his Q to a melee ability. You can easily invade him pre-6 and bully him. Sometimes you can even run ignite and kill him because his jungle clear is pretty unhealthy.
Taric
|||SUPPORT||| Taric is really strong but firstly: He's very reliant on having a teamcomp that works around him and secondly: he's incredibly difficult to play. Oblivion Orb rush is pretty nice, and be sure to watch out for any allies he may have, that can dash.
Teemo
|||TOP||| Can't gank him after 6 without a sweeper due to his shrooms slowing you down. Swifties are recommended, and Mikael's is really strong if you have a lot of AA based carries. Kill pressure is surprisingly high on him with Glacial or AP when you get items as simply helping your Toplaner catch up to him and get into melee range will usually allow them to kill him pretty easily.
|||SUPPORT||| This pick mainly relies on cheesing people, harassing junglers and soaking xp from solo laners to get dumb ganks in. Sometimes he's also played to oppress the lane as Janna lacks sufficient pressure to really do much into him. Focus on vision control around objectives as his shrooms will annoy your jungler endlessly, and use Mikael's to make the pick irrelevant. He lacks engage power and cannot set up for ganks and his roams are pure cheese.
Thresh
|||SUPPORT||| Thresh is one of the only engagers that are legitimately scary for Janna, as he has ranged autos and his E is instant if used backwards, pretty much guaranteeing him a hook with Glacial slow. For this reason Swifties and holding your W can be very important. Heal/Exhaust with Cosmic are very strong here as preventing his all in from becoming a oneshot, will pretty much extend the fight and let you completely ruin his life. Also if you have mobies in lane you can use the obnoxious speed to bait hooks from bad/greedy Thresh players. Like with any engager you outscale him quite massively as his only lategame is getting picks from people autopiloting. Read Blitzcrank entry for general guide against hook champs.
Tristana
|||ADC||| You can cancel her W making her lose a substantial bit of damage, furthermore you can run Glacial + Exhaust to deny her any sort of burst in lane pretty much denying her all capacity for snowballing. Taking Frozen Heart second makes her attackspeed slower and thus makes it harder for her to proc her bomb and get a jump reset. Her R can cancel your R and she generally has really high early damage so playing defensively and preventing her from making plays is more important than trying to bully her.
Trundle
|||JUNGLE||| Rush swifties. This champ can and will gank you. His damage is completely obnoxious and your R doesn't really heal that much early compared to the amount of consistent DPS Trundle can output. Fighting him with an ADC is futile. Take Glacial and Exhaust or take Heal if your ADC has Exhaust. Frozen Heart is good if they have a normal lethal tempo ADC and a Trundle. In lower elos you can invade him with Swifties but really good trundle players may or may not catch you with well-placed pillars, especially on the mountain dragon map.
Tryndamere
|||TOP||| You can dive him with most toplaners and you can often completely ruin his life at lvl 6 as most Tryndamere players will try to take fights where their ult lasts just enough time to let them survive. Simply popping an exhaust or a heal or using a glacial proc is usually enough to tilt the fight in your own toplaners favor. And if it's not a close fight you can use R to peel him off your laner.
Twisted Fate
|||MID||| I absolutely despise this champion. TF players dedicate their entire life to making Janna suffer with their stupid teleport RFC range point n click stun. Matchup advice? Buy Mikael's and pray that he doesn't roam to any of your plays and do his silly little combo.
Twitch
|||ADC||| Twitch is quite strong and often paired with Lulu. In the event he's paired with a Lulu, i'd recommend dodging the game or playing a different champion, as Janna doesn't have the laning power to punish that duo nor does she scale very well into it. The Lulu will be unable to roam with a Twitch tho, so for that reason I think it's playable if you have a solid chance of roaming. If he's not paired with a Lulu the matchup is pretty easy. Glacial + Frozen Heart makes him suffer, and Exhaust puts him out of the game completely. You can also play with Ignite and just bully him early since Janna can take shorter trades into Twitch.
Udyr
|||JUNGLE||| Udyr is a melee statchecker. He doesn't do a lot of damage so if he catches you it's not the end of the world usually. His E recast grants CC immunity for 1.5 seconds, so make sure he's wastes it or you might have to burn R. Pretty easy to bully and invade and very safe to deep ward against. He shouldn't catch you with Janna movementspeed. You shouldn't need Mikael's unless the champion you're playing around is melee, as you can peel Udyr away from pretty much any ranged champion on your team.
Urgot
|||TOP||| Incredibly big and slow. Very easy to hit him with Q and dance around his skillshots. You can use R to heal teammates that are close to being executed, as shielding doesn't work. Swifties are generally good and holding onto W, as getting hit by a missile can slow you and let him flip you. Remember he has SHOTGUN KNEES and running circles around him is not a good idea. Very gankable in laning phase.
Varus
|||ADC||| Varus is quite strong into Janna as he has a lot of pressure in lane and towerdives or at the very least pokes fairly well under tower. Additionally he also scales very well out of laning phase and Janna's only function in this matchup is being a carrier for Mikael's Blessing.
Vayne
|||ADC||| Glacial is good here as it provides additional slow and Vayne is super reliant on her movement speed. For this reason Exhaust is also a must, as Vayne's ultimate is usually something you'd rather want to disengage. It's actually very difficult for a Vayne to dodge Janna Q, but it's even easier to hit defensively. For Vayne to trade efficiently she will want to Q towards you, meaning you get a guaranteed Q pretty much. You can pretty much ruin her trading pattern and force her to swap targets in lane by constantly going for W trades and then disengaging with Q. |||TOP||| Grab a Glacial page with Relentless Hunter, and make sure to gank her as she is forced to push the lane in due to being ranged on a melee lane. Putting her behind and putting your toplaner ahead of her puts the game completely in your favour. It doesn't matter if your ADC goes slightly behind the enemy, because the enemy team will have two ADC's and significantly less frontline than yours making your ADC more useful than the enemies since they will just be ran down constantly.
Veigar
|||MID||| Whether you can roam or not highly depends on what kind of midlaner you have. If they can consistently bait out the E before you gank or bypass Veigar E like Fizz or Katarina, then it is gankable. However most Veigar players are afraid to shove into those champions and usually wait for their Jungler. Counter-ganking said Jungler may also be possible. Get a Mikael's if Veigar is threatening to an important carry of yours. Veigar may screw with your Mejais stacks aswell.
Vel'Koz
|||SUPPORT||| Swifties/Lucidity are good. Swifties let you juke his skills a lot more easily and Lucidity let you have lower flash CD to cancel his R, which is otherwise a pain. His hitbox is pretty huge and taking Glacial + stopwatch (so you can buy boots early) let's you run him down with a lot of ADC's.
|||MID||| You can't really do much to him as a midlaner other than run Lucidity and hope to Flash+R his R and insec him if possible.
Vex
|||MID||| Running Mikael's and Glacial is really good here, as she can fear important carries and deal very significant burst that you can otherwise reduce with Glacial. Preventing her from getting a kill means preventing her from getting a reset and chainkilling the rest of your team. Ganking Vex is usually just a waste of time and invading enemy jungle is quite scary if she has prio on mid.
Vi
|||JUNGLE||| Have fun trying to peel her off your carry. Her R is unstoppable but her normal dash is completely cancellable. Alone she will struggle to do much and the difficulty of this matchup solely relies on what kinda followup she has. Invading her is surprisingly safe since her ulting you will pretty much never result in a kill unless her laners are insanley fast at rotating. Burning her R this way is really good because it means she won't be very useful till it's up again. Cancelling her dash with Glacial Q usually tempts a lot of Vi players into burning R. I like to just perma-roam and intercept this jungler whereever she tries to play around as it's just so effective and merely preventing a gank from succeeding will often result in her losing multiple camps, dying or both. Mikael's does not work into her but Stopwatch rune is a very nice cheese and highly recommended for her R. I'd stay away from Mejai's in this matchup.
Viego
|||JUNGLE||| Viego is a pretty interesting champion to face as Janna. You have to remember his R is uncancellable and his W stun will fire even though you cancel his wind up. As long as you can tank his R, you can simply wait out the ability and R or Q him afterwards and he won't pose much of a threat. Viego's most reliable way of catching you is by flashing his W. You can put control wards in his camo, or just make sure you to stand ontop of him if he's trying to use it to escape as it will let your allies see him. I don't like the idea of invading this champion, however counterganking is insanely fun as Viego players like to towerdive and you can severely screw with him by stunning him for longer than he planned. He's a reset champion so anything you can do to prevent him from getting a kill, will significantly reduce his threat level. Swifties are decent as his ult slows, and he will reset that to get chain kills. Viego grabbing Janna is actually a lot stronger than people realise as he can buff himself aswell as throw a Glacial Q into an immediate R reset with increased AD. Frozen Heart is very good for preventing this.
Viktor
|||MID||| Viktor deals disgusting amounts of damage at a very long range, while having enough movementspeed to consistently avoid your Q's on reaction. Your main counterplay is to wait for your frontliners to CC him in teamfights, and follow up to chain CC Viktor.
Vladimir
|||MID/TOP||| Mid and Top are kinda the same for this guy. You need to identify which characters on your team can deal with him. If your ADC has significant peel and can stack MR then playing for them will give good results. Most Bruisers and Juggernauts can also kill Vladimir with ease provided they can catch him. Aery for the increased scaling and healing power is definitely strong, as there's no guarantee you can shut down Vlad with Glacial due to his pool. Ganking him is makes sense if your mid/top laner can towerdive him or you can try and get your jungler to contribute. Vlad isn't really a threat to Janna as much as he's a threat to solo Q in general. Just make sure your team is equipped to deal with or dodge the game.
Volibear
|||TOP||| I like ganking Voli top if my ally isn't a full tank (full tanks are never worth ganking), as he loves to fight and struggles to escape, especially while Glacialed. Exhaust, Ignite and Heal are all major fight turners in toplane and bringing them there with a massive AD buff + a 15% damage reduction and slow will almost always turn the fight. Remember Voli R is not cancellable. |||JUNGLE|||As a jungler he doesn't pose a threat at all unless you get hit by E's, and even then you can always just take Swifties. You should not be dying to Voli ever, and invading him is hilarious because if he's dumb enough to ult you he still doesn't get anything out of it and throws away major towerdiving potential. If he has Lethal Tempo then Frozen Heart is a good option.
Warwick
|||TOP||| Top Warwick is actually kind of annoying due to his roaming, but thankfully most people are really bad at WW top as it's considered a cheese. His Q is both uncancellable and he can hold it to go behind you and follow flashes. His R is uncancellable while he's in the air, but you can always charge a Q underneath yourself that will keep you safe as it procs automatically after 3 seconds. Slow's decrease his R dash range and speed, so Glacial is highly affective despite him having a dash. |||JUNGLE||| His Q and R are uncancellable, but you can pretty much always invade him as he struggles chasing you if you hold onto W and don't go below 20% HP. His regular W below 50% or forcibly procced doesn't give enough movementspeed to catch you, and therefore you can invade him as much as you want unless he's fed enough to actually get you below 20% from a single R. Frozen Heart is very nice into Warwick.
Wukong
|||TOP||| Wukong is decently gankable as long as you understand his clone mechanics. His clone makes him invisible for a few seconds while it stands still and attacks. A lot of experienced Wukong players might prevent to stand still to make you run past him. The champion likes to perma fight early game so you can run top as early as lvl 3 and interfere, which will pretty consistently turn out in your toplaners favor. |||JUNGLE||| Wukong jungle doesn't pose much of a threat to you as he simply doesn't have any reliable way of getting onto you besides Flashing and using R. Most Wukong players will try to dash from invis, which is very easy to react to, especially if you see the clone. Invading this champion is pretty easy and can annoy him immensely since he falls off fairly hard and needs his early game to go well.
Xayah
|||ADC||| Main reason she's in major is because the supports that are good with her are usually hard counters to Janna, and she also extends CC with her root combo making any stun a guaranteed kill. The champion itself is not that big of a deal for Janna as Xayah cannot chase or engage very well and her feathers are quite jukeable. However the Rakan matchup is absolutely terrifying for Janna, and he's most often played with Xayah which often makes this matchup seem harder than it really is.
Xerath
|||SUPPORT||| As a support Xerath brings little to no utility to his ADC, in exchange for damage in the form of skillshots and high waveclear. This means that by dodging his skills you're effectively making him completely useless. His W slows and sets up his stun and Q, so Swifties are a very solid choice in lane. Roaming can be difficult as Xerath can reliably poke out your ADC even under tower, but setting up ganks with Glacial or even just scaling with Aery is pretty easy here. The entire laning phase is just played like a game of Dance Dance Revolution pretty much. |||MID||| His low mobility and high waveclear can make him very gankable if he's dumb, but if he's freezing you will just be wasting your time. Also invading the enemy jungle can be sorta dangerous as Xerath can assist his Jungler without moving from Midlane at all.
Xin Zhao
|||JUNGLE||| He cannot dash through your Q and you literally shouldn't be able to die to him after lvl 3, meaning you can roam and invade with double yellow trinket lvl 3 firstback with tier 1 boots and completely ward one of his jungle sides and he can do nothing but cry about it. Xin Zhao gets outscaled by almost every champion in the game so ruining his earlygame literally means he doesn't get to play anymore.
Yasuo
|||MID||| Yasuo windwall blocks Q but not R, making him sort of annoying but not a super big issue. He likes to permapush and snowball although he can play safe and farm most people who lock in Yasuo don't do that as Yone is objectively better for that style of play. Hence you can often try to abuse him by doing roams from base with tier 1 boots or even try to kill him when you have 6 by doing an insec. Yasuo's only way of killing Janna is by doing a keyblade (E+Q3+Flash) or by ulting off someone elses knockup. If you get hit by his regular tornado then that's just a wind gap and you should never pick Janna again. Frozen Heart is very strong here as Yasuo enjoys his Attack Speed and it prevents him from killing you ever.
Yone
|||MID||| Ganking Yone mid is pointless without a jungler unless he's playing super aggro and uses his E from outside tower range. This is because his early is weak and he'll usually come back to the E with very low HP letting you finish him off and shove mid regardless of whether your laner survives. Yone's R and E2 both make him cancel knockups so in higher elo's with mechanically consistent Yone players you will struggle to stun him with Q. If he has Flash he can often auto you to death. aboutFrozen Heart is insanely strong into Yone. |||TOP||| On toplane Yone loses pretty much every early game, yet a lot of Yone players will attempt to fight anyway. Interfering in fights or setting up dives are highly valuable as Yone going behind early on top means he won't be able to come back untill your toplaner takes his tower.
Yorick
|||TOP||| Yorick is a heavy late-game scaling splitpusher juggernaut who CAN fight early but doesn't actually need to. This means in most games Janna doesn't really impact this character at all, and your main focus should be getting a carry fed that can deal with him. Usually an ADC or a tank-shredding bruiser.
Yuumi
|||SUPPORT||| I am proud to announce Yuumi is no longer a champion. You just win because she's bad and does nothing. Actual tips for this matchup are: You can Q her when she jumps off very easily, then get between her and her ADC and R them away from eachother. Your R is instant which means it can cancel her W reliably when she jumps to her ADC if you have good reflexes.
Zac
|||JUNGLE||| Zac's jump can be cancelled with Q and R, however he still has his Q and R, meaning you'll have to dodge his Q aswell to not get stunlocked and killed. If he's a complete psychopath he can flash R and get a guaranteed knockup on you which can be deadly in certain situations.
Zed
|||MID||| Janna does very well into Zed. If you're good at paying attention to the entire map at once, try and watch for when he wastes a W, and then gank him. A lot of mid players lose to Janna ganks because they only track the Jungler and never expect the support to be there. I recommend running Glacial, and if not then you absolutely have to carry Exhaust. An armor item isn't necessary into Zed as long as you have Glacial or Exhaust to reduce his damage, as well as the mechanical skill to dodge his Q's. Extra points in W helps and Swifties can work if you struggle with the E slow but i wouldn't buy them purely for Zed since Lucidity gives shorter Exhaust cooldown.
Zeri
|||ADC||| 42% winrate champion. Only playable with Lulu/Nami/Yuumi, meaning if she has one of those then it's a very annoying matchup that you will lose laning phase and get outscaled in and that you should dodge unless you can roam the game, or if she doesn't have one of those supports it should be the easiest game of your life.
|||MID||| You can kinda gank her but I would only go for it if she wastes E since she can otherwise just hop the wall and waste your time.
Ziggs
|||MID||| Can't gank him very reliably and he's also super annoying with his slowing field of bombs ruining Mobies passive. He has artillery mage range but possesses an escape move, making him practically ungankable. With that said, he doesn't exactly threaten Janna as her movespeed is high enough to move from his R center to the edge on reaction. |||ADC & SUPPORT||| As a botlaner Ziggs excels in high tower damage and safe farming. He should only have kill pressure if you overstay while poked down or if he get's ganks from his Jungler. Roaming is pretty great into Ziggs since he will take your ADC's tower quite quickly thus letting your ADC freefarm early, however this also means he gets a lot of gold from plates.
Zilean
|||SUPPORT||| Zilean is insanely strong and I'm not sure if Janna can apply any appropriate counterplay to him. His R makes him essentially outscale you, provided that his team has a champion that synergizes well with him. Even then, it's fairly difficult to play a laning phase against him without a premade, as you have to stall the fight while the guy with Zilean R is on 1 hp and trying to kill you. Janna can try to R to stall, but only if Zilean has used bombs. He can match your roams and beat you in lane, damage wise atleast. Use Swifties to avoid his disgusting slow, as it usually results in getting double bombed.
Zoe
|||SUPPORT||| As a Support, Zoe can steal your item actives and summoners. This is the kind of game where i'd run Moonstone/Mandate or Night Harvester (if enemy ADC has short range it's actually not bad) and then make sure I run Heal as Janna E passive let's you abuse Heal better than Zoe, compared to Ignite or Exhaust which both champions get the same value out of. Zoe cannot fire through the minion wave and lacks waveclear, so you can always just charge Q through the wave and permapush her to neutralize her CC and poke.
|||MID||| As a midlaner she lacks escapes but has damage to oneshot you after one item. She still steals summoners so Flashing for anything other than an immediate R is not a good idea, as she can use R to pick up your Flash and escape the gank. Mikael's is good as it can cancel sleep and save a carry or yourself from certain death, and Zoe won't gain much value from it as Mage players aren't typically adept at using QSS or Mikael's.
Zyra
|||SUPPORT||| Zyra favored skill matchup. If Zyra misses E she will likely still use E to spawn plants, which will be her melee slowing plants. Additionally she can build Rylai's but I don't often see that despite it being strong. Either way Swifties are a very good option in this lane. The correct build Zyra should play into Janna is Electrocute and rush Sorc shoes for flat pen. For this reason I believe it's best to take two defensive runes, one for Armor and one for Magic Resist. If you choose to play Glacial it's viable to run Mikael's as Zyra E will guarantee her R, and cleansing immediately is the only way to avoid this. Her Plants target the nearest target, unless a Champion is in range and got hit by one of her abilities. If you dodge her Q and you're behind minions, then even if she spawns ranged plants on top of you they are most likely gonna target the minions.
To roam or not to roam is probably the most influential decision you can make as it decides your entire playstyle for the game.
It's important to understand that there's a difference between roaming and rotating. You should always rotate to river for objectives and hover fights if you can establish lane priority, or "prio" for short. You establish prio by pushing the minion wave, onto the enemy side of the map. This makes it so that if the enemy team follows your rotation or roam, they will first have to ignore your minion advantage, allowing you to turn on them if they do so before you've ran too far off. If they manage to follow you into river they will still lose minions regardless of how the fight plays out, meaning you inherently come out on top.
When it comes to roaming I like looking at the map as if it is split in two halves: botside and topside. This means you will want to look at the map as though you are a hyper-aggressive earlygame jungler who deepwards instead of farming enemy camps. Speaking of junglers, it is important that you roam to the same side of the map as your jungler, as that is what is referred to as the "strongside" of the map. This is because Janna is especially effective at stalling fights against people who try to engage her, meaning you can usually lockdown the unfortunate enemy jungler who thought you would be an easy pick in topside river untill your jungler comes along and finishes the job. This position is absolutely disgustingly advantageous in solo Q as you can now deep ward entirely for free while your jungler takes half the enemy jungle.
This means if you play on the topside you will be able to gank toplane, midlane or invade the enemy jungle. You can also use midlane to transition gank to the botside. Botside is ofcourse the same as topside but mirrored.
Fenree's OTP Janna Archive [W.I.P]
Build Guide By Fenreee
14
1
25,087
Views
0
Comments
Thank You!
Threats
Synergies
Show All
You must be logged in to comment. Please login or register.