Boards›Gameplay

A Plea from Top Lane

ThrowsTheBird·7/22/2018, 7:45:18 PM·1 votes·628 views
League of Legends Champions Stats * Patch 8.14

Greetings,

I would like to briefly address the state of top lane in a few paragraphs and start a discussion.

Source: https://lolalytics.com/ranked/worldwide/platinum/plus/champions/

According to the statistics Garen enjoys a 53.8% and Mundo a 50.6% win rate while they constitute 20 % (!!!!) of all the champions played top lane. The "win rate is not everything" argument is no longer valid, since Garen has a 11% and Mundo a 9% play rate. They are the top picks across all elos at the moment. Even in diamond. This is a fact, nothing to argue here.

I would like to talk about how it impacts the Lane and the gaming experience of those players who go Top. Since they make up 20% of all picks (34% with Darius!) this means they push out a lot of champions top lane. This would not be problematic until a certain point where their kits are so overtuned that the champions have a death-grip on the lane.

Let's focus on Garen for a bit. An old champion with an old kit and that is quite alright (I don't like reworks). He should be teaching the basics of top lane for new players and apparently Riot agrees since you get Garen for free if you start a new account now. However when this champion is buffed to the point where he is a top pick even in Diamond elo you start to wonder...what is there to learn about top lane now? True damage hypercarry bruisers now LOSE to Garen according to every single statistic site I could find. This means the game no longer incentivizes you to learn complex, high risk high reward champions. To keep bad kits viable you have to overtune them to a point where it is unfun to play as or against the chamipon. This Mundo / Garen run-at-the-enemy while being invulnerable meta has several other harmful effects on the lane.

Results:

  • top lane is a non-interactive farm lane when these champions are involved
  • skill expression opportunities are very few given the simplicity of these kits
  • champion diversity is harmed. If we put Darius into the mix then the three of them (Darius, Garen, Mundo) account for 34,5% of ALL PICKS in the lane. That means every third players picks one of these champs because there is no reason not to pick them
  • top lane has stopped being rewarding to those who spend years mastering a kit.
  • Tanks / Juggernauts no longer have a weak early game which used to be the counterplay to their scaling for 7 seasons. Dirt cheap items, great scaling...and now strong early game. Something went wrong here. since items are dirt cheap and death no longer sets back a lot of these champions it does not matter what you do with them in lane.

Possible causes:

Runes Reforged and the Tank class update adjusted the base stats of these champions to an unhealthy level. Then you spend patch after patch buffing bad and outdated kits. I am talking about Chogath, Nasus, Maokai, Mundo, Garen etc. Chogath no longer loses stacks upon dying, brutal buffs to Q and R. Nasus receives even more free stats on his ult, Mundo regeneration buff just to name a few. Then you hit these champs with very small, very tiny nerfs which do not in any way make them less tanky.

Meddler said earlier that laning should be an ENGAGING PvP experience where skill determines the outcome and one laner may emerge stronger when the phase ends. This is in no way true to top lane anymore when a tank / juggernaut is present.

My question is: when is it going to be enough? How strong do you think bad kits should be? You are losing players Riot Games at a rapid rate. If you seek to make League great again then I suggest you take a good long look at what's going on top because the season 6 tank meta was NOTHING compared to how unfun and non-interactive this game has become Top Lane.

Thank you for reading.

4 Comments

FireDrizzle7/22/2018, 8:00:59 PM2 votes

"Tanks / Juggernauts no longer have a weak early game which used to be the counterplay to their scaling for 7 seasons. Dirt cheap items, great scaling...and now strong early game. Something went wrong here."

Juggernauts in general scale badly. They are lane bullies genarally. No one is picking Garen or Darius for their lategame anyway.

redniwediS7/22/2018, 8:26:48 PM1 votes

Before I start I am a Garen main. I don't intend to be a biased defender of him, I'm actually interested in conversation on this.

Tanks / Juggernauts no longer have a weak early game which used to be the counterplay to their scaling for 7 seasons.

Not entirely true. Back in the day the champions we now call Juggernauts had some of the stronger early games. The Juggernaut rework specifically changed Garen to have a weaker early game in exchange for a better late game.

But this is still a good observation. Riot has never been great about balancing the early game, with early game champions either steamrolling out of control off of one kill or sitting there until the lane phase ends because they can't do anything. That said the strongest top lane picks right now can both play safe and play aggressively. It's not about the lane being non-interactive, it's about some champions having all the cards in certain matchups.

How strong do you think bad kits should be?

This is where you fully lose me. Simple kits are not the same as bad kits. Bad kits are nerfed into the ground until Riot can do something about them, where simple kits are allowed to be strong and viable. Not every player is interested in mechanically intensive champions.

Garen specifically had his kit updated in season 5. Three years is not what I would consider old in an eight year (excluding beta) old game. He had his silence weakened, his spin adjusted for the late game, and was given an all new passive to change his play a bit, all so that he could fit into the modern game. While he could use a few tweaks his kit actually fits into the current game rather well.

As for him being "buffed to the point where he is a top pick even in Diamond elo" do you know what his last buff was?

Q base damage increased to 30 / 65 / 100 / 135 / 170 from 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130. W maximum bonus resistances increased to 40 from 30.

This happened three months ago, and the patch after saw Garen's win rate go down. The meta shifted in those three months, and Garen went from a sub-50% win rate to where he is now. It might just be the way you phrased it, but you make it seem like he was buffed and got here immediately, when it was a number of factors that made him the A tier pick he is right now.

This Mundo / Garen run-at-the-enemy while being invulnerable meta has several other harmful effects on the lane.

I won't speak for Mundo, because I don't play him, but Garen is still very easy to kite. I've had more than a few games where I steamroll, but each and every one involves the enemy team either not having the tools to kite me, or not even bothering to kite. I can just run people down and they either try to fight or they run without using any CC or attacks, and these are the people I also see complaining about Garen being broken in all chat.

When I actually face people who know what they are doing I'm kept in check, but unlike the last few seasons these people seem to be few and far between. Maybe my MMR has just tanked or something, but it really does feel like people just don't know how to kite anymore.

Even spectating the number one Garen main on NA, riste, shows stuff like this, and he is playing in Master tier. He's also a lot smarter than an average player, waiting for people to blow their CC before going in and all that, but still. Light CC comps are exactly what a Garen player wants to deal with, and they are common right now at every rank.

Meddler said earlier that laning should be an ENGAGING PvP experience where skill determines the outcome and one laner may emerge stronger when the phase ends. This is in no way true to top lane anymore when a tank / juggernaut is present.

When Meddler says "skill" he is not talking only about mechanical skill. Knowledge is a very important aspect of this game, particularly so for top lane, and is still a huge part of how engaging the lane is in this current meta. Understanding your opponent, what they can and cannot do, and what they will likely try is a skill in and of itself, and when playing against a Juggernaut is far more important than mechanics.

Vlada Cut7/22/2018, 9:08:42 PM1 votes

How to deal with all 3 at once: Pick Aatrox and git gud.