If you want to know how to counter Yone, the short answer is: punish him while his E is down, and pick a champion who wins short fights before his items come online. On op.gg’s Emerald+ data for patch 26.20, Gangplank, Fiora and Jax are the best big-sample counters in top, and Vex, Annie and Syndra lead in mid. The one item that matters is Plated Steelcaps (or Mercury’s Treads into a mixed-damage build), and the one thing to remember is that his E always snaps him back to where he cast it. You will leave with the counter table for both lanes, his exact cooldowns, a laning plan by phase, and the counters that do not hold up anymore.
Yone is played almost exactly as much in top as in mid (49% and 49% of his games), so both lanes get rows below. For the wider “when is a counter-pick worth it” logic, see our counter-pick guide by lane. This is the Yone-only deep dive.
Why Yone is hard to lane against
Yone gives you very little to hit. His Q comes back every 4 seconds before attack speed and as fast as 1.33 seconds late. Every third Q is a dash with a 0.75-second knock-up. His W hits for a slice of your max health and shields him at the same time. And his E sends his spirit forward for 5 seconds, then pulls him back to safety and deals 25 to 35% of the damage he did in that window again as true damage. That makes his E a free trade with a built-in escape.
The weak points are real, though. His E is on a 22-second cooldown for the whole early lane, his ultimate is 120 seconds at rank 1 with a 0.75-second cast you can see coming, and his early game is his worst game. op.gg’s Emerald+ split has Yone top at 49.08% in the shortest games and 51.42% in games past 40 minutes. Unlike Yasuo, he scales, so lane is your best chance to get ahead of him.
Patch 26.21 trimmed his Q AD ratio from 110% to 105%, per the official patch 26.21 notes. It trims his lane damage slightly, and the matchups below still hold.
Yone counter table, top and mid
These are the champions who beat Yone most often, from op.gg’s Yone counter data: Ranked Solo/Duo, all regions, Emerald+, patch 26.20, pulled 21 October 2026, before the Q nerf landed. Only matchups with 300+ games are listed. Yone sits at 49.86% top and 50.32% mid in that sample. Riot does not publish official matchup data, so read these as a tracker snapshot.
| Champion | Lane | Win rate vs Yone (games) | Why it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wukong | Top | 54.05% (1,075) | Clone baits his Q and E, and his own knock-up R wins the all-in. Mixed changes in 26.21 |
| Poppy | Top | 53.98% (754) | W stops his Q3 and E dashes, and her E stun punishes him near walls |
| Gangplank | Top | 53.85% (4,464) | Ranged Q poke while his E is down, and barrels punish him for walking into the wave |
| Fiora | Top | 53.70% (4,341) | Riposte parries Q3 or R and stuns him, and her true damage wins long trades |
| Riven | Top | 53.17% (1,941) | Her E shield absorbs his short trades, and she trades faster than he can stack Lethal Tempo |
| Jax | Top | 52.58% (6,902) | Counter Strike blocks the autos his damage depends on, and the biggest sample here |
| Sett | Top | 52.53% (5,304) | Wins the level 2 all-in before Tempo stacks, and W soaks a whole trade |
| Vex | Mid | 55.07% (3,009) | Her passive punishes dashes, and he dashes with Q3, E and R |
| Annie | Mid | 54.52% (1,647) | Stun on demand, burst before his E can return, Tibbers peels |
| Syndra | Mid | 53.19% (5,708) | He has no Wind Wall, so her poke and E stun land freely |
| Ahri | Mid | 53.15% (7,863) | Charm stops the E engage, and three R dashes outlast his all-in |
| LeBlanc | Mid | 52.66% (4,250) | Bursts him and returns to her W pad before he can trade back |
The pattern differs by lane. In top, the winners are duelists with a block or a parry (Jax, Fiora, Poppy). In mid, they are ranged mages with fast crowd control. That last point is the biggest difference from Yasuo: Yone has no Wind Wall, so projectile mages who lose to Yasuo, like Syndra, do fine against Yone. If you want to know where these champions stand outside the matchup, our top lane tier list ranks the whole lane.
Yone’s cooldowns: the windows to punish
All numbers from the League of Legends wiki, checked October 2026. Most Yones take E at level 3 and rank it again at 8, 10, 12 and 13, so the early lane is played around rank 1.
| Ability | Cooldown | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Q Mortal Steel | 4s, down to 1.33s with bonus attack speed | Every third cast is a dash and 0.75s knock-up. Each stack lasts 6 seconds |
| W Spirit Cleave | 14s, down to 6s with bonus attack speed | His shield lasts only 1.5s. Step back and let it expire before you trade |
| E Soul Unbound | 22 / 19 / 16 / 13 / 10s | 22 seconds early. Without E he has no escape and no extra true damage |
| R Fate Sealed | 120 / 100 / 80s | Two full minutes at level 6. A 0.75s cast you can sidestep |
The E window is the whole matchup. When he uses E, he has 5 seconds to deal damage before he snaps back. Back off out of range and the mark stores very little. Once he returns, you have roughly 17 more seconds where he has no way out of a bad trade. That is your all-in.
How his kit beats you, and how to deny it
E return: the free trade
Yone’s E sends him in and pulls him back to where he cast it, with immunity to knock-backs on the way. Do not chase his spirit. Chasing him into his return point means walking into his lane, often into his jungler. Instead, step back while he is in Spirit Form and spend your crowd control after he returns, when the cooldown is ticking.
Q3 dash and Lethal Tempo
Q3 is his main engage. Doran’s Bow (82.7% of top games) and Lethal Tempo (92.0%) make his early auto trades much stronger than they used to be. In an r/summonerschool thread about Yone top since Doran’s Bow, a Sett and Urgot player says Bow removed Yone’s early weakness. The top replies agree on the answer: force the fight at level 2 before Tempo stacks, or walk at him to bait Q and step back out of range when he throws it.
Mixed damage that ignores your armor
Every other auto from his Azakana sword is 50% magic damage. His W and R are half magic, and his E mark is true damage. If you stack three armor items because a guide told you to, a fed Yone will still kill you. One armor item and one magic resist item, or Mercury’s Treads, work better.
Laning plan by phase
Levels 1-3. This is your best window. He does not have E until level 3, so a Yone at level 1 or 2 has no escape at all. Melee counters should take the level 2 all-in if they hit 2 first. Ranged laners should poke whenever he walks up for a last hit. If you need a refresher on when to trade and when to back off, our guide to trading fundamentals covers it.
Level 6. Fate Sealed is a long-range engage, 1,000 units, but with a 0.75-second cast you can see coming. Do not stand in a line with your jungler when he has it. If he misses it, you have two minutes before he gets it back.
First item. In top, most Yones buy Blade of the Ruined King first, then Shieldbow and Infinity Edge. In mid it is usually Shieldbow first. BotRK makes him much stronger in extended trades, so your all-ins should happen before his first back, not after. Once he has two items, play for teamfights and objectives, not for duels.
If you would rather skip the matchup homework and just climb, our League of Legends boost team plays top and mid at every rank. op.gg ranks him second in top and third in mid at Emerald+, so we play into him every day.
Teamfights and draft answers
Yone needs a target to dive. His R hits everyone in a line and blinks him past the last champion he hits, so a team that stands in a clump in a corridor is giving him a five-man ult. Spread out in choke points and around objectives.
For draft, the strongest answer is crowd control that does not care about his E return: point-and-click stuns, suppressions and knock-ups from your jungler and support. A Yone who uses E to dive and gets locked down before he can return dies in the fight. Champions with long-range disengage, like Janna or Ahri, also make his R much worse. In our Diamond games, the most common way Yone loses a fight is diving in with E and R and getting stunned before the return.
Counter items
Yone’s damage is mixed, he builds crit, and he leans on lifesteal and shields, so there is something to buy against each of those.
| Item | Cost | What it does vs Yone | Who buys it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plated Steelcaps | 1,200g | 25 armor and 10% less damage from attacks | Melee tops when he is ahead |
| Mercury’s Treads | 1,250g | Magic resist for his Azakana attacks, W and R | Anyone facing a full crit build |
| Randuin’s Omen | 2,700g | 75 armor and 30% less damage from critical strikes | Tanks |
| Thornmail | 2,450g | 75 armor and 40% Wounds against BotRK and Death’s Dance healing | Tanks and bruisers |
| Frozen Heart | 2,500g | 75 armor and 20% less attack speed nearby | Tanks, mana users |
| Zhonya’s Hourglass | 3,250g | 2.5s stasis to wait out his R and follow-up | Mages |
| Serpent’s Fang | 2,500g | Cuts his W shield and Shieldbow | AD assassins and duelists |
Counters that are overrated
Same op.gg Emerald+ 26.20 sample. All of these get suggested as Yone counters, and all of them lose or only break even.
- Malzahar mid: 46.93% over 3,778 games. Suppression on a long cooldown is not enough against a champion who trades on a 4-second Q.
- Sylas mid: 46.59% over 6,596 games. Stealing Fate Sealed is fun once. The lane is not.
- Kassadin mid: 46.37% over 3,401 games. Magic damage reduction does not help much against a champion who does mostly physical damage.
- Mordekaiser top: 46.87% over 4,583 games. Yone just dashes out of his Q and E.
- Rumble top: 45.23% over 1,406 games. Often on older lists, but he loses.
- Vladimir top: 49.62% over 1,306 games. He was a top counter on op.gg’s list last patch (44.9% for Yone), and now he is basically even.
- Renekton (51.65%) and Malphite (51.88%) top: both are slight wins, not the hard counters older guides make them sound like.
Where this advice falls short
Yone is one of the most picked champions in both top and mid in this sample, close to 9% pick rate in each lane. That means a lot of the games in these numbers are from players learning him, which pulls his win rates down against everyone. Against a Yone main, most of these matchups are closer than the table suggests. The data is also from patch 26.20, before the 26.21 Q nerf, so his numbers may drop a bit more by the time you read this. And some samples are small: Poppy’s 754 games is not the same proof as Jax’s 6,902. Finally, a counter-pick you have never played is worse than your main in a slightly bad matchup. Use the cooldown windows above with what you already play.
Frequently asked questions
Who counters Yone top?
On op.gg Emerald+ for patch 26.20, Gangplank (53.85% over 4,464 games), Fiora (53.70% over 4,341) and Jax (52.58% over 6,902) are the reliable big-sample answers. Wukong and Poppy post higher win rates on smaller samples.
Who counters Yone mid?
Vex (55.07%), Annie (54.52%), Syndra (53.19%) and Ahri (53.15%). All of them have fast crowd control and enough range to punish him when E is on cooldown.
What is Yone’s E cooldown?
22, 19, 16, 13 and 10 seconds by rank. Most Yones take E at level 3 and rank it at 8, 10, 12 and 13, so it is 22 seconds through the early lane.
Should I build armor against Yone?
Some, not all. Every other auto is half magic damage, his W and R are mixed, and his E mark is true damage. One armor item plus Mercury’s Treads or a magic resist item works better than three armor items.
Is Yone easier to counter than Yasuo?
Not in lane. Yone is op.gg’s number two top laner at Emerald+ and wins 53.16% of mid games into Yasuo over 10,845 games. He has no Wind Wall, though, so projectile mages do much better against him.
When is Yone weakest?
Early, and whenever his E is down. His top win rate is lowest in short games (49.08%) and climbs to 51.42% past 40 minutes, so your lane is the best chance you get.
To recap: punish the 22 seconds after his E, sidestep the 0.75-second R cast, mix your resistances, and pick a duelist top or a fast-crowd-control mage mid. Gangplank, Fiora and Jax top, and Vex, Annie and Syndra mid, win the most right now.
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