Udyr is a carry, and you can shut him down like you can shut down any carry. If you don't shut him down he becomes nuts, like any other carry. They effectively changed 3 things with udyr, made it alittle easier to stance dance (lower cooldown), buffed phoenix stance, and fixed a bug so that his passive works correctly (but also nerfed it to counter the bug fix partially). It is really easy to counter udyr in the laning phase and if you do so, he is not very dangerous in the late game. *They also nerfed Bear stances speed boost so it is far harder for him to get away.

How to counter Udyr in lane phase: Shoot him once.
What Udyr does: Throws up turtle shield (3 seconds active).
What you do in the mean time: last hit creeps and shoot him 3 seconds later. Repeat. Soon he will be out of mana and then he cant avoid damage and has to be really careful to last hit.

How to stop an Udyr from ganking/getting away: Use a slow or a stun.
But Udyr has a cleanse!: Have more than a single unit of cc on your team. Or use it more than once, as all CC's have a lower cooldown than cleanse.

How to counter Udyr in a team fight: Use a slow or a stun, just like any other carry. Udyr can only do damage if he gets into melee range.


In short, pretend Udyr is like Yi, both have an effective heal, both can do high damage and rush fairly quickly at you. The key defining difference is that Udyr has a 1 second stun every 5 seconds and Yi has higher dps without a stun.

Item counters to Udyr:
Frozen Mallet (slow)
Phage (slow)
Trinity force (slow)
Mercury treads (Reduce stun)
Any piece of armor (reduce damage)
Any item with life leech (Leech life back).

Questions and Answers:
Q: You just play Udyr all the time so you don't want him nerfed.
A: Incorrect, I do play udyr sometimes, but he is not in my top 3 heroes.

Q: I run up to melee udyr and he stuns me, and then I die. What am I doing wrong?
A: Udyr is a melee carry, just like Yi is, why would you run up and try and kill Yi like that? Potential things you are doing wrong. Attacking him without help, attacking him without enough health, being a melee hero against someone designed to eat people in melee.

Q: What heroes are good against Udyr then?
A: Any hero with a stun or a slow at range. Also any hero that can separate Udyr from his teammates such as blitzcrank, singed, etc.

Q: But I can't solo Udyr as [insert character here]
A: Really? You can't solo a character designed to be really difficult to beat one on one? You don't say. He is difficult to defeat 1 on 1 after he has been fed as he is a carry.

Q: My teammates don't help me kill Udyr so I tried to fight him by myself and died.
A: That is your team being terrible and not working together.

Q: But Udyr is jungling! How do you stop him, he is too OP when he jungles and he shows up out of no where!
A: The same way you stop a Jungle Yi, shut him down in the jungle, use clairvoyances to see where he is, don't overextend in your lane when your lane partner isn't there to back you up.

Q: I can't escape from Udyr!
A: You shouldn't have been out so far. It is often impossible to solo escape from: Udyr, Yi, Jax, Nidalee, Kassadin, Nunu, Blitzcrank, and Ashe.

Q: Turtle shield is too strong now, you can't ever break it!
A: Turtle shield wasn't changed in this patch, you are complaining based on changes that didn't happen. That makes you stupid because you can't figure out when 3 seconds end.

Q: Udyr can use his turtle shield and regain his mana in 2-3 hits!
A: No he can't look at the math below. It effectively takes him more than 6 hits at lvl 5, and far more than that below level 5.

Q: But Master Yi can't gank as well or escape as well as Udyr
A: Incorrect, Master Yi has a higher base movement speed and highlander has a higher movement bonus and it makes him immune to all slows, which is something Udyr does not have. In addition, Master Yi has alpha strike which lets him further close the distance to an enemy which Udyr does not have.

Q: But I am a melee champion and I still want to beat Udyr.
A: The real answer is get a teammate to help you. However, exhaust is something everyone can pick up and it makes Udyr almost useless, as he must melee hit to be effective.

executioner's calling?

+1

You sir, have given me hope.

I've countered Udyr by playing Udyr better than them so far. :3

Still, he really needs a nerf.

[Edit:]
I forgot to add: +1 for a nice thread, points out many misconceptions (like the non-buff to turtle shield).

-1

Joking right? Sure he pops up turtle, but then he hits something 2-3 times and gets that mana back. So, no. This only gets worse every rank too.

That is both helpful and informative /sarcasm

Edit: The "turtle buff" may be someone going Phoenix > Turtle for the AP boost. Slight buff at the most if it works that way. Only speculating on that.

Yep, agree with above comment, you can't starve Udyr of mana if he takes turtle.

I've found the best way to counter Udyr is to make sure his laning partner is complete garbage, feeds a ranged DPS champ, who then harasses Udyr so much he makes absolutely no gold- at least that's been my experience playing as Udyr lately.

In my short experience of playing Udyr, ranged people can eat him up easy early game, and often I find people charge towards him late game, and then just as soon as they get 1 attack off on him, they just run back and effectively repeat this over and over again, effectively achieving nothing seeing as Udyr just gets his health back through lifesteal.

I think calling Udyr OP this early is wrong, but I also think that perhaps the devs should review his power carefully.

There is no shame in switching lanes if you are in a bad matchup.
Most melee champs vs Udyr atm is a pretty bad idea, so swap off with a ranged, so they can harass him better.

He is not outright overpowered in an equal matchup. The biggest issue is he can level better/faster then anyone atm. Level 4 dragon, nonstop laning/jungle, while you need to break off and shop from time to time due to harassment.
If you let him become level 12 to your level 8, then he snowballs out of control. And this can happen VERY easy if the Udyr has any idea what he is doing.

For the record, I realize it isn't technically mana leech, but mana gain from nothing sounds stupid.

Please don't spread missinformation about how easy it is to leech mana back at low levels, when it is not the case at all.


Udyr hits for 53 damage at lvl 1 when he can only have rank 1 turtle, which costs 75 mana. At most he can gets back 6 mana per hit. If you take into account mana regen, he must attack 11 times to break even mana wise, which takes him 16 seconds assuming he is able to attack as fast as possible. Keep in mind if he actually uses turtle every 3 seconds like I suggest, he can only use it 3 times in a row without needing more mana.

At level 3 Udyr hits for 60 damage and turtle costs 65 mana, and he gets 8.5 mana back per hit. He must attack 6 1/2 times to get mana back (including regen). This takes him 9 1/2 seconds to do so. So again, at level 3 you can still easily outharass him.

At level 5 Udyr hits for 67 damage and turtle costs 55 mana, and he gets 10.6 mana per hit. He must attack 6 times and it takes him 8.3 seconds to do it. So you can still easily harass him at lvl 5 far faster than his mana regens.
Admittedly at lvl 5 he may have an attack speed item or damage item. If he has berseker greaves at lvl 5 it takes him 7 seconds to get his mana back, and if he has mandreds or phage it also takes 6.5 seconds (of hitting every possible chance) to get his mana back.

So yes, even at level 5 it is easy to waste Udyr's mana if you put a ranged unit against him. Also keep in mind this is assuming he is maxing turtle first and if he does that, he is not much of an offensive threat.

If you haven't harassed him by lvl 7, then it is completely your team's problem. See what happens to Yi if you don't harass him by lvl 7 (he can own you).


As for pointing out how difficult it is for heroes to 1v1 Udyr, he is a carry and if he is fed he is very difficult to take down 1v1, just like any other carry.

Yes, if you max Phoenix you do get a total of 36 more temporary hitpoints from turtle, and it starts at 12 bonus hp at phoenix level 1. Of course the problem with this, is if he is stance dancing betweewn phoenix at turtle at low levels he will run out of mana really fast. Now some could say that going between phoenix and turtle will boost your damage significantly and let you leech more mana, but this is not really the case. As we are talking about harassing, let me again use low level examples.

Level 3 example: Turtle stance is lvl 2 and phoenix is lvl 1. To use both of them every 5 seconds it will cost 140 mana, which takes Udyr ~17 seconds to fully regain if he was theoretically hitting as often as possible only in turtle stance. That means he spent zero time in phoenix stance and only used it for the buff.

Level 5 example: Turtle stance is lvl 3 and phoenix is lvl 2. To use both it will cost 120 mana, and even hitting at every opportunity will take him 13 seconds (with items) to regain his mana back.

So while it is true that you can argue that turtle was buffed, if you do so, you have to also mention that using it "buffed" will require you to constantly be out of mana and therefore useless.