Nocturne vs Locke Counter Pick

The statlines are identical where it usually matters: 655 health at level one, 2,508 at level 18, 125 attack range and 32 magic resist for both. Armor is the separator — Nocturne opens with 38 to Locke’s 32 and finishes with 109.4 to his 103.4. The 2,007 games behind it on patch 16.13.1 make the reading stable rather than provisional, and that margin surfaces as 56.4% in Nocturne’s favor.

Locke’s profile is listed as physical, but Silver Stake adds magic damage on-hit that grows with the target’s missing health, so the longer a fight runs the less an armor advantage means. His plan is a sequence: Ritual Nails marks enemies and his attacks consume the marks for bonus damage, Soul Ignition trades self-damage for attack speed and move speed before healing part of it back, and Purgatory can execute outright. That sequence needs an uninterrupted window, and Nocturne exists to deny exactly that. Unspeakable Horror fears him if he cannot escape its range, Shroud of Darkness eats one cast with Purgatory the obvious target, and Paranoia removes the vision he needs to reposition through Ashen Pursuit. Foot speed runs 345 against 340, close enough that a Dusk Trail decides who disengages. Difficulty sits at 4 and 5, so neither result is an execution story — the resistances and the interrupts are doing the work. More on Locke.