How to Beat Ancient Coin: Strategies, Tips, and Champion Picks

The Ancient Coin has become a staple in the recent meta. We created this guide to help those of you that have had trouble defeating it, and to show others how to use it themselves. We’ve written this article to be a lasting reference, so if Ancient Coin is nerfed or falls out of favor for a while, the advice here will still hold true if it becomes a popular choice again in the future.

How does Ancient Coin work?

• TL:DR
  • Coin causes minions to have a chance to drop two different types of coins – mana or gold.
  • The coin that spawns is always the opposite of the last coin that spawned.
  • The item gives no combat stats. Its purpose is purely regen, gold generation, and a bit of CDR.

Why is Coin strong right now?

Coin is strong right now for a few reasons – the biggest ones are its gold generation and its ease of play.

Gold income

In our Farming Decompilation, we learned how incredibly important gold is since it represents power from buying items, and your ability to access resources such as Control Wards.  In the current meta, Coin has the highest gold generation rate of all the Support items. This allows Coin supports to out-scale their opponent in stalemate situations. Although it doesn’t provide any combat stats,  buying the item represents a long term investment that almost always pays off over time. In the hands of a good player, Coin can sometimes even grant Supports powerful items like Ardent Censer or Redemption by mid game.

Ease

In comparison to its Support item counterparts, Relic Shield and Spellthief’s Edge, using the Coin is mechanically easier to use due to its passive nature. While Relic requires melee Supports to last-hit in order to create gold income, and Spellthief requires ranged Supports to be able to reliably land their skill shots and harass with auto-attacks, Coin simply needs its wielder to walk up and collect coins. In theory, it should be risky to grab the coins since your enemy sees them and can anticipate your movements, but the pick-up range is actually quite forgiving. It also isn’t too difficult to keep your minions between you and your enemies to protect yourself from skill shots in comparison to landing them.

Which champions are good with Coin?

Most Support champions that synergize well with Coin are from the Enchanter subclass. In general, Enchanters have a more reactionary play style and ability set, making them inherently more passive in nature in comparison to poke or engage Supports.

Janna

Janna is the prototype Coin Support – the item synergizes incredibly well with her “peel and protect” play style. The Storm Guardian’s kit allows her reliable safety to pick up mana/gold coins and can shutdown aggression (more on this later).

Lulu

Although the Sorceress Yordle can play poke, the hyper carry ADC meta has her favoring the passiveness of Ancient Coin. Alongside Janna, Lulu has some of the best protective abilities in the League (Polymorph, shield, slow) and is comfortable playing a laidback play style in lane.

Sona

The mute Maven of Strings is traditionally more at home using poke and doesn’t have as many protection tools as Janna and Lulu. However, she scales the hardest of the three and the Coin enables her to get hit her items faster than Spellthief in the current meta.

Soraka

Like Sona, Soraka also scales very well and Coin offers a reliable source of gold. The Starchild can play aggressive with her Q but is very much at home playing passively.

Other Coin users

Rakan

Rakan is more of an engage Support but he chooses Coin because the other two options simply aren’t good with him. He synergizes well with the Talisman of Ascension path since he thrives with high mobility.

Thresh

Thresh offers Support mains some flexibility by allowing them to choose between Coin or Relic Shield. If you want to play passively or aren’t good at last-hitting, Coin is a solid option. Relic may be better if your CS mechanics are up to snuff and you want more overall tankiness.

How to beat Coin

Coin is indeed very strong right now, but do not fret – our experts have some tips on how to approach countering it.

Be aggressive!

In general, the best way to beat Coin is with Aggression. Remember that choosing the Coin means sacrficing combat stats – Relic shield offers tankiness while Spellthief provides damage. This puts Coin Supports at risk since these champions are often inherently squishy. Keep this in mind as you head to lanes and look for openings to go on the offensive while you have an early advantage.

On that note: ban Janna

Janna’s Q, Howling Gale, can singlehandedly shut down all-in engages and her shield can mitigate poke – this means that playing aggressive can be playing incredibly hard. It’s not a bad idea to ban her unless you’re great with a hook champion like Blitzcrank or Thresh (even if you are, you may still want to – she has over a 55% win rate after all).

Punish the pick up

In order to reap the Coin’s benefits, the Support has to walk up to the minion waves to pick up their gold or mana. This can be quite predictable – try to see the patterns in your enemy’s movement and look to engage with an all-in or punish them with poke. Don’t forget that a coin is guaranteed to drop off of every Cannon minion.

Zoning and wave control

If you manage bully a Coin Support and get an early lead, look to extend your lead by using zoning and wave management. Work with your ADC to freeze the lane in your favor to make it awkward for your opponents to walk up to collect the coins without risking more pain. If you succeed, you should be able to put the Coin Support far enough behind that they won’t be able to generate more gold than you.

Impact the map by roaming

Coin’s gold generation relies on staying near minion waves – this makes it less appealing for Coin Supports to leave the lane and roam. Use this to your advantage by gaining map control through placing deep wards in the enemy Jungle or forcing action in other lanes by ganking or taking objectives. The more pressure and impact you put on the map, the more likely you’ll cause the Coin Support to have to leave their lane.

Champions that are good against Coin

In general, these are aggressive playmakers that have hard engage, multiple CC options, all-in potential and/or can enable ganks well.

Supports

Playmaking champions such as Blitzcrank, Thresh, Leona, and Rakan are great options for punishing Coin Supports when they look to collect to gold (just remember to take Ignite and ban Janna!). Remember that they are much squishier, so if you play your cards right in an all-in you should come out on top.

Other Supports like Bard and Alistar can roam and pressure the map without fear of the enemy Support contesting them. Establish map vision dominance or help your teammates gank or invade to create advantages.

Divers

Champions like Shyvana, Lee Sin, and Elise can put a Coin Support behind in lane phase due to their effective diving ability. If you’re a Jungler, look to help your teammates at bot snowball an advantage over their counterparts. Coin Supports often have good peel, sure, but its hard to peel multiple threats at once.

Mobile champs

Champs that have tons of mobility like Twisted Fate, Taliyah, and Corki (with package) can also help punish Coin Supports who get out of position when trying to pick up coins. They can aid in putting pressure around the map and forcing the Coin Support to leave their lane.

Thanks for reading! We hope this helps you out when you find yourself facing a Coin Support in champ select. For more tips and tricks, visit our Discord.