Friendly reminder to Top laners...
... and an extent all lanes and jungler roles as well. But. Observe your match up. You may be very confident in your pick, knowing your champion well, their strengths and weaknesses, not just going to that champ when its a strong pick, but because it's such a comfortable pick. Remember. Even when you get good enough with a champ to know their weaknesses, never forget them. It is simple, we already know this. But that's what a reminder is! To remind us to do this because we become complacent sometimes as we learn from our mistakes.
Which may lead to us making more mistakes, and not ones we can learn from. Mistakes that we already learned and should not make and learn nothing from. Let a couple CS go if it means you risk a bad trade. Let it happen. When you push your enemy under the turret and they have 10% HP and are trying to last hit under their tower. Let em. Maybe don't tower dive. Let them push back out, or see who gets impatient first and watch how often they end up "diving" you out from under their own tower to "bait" you back under it. And die.
Check your match ups. Being confident in your pick, why not skip the Doran Blade + Biscuit top start and go Refillable Potion + Armor if you know it's gonna be a tough lane? Remember to have the patience to allow yourself to shine when its best. Not when you want to! Which for me is always. So sometimes I get myself into situations I shouldn't, because I know under most variables involved I'll come out on top. But the second I grey screen I see the mistakes I made, the poor engages I did. The needless aggro, freezing waves for no reason when I should be roaming, ect.
That's pretty much it. Just take an extra ten seconds, and not so much try to counter pick who your opponent is, just observe and realize what the match up is. Wether they pick into your champ, or you get to pick into their's, when you meet up in lane when waves arrive, remind yourself. What does your champ do? How do they do that? How does the player go about accomplishing these things best? Then ask, who is your opponent? What do they do? How do they do that? And how does the enemy player go about accomplishing those things best?
It's then less a matter of pushing to achieve your win conditions and more or less preventing your opponent from doing what they need to. Your inherrent skill with your champ will express itself after lane phase when team fights break out. Control and dominate the lane if you cannot do so to your opponent, and if they are a bully or a snowball champ, let them bully and stock up for the mid game, and if they snowball deny them their fuel to start the snowball and itemize accordingly.
This post is not to inflame any ego's or to teach anyone, anything. Just a friendly reminder.
