The torment of the Top-Laners: Why top-lane bruisers suck

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• 1st: Power/Damage creep '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Bruisers/Fighters in general are the class who are more exposed to damage -- together with tanks -- due to their melee nature and lack of escape tools; however, they don't have enough tools to survive in most situations, which leads them to ultimately fail in their role: present a meaningful threat to their enemies. This problem has been severely aggravated through the last seasons due to the increase of the average damage dealt in matches (also know as the "power/damage creep" problem)

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• 2nd: Bruisers are outclassed by tanks '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Different from bruisers/fighters, a great part of the tank champions have a solution for this power/damage creep problem: strong, efficient and solid defensive tools. Generally, tanks can take almost the double of damage that a bruiser can take before falling on the ground; not only that, but they have more CC and almost the same damage (if not more) during early and mid game -- match-decisive moments. By the end of the day, the key targets of a team have much more to fear from the tanks than they have from the bruisers, since a very durable champion with %HP burst and Hard CC is much more dangerous than squishy damage threat champion without escape tools. This problem is even more visible due to the fact that some of those same tanks are top-laners and generally are much more stronger than any top-lane bruiser during the lane phase, causing this same bruiser to be outclassed by his enemy tank laner for the entire duration of the match.

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• 3rd: Overpowered and Poke-based matchups '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Champions like those above make the laning phase of most top-lane bruisers unnecessary hard and frustrating: Strong tanks like Ornn and Maokai can win any trade or all-in due to their high base stats and combination of hard CC, %HP damage and shields/heals; so you will have 2 options: try to farm-only the entire laning phase or just dry up ice trying to trade with them. Poking-based champions are the ones who nobody like to lane against. They usually concentrate too much power in their early-mid game -- remembering again, the match-decisive phase -- , which leads them to be unbalanced in terms of game phase power; not only this, but they also create a large amount of toxicity in the top-lane due to their oppressive nature, almost like a sadistic dictator (). Because of their great impact and oppressiveness in the early game, they end up getting a large vantage over their melee laner. I do agree that some of those champions can be shutdown with gank-work and smart play, but they still very toxic none less, which can lead to tilting and eventually disavantage.

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• 4th: Displacement (knockback, knockup,...) creep The reason as well of the devaluation of the Tenacity stat. This problem is similar to the power creep problem: there's too much CC in the game that cannot be mitigated, which causes the melee champions, including tanks, to simply be easily locked down for the entire duration of team fights. The only problem is that, again, bruisers generally don't have enough durability to even survive the CC duration, much less being able to be a threat after it ends.

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The first problem can be attenuated with items such as Sterak's. Maybe more variety of melee-only items with defensive tools like Sterak's Lifeline or Stoneplate's Stoneskin. Reworks like Xin Zhao's ult (a windowed defensive tool) can help bruisers at least survive after trying to do their jobs.

The second requires base stats and skill damage nerfs for SOME tanks and buffs for bruisers (maybe a base+perLV armor/MR increment).

Just nerf the poking power of the top-lane devils and buff their late game.

4th: this one is hard...