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Aurora Counters: Who Beats Aurora

Updated for patch 26.21. Ability details come from Riot’s official game data for this patch.

Aurora counters are champions who punish her hops, cut off the healing from her spirits, and lock her down before she slips out of sight. She’s a 550-range mage who dashes with three of her four abilities, turns invisible on Across the Veil, and heals from the spirits her damage pulls out of enemies.

We matched the five below against her patch 26.21 ability text, one kit against another. Win rates played no role.

Aurora counters: Aurora, the Witch Between Worlds, splash art

Why is Aurora hard to counter?

  • Spirit Abjuration (passive): her spells and attacks exorcise spirits from enemies; the spirits follow her and heal her.
  • Twofold Hex (Q): a missile that curses enemies it hits, recast to pull the curses back to her, damaging anyone in the way. Cooldown 9/8.5/8/7.5/7.
  • Across the Veil (W): a leap that hides her on landing: invisible, with a burst of Move Speed. Cooldown 22/21/20/19/18.
  • The Weirding (E): a blast that damages and slows, then hops her backward. Cooldown 15/14/13/12/11.
  • Between Worlds (R): a leap with a slowing shockwave that leaves an area she can teleport across, from one edge to the other. Cooldown 140/120/100.

She never stands still. The Weirding hops her away from anyone who gets close, Across the Veil leaps and then hides her, and Between Worlds lets her blink from one side of a zone to the other for as long as it lasts. Add the spirits, which heal her for every trade she takes, and the usual mage plan (poke her, go in when she’s low) runs into a champion who is rarely low and rarely where you last saw her. What breaks that pattern? Three things, and each counter below brings at least one: punishment for dashing, a lockdown she can’t hop out of, or damage that doesn’t care whether she’s visible.

Which champions are the best Aurora counters?

Vex

Doom ‘n Gloom (passive) puts a mark on any nearby enemy the moment they dash; Vex then cashes the mark in for bonus damage, and each cash-in brings her empowered state back sooner. Aurora dashes with W, with E and with R, so she feeds Vex marks all lane long. The empowered basic ability fears and interrupts dashes, which means a well-timed Mistral Bolt (Q) stops The Weirding’s hop mid-air. Looming Darkness (E) damages, slows and applies Gloom in a zone, Personal Space (W) shields Vex and damages anyone near her, and Shadow Surge (R) marks a champion and lets Vex dash to them, invisible or not once marked. Honestly, this is the cleanest answer in the mid lane.

Fizz

Aurora’s hops are her defense, and Fizz has his own. Urchin Strike (Q) dashes through the target, Playful / Trickster (E) makes him untargetable on his spear (Twofold Hex and The Weirding both whiff on a hopping Fizz), and Seastone Trident (W) bleeds her for magic damage over several seconds, which keeps ticking while she’s invisible. Chum the Waters (R) attaches a fish that slows her, then a shark that knocks her up. A slowed Aurora can still hop, sure, but a knocked-up one can’t. Nimble Fighter (passive) shaves a flat chunk from each of her curses and blasts, which adds up when most of her damage arrives in small pieces.

Kassadin

Everything Aurora does is magic damage, and Void Stone (passive) trims exactly that, while Null Sphere (Q) leaves a shield on Kassadin that soaks magic damage on its own. Force Pulse (E) charges from spells cast near him (she casts plenty), then slows in a cone, and Riftwalk (R) teleports him to wherever she landed, with repeated Riftwalks dealing extra damage for the chase. Nether Blade (W) turns his basic attacks magic, with a bigger hit on the active that also refunds Mana. The catch is time: before Riftwalk, Kassadin has 150 range and she has 550, and that’s a lot of hops to walk through.

Irelia

Flawless Duet (E) is two blades closing on each other, and the champion standing in the gap gets damaged, stunned and Marked. A stun is the one thing Aurora can’t hop out of. Bladesurge (Q) dashes to a Marked target and refreshes on a kill or on a Mark, so Irelia reaches her through a minion wave and keeps going, healing on each dash. Ionian Fervor (passive) stacks Attack Speed when her spells connect, Defiant Dance (W) cuts physical damage while she charges it, less useful against a mage to be fair, and Vanguard’s Edge (R) explodes blades outward on hitting a champion, then forms a wall that damages and slows anyone who walks through it. Between Worlds’ teleport doesn’t cross that wall for free.

Malzahar

Nether Grasp (R) suppresses one champion over a damaging zone. Suppression is a hard stop for Across the Veil, The Weirding and Between Worlds alike. Call of the Void (Q) fires two portals that silence, so she can’t cast her escape while the silence lasts, and Malefic Visions (E) deals damage over time that keeps ticking after she goes invisible, refreshed by his other spells. Void Swarm (W) summons Voidlings, and they’re drawn to whoever carries the visions. Void Shift (passive) hands him massive damage reduction and crowd control immunity whenever he’s gone a while without taking a hit, which blunts her poke-and-pull Twofold Hex rhythm. Is he mobile enough to chase her? No, and he doesn’t need to be, because the suppression comes to her.

How do you play the lane against Aurora?

  • Trade when The Weirding is down. It’s her backward hop, on a 15 second cooldown at rank 1, and without it she takes the full trade.
  • Don’t chase her blindly after the leap. Across the Veil makes her invisible with bonus Move Speed; wait for her to reappear, then commit.
  • Kill the spirits by killing the trade. Spirit Abjuration heals her from spirits she pulls out of the enemies she damages, so every free hit she lands is a heal.
  • Sidestep the recast of Twofold Hex. The curse pulls back toward her and damages anyone in its path.
  • Save your stun for Between Worlds. She teleports across the ult zone, but a stun or suppression inside it ends that.

Which items counter Aurora?

Grievous Wounds first, then Magic Resist. Her passive is a heal, so Oblivion Orb early and Morellonomicon later cut it by 40% for 3 seconds on every magic hit (Chempunk Chainsword does the same for physical damage). Kaenic Rookern’s 80 Magic Resist and Magebane shield suit a laner who takes poke in short bursts with gaps between them, and Banshee’s Veil blocks one ability, ideally Between Worlds’ shockwave. Numbers for all of them are listed in the LoL items database.

When is Aurora at her weakest?

Right after she lands. Across the Veil is a 22 second cooldown at rank 1, and The Weirding is 15, so a hop spent on offense is a hop she doesn’t have when Irelia’s blades come together. Vex gets paid for every one of those hops either way.

And without spirits. Her healing depends on damaging enemies first, so a lane where she can’t land Twofold Hex safely is a lane where she doesn’t heal (Malzahar’s silence does a lot of that work). Does she scale out of it? Her cooldowns shorten with rank, but all three escapes still have one thing in common: they’re dashes, and dashes can be interrupted.

Still learning what mid is for? Read our guide to LoL roles first. Other champions we’ve covered, counters and ARAM alike, sit in the guides index, her cosmetics are on the Aurora skins page, and her one-lane version has its own Aurora ARAM guide. Long story short, Aurora counters punish the hop and cut the heal.

FAQ

Who counters Aurora the most?

Champions who punish dashes or lock her down: Vex, Fizz, Kassadin, Irelia and Malzahar.

Can you see Aurora when she uses W?

Across the Veil makes her invisible on landing. Damage over time already applied, such as Malefic Visions or Seastone Trident’s bleed, keeps ticking while she’s hidden.

How does Aurora heal?

Spirit Abjuration exorcises spirits from enemies her spells and attacks damage, and those spirits follow her and heal her. Grievous Wounds reduces that healing.

What is Across the Veil’s cooldown?

Across the Veil has a cooldown of 22/21/20/19/18 seconds.

How were these counters chosen?

Each pick had to punish her dashes, stop them with hard crowd control, or keep damaging her through invisibility, judged from her patch 26.21 ability text. No win-rate data was used.