Urgot Matchup Miniguide

To begin learning this matchup, you need to learn what Urgot's abilities do as well as his playstyle and his trading patterns. In general, his playstyle is to look for harass with his Q, whittle you down, and then look for opportunities to all - in or trade with his dash. Adding to that, he can set up ganks really well with his dash, which means you're in danger if you mindlessly push up without vision of the enemy jungler or without your own jungler being near. There are a few trading patterns Urgot can use besides just auto attacking you, but let's take a look at two common ones:

1. Q + Auto -- This one is rather simple. He'll look to land his Q, which slows you, and then look to get into range quickly for an auto attack with his shotgun legs and back out.

2. All-in/full spell rotation -- This is a lot harder to pull off generally, since it requires you being in his melee range, which you should never be in in the first place, so if you are that's a pea-brain mistake. His all-in takes a lot of different forms - he could start off with the first trading pattern and then if he decides that he can all-in you, he'll dash and use W for tons of damage on you by attacking you with most or all of his shotgun legs. Other times, this trade might start with him running at you to look for a dash, so if he does do that you just Q and run away out of his range. This is because if he does land the displacement on you, then he can guarantee a Q hit + slow and can possibly kill you.

Now that we've gone over his basic trading patterns and his playstyle as a whole, let's take a look at how to actually play the matchup in lane:

If you're maxing E, then you're playing this matchup wrong. You want to max Q and freeze the wave early on - Urgot mostly cannot do anything against you because anything he does you can out-sustain him and out-trade him with Q and W. He has no innate sustain in his kit while you do, so you can win the majority of short trades with just that since most Urgot players will not want to sacrifice their dash just to get a shield. Your Q + E trade outdamages his Q + auto trade simply because of the missing health damage and resistance penetration. Furthermore, his mana costs are waaay higher than Kayle's for Q and W, making it much harder for him to consistently harass you with his spells.

Dodging his Q is also relatively easy and can be baited just as easily. If you walk up, his natural instinct is to also move in range to hit you with Q - you can dodge it by walking up and then turning 90 degrees when he does show signs that he'll use Q. You can even just walk up and then walk back to do a feint and bait out his Q. Many Urgots' Q usage will be very telegraphed - if they see an opportunity to hit it and they think they can hit it, they will most likely use it. In this sense, your movement should not be telegraphed - consider dodging at a different angle or improving your reaction time so you can actually get out of the circle if you're in it.

So what do you do now? You should know that Urgot will naturally push the wave because of his AoE shotgun damage whenever he auto attacks, which means as long as you match ~70-80% of the damage he does to the waves, then you will be able to set up a push toward you that won't crash and reset.

Once you have this wave set up, you'll want to freeze it to make him walk up to CS, leaving him vulnerable to your jungler and your own harass with Q and E. This also makes it harder for him to trade since he cannot use trading pattern #2 and he will sometimes not be able to use the auto attack portion of trading pattern #1, making the only choice he has to harass be his Q, which costs a lot of mana as he puts more points into it.

The next thing to look at is itemization.

For the most part, the best item to rush will be a BoRK because he is a bruiser who will be mostly building items that give him health. And since BoRK's passive deals %hp on hit damage, you'll be using his health against him. Another reason why this is good is because many players in general will want to build MR against Kayle - and rightfully so, since all her abilities deal magic damage. So if he's building something like Adaptive Helm, then BoRK counters that since Adaptive Helm only reduces magic damage.

After that you'll want to pick up something like Rageblade since you should be 11 by this point and he has no way of getting out of your range if he ever engages. Basically after this point (and pretty much after completing BoRK), you control the lane and he can no longer duel you unless their jungler intervenes, you fed him kills, or your jungler fed him kills. Your ultimate counters all of his damage if you choose to start off a duel with it and it counters his execute if you choose to hold onto it - just make sure to be decisive in your decision to use your ult or to hold your ult.

Once you're past this phase, you should once again look at his items. Does he have Conq? Is he building DD? If yes to both or to DD, then build something with Grievous Wounds. The optimal option is to pick up an Executioner's Calling because it is the cheapest option for Grievous Wounds and sit on it until late game, then complete it for a Mortal Remind or sell it for a Morellonomicon depending on what build path you are going.

Runes don't really matter that much against him -- Fleet, LT, and Klepto are all okay although I prefer Fleet or LT into this matchup more than Klepto. Kiting is pretty important as well.