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Now that S5 is rolling out, Top lane deserves and NEEDS balance attention.

metaworldpeace10··3 votes·3,677 views

For right now, top lane is the LEAST balanced lane/role in the game. I guess you could make an argument that Jungle is the least balanced role, but only because of the extent of the jungle changes, the jungle will eventually be balanced, but it will take time, we all know that. Top lane, however, has been completely left in the dust. There are several issues with the top lane. As a former top lane main, I'll list them.

  1. Melee vs Ranged interaction. This topic has been discussed on various occasions and nothing has been done about it. Ranged champions pay no repercussions for being ranged. They can auto attack you and bully you to no end and there is nothing you can do about it as a melee champion. Why do you think that the only melee top lane champions played in worlds were champions that had targetable, point and click CC gap closers (Irelia, Maokai) or in Rumble's case, his ability to farm from range and his teamfight capabilities. When ADC's like Vayne or Quinn can head top, knowing that they will murder lane with little to no skill, you know that there is something fundamentally wrong with ranged/melee balance.

  2. No matter how hard you roll you're lane, you're totally worthless if either mid/bot feeds. As a top laner, I enter every game praying to RNjesus that my bot lane/mid lane are competent and hold their own. Because if bot lane or mid lane lose or both? My chances of carrying that game are kissed goodbye. I also pray that my jungler doesn't come top, because at my elo (platinum) most junglers are smart enough to gank bottom and force a 3v2 fight that usually ends in their favor and they pick up dragon immediately after. Ganking mid/bot is MUCH more advantageous than ganking top. There is no reason to go top as a jungler. If you go 5-0 in your top lane matchup, It doesn't matter, because if bot lane lost and the other team has a Janna/Thresh/Braum, you're completely invalidated in every teamfight. You cannot engage, and if you do, you'll get blown up. Why do you think the pros are playing Irelia/Maokai/Rumble/J4/Lissandra/Jayce? I know why! I'll tell you in my next point.

  3. In order to play top lane, you have to bring something useful to teamfights, safe laning or self-sustaining. Irelia is able to shrug off poke due to her w active. She's able to sustain herself through laning phase and she brings point and click cc/gap closer. Maokai has a safe laning phase relatively speaking and has huge teamfight potential. He also comes with unavoidable CC gap closer Lissandra has a safe laning phase, easy to farm with, bullies melees out of lane due to being ranged and brings a shit load of CC to the team. Yep, she's the perfect top laner. She brings hard cc for teamfights. She's mobile and can avoid the occasional gank or all in from the opposing top laner, she's safe and self-sustaining through her mobility/cc Rumble brings great CC/damage to team fights through is ultimate and has a relatively safe laning phase with long ranged poke and decent waveclear. Jayce is a great lane bully who scales beautifully into late game. Brings team wide utility all while invalidating any melee top laner. You nerfed Lucian for being a lane bully who scales into late game... Hmm.. ironically enough if you're in the top lane, you ban be a bully and scale into late game and its balanced (looking at you Ryze

  4. Tank itemization is shit. There is no avoiding this point. Tank itemization has been repeatedly nerfed over the course of the past 2 seasons. Warmogs? Nerfed. Banshee's? Nerfed. Omen? Nerfed. Sunfire Cape? Nerfed. Spirit Visage? Nerfed. Then you have items like Frozen Mallet/Wit's End/Executioner's Calling which are all either useless, have terrible build paths or are not stat efficient in anyway. Tank itemization/masteries are the core root of the problem. Once more items are introduced (hello crit reduction itemization! so I don't die in 3 seconds to a Jinx who crits me twice and blows me up) or buffed into viability, it will be easier to see which champions are abusing and which aren't. You can tweek champion balance and receive MUCH better long term stability through fixing itemization first, then champions.

I'm sorry this is a long post, but I want to start some discussion on things we can do to top lane to make it more impactful role, rather than starting the game with a prayer. hoping your team can carry you, because you cannot carry from the top lane. A few ideas I have, not saying these a perfect, but ideas notheless:

  1. Items with crit reduction
  2. Make the scuttler crap only available between mid/top lane and make it a more contestable objective.
  3. maybe add a new objective top lane? Allow baron to be farmed at the 10 minute mark, but with less bonuses and have it scale up?
  4. Make top lane tower worth more gold than the other towers?

Anyway, I hope we can get a good discussion and get some Rioters in here to discuss these very important issues!

2 Comments

Leti the Yeti2 votes

clearly supports are the least balanaced role better nerf sona

now rlly, its more like the problem is with tanks are bruisers rather than toplane

SmokingPuffin2 votes

Ranged champions pay no repercussions for being ranged. They can auto attack you and bully you to no end and there is nothing you can do about it as a melee champion.

This is true for some melee champions, especially the older ones. Basically, ranged tops are totally comfortable handling a bruiser with a targeted gap closer and melee range damage. These lanes tend to devolve into pure sustain wars, where the question is whether the bruiser can soak the damage or has to base early. In the current game balance, it's a low early sustain environment, and so ranged tops are tending to dominate the lane.

Many melee champions are comfortable against this sort of opponent, though. Examples: Gragas Kassadin LeeSin Maokai Mordekaiser Nunu Rengar Rumble Riven Singed Talon Zed Yorick

In general, it seems there are a few types of melee kits that can fight on equal terms with ranged champions:

  1. Has ranged abilities to farm with
  2. Has sufficient mobility to outplay the ranged champion
  3. Can repeatedly trade and sustain the damage back
  4. Is Singed

As a top laner, I enter every game praying to RNjesus that my bot lane/mid lane are competent and hold their own. Because if bot lane or mid lane lose or both? My chances of carrying that game are kissed goodbye.

I think about this a little differently. I think that fed tops are really good at solving fed mids, but they tend to get wrecked by fed ADCs.

In order to play top lane, you have to bring something useful to teamfights, safe laning or self-sustaining.

This sounds true, but it doesn't sound like a bad thing. I think we want to preference top laners that can teamfight well over the "I can only split push ever" guys. Split pushing should be a thing, but not the only thing the top laner can do.

Tank itemization is shit.

I don't think this is really true. Tank itemization has been nerfed repeatedly, but that's just a special case of "itemization has been nerfed repeatedly". You can say the same thing about the top tier offensive items like BT, IE, PD, and so on.

My beef with tanks is that most tanks don't really have any additional tankiness compared to bruisers. Sejuani dies about as fast as Renekton dies. I think many tanks need better base stats and scaling, and then we won't feel so bad about their items.

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