By far the most important champion this season, Sivir has completely defined the meta. If your ADC cannot play the 500 range, utility based ADC, your team is most likely not performing well, or at least not performing to your optimal capabilities. Lately, there’s been quite a lot of talk about the champ and she has garnered a lot of attention due to what she brings to a team in the marksman role. I feel the call for nerfs is unproductive and personally dislike Riot solving problems analysts, coaches, and players could be solving on their own. Think outside the box and work with what you’re given instead of letting Riot determine who’s strong and who isn’t.

Before attempting to solve the riddle that is “how to beat a Sivir comp”, first we need to define her strengths and weaknesses. Determine the root of the problem and why she’s so strong.

Strengths:

Strong wave clear from level one until the end of the match. This allows her to shove lanes right from the get go for early lane pressure, split push quickly, and also become a positive presence if a team falls behind.

Safety in multiple aspects. 1.5 second spell shield allows her to eat up one potentially crucial ability or to play more aggressively knowing it’s in her pocket. On the Hunt gives a massive 8 second long team wide speed boost that is 1000 range around her. Typical ADC itemization allows for some defensive measures, such as Bloodthirster, Guardian Angel, Banshee’s Veil, or Quicksilver Sash, among many options.

Poke throughout the match. While her Ricochet only has an initial range of 500, an auto attack buff, due to its infinite bounce you can gain quite significant ranged chip damage in lane and in team fights. Her Boomerang is a 1200 ranged, AOE nuke.

Low cooldowns. Her Boomerang has a flat 9 second cooldown, Ricochet scales from 9 to 5 seconds, Spell Shield scales from 22 to 10 seconds, and On the Hunt scales from 120 to 80 seconds.

Good individual scaling. Boomerang scaling up to 110% of her total attack damage, Ricochet scaling up to 70% of her total attack damage, Ricochet being an auto attack reset, and On the Hunt giving her up to an 80% attack speed buff when Ricochet is activated.

Weaknesses:

Mana hungry. While her mana pool is average throughout the match and she does have above average mana regen throughout the match, she constantly spams her abilities, of which cost 70 to 110 mana, 60 flat mana, and 100 mana. However, with proper Spell Shield use, mana is not a huge concern although improper use with proper ability spam will lead to her running dry.

Has few winning match ups in standard 2v2 situations. In the current meta, popular champs such as Kalista, Jinx, and Vayne have a good time in lane against her.

So as you can see, lots of individual and team wide strengths with very few punishable weaknesses. Due to these traits, she’s one of the few marksmen that can be picked up and fit into any comp imaginable.



However, the one thing that stands above all of her strengths is On the Hunt. The ability to engage and disengage an entire team fight at your choosing is something no other ADC has the capability of doing. Most recently, Fnatic ran an absolutely terrifying stampede team comp that allowed them to just run on through H2K and their poke comp. She’s also very popular in kiting team comps featuring champs such as Xerath due to the ability to just spell shield and flee from any sort of engage, allowing her team to kite it out or follow up with a re-engage. It is my opinion that the ability to engage and force a fight at will is far more devastating than the ability to kite a fight out. I feel that right there is the true problem and why Sivir is defining this meta. The reasoning is that there are so extremely few options which even check the powerful ability that is On the Hunt. There are no counters to that ability due to it being just a flat team wide speed buff.

Looking at other marksmen, you see downsides to their Ult use. If Twitch doesn’t use his Spray and Pray at the opportune time he will lose a massive amount of DPS and range. If Jinx doesn’t use her Ult at an appropriate range and health she loses a large amount of potential damage. If Kalista uses her Ult too soon she may mess up a potential engage or get her support killed. Nearly every other ADC has an Ult that brings a clear potential downside in its poor use. There really isn’t any poor use to On the Hunt. Another thing to note is that with certain ADC Ults, there is some potential play involved. You can flash many of them or position properly to avoid the brunt of the damage a la Spray and Pray. The problem with On the Hunt is that there are so few checks to it and zero counters that when Sivir gets ahead she creates these oppressive team wide assassinations.

What can answer a Sivir?

In lane, the most popular “counters” to her are Kalista and Vayne, two champs that, in theory, punish her heavily in lane and in the early game so she cannot freely engage whenever she chooses during mid game team fights. However, lane swaps exist and even in these so called “counter” lanes, it’s very rare to see a bot lane completely manhandle the opposing bot lane at decently high competitive levels.

To truly answer Sivir, you have to look straight past just the lane match up and find ways that can help negate that oppressive team wide engage she brings. At support lately we’ve seen less disengage champs and more engage champs, Thresh, Nautilus, and Alistar all coming to mind. The one disengage support that’s being heavily played is Janna. While I heavily advocate the use of Janna against Sivir just due to how strong and how utility based a potential Sivir+Janna lane is, I’ll look at other potential champs that could be of use against Sivir that teams may not have thought about.

Potential Off-Meta Answers

Nami – A champ that was fairly contested all of last season, Nami became a much more niche pick here in Season 5. She brings what I would determine as one of the very few checks to a Sivir Ult engage in her own Ult. Proper use of the Tidal Wave stops most engages dead in their tracks, allowing for a strong re-engage when Sivir Ult is down or just flat out re-engaging off the CC and taking advantage of that. During this split, across all half notable regions, including Brazil and Japan, she’s seen 10 total picks. Only 10. What’s most interesting here is that historically, Nami has played very well into Alistar, one of the most highly contested picks in the game currently. I would love to see a revival of this champ and feel she’s being horribly slept on while Sivir is just dominating the meta through obscene engage potential. In Champions Spring 2014, Nami was picked at a fair rate, particularly among playoff teams, to help counter the heavy engage that champs like Annie, Pantheon, Shyvana, and Rengar brought. I would be very interested to see how she fares in consistent competition right now.

Trundle – Seeing a multitude of buffs recently, I’ve been a bit surprised to see him not crop up, especially in the tank meta that Cinderhulk brought us. The last time Trundle was truly popular was back in the Shyvana, Renekton, and Mundo days of top lane so it would make sense for him to appear against other tanks. He brings arguably the strongest disengage from the top lane and it’s on a low cooldown spell. His pillar stops critical members from engaging with instant terrain and a heavy AOE slow. This is a 1000 range spell that can almost completely block off crucial choke points and being maxed second comes down to an 11 second cooldown. With a good amount of CDR, you can have almost 100% pillar up time. He has trouble in a typical lane swap scenario, but he’s one of the best double junglers of any top laner and has the abilities to remain somewhat relevant in a match from behind due to them just sapping the opponent and rewarding you. And in the current state of the game where it’s not uncommon to see three tanks on the opposing team, the ability to drain tank stats and artificially create a squishy opponent is something I would think would be more sought after. Trundle has seen only five total picks this split.

Anivia – Now, here’s where people may think I’m a little crazy. I thought it was crazy too, until I saw it in action here (courtesy of @leagueofemily). Anivia hasn’t been a truly “viable” champion since like Season 2. You can count 50 total competitive matches being played dating back to the very start of NA LCS, all the way back in February 2013. But right now, I think is the perfect environment for Anivia to succeed. The biggest complaints about Anivia is her being horribly mana hungry and having a weak laning phase. Being mana hungry was solved a ways back with Athene’s being changed and her weak laning phase isn’t punished in the mid lane. There are very few champs being played that could punish Anivia. If Vladimir is getting away with not being punished, I’m more than sure Anivia could line up right next to him. Now, talking less about her supposed weaknesses and more about her strengths, it’s what she’s always had. The ability to disengage from any fight with her ice wall and turtle a match almost single-handedly is unparalleled. I feel this is the third big “check” to a Sivir Ult engage. Anivia also helps check one of Sivir’s other notable abilities in pushing waves hard due to her great wave clear throughout the match.

Current Meta Choices

Right now, in the current meta, I can spot four strong, team oriented picks against a Sivir: Azir, Gragas, Rumble, and Janna. No other champ that is popular comes to mind as bringing notable, strong AOE disengage. Unfortunately, the chances of landing all of those champs on one team is nearly never going to happen. I feel we’re in the middle of a meta where people are being stale in their choices and not looking at real team wide answers to Sivir.

One of the largest issues in this riddle is that I see laning answers to Sivir, but due to how the game has developed you have to be thinking past the standard laning when talking about answering a strong pick. The reason Sivir is strong isn’t her laning, but in what she brings to the team. For example, whenever we see top lane and jungle tanks rise up you start seeing a shift and you start seeing different answers not in the top lane, but in the ADC role. You start seeing less of Ezreal and more of Vayne. Yet, for whatever reason, people have not applied the same logic in reverse. We aren’t seeing teams creating comps and choosing certain picks outside of the ADC role to check the Sivir pick. All we see is teams picking straight counters to Sivir in laning phase, but that doesn’t answer the riddle because her laning isn’t why she’s so sought after.

You want to beat the Sivir comp? Don’t lock in Vayne and hope to dumpster the Sivir in lane. Create your own anti-Sivir comp. Think of picks that can contribute to not just take her down, but stop that 600 movement speed Olaf from tearing your team apart. Take picks across the map, not just in the bot lane, that can help check the Sivir Ult. Create a comp that can disengage with the best of them and show people how to beat Sivir. Think outside the box for once and figure out how to stop her. She’s stampeding all over the place, dominating the meta and it’s getting old.