Gnar vs Malphite Counter Pick

Malphite opens with 40 armor, the highest starting value either champion here brings, and reaches 124.2 by level 18 against Gnar’s 94.9. Half of Gnar’s mixed damage runs straight into that wall, and the record reflects it: 43.5% across 1,916 games on patch 16.13.1.

• Ground Slam deals magic damage scaled off Malphite’s own armor and cuts enemy attack speed, so the item that makes him durable also makes him hit harder while suppressing an attack-speed form like Hyper.
• Granite Shield absorbs up to a tenth of his maximum health and restores itself out of combat, which blunts poke from Boomerang Throw between engagements.
• Seismic Shard steals move speed for three seconds, turning a shared 335 base into a deficit at the moment Gnar wants to leave.

Malphite rates 2 for execution against Gnar’s 8, so almost all of the difficulty sits on one side. Where Gnar has an argument is magic resist, 30 against Malphite’s 28, and Unstoppable Force is a single non-repeating engage that mana has to fund. Baiting it with the small form and then transforming is the sequence the win rate is missing, since Mega Gnar’s GNAR! needs terrain to pay off. Malphite’s own damage is mixed as well, with Thunderclap layering aftershocks onto his attacks, so both of Gnar’s 32 armor and 30 magic resist are under pressure at once.