Top lane

CarterCarnage·May 4, 2015·1 votes·419 views

I am about to start playing ranked and I main top lane. I wanted to know if this was a good strategy. If my team has a tank, I use and if they don't, I use . Is this a good idea? I'm good with both champs.

6 Comments

ZergReapMay 4, 20151 votes

I have been an adc/top main since season 3 and I like your style. Don't feel pressured into playing Nasus (Nasus isn't bad by any means). Until you have more experience in ranked, I would just pick the champion you would rather play or think you can win lane the best with.

This season I only really play Irelia top, and you should look into her. She gets the best of both worlds with damage and tankyness (assuming you do a standard build item 3078 item 3110 item 3065 item 3143 item 3153 item 3111 ). GL

TeemoJenkinsMay 4, 20151 votes

In Bronze it seems like virtually no one knows how to deal with Susan so he's a solid pick... I find it ironic that you refer to him as a "tank" since 90% of Susan players afk farm for at least 25 minutes in a match and then split push, not team fight.

Jayce is super situational and can be countered by smart players - again you won't find many in Bronze so if you're a good Jayce player you'll be in a good spot.

CarterCarnageMay 4, 20151 votes

I find another top lane tank to be Sion. I use Sion frequently but I think that Nasus is the way to go because of how tanky he is and how much damage he can dish out if he farms correctly. Sion can put out some damage, but in my opinion, Nasus puts out more.

T RexHasLongLegsMay 4, 20151 votes

If you can win with split pushing Nasus will serve you well, otherwise it depends on your team bc you won't apply enough pressure to do anything other than win if your team is doing well and lose if they are doing bad bc the enemy can ignore your lane and 5v4 shut down your team if you don't split push well.

Out of curiosity, what do you play for other roles?

CarterCarnageMay 4, 20151 votes

Mid: Veigar Viktor Jgl: Pantheon Nunu Supp: Nidalee Adc: Caitlyn Tristana

T RexHasLongLegsMay 5, 20152 votes

WARNING: This is stupid long and you may or may not find it useful. It's stuff I wish I had thought about going into my first season of ranked so I didn't end up in bronze and then struggling in bronze bc it is legit where I belonged. In my experience the following helped me get a lot better, but at the end of the day it's a game and you should have fun, so if this advice would make the game less enjoyable, ignore the fuck out of it :D

So I'm a big fan of narrowing down your champion pool to bare essentials and then getting broader from that (it works best in my personal experience, I started broad in S3 and was low bronze after placements and made it to gold playing almost only Nunu jungle and Janna support, was silver S4 never finding something I liked enough to main, and got placed mid bronze this season after a long break and climbed to silver with mostly one champ and I think I have a lot of room for growth in terms of most of my recent losses are stuff where I made a bad choice late game so a little work may get me to gold in a month or so).

My first and BIGGEST suggestion is to look at playing pantheon top. If you love top lane the most he makes a good addition. Jayce for poke comps and stuff where they can't hard engage on you in lane so you can poke them down (nid can work similarly in mid lane and maybe top lane, so you may be able to transfer some jayce skills to playing nid mid if you end up mid very often). Then you have Nasus for split push/late game team comp that scales infinitely. Pantheon would add and early bully champ when you face an opponent who is weak early and you might want to shut down and kill in lane a bunch.

Other than that it looks pretty strong so my only other suggestion would be that I personally think one of the best things you can do is have overlap in your champ pool (ie champs that can play multiple roles), so long as you can remember to make changes as needed (played nunu support s3 and always forgot I wasn't as tanky as nunu jungle and went to ham lol).

The thing about playing champs in multiple roles is it lets you focus on getting really good on a couple champs and really learning all the little tricks about them so you can play them even against stuff that "counters them." If this is something you want to try more (and that is a BIG if) I'd look at changing your champ pool up like this:

Top: Nasus Jayce Pantheon Mid: Nidalee , maybe one of the two you play now since they are good in more match ups than those two (well Viktor is) and if you like one of your two they may be worth keeping if you play mid often and want variety Jungle: Nasus , maybe Nidalee but she is hard to learn, and maybe Nunu still because he is so strong Support: Nidalee , possibly Janna because she is strong but you may not like her, and maybe Lulu Morgana or Annie who can also go mid or top if you want an AP option if you have a mid who picks an AD champ and you don't just want them stacking armor against you. ADC: Caitlyn , Honestly she is all you need probably and she is probably easier than Tristana , but I don't really ADC bc I don't like it and I'm bad at it so I wouldn't know here.