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Mint: A look at MaRin’s golden play

Riot·7/9/2015, 7:15:50 PM·0 votes·14,724 views

The top lane is just about the most daunting place to set up shop on Summoner’s Rift.

Top laners are often the victims of brutal lane swaps and can find themselves isolated from help in difficult situations -- but there are glimmers of light even in the darkest places. SKTelecom’s top laner Kyunghwan "MaRin" Jang has turned the top lane into his own personal gold farming oasis. As a proven denizen of this treacherous environment, MaRin has come close to perfecting his wildly effective top lane strategies. He only does one thing better than defending his turf, and that’s farming it for all the gold it’s worth.

Ready to Rumble

The first rule of playing top lane is to always push your advantage! That’s why when MaRin creates a lead for himself in lane (which he often does), he rolls himself up and begins to snowball. If MaRin builds up a lead, the rest of his team can play with same amount of freedom as an untamed pack of wild Poros.

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One of MaRin’s techniques to keep the gold piling high is bringing pressure straight to his enemies. "Push your lane against your opponent’s tower and force the jungler to help top lane," MaRin explains. "This way, your teammates can play with less pressure in their lanes." Once that pesky jungler reveals himself, the other laners are free and clear to play with maximum aggression.

Another winning strategy MaRin uses up in the top lane comes straight from the Freljord -- freezing a lane. MaRin keeps the minion wave where he wants it, allowing him to farm freely, and forcing the enemy to overextend for precious farm. He does this quite often when it seems that the enemy just can’t quite maintain any significant pressure on the map.

In the match above against the Jin Air Green Wings, MaRin gets ahead with an early gank then often freezes the lane in order to maximize his farm -- and his advantage. A lead means items, and items mean power. The game hinged on a final fight where the underpowered enemy Rumble was steamrolled by MaRin’s Maokai, who was deep in the back lines causing havoc -- a direct result of the lead that MaRin built by capitalizing on his lane advantage. When MaRin freezes a lane over, both the creep wave and the enemy top laner become subject to his will. The rich get richer, and the poor stay poor.

Obstacle, prepare to be obliterated!

MaRin usually finds himself playing from ahead, but sometimes that just isn’t an option. "The biggest obstacle is when you lose the laning phase and you're behind in gold and level compared to your opponent," MaRin says, reflecting on the difficulties of playing top.

He’s often not in much of a rush to get back back into the game, though. League games are long, intricate things, and MaRin has shown that the most consistent way to get back in control is through slow play -- whittling away at your opponent's lead, one minion at a time.

The video above is a perfect demonstration of how he plays like a true comeback king. After MaRin gave up two early deaths he went straight into catch up mode. Eventually, his methodical farming began to chip away at Sangmyun "Shy" Park’s lead. Of course MaRin’s efforts were aided by the great play of his team, but he dug in and eventually farmed his way back into the game.

On top of farming, MaRin’s timely Teleports and strong team fight presence created even more opportunities for success. He ended up hitting his item power spikes on par with Shy at about 25 minutes in, and from there, he never looked back. It required a great amount of patience, but MaRin carefully found the advantages he needed to fight his way back into the game, helping ensure a victory for SKTelecom.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

If MaRin finds an enemy infringing on his ability to farm effectively, he will do his best to make sure that they see a grey screen -- soon. He has the highest KDA of any top laner because he almost always gets involved. In order to expand his gold enterprise, MaRin’s got to make business trips to fight with his team. If successful, he can make a decent chunk of kill/assist gold with every Teleport use. To do this effectively, MaRin really has to relish being that meat shield who dives into the back lines, breaks the ranks, and forces a retreat. MaRin often will Teleport into a fight and lay down a team-punishing Rumble Equalizer, or crush the enemy AD carry with Maokai. It’s just the way he plays.

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MaRin’s potent mix of farming and fighting has led him to absolutely annihilate opponents in the LCK. MaRin’s 402 gold per minute (GPM) reflects his mastery of effectively tilling the soil of his farm, and there’s something to be said when the next best top laner in the LCK, KT Rolster’s Chanho "Ssumday" Kim, makes 30 less coin a minute.

Yet he's still not content. "I don’t think I’m at my peak yet," he says, reflecting on his play so far. "I believe I have to practice harder to maintain a consistent skill level and play my very best."

When it comes to farming out of the top lane, MaRin already outclasses just about everyone. If it’s true that he has yet to reach his potential, he may just set a new bar for what dominant top lane play looks like. MaRin is an astounding talent in many regards, and it’s his mastery of the small details, the nuts and bolts of effective farming, that set him well-beyond his top lane peers.

You can catch MaRin take on the best top laners in the LCK every week, right here on Lolesports.

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11 Comments

Andy9745807/10/2015, 11:24:40 AM10 votes

Best Top Laner World

Dibony7/9/2015, 8:20:25 PM7 votes

i love MaRin <3 such a good and talented player

asianshenanigans7/16/2015, 1:35:39 AM1 votes

SKT focuses A LOT of their resources onto Marin. Despite the fact that everyone thinks Bengi babysits Faker, he spends the most time in top lane trying to secure Marin a lead. Of course, this strategy works but it does not necessarily mean he's better than Ssumday. GPM is not an accurate stat considering how much gold is funneled into Marin. Still a great player but not all of it is him.

QQsha9/12/2015, 3:07:14 AM1 votes

MaRin, along with Koro1, is one of the most OVERHYPED top laners ever. The two videos used to show his "golden play" only shows one good play from him in the entirety of the 77 minutes.

In the game against Jin Air, he has SO MUCH help from his team to try and shut down Trace. And each time it resulted in a death for Bengi. It got so bad to the point that Wolf had to go up and salvage the situation. The CS lead he has doesn't say much, because Rumble's inherent ability to CS is significantly worse than a champion like Maokai. That coupled with the fact that all Bengi did the entire laning phase was sit in top, it's no surprise that Trace has low CS, but not much lower than a Rumble is supposed to have anyways, which is great by Trace. As a result of Trace and Chaser's superior play (or MaRin and Bengi's poor play, you can pick which you like), Jin Air slowly build themselves a solid position in the game. However, Chei single-handedly throws the game to SKT. He flash Q's for Faker and misses, and still proceeds to try and pursue Faker despite having poor vision and dies to 4 people. Now, this is where MaRin makes his one and only good play - he TPs into mid lane right as Chei flashes for Faker. This causes Jin Air to peel away, while Chei thinks he has his team behind him and keeps walking forward. The result? A 100% free kill on the CC-heavy support. The situation could've been salvageable for Jin Air if MaRin didn't have the perfect timing on his TP. After that, Bengi and Faker go MASSIVE with the re-engage. Jin Air tries to stop SKT from taking dragon and Bengi gets a BEAUTIFUL flank for a 3-man ult. Faker blows up Trace, making him drop a less-than-optimal ult. From there, Faker continues to go massive and blows up all 3 of Jin Air's carries. In essence, MaRin nearly cost them the game, gave them a small opening to come back, and Bengi and Faker carry MaRin's ass to victory. And if you don't think MaRin was doing his best to throw, watch the game. He throws his lead at every chance (the lead Bengi gave his life to give). He uses his TP to "save Faker" when Faker was fine. And instead of cancelling, he finishes the channel and dies for nothing other than giving away his TP. After that, he 1v4s them in an attempt to steal the red buff when he knows where everyone is. Then he TP flanks when Jin Air are taking dragon, gets collapsed on instead of cancelling (again), and basically gives up 2 kills, a TP, and Baron for a Dragon. My God, if Chei's throw didn't happen, that would've been the throw to stamp their loss.

In the game versus CJ Entus, he falls behind, yes. But he counterpicked Shy and has Bengi on Eve in the jungle. Shy can't exactly try to play aggressive to extend his lead, he could easily throw it back to MaRin, and things would be horrible from that point on. So MaRin can safely farm top and eventually get to the point where he can start bullying Shy again. Also, given the picks, MaRin is perfectly fine buying 3 MR items in a row while Shy's first item is geared towards teamfighting and poor in dueling. Anyways, this game goes pretty even for most of the game, and we come to the teamfight that decides the game. Shy wastes his initiation on Janna, and Wolf proceeds to reset the fight using his ult (which also deny's Sej's knockup) as Sivir ult starts to wear off. MaRin's TP finishes, and MadLife uses his pulverize on him. From there, all their initiation is gone as Bang and Faker (being perfectly positioned) are untouched in entire the fight. Oh, did I mention Ambition pulled a Xmithie and whiffed his ult? Yeah, that happened too. So to recap: Shy wasted his W on Janna (twice), Ambition was 100% useless (none of his spells hit anything), and MadLife was 100% useless (1 Q, and walks around the fight, not even auto attacking). I don't know about you guys, but if you've ever had 3 100% useless teammates in a 5v5 fight, the game tends to be very hard to win. Credit to MaRin for ulting Azir and Ambition so Coco can share in the uselessness of his team (but at least he still did some damage). SKT positioned perfectly throughout the fight, and CJE just... They butchered the fight about as badly as they possibly could. It's surprising to think that this is one of the few teams in the world to make SKT look human. Anyways, once SKT got Baron, they aren't going to lose the game.

I don't hate MaRin. I've actually liked him before anyone thought he was good, when he played only Rumble and Renekton. In my opinion, MaRin has always been a good top laner (though he suffered from a limited champion pool), just not a TOP tier one. Top 10 or 15 in the world? I'd feel very comfortable saying that. Top 3? Definitely not. I'd say top 3 would be Huni, ssumday, then a heart-wrenching decision between Flandre, Gogoing, Duke, and Smeb. Yes, I put ALL of these players over MaRin. And the only reason I don't put Looper over MaRin is because Looper is on M3, the 2nd team where dreams to to die (the 1st would be WE, which used to have M3 as a sister team). Honestly, I would put Acorn in the list of those running for top 3 if LGD didn't have such a poor showing in both regular seasons. I mean, MaRin is the shot-caller for SKT, so I should give him a few bonus points there, but it's still not enough to break into the top 3 for me. My opinion of him might change at worlds, but I'll most likely still feel he's very overhyped, even if he moves into my top 5.

Anyways, tl;dr, actually watch and analyze the games, and you'll recognize that MaRin nearly threw the game vs Jin Air, and only made 1.5 good plays (I'll give him credit for the ult onto Ambition, even though the fight was decided regardless), basically getting hard carried in both games by Faker and Bengi/Bang.