some advice on Kled matchups
hello people, friendly neighborhood anonagon here coming at you with a guide of sorts
i think i recently made the transition from "Kled player" to "Kled one-trick", so I thought I might as well come share my knowledge of how to play this beautiful mass murderer against opponents of all shapes and sizes. I'll be categorizing most top laners into one of five categories based on how difficult they are to play against.
Really Easy Lanes:
These champions are generally pretty squishy, and have little they can do to stop you if you start smacking them up. Q them on cooldown, E onto them aggressively.
Easy, but don't get cocky:
These champions are very squishy and can easily be killed, but have things you need to play around. You can punish them hard for harassing you they way they do other champions. If you dismount though, back if you can. These aren't easy to remount against.
Basically Every Tank:
Most of these are fairly easy matchups, but if you get even slightly behind you won't be able to kill them without help. Kled suffers against tanks if he's behind. Try to get a lead early, but be wary of ganks. If you get ahead, most of these are fairly easy, and also very easy to remount against.
Skill Matchups:
For these I should give a little more context to each.
Kled should win against Darius if he plays properly. Poke him down with Q - it should be fairly easy to stay within Q range since he's so immobile, but make sure to dodge his Q too. If you land Q but break it to dodge his, you've won the trade - he's lost mana and health and you've lost nothing. If he E's you close, be sure to stay close to dodge his Q. Don't take extended trades, because his passive ensures he wins those.
Riven has the advantage level 1 and maybe level 2, but for most the laning phase you're in control. Play around her Q cooldown. Don't go too ham, and don't dive her. She will punish you very hard for that. At level 6 you need to play safe unless you're super far ahead. The powerspike of her ultimate is honestly pretty ridiculous and while its up she outtrades you hard.
Still not entirely sure exactly how to win these matchups cause I don't see them that often, but I can confirm that they are winnable but not super easy.
Fiora:
Fiora is probably the only champion who I'd say "counters" Kled in lane. Its certainly not unwinnable, but its heavily stacked in her favor. A large portion of your early damage comes from Q, which can always be reliably Riposted. Riposte also shits on you while dismounted, because you don't gain Courage from attacks she blocks, and if she hits you with the rebound it gives you an attack speed slow, which absolutely demolishes your chance of remounting. Add on to this consistent %hp damage, consistent mobility which makes hitting Qs and Es very hard, and high damage output to put you down before you can remount... Fiora is a challenge.
Here's my advice for trying to win this matchup. Use Q to bait Riposte, and don't go in after landing a Q unless you know Riposte is down. Rather than play around your Q cooldown, play around W. To harass her, E in, wail with W, E out. Start Doran's shield and get Tabis. Get your jungler to gank if you can. If you get a lead, just try to play it safe to prevent her from snowballing, rather than try to snowball yourself.
Thanks for reading. If you don't see a matchup on here, its probably because I don't see them too much. I'll try to keep this updated. Feel free to ask any other questions about Kled if you have them.
