Mina — Patch 1.62 Verdict
[Liquipedia RPL: A] Pro play (RPL 2026): 27 picks, 63.0% WR, 21.3% pick/ban rate. Note: pro meta may differ from ranked.
Mina — Tank Guide
Mina weaponizes the punishment she takes. Her kit is built to walk into the middle of a fight, pull someone out of position with Death Scythe, lock the enemy team into attacking her with Dark Dominion, and let her passive Sweet Revenge punish every hit they land. She is not a peel tank and not a disengage tank. She is an engagement tank who rewards opponents for focusing her and punishes them for ignoring her.
This patch she sits at B tier on a 63% win rate, which is genuinely impressive and reflects how well she works when played correctly. The 11.8% ban rate tells a more nuanced story: she gets banned out of comps built on sustained auto-attack damage, because Dark Dominion plus Mail of Pain turns those teams into self-destructing machines. The reason she doesn't push past B is that her W pull is a strict skillshot, and against a coordinated Diamond lobby, missing it in a fight-starting moment means your team walked into a 5v4 with no initiation. She also has zero ranged presence before she commits, which makes her exploitable in the laning and pre-rotation phase.
Pick Mina if you are a roam main who likes proactive, dive-heavy play, can land a directional pull reliably, and are running with at least one hyper-carry to clean up the chaos she creates.
Strengths
- +Dark Dominion provides team-wide peel in a single button press, forcing the entire enemy team to redirect aggression away from your carries for a full two seconds, a duration long enough to flip most team fights.
- +The max-HP scaling on Whirling Scythe means Mina remains relevant against tanky frontline compositions that would otherwise make a utility tank irrelevant, giving her a damage ceiling that scales with enemy itemization.
- +Death Scythe's pull-and-slow combo is one of the most reliable pick tools on a roamer, enabling kills on isolated targets before a fight even starts, particularly strong in the tight corridors around the Dragon pit.
- +Sweet Revenge turns every focus attempt against Mina into a net positive for her team, which creates a no-win dilemma for the opponent: attack her and take passive damage, or ignore her and let her Q and W freely.
Weaknesses
- −Death Scythe is a narrow skillshot with shorter effective range than comparable hooks in the roam pool, meaning a miss in a critical fight-starting moment leaves your entire team stranded without an engage.
- −Mina has no escapes other than Flicker, and her W is her only mobility tool, once Flicker is spent, she is one of the most kitable heroes in the game against compositions with consistent displacement.
- −Dark Dominion's damage reduction only applies to taunted enemies, so instantaneous burst champions like Natalya or Tulen can still eliminate her in the taunt window if she is not adequately itemized.
- −Pre-rotation laning as a roam Mina is genuinely passive and unrewarding, she cannot harass at range, cannot waveclear, and depends entirely on landing W to trade, making her vulnerable to aggressive dual-lane pressure in the early minutes.
Abilities
PSweet Revenge
Counterattack when taking damage, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies.
1Whirling Scythe
Mina swings her scythe around her, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies (max 2% HP).
2Death Scythe
Mina pulls the enemy in front of her toward her, dealing physical damage and slowing their movement speed by 50% for 2 seconds.
RDark Dominion
Mina taunts nearby enemies, forcing them to attack her for 2 seconds. Damage taken from taunted enemies is reduced by 50%.
How to Use Mina's Kit
Sweet Revenge fires an AoE physical damage burst around Mina every time she takes a hit, which means her damage output in the middle of Dark Dominion is entirely dependent on how many enemies are hitting her simultaneously, one enemy attacking her is a tickle, five enemies attacking her is a blender. The key mistake players make is forgetting that Sweet Revenge still procs off damage taken while no enemies are taunted, so during the early laning phase, standing between two enemies, even without using R, will generate meaningful chip. Itemizing Mail of Pain accelerates the passive's synergy drastically, since reflected damage stacks on top of each proc.
Whirling Scythe's max-HP scaling (2%) is what makes Mina a legitimate threat to tanks and bruisers rather than just a support body, against an enemy Maloch or Arduin, this skill actually hurts. Use it immediately after landing a W pull, before the enemy has processed the slow, to guarantee you are in range for all hits. The most common mistake is opening with Q before landing W, which telegraphs your position and often pushes you slightly forward, making the W angle harder to line up on a backline target.
Death Scythe is the entire engine of Mina's playmaking, a narrow, fast-traveling hook that drags the first enemy hit in front of her and applies a 50% movement speed slow for two seconds. The effective range is deceptively short compared to Grakk's hook, so the consistent play is to Flicker into close range first and then W to yank a squishy before they can react, rather than attempting a long-range fish that misses and strands you. Against teams with multiple dashes, try to bait out their escapes before committing to the pull, a slowed, dash-exhausted carry is a dead carry.
Dark Dominion forces every nearby enemy to attack Mina for two seconds while reducing incoming damage from those taunted enemies by 50%, which is simultaneously the best and most misunderstood ability in her kit. The damage reduction applies only to taunted enemies, so burst mages like Tulen or Natalya who can drop their full combo in under one second will still chunk you, the taunt does not make you immortal, it makes you durable against sustained hitters. Crucially, activate R after using W and Q, not before: taunting enemies first gives them two free seconds to reposition or dump abilities while you are still on cooldown.
Skill Order
Priority: R > Q > W| Skill | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Whirling Scythe | 1 | · | 3 | · | 5 | · | 7 | · | 9 | · | · | · | 13 | · | · |
2Death Scythe | · | 2 | · | 4 | · | · | · | 8 | · | 10 | · | 12 | · | 14 | · |
RDark Dominion | · | · | · | · | · | 6 | · | · | · | · | 11 | · | · | · | 15 |
Loadout
Golden Body
Protect
ProwessStandard Build
1
2
3
4
5
6Core Combos
Standard Engage
21RThe bread-and-butter initiation for catching an overextended carry: Flicker closes the gap silently, W yanks them out of position before they react, Q hits immediately in the resulting melee range, and R locks in any nearby responders who come to help, land this on the enemy ADC under their own Tower in the mid-game and the fight is effectively over before it starts.
Taunt-First Brawl
2R1PUse this in a mid-lane or Dragon brawl where you are already in melee range of multiple enemies and don't need to create the engage, W a squishy to pull them into your team, immediately R the cluster, then Q spins through all of them while Sweet Revenge procs on every incoming hit.
Peel Combo
21RWhen an enemy diver like Nakroth or Murad is collapsing on your carry, step between them, hook the diver with W to reset their angle, Q to deal damage in their face, and R to force them to waste their aggression on you rather than the carry, this requires good vision of the dive before it lands, not after.
Gameplan
Mina's first spike is level 4 with her full three-ability kit, but she doesn't feel like a fight-winner until Ring of Terror and Gaia's Standard are done, since that HP, regen, and threat give her the sustain to stay in a skirmish long enough for Sweet Revenge to accumulate. Her peak is the mid-game at two or three core items with Dark Dominion maxed, where a Flicker-W-R sequence in the right spot can decide a Dragon or Tower fight in under five seconds. Late game she softens as enemies build armor-pen and burst gets harder to mitigate through the taunt's damage reduction alone, so play slower and set up picks instead of forcing five-man taunts.
Early Game
Levels 1–6- →Rotate to contest the first Dark Slayer or Dragon buff with your jungler — your W pull in a narrow jungle corridor is almost guaranteed to land and can flip the early objective fight entirely.
- →Do not attempt lone-wolf level-1 invades; Mina's damage at level 1 with only Q available is negligible, and dying early costs your roam-gold-dependent item ramp significantly.
- →When your carry has pushed the lane, roam to the nearest river bush and look for a W pull on an enemy roamer or solo-laner trying to contest vision — a successful pull-kill at three minutes puts you ahead of your item curve by a full component.
Mid Game
Post Broken Spear- →Force Dragon and Tower fights at two items — this is your strongest window, and you should be looking to Flicker-initiate every major objective contest rather than waiting passively on the outside of the fight.
- →After landing a pick with W, immediately ping for your team to collapse; Mina does not clean up kills efficiently solo, and her value is in the assist-and-displacement role, not the execution role.
- →Track enemy Flicker cooldowns: the moment a key carry has burned Flicker, that is your cue to walk up aggressively and look for a W, because they have no answer to your hook-taunt sequence.
Late Game
Teamfight phase- →In the late game, stop trying to Flicker-engage cold into five enemies — instead, wait for a pick opportunity on a lone target near an objective and trade your R for their positioning, letting your damage dealers finish.
- →Blade of Eternity's revive passive changes your late-game risk calculus significantly: you can afford to dive deeper under Towers than almost any other roamer, so use the revive window to burn Tower aggression and buy your team free damage.
- →Peel your hyper-carry rather than seeking personal glory — if your team has an ADC like Laville or Tel'Annas surviving into the 15-minute mark, your job is to W anyone diving them and R the moment two or more enemies collapse, not to initiate a full team fight from scratch.
Matchups
Mina is best first-picked when the enemy has two or three sustained auto-attackers. Comps built around Laville, Tel'Annas, or Kil'Groth are her ideal prey, and the ban-rate data shows those players know it. Against burst-mage comps headlined by Natalya or Tulen, don't first-pick her; see whether those picks are off the table before locking in. In bad matchups, play very conservatively. Your value shifts from fight-initiator to objective-area hook machine, fishing for W pulls on isolated sidelaners rather than Flicker-engaging into a five-man burst comp. Running alongside Grakk takes the initiation pressure off you personally and improves your bad-matchup games a lot.
Mina gets countered by
NatalyaNatalya's ultimate deals its full burst damage instantaneously, completely bypassing the meaningful window of Dark Dominion's 50% damage reduction before the taunt even processes, she is the single most dangerous champion into Mina in the current meta.
TulenTulen can teleport in, dump his entire rotation in under a second, and teleport out before the taunt duration even becomes relevant, making Mina's signature defensive tool essentially useless against him.
ButterflyButterfly's dodge mechanic and high sustained physical DPS make her particularly punishing since she can activate evasion during Dark Dominion to negate a portion of the proc damage while simultaneously shredding through Mina's HP before the taunt expires.
QuillenQuillen can engage from stealth, burst a carry before Mina has time to react with W or R, and then disengage completely with his repositioning tool, Mina's entire kit is reactive, and Quillen's stealth-burst pattern gives her nothing to react to.
Mina synergizes with
LavilleLaville's sustained auto-attack damage output is maximized inside the two-second window that Dark Dominion buys, and his naturally fragile frame is protected by Mina's peel W when he gets dove, they cover each other's exact weaknesses.
Tel'AnnasTel'Annas's ultimate roots the entire field just before or after a Dark Dominion taunt, stacking CC in a way that gives her no path to escape while simultaneously letting Mina's Sweet Revenge accumulate maximum procs.
HayateHayate's burst is designed to unload on a stationary target, and a W-pulled, R-taunted carry who is stuck attacking Mina is as stationary as it gets, Hayate converts that free window into an elimination almost automatically.
GrakkA dual-hook composition with Grakk in the jungle and Mina in the roam role means the enemy team is facing two different directional skillshots that punish any overextension, and Grakk's AoE devour chains naturally with Mina's R to turn a pick into a full engage.
Pro Tips
- →Angle your W perpendicular to the enemy's movement path rather than directly at them, if they are walking left, cast the hook slightly ahead of where they are going, not at their current position; experienced players unconsciously dodge predictable hooks by continuing to move.
- →During Dark Dominion, manually walk toward the enemy backline while they are forced to follow and attack you, this repositions their carries away from your carries and compresses the fight into a smaller area where Sweet Revenge hits more bodies per proc.
- →Ring of Terror's active should be used before initiating, not after, the movement speed boost is what closes the gap that makes your Flicker-W sequence harder to dodge, and players who save it as a panic button are using it wrong.
- →Track which enemies have purchased Soulreaver or Rankbreaker in the mid-to-late game; armor-penetration items directly reduce the effective value of your taunt's damage reduction, which means you should be building Shield of the Lost earlier than usual against those inventories.
Mina is the roam for players who want to be the reason fights happen, not the reason fights are survived. She is an initiator first, a tank second, and a damage dealer by accident. Her 63% win rate is a real endorsement of how effective she is when piloted right, and the investment to reach that ceiling is lower than most comparable initiators. The thing to master is Death Scythe angle selection: every other decision in her kit flows from whether that pull lands. Hit W on demand in Diamond lobbies and the rest of her opens up.
Mina — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mina good in the current ROV patch?+
Mina is a solid B-tier roamer this patch on a 63% win rate, which is genuinely strong and places her above most of the tank roster in actual outcomes. The caveat is the 11.8% ban rate: she gets denied often in Diamond-and-above lobbies where opponents know her bad matchups. She rewards players who know when to pick her and when to pass.
What is the best build for Mina?+
Recommended core is Ring of Terror into Gilded Greaves, then Gaia's Standard, Shield of the Lost, Mail of Pain, and Blade of Eternity. Mail of Pain is critical because it works with both Sweet Revenge and Dark Dominion; reflected damage during a taunt where five enemies hit you at once is a real chunk of burst. Don't rush Blade of Eternity; finish your survivability core first so the revive matters when it triggers.
How do you counter Mina?+
Pick instant-burst mages like Natalya or Tulen who can front-load all their damage before Dark Dominion's taunt processes, or assassins like Quillen whose stealth-burst gives her no time to react. In-game, never clump more than two champions when Mina is alive with R up. The taunt is far less dangerous on two enemies than five, so spread out during objective contests and take away her primary power.
Is Mina hard to play / good for beginners?+
Medium, driven almost entirely by Death Scythe. Her W pull is a directional skillshot that has to be aimed correctly or her whole initiation collapses. The passive and ultimate are automatic or simple presses, so the mechanical ceiling isn't extreme. Beginners can learn her but should grind W angles in classic or practice mode before bringing her into Diamond lobbies.