DrMundoMatchups

Always Q max. It's easy to hit cleavers against Ornn, and you outscale in a side lane.

His all-ins are really strong and denying CC against him doesn't matter as he chain CC's so easily. In teamfights his item upgrades will make him more useful if you don't hard carry them.

I like First Strike into Ornn since cleavers obliterate him and he still destroys you melee range in lane. You can take Grasp of the Undying into a bad Ornn if you are confident you can dodge the W though.

Always Q max. If you aren't confident you can look to outscale and farm in lane — if Jax ever Qs onto you, cleaver and walk away.

If you're good at spacing this is a bully lane where from level 1 you can completely dominate him. Just keep in mind if you mess up a trade you will probably die later, and 1 death into Jax is game-ending — his zoning potential is really good.

Phase Rush + Resolve if you are unconfident, Grasp of the Undying if you want to bully.

Always Q max. Easy farming lane — aggressive trades in melee range favor you.

You can start W in the middle of Garen's uncancellable Q empowered auto animation which makes you hard win trades in lane without much counterplay. Look to be super aggressive — this is one of the few laning phases where you just straight up win. Usually I just shove waves from level 2 and poke him under tower. You hard outscale him in extended trades later on.

Keep in mind Garen's gameplan does not care about you:

• Phase Rush + high mobility allows him to roam, split push, and demolish towers quickly

• If he takes Conqueror, he scales significantly worse since you can just run him down later, but keep in mind that if you mess up in lane he can kill you

• He goes from weak in lane with Phase Rush to a pretty good bully with Conqueror

Split-push strategy:

• If you win lane, the enemy mid likely can't match you — full send your own split until Garen is forced to respond

• If Garen must match you, you've essentially won the game

• If you have to match his split, he has the tempo advantage

Ult considerations: time your ult carefully, ideally just wait for him to use R elsewhere if possible. If he saves it for you, ult at ~1/3 HP instead of ~1/8 at rank 3. I usually build a Sterak's Gage 4th/5th so that I can disregard this, but if you're tryharding it's a bait purchase — just build normally and be smart.

Don't take Phase Rush — you need Grasp of the Undying to bully him in lane.

Always Q max. Standard AA-oriented tank fight but you win it. Poke Malphite with cleavers.

Don't get cocky and take Conditioning — you need Second Wind, his poke is actually very high if he has Comet.

Phase Rush + Resolve

Always Q max. I have 1.1 mil on Mundo and 1.5 mil on Darius, and I can confidently say this is Darius's worst melee matchup.

• You can farm freely with Q — any poke you land is essentially permanent since his only sustain relies on abilities he struggles to land on Mundo

• His only CC is on a really long cooldown/costs a lot of mana and your passive reliably cancels it

• You hard outscale him, and all-ins are possible as early as level 3 if you poke him down

• If he uses Q and misses while you have passive up or his E is down, look for a Q → W → auto → E → W → walk away combo — it chunks him while he can't retaliate

Lane threats:

• If he DOES manage to freeze, the lane is dangerous without jungle help, but your Q poke + mirroring his Ghost makes running you down very difficult

• Spam ping your jungler away unless you're better than him and poke him down — the 2v1 for Darius isn't that hard and if he wins it the game's over

• Similarly to Akali it's really hard to feed but if you DO, gg

Considerations:

• His only tank-killing potential is armor pen, which Mundo ignores as a health-stacker

• Darius has no max-health damage, making his trades very manageable

• He has trouble landing Q on Mundo pre-Stridebreaker but you should still eventually build a Bramble Vest

• His one real gameplan beyond just outplaying you in lane is using you to get his passive in a teamfight and then flashing into your team — so don't let him do that

Phase Rush + Inspiration highly recommended. You don't need Second Wind into Darius (he doesn't have a real way to poke you), you will never proc Demolish, and Phase Rush negates his Flash all-in which is his one angle in lane.

Grasp of the Undying is also fine if you're a diehard Grasp player but it does give Darius some opportunity to kill you in lane and doesn't scale as well.