Is Top Lane The Worst Role In League of Legends?

which of the five roles would you say has the lowest impact in the game almost everyone's answer would most likely be top right if we were to order them from highest impact to lowest the list will look something like this jungles at the top followed by mid lane then support then ad carry and then top or you know depending on bias you could make a case for adc being the most useless because it's the only role that actively needs help but for the sake of argument we're proceeding as if top lane is at the bottom and hyperboles aside i don't think it's the most unreasonable claim to make ever since the decline of tank meta back in season 6 and 7 the idea that top lane is 90 coin flip has permeated the mentality of most top laners there's a shared consensus that for the first 15 minutes of the game whatever the top laners do won't influence the game's state enough to make a meaningful difference whether that's true or not is largely irrelevant at this point this sentiment has already affected how people see the game especially during the laning phase for crying out loud we call top lane an island to signify how isolated it is from the rest of the map this was acknowledged by riot games themselves and they invested a great deal of effort trying to equalize the disproportionate amount of attention given to bot lane two things in particular were the introduction of the rift held shelley a neutral objective that appears before baron does in the hopes that teams might allocate more resources and manpower away from bot lane the other is to change the solo experience in a normal game top and mid laners are 2 or sometimes 3 levels ahead of their bot in support because getting solo kills provides a lot more experience both champions and minions yet despite systematically altering the mechanics of summoner's rift and the mini top lane metas quote unquote we've had in the past five years players just can't shake the thought that top lane is and will forever be an island i made a video on why toppling feels useless back in the summer of 2020 but looking back i should have spent more time delving into the root problems of top lanes supposed in solarity but the changes to teleport i figured now is as good a time as any to sit down and discuss what the hell is wrong with top i should probably clarify that i'm not saying top lane cannot carry but of the five roles it takes the longest to be able to barring teleport to commemorate the launch of the new season patch 12.1 released a change to the summoner spell teleport which you see being taken quite routinely by top laners for those who don't know teleport's cooldown is now 6 minutes at all levels and can only work on towers but after 14 minutes when tower plates fall off it transforms into unleashed teleport which is how teleport was before and its cooldown goes to 4 minutes basically they nerf teleport for like the 40th time i want to quickly read their justification out to you while league of legends is indeed a team game it generally evolves in phases as the game progresses you interact with your team more laning phase lets you flex your individual skills but it also needs some outside influence to keep things from getting too predictable however right now there's too much disruption happening too early and too often this is especially the case with frequent teleport fights in bot lane and this isn't bad for top laners only top and mid players also lose out on the ability to express their laning skills in the same way currently it often feels like bot lane gets decided by outside influence and mid and top get decided by the influence they have on bot lane rather on how well they play their own lane their reasoning is quite sound in my opinion i would say since 2019 the goal of top and mid lane was to leave lane as quickly as possible essentially undermining the importance of laning phase and to 80 scene support means i'm sure you're all frustrated with the absurd number of four and five-minute tb gang spot lane right teleport is second only to flash the most powerful summoner spell in the game league of legends is predicated on positioning it takes time to travel from one end of the map to the other and much of the game's macro hinges on taking advantage of your opponent's position or misposition like if you see the enemy jungler bot lane you can rush baron teleport grants you the ability to circumvent this to a degree it allows a champion to be far away from an important objective since all they have to do is teleport to a ward or minion whenever they are needed toplane is also known as the sideline rule champions who go out there are usually self-sufficient and can handle themselves in combat very comfortably they usually take teleport so they can impact the map despite how isolated top lane is that tends to manifest itself in the form of a bot lane tp gank other than flash the two subnet spells you see taken often in top lane are ignite and teleport the former augments your kill pressure in lane while the latter unlocks your ability to fast travel which has a mile long list of possibilities and that was what ryan aimed to correct with this change all ignite does is give you more damage but teleport has too much flexibility you can use it for ganks to quickly get back to lane to split push in the late game to get flanks in team fights so many things if you don't take teleport your potential impact throughout the course of a game is gated since you have to walk everywhere and in a game where being even three seconds earlier to a fight can make or break your team's chances of victory that makes a big deal the response to teleport's changes exposes the core problems surrounding toppling it's too isolated the goal behind this nerf was to put more emphasis on a player's faculty in the laning phase instead of trying to acquire your lead by roaming it's just you and your lane opponent solo laners who prefer to run ignite or ghost might see this as a good thing they can just focus on winning lane without being concerned that their lane opponent will tb gang bot and carry that way but all this does is further limit the roles already limited agency teleport is really the only way top laners could have any influence early on because it took the longest to leave in a lot of scenarios mid lane can start perma-roaming by level 6 or 7 top laners usually can't until level 9 10 sometimes 11 and bot lane doesn't have to roam since 90 of the action takes place there it's too polarizing of a role in a vacuum and two useless of a role in the context of the rest of the map he's very matchup dependent up there too if you pick gwen and you're up against the tryndamere there's virtually nothing you can do he out trades you out all leans you out duels you out sustains you out everything's you given how much experience you get in solo lanes even dying once and losing a wave will permanently set you back two levels and with how four out of five champions top or melee you can get zoned off and beat down 50 cs by 10 minutes unless the jungler ganks for you a single misplay is all it takes for you to lose control over the entire link i'm sure we've all seen him once or twice enemy top laner is level 16 while yours is level 12. as a result top laners are split into two groups those who take teleport and those who don't the ones who take ignite ghost or combat some are banking on gaining an advantage in the 1v1 those who take teleport do so in order to have more options if you're playing riven and your opponent is renekton facing him head on is extremely risky so you might go teleport and hope you can garner a lead for your team elsewhere such as ganking bot top laners are understandably upset by the changes to teleport because it shuts off one of those options placing an even greater emphasis on who wins or loses top lane except the victor is usually decided on whichever player goes second there are so many matchups that are straight up unwinnable for one side no matter how good they are jungle mid and bot lane do have unfavorable matchups but they each have ways to somewhat circumvent this in the bot lane it's a two on two even if draven has a hard time against caitlyn that can easily be fixed with the nautilus or blitzcrank i think it's pretty obvious to the jungle you don't have to confront your jungle opponent at all the mid lane does have a few really hard matchups for certain champs but most of them are ranged and have enough waveclear to play the neutral or they can just roam even if they don't have teleport top lane needs teleport to roam because it's too far from one end of the map to the other that holds true but what about jungle intervention obviously getting a gank or two can turn a losing matchup into an increasingly winnable one and to be frank top laners have some of the worst map awareness in the game the issue is there's far less incentive to gank top than mid or bot lane for two reasons 1 dragon getting the first two dragons is critical in building momentum for the mid game your team only has to get two more to acquire the dragon soul a permanent buff that statistically gives your team at least an 85 chance of winning the game two ganging bot means you snowball two champions for the price of one the only real benefit from a top lane gank is a kill and a few tower plates a successful gank bot means two kills and usually a dragon shelly is valuable to have but not necessary or consistent for that matter sure in ideal conditions a single rift title can easily get you two or more towers but it's not a guaranteed benefit dragon is opportunity costs that's all it is junglers really only gain top if it's the only lane they can get a lead in and even then it's their choice not yours obviously depending on your jungler to win lane for you isn't a viable strategy to climb you have to take matters into your own hands i'm not saying roaming as a top laner is completely dead with that teleport but it requires a lot more commitment if it goes wrong you'll be punished way more than if you had teleport and believe me when i say giving your lane opponent even 30 seconds of free time can lose you three tower plates or more mid laners can casually run around the map since their lane is smack dab in the middle supports can roam at their leisure since they don't need to worry about farming there are just too many things left up to chance as a top laner you have to first hope you don't get counterpicked then you have to hope your teammates go even at the very least then you have to get a massive advantage over your lane opponent which may not be possible if they're playing someone who can safely farm without interacting with you with all that said what can be done to fix top lane to make it feel less skewed towards bot lane in the early game i genuinely don't think you can not in league's current state if they want to fix topland they have to dismantle the entire rift all the rules and conventions and build it back up from scratch riot basically dug a hole so deep that even if they put the shovel down right now they can't get out of it every solution i can think of doesn't work because something cancels it out solution 1 increase the pressure capacity of top lane by giving them more experience gold etc in order for top laners to consistently be able to solo carry games their individual strength has to be higher than that of two champions the adc and support the only way that's possible is if they have such an overwhelming stat advantage like they have to be level 14 while the adc and support are both level 11 and they usually have to be at least a full item ahead this used to be the case at one point when riot first increased solo lane experience it was very common for top laners to be level 15 while the adc and support were both level 9. that's a little too extreme but in reality that's how far ahead the top laner had to be in order to make an impact in the mid game why this solution doesn't work though is because of what i said earlier top lane is too polarizing of a lane it's way too easy for either side to completely destroy the other through a bad matchup or even a single kill top laners are also usually good at 1v2 so even if the jungler tries to stop the bleeding they run the risk of exacerbating it further giving toplane more golden experience may make it easier for them to solo carry games but it also increases the volatility of an already volatile lane effectively that shifts the uncertainty around it doesn't get rid of it solution 2 removes support from bot lane other than dragon the main reason people focus on bot lane so much is due to having 2 champions if bot lane wins the 80 carry can power spike earlier while the support can roam around the map it's a double whammy that's the key difference between top and bot lane the support if we flipped it around and supports go top then top would become the new bot lane however this solution doesn't work because marksmen are designed to require the assistance of a support in the early game if you leave caitlyn kaiser jinx ezreal jin xia twitch any of them by themselves they'll be completely screwed supports are the only players who can babysit the adc we can't put them anywhere else as that would give marksman zero a chance to actually farm or do anything but let's humor the notion and make supports go top once again that doesn't change the agency of top lane at all if you're playing renekton against riffen but you have to support soraka while they have jana janna can help riven survive a lane she would otherwise be getting dumpstered on it's much harder to tower dive as tryndamere when your lane opponent is backed up by a nautilus who can perma-stun you for half your ultimate's duration moving support out of bot lane and into top doesn't give you more carry potential it actually makes it harder since you now have to plow through two champions instead of one you also get a support but then you have to split experience with your support so your kills aren't as significant solution 3 add high value objectives on top side to shift attention away from bot lane this might seem like the most logical solution if hypothetically we swapped dragon with rift child and baron then junglers might want to spend more time toppling it can also equalize the opportunity cost between the two roles if your team wants to snowball 2 champs they have to forfeit dragon if they want dragon control they only get to snowball one champ sounds like a win-win right not exactly in theory yes switching the dragon and baron pit would probably shake things up a bit but herald is one of the few ways top laners can get at a top lane quickly if your jungler notices the enemy top is down to 3 plates or less they might go for shelley to knock it down allowing you to move your ass out of that island and start doing things around the map securing dragons is important but it doesn't change the game's state all too much since individual dragon buffs are for the most part negligible in other words you get no benefit in the early game for securing dragons those are to assist you in the mid to late game when you go for souls the problem with top lane is how useless it feels during laning phase once lightning phase is over there's no such thing as top knit or bottling since everyone's roaming the conundrum behind shelly is that she's easy enough for junglers to solo provided they're given the time to do so but she has enough health and durability to where it's not really an efficient use of your time as the top laner to go after it yourself ultimately toplane is in a feast or famine situation any changes to it will either make it super crazy no counterplay busted or a dead roll any solution to increase the individual agency of top laners in the early game will only lead to a coin flip in whoever picks a favorable match up or whoever scores the first lead teleport was really the only quote unquote healthy way to give early play making potential to top laners but even that feels really constraining it's kind of how summoner's rift was designed top lane does have the potential to carry games through absorbing pressure such as letting the enemy jungler can't top so your team can secure dragons and win bottling then again i'd be hard-pressed to call that carrying you're more like a decoy at that point not the most glamorous job out there if we look back to how tank meta made top lane so influential it's mostly because the game was much slower games weren't decided by whichever team won lane the mid game used to begin at 20 minutes to 25 but now it's more like 15 when the tower plates fall off it's a very complex problem that cannot be solved with a simple change i genuinely believe riot has to flip the table in order to fix top lane as a role nothing they do now will address top lane's decreased agency in an easy or healthy way with that said while the role itself feels weak the champions are very strong which i take in a heartbeat we're sort of the opposite of adc where adc as a role is very powerful but the champions get memed on non-stop for losing 1v1 to every other class in the game there's nothing more ego boosting than one between top lane and getting those occasional top gap moments where you have like 12 kills and are virtually indestructible it's a role that makes you feel powerful yet useless at the same time it's pretty weird but what are your thoughts on toppling do you think it's as useless as top laners say or do you think top lane is actually really underrated as a role let me know in the comments down below for now if you enjoyed the video i'd appreciate it if you left a like subscribe to the channel for more content like this don't forget to follow me on twitter join my discord server and check out my previous discussion videos if you haven't yet but until next time thank you all so much for watching and i look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Vars

Views: 274,153

Keywords: league of legends, proguides, league of legends pro guides, league of legends guide, lol, lol top lane, lol teleport, teleport nerf, lol teleport rework, lol unleashed teleport, lol top lane season 12, lol top lane useless, lol top lane worst role, is top lane useless, lol discussion, top lane problems, top lane buffs, lol season 12, summoner spell, season 12 changes, enemy, msi, arcane, tyler1, kda

Id: 6pUMbj7KjXA

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022