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Top lane just got a tumor again, Riot is doing nothing about it again, because it's Top... again

nelogis·6/11/2019, 8:16:52 AM·53 votes·14,994 views

"This guy talking about Tahm?"

Yes of course I'm talking about Tahm, what else would I be talking about. Once again we have something so abnormaly toxic to play against in the Top lane but it looks like Riot is feeling good about it!

Another champ that was unbalancable in his main role and whoop up you go to the dumping ground called Top. The easy way out!

And now let's look at these genius Tahm changes on the PBE

Devour (W)

  • Champion spit lockout time after animation lowered from 1 to 0.25
  • [New] Allies can no longer release themselves from Devour early whole affected by enemy loss of control effects (stun, suppression, fear, etc)
  • Allied champion spit range lowered from 400 to 250
  • Devour damage changed from [100/135/170/205/240 (+5/7/9/11/13% target max health)] to [60/105/150/195/240 (+9/10/11/12/13% target max health)]

2 of those are straight up nerfs to --> SUPPORT <-- Tahm (of course we have to make sure bot lane is fun to play, what else would we do if bot wasn't fun to play!) then there is 1 useless change and 1 BUFF FOR TOP?! If you have more than 1K HP his Devourer will do more damage! Are you out of your mind?

So this means top laners have the unique privilege of playing against this shit for another 2 weeks (If Riot is generous enough to nerf him next patch that is, who knows maybe we can enjoy this even longer)

But if ANYTHING even remotely anti-fun is viable in any other role it gets instantly banished into the abyss of unplayability. When was the last time you saw an Heimedinger bot? Malzahar support? yeah thought so.

Then we come to Top and we have to keep up diversity and can't just make Top a "melee paradise" blah blah blah insert the usual bullshit people use to justify toxic champions in Top lane.

Top is already the lane with the biggest champ pool, got take your diversity and put it in the ADC role (oh we did but then everyone cried and we reverted it all, how nice)

Also as an important note, Top laners actually don't care if every champ is vaible Top, what they care about are champs that make it unable for them to play the game. Go play your Taric top or Kha top or Warwick top or Vi top nobody gives a shit, you can at least play the game against them. It's even welcomed, gives top some fresh air!

But no, gotta collect data for 3 months, Hashinshin telling you nice things, people spamming "NERF TAHM NERF TAHM NERF TAHM NERF TAHM" on every twitter post you do and a Reddit thread with 10k upvotes titled "Top Tahm is worse than 10 gigaholocausts" for you to realize "hey maybe people actually don't want Top lane Tahm to be a thing"

59 Comments

Ravenborn6/11/2019, 3:26:07 PM3 votes

We always have something disgusting on top... Udyr, Vlad, Irelia, Riven etc... and now Tahm. I bet nothing will be done for a few more patches.

FSRER6/11/2019, 12:41:42 PM2 votes

And yet I prefer to play vs Tahm than to play vs vladimir or kennen. At least vs tahm, you can farm and play defensively and he is automatically useless because he needs kills to survive mid game.

Shahamut6/11/2019, 2:10:18 PM2 votes

I'd rather fight Tahm than Neeko...

Thingamajig6/11/2019, 8:26:54 AM2 votes

haimer wasn't touched to remove him from bot his ult was nerfed to reduce his dive potential because most haimers that weren't stupid would ult q and if they land the stun you would get 1 shot dove by a supposed squishy champion without counter play because even if you flash the stun the turrets far out damage any champion

malza bot was toxic to play against because unlike tahm that takes 10-15s to kill you malza had 1 button to play with that resulted in kills any time he wished it

renekton illaoi and riven haimer and gnar don't allow you to play top lane as well when is the last time you had the amazing experience to play against haimer?

chipndip16/12/2019, 1:41:39 AM2 votes

Just don't fight Tahm for like 15 minutes and he auto-loses the game because supports don't scale. He's only a monster if he's fed, and that only happens if you can't dodge Q or you actively engage an early game bully.

Flashes6/12/2019, 2:19:58 AM2 votes

While I do think ADCs need some diversity, it's impossible at this point in time because of the Crit itemization being the way it is, which gives auto attack based champions a massive amount of late game power.

As a result, ADCs are viable bot, and only ADCs are viable bot (except for Yasuo because he's Yasuo.) If Mages are added bot, what happened was that Vladimir, Swain, and Heimerdinger simply had more utility than traditional ADCs, but also had more damage in the early game, resulting in extremely heavy snowballs. Not to mention that this was the beginning of the snowball meta, where Assassins began to become much more common, and this was one of two largest factors as to why games are much shorter than they were a few seasons ago.

I have certainty that Riot's not going to try that again, where they made it so that suddenly 10 more champions, some with massive player bases like Caitlyn or Vayne (pre rageblade abuse), were effectively dead from the game.

AMADEUSdotEXE6/12/2019, 3:13:03 AM2 votes

I know I'm not an expert but I swear I feel like if you nerf the range on his Q he would be easier to balance. It's reasonably difficult to sidestep but the range is actually insane for how low the cooldown is. 900 range on a high damaging ability with a 2 second cooldown at rank 5 and a 1.5 second stun/slow. The hitbox isn't absurdly wide but it aint exactly thin. He stops becoming as i oppressive (You need to predict/keep moving and watch for the animation)

Void Kaiju6/12/2019, 2:38:11 PM1 votes

I know I'll be downvote brigaded for disagreeing with you and trying to be constructive, but here I go anyway.

Tahm Kench is oppressive to the current meta melee laners and he isn't fun to play against. I have played him toplane since they day he came out, and with every buff/nerf he has recieved since. I've had him mastery 7 for ages, I have a pretty solid understanding of his strengths and weaknesses.

Currently toplane is dominated by either: melees who specialize in very potent all-ins that you can't safely itemize against, or ranged champion who can stay far enough away to disengage/avoid the all-in entirely. ie. Aatrox, Irelia, Darius, Tryndamere, Renekton, Riven, etc. These champions are able to dictate when interaction gets to happen in lane and if they get ahead will simply roll over other champions with very little the other champion can do. They can pressure an engage from pretty far away and can seldom be defeated unless you're playing another one of them if you fall even a little bit behind. I personally find this far less fun to play against than Tahm Kench, but I digress.

Ranged picks naturally came as a result of these oppressive all-in melees. Tahm Kench being strong is also a result of this because he HARD COUNTERS all ins. But he is far from unstoppable. There are things you can do and they aren't particularly difficult.

-Take the L in lane, let him get a little more CS than you. He scales like garbage in teamfights if he's not massively fed. Esp. with the utility nerf coming this patch. His 1v1 is amazing, If he's zoning you, sucks but you deal with it like you deal with literally every other melee bully who can zone you off wave. And he can't engage on you without standing behind wave and becoming vulnerable to ganks.

-Shove his wave to force him to use his spells for clear. His waveclear pre-titanic hydra is garbage and requires him to W a minion and spit it into the wave to try and stop it from shoving into him. When he's unable to W you can freely go in for a trade, or if he misses Q/uses Q on a minion you're able to go in, smack him with a quick (EMPHASIS ON QUICK) combo and then retreat behind your minions.

-He can't Q you through your minion wave, so if you have a spell that can hit him inside of his you're already at a big trading advantage. Use it. If he's trying to walk through your wave to get you, wander around it and force him to waste time walking whilst you land spells through minions. Chances are you'll either do enough damage to force him to back off, do enough damage to win trade even through his w+e.

-Play. A. Tank. Or something that can use Grasp of the Undying. It's the ultimate short trades rune, and champions who can rush early MR don't have much to fear from him. You can just apply the previously mentioned tactics whilst having convenient short trades and CC to enable them.

-Did you fall behind and now he's pushed lane and is threatening to kill you when you go up to cs? Lucky for you that although Kench has a godly 1v1 melee matchup, he's incredibly mediocre 1v2. As long as you can properly juggle his stacks between you and your jungler you can defeat him handily.

-Since Tahm Kench gets outscaled by most meta toplaners, coming out 25 CS down vs him pretty much counts as winning lane. Look for opportunities to pressure the map instead if you feel you are falling behind, he can't put much pressure on towers anyway since his entire kit is about killing champions. Go make the TP play botlane and net your team a couple of kills. Contest that dragon or rift herald or scuttlecrab. Find ways to play like TK isn't there because unless he's forcing a fight on you 1v1 he may as well not be.

-TK likes to spam Q! As I'm sure you know. Picking up early Mercury's Treads and/or a Spectres Cowl will do a lot for you to mitigate the damage you take if you fail to avoid it, and reduce the slow duration so you have more of a chance to get away. Work on sidestepping the Q, it's a lot of his battle power and in many cases is his first max spell. If he can't weave in more than 1 Q in a fight you have a solid chance at beating him.

-TK is incentivized to stack health! That means oftentimes he will forgo resists in favor of a higher HP total. He's vulnerable to people who can use BotRK or Liandry's Torment against him in lane because they can take him down really quickly.

-Unless you need to disengage, save a hard CC spell when you want to fight him. He can't cast his shield while crowd controlled, so if he's greedily fishing for that 3000 grey health shield, tagging him with a stun, silence, or knockup and then just popping through that last bit of damage will deal with him handily.

He's honestly no more cancer to play against than many of the toplane champions currently. It's just that tanks, who have the best chance of enduring lane against him, have been dealing with stuff just as frustrating for them to play against as you find Tahm Kench. If you work on being more adaptable you will find that TK is a bit of a meme pick. The nerf to the ally W means he's even LESS useful coming out of lane if he isn't fed, because he can't just be a peel machine for his stronger allies.

GodlyBane6/12/2019, 3:02:53 PM1 votes

The nww mordekaiser can beat 2 tahms on him at once. You thought tahm was bad. You THOUGHT tahm was bad? Well you have a champion that just created the S++ teir by existing. Perma ban morde if u want to have some sembelence of fun

AMADEUSdotEXE6/12/2019, 3:08:11 AM1 votes

Tahm and Riven need to be hotfixed. Tahm is just unacceptable

Exin06/12/2019, 8:50:50 PM1 votes

{quoted}

"This guy talking about Tahm?"

Yes of course I'm talking about Tahm, what else would I be talking about. Once again we have something so abnormaly toxic to play against in the Top lane but it looks like Riot is feeling good about it!

Another champ that was unbalancable in his main role and whoop up you go to the dumping ground called Top. The easy way out!

And now let's look at these genius Tahm changes on the PBE

2 of those are straight up nerfs to --> SUPPORT <-- Tahm (of course we have to make sure bot lane is fun to play, what else would we do if bot wasn't fun to play!) then there is 1 useless change and 1 BUFF FOR TOP?! If you have more than 1K HP his Devourer will do more damage! Are you out of your mind?

So this means top laners have the unique privilege of playing against this shit for another 2 weeks (If Riot is generous enough to nerf him next patch that is, who knows maybe we can enjoy this even longer)

But if ANYTHING even remotely anti-fun is viable in any other role it gets instantly banished into the abyss of unplayability. When was the last time you saw an Heimedinger bot? Malzahar support? yeah thought so.

Then we come to Top and we have to keep up diversity and can't just make Top a "melee paradise" blah blah blah insert the usual bullshit people use to justify toxic champions in Top lane.

Top is already the lane with the biggest champ pool, got take your diversity and put it in the ADC role (oh we did but then everyone cried and we reverted it all, how nice)

Also as an important note, Top laners actually don't care if every champ is vaible Top, what they care about are champs that make it unable for them to play the game. Go play your Taric top or Kha top or Warwick top or Vi top nobody gives a shit, you can at least play the game against them. It's even welcomed, gives top some fresh air!

But no, gotta collect data for 3 months, Hashinshin telling you nice things, people spamming "NERF TAHM NERF TAHM NERF TAHM NERF TAHM" on every twitter post you do and a Reddit thread with 10k upvotes titled "Top Tahm is worse than 10 gigaholocausts" for you to realize "hey maybe people actually don't want Top lane Tahm to be a thing"

He was send to top lane to fight another cancer and riot even removed his support class so for good or bad suck it up he is not going anywhere.

Crownless Exalt6/12/2019, 2:33:24 PM1 votes

Honestly, he is really annoying right now, but I want a VERY SLIGHTLY toned down version of him to stay top. It makes the game more interesting. I have yet to face on top, but I do think adding tanky champs back top will help with the meta. I'm pretty tired of seeing almost exclusively ranged champs and bruisers / fighters. I want tanks and mages back, but that could just simply be me.

Hammermancer6/11/2019, 6:48:16 PM1 votes

see what happens when you nerf ranged top laners?

FUCKING TAHM KENCH GETS TO BE META

Bring back jayce/quinn/vayne and his predators will be back

Rezlac6/11/2019, 10:08:17 PM1 votes

Why not put his bonus magic damage back on his ult. This makes him less overbearing pre-6.

Stahlvormund6/11/2019, 11:47:35 PM1 votes

https://boards.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/community-creations-en/xvJYFFTi-regarding-tahm-kench-rework