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I need tips for fighting Mages/ADCs that go top to cheese a melee top laner.

Dangerous Man··1 votes·1,029 views

So I hate losing pre-game just because I got cheesed by a ranged top laner who can auto me to half hp (or poke with ranged abilities) level 1 because I don't know what I'm doing against them. Champions like Vladimir, Teemo, Jayce, Ryze and Swain seem to be pretty fine to lane against as a melee champion like Aatrox Nautilus MonkeyKing Darius because they're balanced for top lane pretty well already. But champions like those (for me at least) can get absolutely dicked on by Vayne, Quinn, Malzahar, nearly any random mage (Except maybe Aurelion Sol or Azir because they'd get destroyed early by me so far) can just poke a tank/slow melee fighter out before you get to actually start laning.

Also If there's is a mage I have to specify that I get annihilated by 100% guaranteed it would be Nunu because of the E spam and the constant healing on Q. I'm posting this because I just fought a Morgana as Aatrox and was completely useless because she could 1. Spellshield my Q 2. Q me before I got to engage 3. Poke me with autos and W level one 4. Just generally CCing me to death. But I DID beat a Kalista top as Aatrox just because Kalista wouldn't have an ult top and her W does no damage so I could engage and heavily outtrade her. She basically put herself at a severe disadvantage before the game started by picking a bad ADC for top.

I've had this trouble for as long as I've played top and I've got beaten by an assortment of mages within the past 2 years just because I can't figure out how to outtrade them. I never bothered to ask how to beat them and I've never found any information on these weird matchups. Please help lol my teammates can easily roast me for being beaten by Urgot as Poppy ;=;

10 Comments

DeathBurst1 votes

The short version is: stay safe in early game, don't let them poke you for free, even if you have to give up CS for that. As a rule of thumb, if taking a CS would cost you more than 2 auto-attacks worth of poke, don't go for it. Once you're level 6-9, or even before if you have assistance from the jungler, you should be able to burst them down. They are incredibly squishy compared to traditional Toplaners. The key point is to act decisively. Be careful about when you choose to fight, but when you DO fight, go all out. Ranged champion win short-to-medium trades because they can continue to hit you when you want to end the trade and retreat. So don't retreat.

The long version depends on a huge amount of factors: team-comp and win conditions, who scales better into the late game, what amount of time do the two junglers spend top, who exactly are the ranged and melee champions. I don't know a lot about Aatrox, for instance, but Garen vs Teemo and Garen vs Lissandra are 2 match-up I know really well, and even if the general principles apply, they play very differently.

Dangerous Man1 votes

{quoted}

The short version is: stay safe in early game, don't let them poke you for free, even if you have to give up CS for that. As a rule of thumb, if taking a CS would cost you more than 2 auto-attacks worth of poke, don't go for it. Once you're level 6-9, or even before if you have assistance from the jungler, you should be able to burst them down. They are incredibly squishy compared to traditional Toplaners. The key point is to act decisively. Be careful about when you choose to fight, but when you DO fight, go all out. Ranged champion win short-to-medium trades because they can continue to hit you when you want to end the trade and retreat. So don't retreat.

The long version depends on a huge amount of factors: team-comp and win conditions, who scales better into the late game, what amount of time do the two junglers spend top, who exactly are the ranged and melee champions. I don't know a lot about Aatrox, for instance, but Garen vs Teemo and Garen vs Lissandra are 2 match-up I know really well, and even if the general principles apply, they play very differently.

Aw man I have to have a boring lane to live :(. I have trouble not trading. I'm so used to supports where somebody gets in range you can immediately use abilities on them. Wouldn't it be extremely hard to win a lane though when you have to give up large amounts of cs to live? Because then they just have a gold advantage and are automatically winning even if you can manage a kill or 2 without dying. idk man I may need to wait for somebody who can give details about trading with Aatrox/Poppy/whatever I play to better understand what I'm doing. Kind of a vague comment.

DeathBurst1 votes

If you decide to trade and you end up losing the trade, that was a bad decision, no question about it... Losing is boring.

And yes it would be hard to win lane, but sometimes you don't have to win the lane in order to win the game. You just have to not lose too hard. What do you think will happen in team-fights when your team has a frontline (even if you're slightly underfarmed), while they just have 2 ADC and nothing to protect them?

Poppy has an opportunity to trade if she has her passive shield and/or Courage of the Colossus available, but you have to play around your cooldowns properly. 'cause if they see you waste them, and they have half a brain, that's when they will engage.

DemainaNyx1 votes

Play safe and assume you are going to lose lane. Honestly, that's all I can say. I don't play top but I've won as Nasus vs Quinn because I started cloth 4 pots and just farmed as much as I could under tower. I think I literally had like 40 CS at 10 minutes, but I was also 3/0 because Quinn kept trying to poke and dive me under tower when I was low health and miss judging how long wither would keep her under tower.

Again, not a top laner, but maybe consider taking Bandit in masteries in these kinds of lanes. 1 gold per missed minion is still more than nothing, plus you get 10 gold per auto against champions if you ever get in range of them, so you might be able to use that to help offset the missed CS. This may be bad advice, but I've seen stuff like Nasus top with Bandit before, so who knows.

The other thing is look at the match up and change your build. Morgana is going to continue to push the wave non-stop cause that's all she can do really. Maybe consider rushing a ZZ'Rot or Banner to help counter her push.

Dangerous Man1 votes

{quoted}

Play safe and assume you are going to lose lane. Honestly, that's all I can say. I don't play top but I've won as Nasus vs Quinn because I started cloth 4 pots and just farmed as much as I could under tower. I think I literally had like 40 CS at 10 minutes, but I was also 3/0 because Quinn kept trying to poke and dive me under tower when I was low health and miss judging how long wither would keep her under tower.

Again, not a top laner, but maybe consider taking Bandit in masteries in these kinds of lanes. 1 gold per missed minion is still more than nothing, plus you get 10 gold per auto against champions if you ever get in range of them, so you might be able to use that to help offset the missed CS. This may be bad advice, but I've seen stuff like Nasus top with Bandit before, so who knows.

The other thing is look at the match up and change your build. Morgana is going to continue to push the wave non-stop cause that's all she can do really. Maybe consider rushing a ZZ'Rot or Banner to help counter her push.

Well of course you'd win as Nasus by farming. I lose against Nasus all the time because they ignore me for 20 minutes and play with the dumb sustain then Q me for the first time dealing like 300 damage. But I still will take your advice. I'd take bandit if I am able to auto them but I know I wouldn't have an easy time farming. All I'd be losing for that is a small amount of damage from the other masteries so it'd make sense ty for that. And I don't usually think to build ZZ rot on top but I guess it'd be good especially for the movespeed. Also ignore that Aatrox vs. Morgana game in terms of my skill. I completely gave up when I was being one-shot by everybody except the Rakan on their team. I rarely flame/get tilted but that was one game I could not stand for a number of reasons including the matchup so I sorta snapped.

DemainaNyx1 votes

Perhaps Nasus has that powerspike, but if I have 40 CS at 10 minutes, a generous estimation of 30 Q kills means 90-ish stacks. And that's being overly optimistic about my stacking honestly considering Quinn used her vault to try and stop me from Q-ing. And even then 90-ish stacks is still really far behind from what I've seen.

But yeah, just try not to let those ranged top laners get to you. They're basically just a cheese tactic, like Anivia Poppy botlane (my support never learned that game...). Most of the time you will be 90% more effective later in the game cause you'll have the health advantage and they won't have a tank to protect them. Plus, you can be a 0/4 Darius and still be effective due to just being a disruption in the enemy team. Believe me, I've lost plenty of games due to my entire team trying to kill the 10/2 Lucian being protected by his Thresh while Darius and Sejuani are running at me unimpeded.

Mataka Tek1 votes

As a Malzahar Main who tried to play TopLane as first pick for about 2 weeks in a row (before this most recent nerf) , I can tell you that all it takes for you to defeat a Malzahar is:

  1. Quick Silver Sash and maybe Spirit Visage.

Pretty much every top laner that makes the QSS purchase will crush a Malzahar because QSS negates the damage from his ult as well as the CC. (just don't stand in the pool after you activate).

Or... PLay Darius, Illaoi, Mordekaiser, Kled (esp Kled), Riven, Fiora, Yorick, Xin, Nasus, or Teemo and buy QSS around level 6, and they crap on Malz all day.

However, now it is POST-NERF. Malzahar is simply too weak to jungle or Play Toplane verses ANY high ELO player.

So, if you are having trouble WITH QSS, and Spirit Visage in the last few days vs any malzahr player, your just not doing your job.

Shonjl1 votes

Its no different than a Teemo top, just survive til you get some resist to counter them then go all in on them. Even a Quinn as annoying as she is can't survive against a tank once they have some armor to counter her, just like Teemo can't survive once someone gets a SV.

If you let them get ahead early then you doom yourself, if you survive you win even if you don't kill them since they HAVE to get ahead to do well.

HeresyHorus1 votes

as a top lane melee that isn't Riven Ekko Fiora ( guys with multiple dashes on low cd ) against ranged AD, sorry u have a chance.

against any mage that isnt Vladimir Swain Kennen ( guys with no resource problem and low cd ) just get summoner 1 for their single very high cd cc early and its first blood for u, get item 3140 and they are food for u, get item 3022 and they will rage quit.

Dangerous Man1 votes

Ty all for these tips. I read them all, just waiting for another game like that so I can see what works. Only thing is @Shonjl Teemo top is much more beatable than any other ranged top laner. Even as somebody auto attack based like Aatrox, Nocturne, Poppy etc...

and @HereseyHorus I think you worded your first sentence wrong. Also I try to assume that I'm first pick in this post and I'm not picking for a ranged top laner. If I was assuming I could counterpick that would sort of ruin the point of this post (not only that, but Riven is an awful top laner in bronze and always gets destroyed, I wouldn't risk playing her without spending an hour in practice tool and even at that she is easily avoided by nearly all top laners). Since the point of this post is I've been screwed and I didn't have a chance as some specific champions for a long time, asking me to counterpick is missing the point entirely.

Also I didn't mention that I Nocturne top in the post because I can beat any lane with Nocturne due to his spellshield and fear. It's a matter of outplaying. Otherwise I struggle as every other top laner that isn't him. I'd imagine Fiora would be the same if I owned her.

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