Janna in the top lane has been terrorizing the League of Legends meta, and many players are frustrated due to this pick getting popular each day. She appeared on the top lane in competitive matches in the LCS 2022 Spring Split, where FlyQuest defeated CLG with her help.
The Enchantress plays differently in the top lane, supporting allies and disrupting enemies to gain leads in the match organically. Though many players try to punish her absence in the lane, she makes up for it by initiating good teamfights and crumbling her foes.
Janna received a little nerf in Patch 12.3, but developers mentioned they are “working on a separate solution” for her influence in the top lane. Players are experimenting with new strategies and adapting their playstyle to counter the Storm’s Fury. There isn’t a concrete strategy to counter Janna because her playstyle is very dynamic and can change at any moment. However, players can stick to their guns and adjust their team composition and strategies to nullify her massive impact in the matches.
Though Janna is strong, she’s not unstoppable, and players can counter her with split-push strategies, better vision control, and by taking her out before she has a major impact.
Here are the best ways to counter Smite Janna on the top lane in League.
Top lane champions
Janna on the top lane usually roams around the bottom to mid lane and sometimes in the jungle to support her jungler. If your team chooses a tank champion for the lane, odds are you’ll lose the lane. They don’t have enough damage to push waves in time while the opponents keep getting advantages on the map.
It’s imperative to have a split push-based champion like Tryndamere, Fiora, and Jax, who can take towers quickly and punish her absence in the lane. These champions could go for Demolish with their runes, giving them a quicker way to destroy towers. Split push champions scale well into the late game, which could be a defining factor in mid to late-game teamfights. Janna is mostly focused on helping the mid and bottom lanes, and the enemy jungler is forced to respond to the threat, which releases the pressure built by Janna on the ally team.
Jungler choice: Burst and assassination
Choosing the right jungler who can reach their power spikes quickly is essential. The threat of Janna and the enemy jungler trying to steal your camps with Smite will always be present, but having a cool and collective outlook on the situation should allow the player to think outside the box and adapt according to the match.
Jungle champions should have burst and assassination capabilities because their job is simple: finding Janna and assassinating her. She is a squishy target, and when she waits in a bush or moves to an objective, junglers should target her and shut her down. Achieving this will have two main benefits. First, kills mean more gold and a faster economy to scale in the late game. Second, it will give kills to someone who can carry in the late-game teamfights. Champions who are best suited for this role are Kha’Zix, Rengar, and Qiyana. These champions can control the tempo of the match and assist teammates when they are feeling overwhelmed.
Crowd control
Crowd control is critical in every League match, and it allows champions to make plays on the map. Having characters with higher crowd control abilities like Leona or Zyra makes it easier to track Janna and stop her influence from a distance. Players could use crowd control to initiate teamfights and eliminate Janna quickly nullify their impact.
Wards
Janna acts as secondary support to a team, letting her team have vision of almost every objective and key places on the map. To counter this, players need to actively invest in Control wards and switch to Oracle’s Lens to clear vision. By nullifying the vision that she provides, teams can play around that and, to an extent, be unpredictable on getting picks on the enemy, leading to snowballs.
