Why YOU SUCK at TOP LANE (And How To Fix It) - League of Legends

in this guide you're going to learn exactly why you suck at Top Lane and simple easy to apply ways to fix it my name's hex I'm a multi-season challenger player that's been teaching League of Legends here at skillcap for over 10 years I even created one of our most popular courses where I taught how to get diamond as a top laner in just 30 days it documented my entire climb with over 14 hours of content and if there is one thing I've learned about climbing as a top laner it's that everything starts with winning your lane here's the good news winning your lane is way easier than you think it is and by the end of this guide you're going to learn everything you'll ever need to do just that so here's the first big myth about Top Lane that it's all about trading this couldn't be further from the truth it's actually the exact opposite and the first video in our brand new Top Lane Essentials course explains why better than I ever could not a single Hulu player will ever argue over two things first is that Top Lane is without a doubt the most unforgiving role in the game if you make a single mistake in this role it feels like you're unable to play for the rest of the match the champions in top are incredibly scary and you're likely playing a melee versus melee matchup so if you fall behind it is impossible to walk up without just instantly dying which brings us to the second thing every High ELO player knows that Wave Control knowledge is by far the most important for top laners out of every role and that it is probably the most critical skill you can learn to get better at it like we said you're likely in a melee matchup where you don't have access to range wave clear to try and farm safely other worlds can often push waves from really far away to avoid danger but in top you have to get up close and personal to farm so if your wave is in a bad spot it is unlikely you get out of it unscathed not only that but a matchup can completely swing based on where the wave is crashed as you can see this Darius is struggling to trade versus the enemy atrox while the wave is here the lane feels unwinable at the moment so you think that both players are relatively equal in skill but when the wave is in the middle of the lane the darus instantly looks like a better player he's just running the atrox down and the matchup looks completely different the point we're making is that you cannot play Top Lane properly unless you care about Wave Control and by the way you can unlock this full course through the discount link below it's completely risk-free since if you don't rank up while actively using skill capped you get your money back no questions asked all right so you now know the real most important skill in Top Lane is Wave Control does this mean you have to learn a ton of different Wave Control tactics and nuanced positions to dominate well no not at all check this out here's a high Platinum Renekton notice how Renekton arrives in Lane level one and is literally doing nothing it's almost like he's waiting for Darius to arrive so we can start trading with him then once Darius comes out of the brush Renekton gets that trade but just gets destroyed which eventually lets Darius hit level two first and Zone him from renekton's perspective he probably thinks Darius is just overpowered I mean he literally just ran at Renekton to out trade him well here is what every top laner gets wrong when you arrive in lane at level one your primary goal is not to trade with the opponent that's secondary your primary goal is to Simply Auto attack the minions to get the push lead and here's why notice here how Renekton is going to land a ton more Auto attacks on the minions compared to Wukong then when renekton's ability is off coold down he can look to land it but the goal is to get what's called a double value spell you're looking to damage the opponent and the minions at the same time now the ability is on coold down so we're back to spamming Auto attacks on the wave to secure the push lead then once the ability comes back up we can look for another double value spell you repeat this pattern on the first wave Auto minions and look for a double value spell when your ability is up as once the second wave arrives the first melee minion will Spike you level two this sets up level two allins on the opponent which can outright win you your lane in the first 3 minutes of the game basically the matchup won't matter if you get the push lead since the level two spike is so powerful and the majority of top laners simply aren't aware of this concept as we saw in the Platinum replay where neither darus or reneka knew they needed two Auto minions and both just sat AFK at the start of the lane so step one in Top Lane is literally just making sure you get the push lead on the first wave by making sure you're autoing the minions whenever you can great this sounds simple enough you'll probably head into your next game put this into action get that push lead early land some double value spells hit level two and then the opponent sits a mile back not falling for the level two Allin guess what this is still winning when the opponent doesn't fall for your level two Allin you then transition into what's called a cheater recall Step 11 in our Wave Control course on our website perfectly summarizes how to do a cheater recall so let's watch it a cheater recall is a really famous early wave strategy and one of the deadliest tactics you can pull off for a big lead if it's done properly here's how it works on the first wave get the minion Advantage by damaging the wave more than the enemy as the second wave arrives look to maintain your minion Advantage as much as possible don't make the mistake of over pushing though as you don't want to crash just yet that's because you want to crash precisely on the third wave so once it arrives push as quickly as possible to crash it into the tower now you can take a free recall while your opponent is distracted with the wave now you'll have an item Advantage with full health and mana on top of that so walk back to Lane the wave will have rebounded back to you so you can now freeze and force trades with your item advantage and play the lane normally from here you can use a cheater recall in all three lanes to get a guaranteed Advantage right at the start of the game great so what you're going to see is Renekton follows that advice gets the level two Spike transitions to only last hitting to not over push the wave third wave arrives so we hard push it to set up your recall timing and then you head back to Lane with an item advantage while the wave pushes back to you letting you set up a freeze you'll see how this one tactic wins Reon his Lane so Now Zed is being zoned from Minions as he can only last it with his Q due to renekton's item lead at the same time whenever Zed gets to close Renekton can go in for a trade this pattern of denying minions and engaging for winning trades continues until eventually the enemy jungler tries to gank to relieve pressure but it's a waste of time since Z is so low and speaking of which once an enemy gets low enough you just push to set up a tower dive we'll talk more on this later for now though Z has been zoned a ton of Cs ended up dying and losing the wave to the tower all from this one cheater recall tactic so this is your very simple game plan get the push level one and either get a level two all in to win your lane or you transition into a cheater recall if you don't get the enemy low enough in health at which point you come back to Lane and start forcing winning trades so this will work against the majority of players you face but what about when you don't get the push lead at level one whether it's due to the enemy knowing to fight for it or the matchup just sucks for you or you have to give a leash like in this game well here's what you do your goal is to take minimal damage level one you don't try to fight against the push you're actually hoping the enemy over pushes and crashes a wave level two so they can't cheat or recall this does mean at some point you're going to be giving up CS especially once the enemy is going to spike level two on you once the wave crashes into your Tower you're just focusing on last hitting until you're level three as once you're level three you're equal in levels with the opponent and can begin to start looking for potential trades this is because when an enemy crashes a big wave into your Tower like this it creates what's known as a bounceback or rebound the third step in our brand new Top Lane Essentials course explains this concept way better than I can when you crash a wave at Tower it will often stall like so this causes the wave to eventually slow push back the other way the major reason it's so important to understand bounce backs is because slow pushes have far more trading value in Lanes where both Champions are melee but another key factor that bounce backs provide is safety Top Lane is also the most vulnerable role to multiple factors for starters it's the counterpick role if you're in a bad matchup you will absolutely feel it way more than any other lane you all know how awful it feels to be counterpicked here not only that but it's a very snowbally role if you fall behind the game is unplayable so you need to be able to avoid ganks Dives and allins as much as you possibly can bounce backs are not only your best friend for getting leads but also to keep you safe from Bad matchups and ganks let's break down all the aggressive and defensive plays you need to know how to play around bounce backs properly let's start at the beginning after your opponent crashes a wave it will eventually bounce as a slow push in your favor your goal is to build up as big of a wave as possible slowly pushing it to your opponent's side of the lane during this time you can be very aggressive looking for trades especially early on into the game like we said before more minions gives you an easier time to harass that's the simple part the push is both the most aggressive part of a bounceback but also the most vulnerable the problem is that although you have a slow pish going you're pushing towards your opponent's side of the lane this means that you can get ganked or if you take a bad trade the wave can be frozen against you and so on so if you're in a bad spot you're low on HP or you're in a bad matchup then when you've got a bounceback slow push going only focus on crashing the wave don't focus on trading or anything like that if you play on your bigger wave during the early levels your opponent probably doesn't have the wave clear to fight you with so many minions around as long as you crash the wave you will be able to neutralize the lane this is because of what happens after you crash the wave your opponent is now stuck in Lane unable to move not only that but you now know for certain that the wave will bounce back to your side of the lane eventually you canuse use this information to plan around building a lead or stabilizing a bad Lane so for example cion knew that this was a bad lande state so he focused entirely on crashing the wave one of the best things you can do off of any crash is simply to base and heal up while buying items this is how you can neutralize a lot of bad Lane matchups the reason this is so effective is because you won't lose almost any Farm while you're gone because the wave is pushing back into you you're going to come back to a wave either close to or at your Tower which you can Farm up easily then if your opponent based you'll be alone like cion is here and you can crash again and if you crash again you can play safe and even repeat this process or as a hypothetical if the garant had stayed Canan would have had a massive item lead either option was good for him in this rough early Lane okay so that was a lot of info and we're not even halfway through the video so let's stop it there basically when this wave crashes the first step is hitting level three to equalize with the opponent you'll then have that bounce back so if you're stronger at this point you can look for aggressive trades as the enemy is so overextended that you have a ton of room to run them down in a trade if instead you felt weaker due to the matchup you simply focus on maintaining a minion lead and building up a big wave off your bounce back instead regardless both scenarios will usually result in you being in this exact spot you'll hit level four before the opponent due to your minion advantage and have a big wave built up it's worth noting a lot of the times the enemy will actually just die to you overextending during this time we'll cover this later however if instead you get an enemy really low but didn't kill them like you saw in the Z clip then this is a great time to Tower dive like we taught you earlier if instead the enemy is too healthy well you just push this wave into setting up a recall that probably sounds familiar and yeah it's pretty much the same game plan as the cheater recall which is why I like to call this a delayed cheater recall so we now have the item advantage and the enemy is pushing back into us and so whenever they overextend we can look to trade with our item advantage and you can see how this once again sets up a solo kill for us so let's quickly recap our game plan early on level one we look to get the push lead if we do we either get a level two Allin on the opponent or they play safe and so we cheat a recall get back to Lane with the wave pushing into us with an item advantage and look to trade on on the opponent and Zone them from CS if an enemy gets low enough we always break the freeze to push and set up a tower dive if we don't get the push lead level one we look to play safe and take as little damage as possible even if that means giving up CS once the wave crashes we'll hit level three that's our signal that we can start to look to play aggressive into good matchups that means looking to trade while the enemy is overextended up the lane and into bad matchups that means focusing on maintaining your minion lead as you build up a big wave if the enemy doesn't get themselves killed during this time you'll end up in this spot level four while the enemy is level three with a big wave built up if an enemy is low enough in health we of course always Tower dive but if they're healthy enough to survive we turn it into a delayed cheater recall head back to Lane with an item advantage and look to trade aggressively as the enemy overextends with the wave pushing into US often setting up solo kills for us great so you now know how to play the early part of the laning phase but what about the rest of it well lucky for you there's really only one concept you need to understand and it's that Top Lane is effectively just taking turn slow pushing into each other for example here Wukong is building up a slow push off a rebound with such a big minion Advantage it can be quite hard to win any trades into him unless you have some sort of big Advantage so often you'll just sit back let the wave crash into your Tower and then you start setting up your own slow push back into the enemy off that rebound when the wave crashes the enemy will often use it as a recall timing to get an item Advantage this is incredibly important we'll explain why shortly your response to this is to slow push so you build up a big wave to counteract that item Advantage then once the wave is big enough and far enough up the lane you crash it to set up your own recall timing to get your own item advantage the enemy will respond by once again building up a slow push off the rebound crashing that wave to set up their own recall timing you then respond by building up another slow push off the rebound and crashing a wave to set up your recall timing well hold on you might be thinking didn't you just teach me that after you cheat a recall you get an item advantage and when it bounces back you can go aggressive so why is it that you're letting Wukong push the wave into your Tower and not going aggressive off the rebound well let's look at the previous examples to learn why yoro made two mistakes he over pushed and crashed on the second wave so he didn't have enough gold to cheat a recall and since he didn't recall it meant he had no item Advantage when the wave rebounded at the same time he overextended instead of playing safe off of the rebound resulting in a trade during renekton's slow push or renekton's turn this put him low in health so once Renekton crashed the wave and recalled he came back with a huge item lead and a health lead this is why Renekton could go aggressive and kill him despite yoro having a rebound Zed on the other hand made one simple mistake Renekton crashes the wave and recalls to get the item lead notice how once Renekton gets back in Lane Zed is level four while Renekton is level three Zed also has a big minion lead what Zed needs to do is use the small timing window to push the wave to try and crash it and set up his own recall timing instead Zed plays way too scared and so Renekton is able to set up a freeze and start thinning out minions this results in Zed missing his timing window and now being in a horrible position compare that to Wukong in the exact same position he's going to fight in this spot to make sure the wave crashes so we can get out of this and actually recall basically if everyone is playing perfectly the laning phase can result in just taking turns slow pushing crashing the wave and recalling into each other on repeat however the vast vast majority of your opponents will not be playing perfectly the most common mistake is they'll trade into your slow push timing basically when it's not their turn setting up a Checkmate position for you if they recall you push the wave and they lose all the Minions to the tower if they stay you Tower dive them like we taught you getting a kill and denying all the Minions to the tower anyway the second most common mistake they'll make is they won't recall after they crash their big wave this means they didn't get to recall to spend their gold on it it so once you finish your slow push into a crash into recalling you're back with an even bigger item lead letting you break the rules fighting back on their turn to slow push and the third most common mistake they'll make is they don't use their slow push to then crash the wave if they get too scared you can end up thinning out the wave and setting up a freeze with your item advantage and suddenly with you having an item advantage and the wave in front of your Tower they can no longer crash the wave to set up a recall to buy items of their own great so you're now pretty much ahead of 99% of the top laners you'll face and have a game plan for the entire laning phase well almost the last thing you need to understand is that everything we just taught you will no longer apply from around levels 7 to 9 this is for several reasons First Once A Champion is level seven they'll have four points in an ability which is usually their best wave clear ability at level 9 they'll have five points in it so these are the levels where Champions unlock very strong wave clear second as the game gets later freezing is simply no longer as strong this is because the whole idea of freezing is that you're denying minions from the opponent as their minions kill yours forcing them to move up to last hit or give up the CS the problem is later on giving up CS like this isn't as punishing minions don't scale they give the same amount of XP at level 1 or level 18 at the same time it requires more experience to level up the higher in level you are what this means is that level one giving up two waves could be the difference between being level one or level three at level seven though giving up two waves could have no impact on your level at all players also have access to more items their ultimates and boot upgrades letting them roam faster while also hitting roams harder so while you're freezing and they're losing a wave or two you're getting kills and objectives elsewhere long story short hard pushing will pin the opponent down preventing that scenario and third by pushing it gives you a roam timing which is often the best way to snowball your lead and top this is because the majority of the roster and Top Lane are melee Champions so often when you get a lead the enemy top laner will just turtle at their Tower if you try to damage the tower they just get to trade on you from safety from under their Tower and they're usually bruisers or tanky Champions so it's not like you can just Tower dive them from 100 to zero an important trick when doing this though when you implement this push into Rome you need to place a control ward in the river brush this is because even if you end up not getting anything done on the ram it often sets you up to get a winning trade if the enemy face checks the brush or they just assume you recold or are roaming and so we'll move up the lane to push so when you get back to Lane lets you get behind them without them knowing and forcing a winning trade with your lead which again can get them low enough to set up a tower dive on them on the next wave and if they just play Passive avoiding this well that means you'll get to any fights in the river first combine that with your lead and it's an Easy Snowball from the winning fights and of course you can always look for a midlink gank off your push into Roam if you see a good opportunity to do so and now you have a simple but effective game plan to win and snowball your lane next is what to do once the laning phase ends and to prove just how good our new Top Lane Essentials course is on our website let's give you a sneak peek into the macro section if you've watched any macro content before you'll know that macro basically boils down to pushing minions and playing around the pressure of those waves so what it simply if no one pushed in any Sid Lane waves everyone would just group in mid and 5v5 team fight all the time if that was the case the only skill needed to climb would be learning how to team fight which is obviously not the case as a top laner you are likely the most self-sufficient champion on your team you're probably a durable tank a great dualist or a mobile carry you're also likely running the Summoner spell teleport this means that you are usually the most suited player on your team to push inside Lane waves and by pushing those waves you give you or your teammates the ability to play around the pressure being created which brings us to the most important macro concept you can learn winning the landing phase you have to remember that both top laners are usually going to be the ones Sid laning in the game typically against one another who stronger is going to be able to push waves into the other player's Tower so one player will have a lot of pressure while the other will have very little impact on the map this is why winning early is so important as a top laner you will have infinitely less options than your opponent if they're stronger than you here's what you can expect if you're losing the enemy top will likely push waves onto your side of the map your job will be to catch the waves they push and to prevent them from just pushing your Towers because they're stronger they will be able to move first on the map so if they push a wave and then rotate towards your team you will always be late that's why you need to try to save teleport to react to their plays so you can join the fight as well we're not saying that's all you can do when you're losing but that's what you should expect your job to be from behind you may be thinking what if I don't have teleport well that sucks that's like asking what if my opponents have Baron Elder Dragon and are 20,000 gold ahead we're exaggerating but sometimes there's nothing you can do when you're behind especially as a top laner you just have to pray your opponent make a mistake and throw just do the best you can which is why you want to have ideally won the laning phase or at the very least be capable of pushing waves after you push a side lane there's two options you can either group with your team or remain in the side lane we'll discuss split pushing in a later video but let's talk about what grouping with your team should look like here pushing a wave to your opponent's Tower forces a response if the enemy does literally nothing then they are losing farm and taking Tower damage they must do something as a response or they fall behind let's take a look at an example jayon and his team are all calling that they'll be contesting dragon in 50 seconds time jaay even pings that he's on his way while pathing to the complete opposite side of the map this will be one of your bread and butter macro plays you want to push Sly waves before the objective has spawned it's important you do it 20 or 30 seconds in advance at the very least now that Jace has crashed this wave the enemy team is feeling the pressure they either have to force a dragon fight immediately or they respond to J Jace's push and send someone to defend in this case the enemy top laner chooses to defend and teleports up here the second that he does jaay counter teleports to join the dragon fight and helps turn it around and just like that he helps secure his team a dragon despite them playing from behind this will be your basic macro rhythm in most games push a wave Force someone to respond and join up with your team let's be clear this won't always yield a positive result but the point is that you keep trying it over over and over again so for example Sani pushes the wave and forces the enemy Gwen to respond then she recalls and pass mid to join up with her team achieving nothing at all that's fine by pushing wav so aggressively you don't lose any Farm while you're trying to group with your team you just have to go back to a s Side Lane before your opponent pushes away to your Tower this is a lowrisk high reward strategy if you get nothing all you have to do is go back to the S Side Lane and try try again by the way we're only halfway through that video and we also cover how to use teleport and how to split push so if you want to learn how to climb ranks fastest Top Lane then this is the course you've been looking for as it covers the A through Z of everything you'll ever need to know to rank up as a top laner it's completely risk-free to try since if you don't rank up while actively using skill cap you get your money back no questions asked you can get all of this through the discount you can only unlock through the link below so what are you waiting for click the link in the description below to get the rank you've always wanted this season all right and that will do it for this one we here at skill cap want to thank you for watching and we'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Skill Capped Challenger LoL Guides

Views: 240,102

Keywords: league of legends, league of legends guide, lol guides, league of legends tips, league of legends coaching, how to get better at league of legends, skill capped, lol tips, lol tips and tricks, league of legends pro guides, how to improve at league of legends, lol coaching, skill-capped, league of legends season 14, lol s14, lol season 14, top lane, top lane guide, lol top lane, lol top lane guide, how to top lane, lol guide, top lane coaching

Id: YEcdIGfwLVw

Length: 20min 31sec (1231 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024