How do you deal with heavy sustain champs at top lane?

Choten·Mar 24, 2016·2 votes·1,736 views

I'm looking for any item builds, runes, or masteries that could help with this, especially for ap mages/champs.

Morellonomicon doesn't affect their health regen unless you've bursted them down to 40%. I could take ignite for the laning phase but then I lose teleport for the mid to late game. Some characters i've been having trouble with are Nasus and his passive, Graves with Death's Dance, Trundle, and Garen's passive.

All of them except for Graves tend to build tank and still deal high damage. In that case, I can build penetrations, kite, counter-build armor, whatever I have to do but they can still out-trade because they heal whatever damage they take right back.

13 Comments

JefftiffyMar 24, 20162 votes

Unfortunately top lane as well as most lanes are decided by picks. Top tier champs are the best and below that it is a bunch of counter picking. The only thing you can do to shut down heavy sustain laners is have a jungler that gives good ganks like LeeSin Hecarim XinZhao camp your lane while also playing someone like Gnar Darius etc to be able to kill them and put them behind. Most of the champs that are hard to push out of lane fall off pretty hard if they even get a little behind. I generally can bully Nasus all game with Gnar or Darius without the aid of a jungler. League isn't in the greatest spot right now for counter building.

ChotenMar 24, 20161 votes

Yeah, I noticed Nasus is pretty weak to true damage and kiting. I was able to shut him down with Olaf but it's kind of disappointing I can't beat Nasus because I built correctly to counter him. I'm just wondering if there's anything I'm missing. In the same way I'd build QSS on a mage to deal with Zed I'm wondering if Executioners Calling would be good on a mage like Karthus or a mage that has slow sustained damage rather than a 0-100 combo like Leblanc where she can just build Morellonomicon.

About the junglers I noticed a lot of junglers not ganking as often and I don't want to make them responsible for my lane especially if other lanes are having problems.

JefftiffyMar 24, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, I noticed Nasus is pretty weak to true damage and kiting. I was able to shut him down with Olaf but it's kind of disappointing I can't beat Nasus because I built correctly to counter him. I'm just wondering if there's anything I'm missing. In the same way I'd build QSS on a mage to deal with Zed I'm wondering if Executioners Calling would be good on a mage like Karthus or a mage that has slow sustained damage rather than a 0-100 combo like Leblanc where she can just build Morellonomicon.

About the junglers I noticed a lot of junglers not ganking as often and I don't want to make them responsible for my lane especially if other lanes are having problems.

As most people say. Top lane is an island. You have to carry yourself up here. I try to gank top quite a bit as jungler actually because a lot of tops have insane snowball potential which if you then bring to the rest of the team almost instantly wins the game. I think the problem is the jungler is too focused on feeding the ADC rather than the utility. It doesn't matter if your ADCs fed if they die to someone who can just ignore everyone but them.

The mentality of the average played in this game of ignore top is really bad for the health of the game and just furthers the "ADC meta" even more. You discard the raw potential of someone like Gnar MonkeyKing Darius Illaoi just to try to put a ton of weight on someone who does damage but also dies to people who are behind instead of the person who does damage and doesn't take that much damage while ahead.

darkmatchwaldoMar 24, 20162 votes

Focus on farming hard instead of trading, since they will win the trade every time with their sustain.

Conserve your resources as well. Try to keep your mana pool up the whole time your TP is on cd. You can also get your TP down to a 180 with the Mastery Insight and item 1333 . You get a 30% CD on your summoner 12 summoner 4 . That is HUGE in top lane. That means you get your back 2 full minutes before the other guy. Allowing you to back a little more frequent if you're having trouble managing your health/mana.

My personal favorite AP champion to play top lane is Ekko right now. He plays well into lane bullies like Darius and sustain monsters like Nasus . His base damage is pretty massive once you know how to trade with your Passive, E, and Q. That lets you build something like: item 3001 item 3157 item 3110 item 3065 item 3135 item 1333

And still be able to one shot squishy carries while being tanky enough to fight bruisers/tanks.

The other thing i love is his build diversity. I can go full glass cannon if my team needs a carry top laner, Bruiser if my team needs initiation that still packs a punch, or full tank if my team has plenty damage and just needs someone to start fights and soak damage.

ChotenMar 24, 20161 votes

I really like this. I can relate because in order to not get killed when my hp and mana are low, I have to recall and it lets the tower get pushed on. Sometimes I have to blow teleport just to get back to the tower rather than saving it for a botlane gank or something. Going to definitley try this out.

BaunjoMar 24, 20161 votes

I think it would help those who are willing to give advice if you gave us some champion names. There are after all a whole lot of high sustain top lanes.

ChotenMar 24, 20161 votes

"Nasus and his passive, Graves with Death's Dance, Trundle, and Garen's passive" those are just some examples. I may be leaving out some I struggled against.

JefftiffyMar 24, 20162 votes

{quoted}

"Nasus and his passive, Graves with Death's Dance, Trundle, and Garen's passive" those are just some examples. I may be leaving out some I struggled against.

I will add though generally it is best if you are losing to try and mix stats. Get some armor first then get your damage. As Gnar I like to go damage then armor. I'm not talking full building items. I'm talking get the first piece of your normal rushed item then stop and grab something situational. It may not turn the lane around, but it does tend to help a lot as even things like item 3077 item 3133 item 1031 item 3211 item 3155 all offer decent size power spikes.

ChotenMar 24, 20161 votes

I do that a lot now against champs that have really strong burst lol. But I'll try that against heavy sustainers and see how it goes. Thanks. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.

BaunjoMar 24, 20162 votes

Well, I have some bad news for you, you deal with every one of those champions in a different way. So wall of text time!

First off, mages are NOT good at sustaining health. Keep that in mind.

Nasus I have played that dog for ages. The key to dealing with nasus is to play champions that do not rely on a resource, or atleast have low costs, and just aggro the fuck out of him. Playing champions that have high sustain is also a good idea. I personally love playing Darius against him, you can make him eat a Q every time he goes in to stack.

Graves Is a odd one for you to bring up. Graves has no natural sustain, so really any champion that builds lifesteal first is suffering in damage or being tanky.

Trundle Is the same concept as nasus. If you pick a champion with no sustain and high costs, there is really nothing to do about that when someone picks up a high sustain champion. Play champions that can be very aggressive, so they do not have a chance to heal before they are dead.

Garen Again, all about the champion pick. Focus on keeping his passive down, and make sure you didn't handicap yourself.

Sire HippingtonMar 24, 20162 votes

vs nasus and teundle, there is not much option other than applying enough harras to out damage their sustain, and vs nasus early on you can also try and all in, though post 6 that is rather matchup dependend. Besides that, they lack waveclear, just push the wave hard so they loose some cs to the tower. On Mages, good manasustain so you can keep up the harras is a good option, or if you niotice they don't go for early defense, like trundle rushing hydra rather than spiritvisage, you can go agressive with items like morellos and abysal and try to burst them down. Once they are low, they often have issues sustaining as they need to get close to minions, especially nasus, so if they are low you can zone them away as they can't get close without getting bursted.

Vs Garen, longrange damage and dots help alpt, just try to hit him evry few sec with something to deny the passive. item 2033 can be usefull as it denys his passive for an extra 3 sec with the dot.

ChotenMar 24, 20161 votes

Thanks. Going to try using item 2033 more against garen. About pushing the lane, when I do that sometimes, they freeze it near their tower and blow up my pink ward constantly which makes it easier for me to get ganked. Also depending on how stacked Nasus is, being away from my tower while he has his slow seems kind of dangerous, but I'll try it out.