How Do We Get Ranged Champions out of Top Lane?
I've been thinking it over the last few days how top lane has been the most neglected role in years. I remember on Hashshin's stream when he was talking with one of the rioters a couple of years ago where the rioter even admitted that top lane is always ignored because no one on the dev team plays or thinks about it. It makes sense business wise considering the most popular roles are on the bottom half of the map. So when you have stuff like ranged matchups dominating top lane against your usual melee bruiser or tank, it has not been looked at for almost the entire year. Being the usual detective, I looked at reasons why this seems to be the case.
- HP Sustain got nerfed on most champs, so to regen harrass is very hard these days.
- Rune Reforged gives champs a lot of free starting stats, so that Vayne walking into top lane has a PTA that gives her a huge damage augmentation. The Vlad has phase rush so you can never get near him. Kennen or GP will just klepto you to get more gold than you ever could, and more items (and funnily more sustain which is the most hilarious). Due to reduction of MR in the game, mages can live there, too.
- Most ranged top laners have a lot of mobility to get away from your immobile solo laners.
- The bottom half of the map (mid, adc, support, dragon) have the most impact in the game, so there is little incentive for a jungler to come visit top these days. Top lane must self function.
Essentially, a lot of factors came together to make it where the balance of certain mechanics became too powerful, mostly due to Riot wanting certain styles of gameplay to dominate their viewing scene. Games these days feel like ranged teams do a lot better than melee ones. If you play a melee champion, you have to make sure you have a lot of mobility to either dive or to dodge the multiple skill shots used by these two specific classes.