Position of Ranged Top Laners

Legendaritosity·11/23/2015, 9:59:46 PM·1 votes·883 views

I wanted to talk about the position of ranged auto reliant top laners.(vayne) I feel that many of these top laners(vayne) have made league "un-fun" and might shift the meta unexpectedly. All they have do do is auto attack the enemy melee top laner and that top laner can't cs and just has to sit under tower for 20 minutes. Not all ranged top laners have the ability to just click and zone the opposing laner out of the lane just a few like Vayne, Kayle, Teemo, Quinn, Jayce, and any other adc that goes top. However, not all top laners can get bullied by these ranged champs. Any mage like Ryze can easily last hit creeps from range or harass the enemy ranged top laner. The champs with sustain like vladmir can get more last hits than those without because the potion system early in the game for top laners took a hit when crystaline flask was removed. All the top laners without mobility are completely prey to Vayne's passive that allows her to chase them forever, or her built in true percentage max health damage. They can even harass you under your tower making last hitting impossible without having to back after only 10 seconds in lane. In the LCS out of fear of being harassed in lane or ganked the top laners would sit under tower and end with very little cs and you can see in the new meta of lane swaps putting the top laners with the lowest cs priority. Normal league of legends is not supposed to be like the lcs. We should not be forced to do nothing for several minutes because we are afraid of losing. League is supposed to be fun but if you have the choice to either back constantly, sit under tower, or die and face the rage of your teammates, it becomes less enjoyable.

Solutions to this if top lane Vayne and Guinsoos Rageblade Kayle become more popular would be to have more mages like Kennen, Ryze, Vladmir, and Cho'Gath go top lane instead of AD champs. Meanwhile mid would be for AD assassins because of the masteries favoring AD champs like Yasuo and Tryndamyere and tanks would be relegated to the jungle(would that mean assassin junglers get moved to lane?) and support. Or we could just ban Vayne every game.

I think Riot could help this by improving the potions. The regular potions are far more expensive, the refillable potion is not good enough for sustain, and the Corrupting potion prioritizes harass over sustain in lane. What we need is a more expensive (refillable) potion set that is solely focused on sustain in lane. Have it be upgraded from the refillable potion so that top laners can get it on the first back if they are taking a lot of harass in lane. Make it more than 500 gold so that people can't walk into lane with it (you might want to take into account top laners starting by killing jungle camps). Think of a creative name for it and not just "bigger refillable potion". You might want to put a limit to the amount of times it can be refilled so that it doesn't become a late game item for other lanes. When you said (I don't remember where) that you wanted to prioritize sustain for champs that needed it. I see that you did that with the masteries by including feast(health on minion kill), secret stash(better pots), runic armor(increased healing), perseverance(increased regen), and Strength of the Ages(health on a auto against a champion). However, most of the time you won't know that you will need that sustain until a few minutes into the game. I don't want league to be a game where you you realize you have imperfect runes of masteries and know the game is over because you lost lane and lost the game. I see the customizable options of league to be adaptable. You change your build to reflect many factors such as if you are behind, the enemy team's composition, the enemy's builds, or if you can sustain or not. Now we can't get additional potions if we have a refillable potion. We could do this with flask so I see this as a disadvantage to top laners that would go that sustain path. The top laners like poppy who cannot survive lane are very hurt by this change. Even if you do not consider my suggestion please make some change to make early non-auto attack related sustain available to solo laners through in game adaption.

Now I open the conversation to you. What are your opinions on the state of top lane ranged champions?

1 Comments

Makior7211/23/2015, 10:33:46 PM1 votes

When I joined lol in season 3 I mained garen top all the way to lvl 30. Along the way I had to learn to deal with the following common matchups, most of these are now common again.

Teemo, Quinn, Vayne, Ryze, heimerdinger, Jayce, Urgot, and zed.

What I learned in this time period is that if your jungles has more than 1 brain Cell they will consistently punish the top lane for over extending as they inevitably will. So sit back, miss cs unless it's under tower. Accept that you will be about 30 or so vs behind and wait on the gank from your jung or mid.