State of Top Lane (long)

The state of top lane as of preaseason 8 is leaving me wanting to quit league.

League is one of the only games i play and i find trouble having any fun in the game anymore.

Im plat elo and it just seems that nobody plays the game to have fun anymore, they just play to win. Off meta picks in top lane are a literal death sentence, or champs that don't directly synergize with a keystone. No one picks a champion in top anymore because they want to have fun, they pick them because they want to counter the pick of their lane opponent. This is fine, but it leaves bruisers, fighters, and mages top who dont have significant teamplay potential very underwhelming.

Picks like Riven top seem to always get countered with some poke based armor tank Picks like Irelia also fall victim to the same counter And picks like Ryze just get done in by some other magic resist tank.

The point im trying to make is that keystones are far too influential as part of the game, especially when tanks can run just about every damn keystone and do well in lane. This makes champions that are restricted to 1 or 2 keystones all but want to die in lane, becase the enemy laner will always have a direct counter to their playstyle.

Attack speed top - countered by bramble vest, sunfire, or ninja tabi while all of those items have significant defensive stats for either extremely cheap or have decent defensive stats as well as a very potent innately offensive stat that allows you to outdamage your lane opponent without even trying.

Mage Top- countered by the basic spirit visage rush into something like adaptive helm, or they just build into sunfires after visage, giving them a disgusting amount of health, resistances, and damage.

Fighter Top- literally any damn armor item. not even a full one, just get tabis and and bami's cinder and the top laner wont do damage to you for the rest of the game. All for extremely cheap as well and with enough variety to counter any ad top. Bami's for caster based AD tops, Bramble for AA based AD top or ninja tabis. Ninja tabi's or randuins for crit based tops (adc tops or yasuo).

Top lane is falling into a meta where the enemy lane opponent builds a tank item, harasses or forces trades with you until you have to try to trade back, and then wins the trade even harder because their items excel at when you try to fight them.

So many champions now are just falling behind because it is just too damn easy to hit they power spike that will win the game. Items that are so crazy cheap like sunfires just make laning a nightmare for snowball champions, and items like hextech gunblade (leblanc and kat) make it so that they enemy mid laner can one shot any non tank player.

Too many champions are falling behind because they cant make use of the 1 item power spike meta that is going on. Take ryze for instance. Ryze is a champion based off of scaling heavily with both tear and rod of ages, which both take significant time to fully realize their potential. By the time ryze has finished his two items, the enemy top laner has bought adaptive helm and sunfires + boots and is already roaming the map contributing to the game, while ryze is still stuck waiting for his items to ramp up to full scale.

Vlad top. Vlad makes use of his vast amount of health he gets from his items to heal and deal massive amounts of damage. But the prerequisites for his power spike is he must have a significant amount of cdr, a decent amount of ap, and a decent amount of health. All hp/ap items he can build have almost no cdr in their kits and do not give a significant amount of ap(save for protobelt) and all of the cdr items he can build well lack severely in the ap department. This either leaves a vlad who heals for very little because his ap isnt high enough to scale his q up to decent % because he was prioritizing CDR, a very tanky but extremely low damage vlad because he was prioritizing health or resistances instead of CDR and AP, or a very squishy very glass cannon vlad that prioritized straight ap and for it has no Hp, Resistances, or CDR. He has no item that just fits his kit.

Champions that have THAT ONE ITEM that just falls perfectly into their playstyle and kit strengths are just dominating everything.
Akali, Leblanc, and Kat are abusing gunblade Ornn, Shen, and Sion are abusing adaptive helm, sunfires, and abyssal mask Junglers get their item extremely cheap as their items have some of the lowest cost for fully upgraded items in the game Supports are abusing the free gold income they get from support items while also being extremely versatile to playstyle. AD Assassins mid are abusing duskblade (zed)

But what are non tank top laners doing?

They are struggling to hit their powerspike with tri force because it is THE MOST EXPENSIVE ITEM IN THE GAME by far and leaves them lacking any versatility in their build-path unless they want to significantly lengthen the amount of time it will take them to hit their powerspike. They are struggling to make a dent in the armor stacking enemy top laner even though they built black cleaver against them first item (i.e. it only shreds 24% of armor and gives low ad...) They are struggling to poke their lane down enough without running out of mana because dorans shield + Spirit visage + (the passive in resolve tree that regens missing hp after u take damage) negates most of their damage. They are struggling to survive or trade in lane because their item does not offer any defensive stats, so the damage they can deal vs. the damage they take is tipped against them in a matchup where the enemy plays or builds defensively (i.e. nashors tooth, ghostblade, phantom dancer)

**Top lane is the promised land for tanks as of right now, because their is a cheap and gold efficient item to counter every playstyle. ** Heal based tops get shut down by bramble, and non AA based heal tops get countered by it anyway as auto attacking makes up a very large chunk of damage in trades and they are forced to not AA unless they want 40% reduced healing. (when is the last time you saw a mundo, volibear, trundle, or illaoi)

AA based top laners get countered by any armor item, as the VAST MAJORITY or armor items have a passive that significantly cripples an AA based top-laners stats (frozen heart, thornmail, ninja tabis, randuins - with all those passives being available in the first 1000 gold into the item)

AD based top laners just dont have a way to bust through armor stacking seeing as how black cleaver's shred passive is negligible and lethality is much too high risk and too low reward, and lethality only solves the armor problem of tank but not the health problem (i.e. as a fighter top lane my lane opponent usually has about 200-400 more health than me at any time, meaning thats 200-400 health worth of damage i have to take off them in order for us to be even)

AP top laners dont have the powerspike potential to compete with a full tank, seeing as how their strengths in top lane come at around the 2 item mark + boots.

Its just too hard to prioritize item rushes that will help you in lane while not also significantly pushing back when you reach your powerspike. Usually what ends up happening is i build for how i want to play my lane, my lane ends, and even if i am doing well i am not nearly strong enough to compete with the items anyone else in the game has bought as i gave up my mid game threat in order to have an only decent early game.

Please stop buffing tank items. I mean like at all. Dont nerf a tank item and then buff a different one. Or nerf a tank item but make it better in the long run. These backhanded nerfs that keep getting released (i.e. sunfire buff, bramble vest release, gaurdian angel changes) are making things so frustrating in the top lane.

When was the last time a bruiser item got buffed?
Steraks gage buff was the last buff for bruisers since juggernaut rework. Steraks gage is also an item that only gives base AD, and not many bruisers can efficiently make use of that ad as not many or none of their abilities scale with base ad.

Im getting sick of waiting for a bruiser meta top again. The last bruiser meta we had was when jax and trundle were top lane gods in s4, or when shyvanna top with smite was being abused for the red smite passive.

I dont want a meta where just one thing about bruisers is strong, which enables those 1 or 2 champions to faceroll the game.

**I WANT AN ALL INCLUSIVE TOP LANE THAT DOESNT END WITH EVERY COUNTER PICK BEING A TANK AND EVERY TANK VASTLY OUTDAMAGING ME DESPITE BUILDING NO DAMAGE. **