How to get better if literally everyone you lane against is a better player

AstroFerrari ·8/13/2015, 6:47:17 AM·4 votes·2,362 views

I've been trying to improve my top lane game but continue to be demolished by people who quite literally are just better players than I am. Or at least that's how I feel. I usually play Riven top and usually concede the first death of the game because I can't respond to my opponent correctly, get ganked, or focus on farming while they do nothing but harass me. Even if I sometimes out farm the opposing laner, they usually level up faster anyway. How do I improve?

22 Comments

Shiroi Kitsune8/13/2015, 1:15:27 PM3 votes

Don't "concede" the first death. Go into normals and practice being aggressive. Instead of doing what you would normally be doing (farm>kills), focus solely on exerting pressure on your lane opponent and winning lane (even if you technically lose because of farm). As you get better at this style, you will find you will be able to keep up with farm better while still playing extremely aggressively. Also, if you are playing Riven and losing lane, you should probably be playing a different champion. I would recommend Wu Kong as he is very mechanically simple, has a pretty high skill ceiling because of all the trick plays with the clone, and can play very aggressive early while still scaling well into the late game (though if you really love riven go for it, this is just a suggestion).

Liquid Dario8/13/2015, 7:48:16 AM3 votes

hmm i would like to go a little more in depth than he did as I can understand your frusteration. I find myself in this conundrum in mid lane sometimes.

warding more often and in the proper spots. Top tri bush and river bush are your two go to. Try to purchase a pink at a certain point in the game usually when you back after your level 6 but before level 9. Use that in tri bush even if it gets discovered it still saved you from a gank. Also you could buy a green ward and ward the enemy top lane bush closest to his tower in certain matchups like rengar jungle for example. As some junglers like to lane gank. Keep your trinket ward for the river bush. And upgrade your trinket at lvl 9. This way you can use the 2ndary trinket ward to keep the bush nearest to his tower warded.

when you speak about demolished there could be many things wrong with what you are doing. So I will try to be generic overall to show where you can make easy improvements to help you.

Depending on when / how you are trading with the enemy in lane make sure when you decide to trade you have more minnions then he does in the creep wave. As this will allow him to take more damage and can change the outcome of a fight as the minnions will aggro on to him.

Back at the correct time. If your enemy laner decides to back you generally want to push the lane to his tower asap and back as well unless your low health wise when at that point you would just want to back and buy. This allows you not to have a lane disadvantage by him coming back with something while you are still with your base item. That will make you weaker than him and good players will know to take advantage of this situation and pressure you.

csing. With riven I know there is maybe a few times where you would want to all in the enemy but against many enemies in the top lane that could be ill advised. With riven lvl 3 would be a great time to assume some pressure on the opponent as you have access to all your skills.

Understanding your spikes. Sometimes disregard the point I just made before this one in certain situations. If you are going to hit level 2 before your enemy even if its by 1 creep you have two skills to the enemies one. This is a early game power spike that you can use to bully your lane enemy. Stay near a spot you know you can enter a trade with the enemy at and know how to use your CTRL + Q / W / E as this will level the skill its the hotkey for leveling a skill. This allows you to quickly level that skill and being using a skill such as your Q at basically the same time. This allows you to quickly react to your power spike by instantly trading with the enemy while your lvl 2 and he is still lvl 1. He will easily eat more than half his hp or even die due to this situation. Allowing you to freeze the lane and pressure the enemy away from CS without running the risk of dying or losing another trade that could result in his death. This will allow you to snowball your lane as you will be able to out cs your opponent unless he gets jungle pressure to stop the freeze. Or you finally push the lane back far enough that he feels comfterable farming. Also push him away as far as you can so he loses the experience from the creeps dying as well this will give you a level and exp advantage which again goes into spikes.

Itemization. Don't just build statically the same items all the time thinking they will work on every top laner. For example, if your fighting against AP you might wanna invest in a hex drinker. Also be sure to understand and react to what your opponent is or is not building. For example, if your opponent is not building armor pen items such as brutalizer; you may want to consider building a randuins omen.

Teleport use. Make sure you make good use of your teleport if you use that. Use it to eighter get a kill bot or mid when your top laner is backed and you have enough hp / dmg to attempt it. Or use it to secure dragon and help fight the enemy off it.

Hopefully this is a little more in depth and will be more helpful to you. I think I wrote enough for now though don't want this wall to get too long so enjoy

BruisingEmu8/13/2015, 8:02:21 AM3 votes

If you're not feeling familiar enough with top lane, and you think that it could partially be due to mechanical flubs with Riven. Consider playing top with somebody with a simpler kit for a bit. So you can focus on more basic things and be sure to understand what your role at a given time is better. If you feel confident with Riven or want to keep playing her anyways, do that.

Riven is strong at pushing. Keep that in mind when considering use of teleport. If you think you can take tower because your opponent tele-ganked bot. Just let bot die and take his tower. You can totally just take ignite and go for trades on your power spikes if you don't want to play the teleport game. I know teleport is super meta right now, but if you're playing Riven the kill pressure is just as good.

It's not just about farming but also about scaring your opponent away from farm. I see a lot of Rivens charge up 2 Qs while they farm (they space them out too). So that they have a period of time where they sit on the third Q. If your opponent doesn't back off from the wave (And let the minion he was about to last hit die) then you Q to knock-up. Auto. Stun. Auto. Dash away. They have to respect that you have strong trading power for a few seconds. Use it to zone them off their farm.

Lugg8/13/2015, 4:28:45 PM1 votes

Playing against better players is what you want. You will never improve playing against players that suck.

Just do searches online on how to improve at League. There is a ton of good info out there for you to soak up and improve your game.

SavingPirateRyan8/13/2015, 9:50:29 PM1 votes

Maybe a fighter/assassin like Riven isn't the best top laner to start with? Personally I'd pick someone simpler like Garen or Darius until I figure out who the enemy top laners are and what they can and can't do.

hh the thinker8/13/2015, 6:56:29 AM1 votes

stop making the same mistakes over and over again. if you die from a gank, it's because you over extended and didn't ward, or you stayed at way too low of health. if you die 1v1, what killed you and what could you have done better? look at how they play and figure out why they played the way they did.

playing vs better players is better than worse players.

Liquid Dario8/25/2015, 7:39:46 PM1 votes

sure feel free to add me if you need some advice.

TehNACHO8/13/2015, 4:11:03 PM1 votes

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I've been trying to improve my top lane game but continue to be demolished by people who quite literally are just better players than I am. Or at least that's how I feel. I usually play Riven top and usually concede the first death of the game because I can't respond to my opponent correctly, get ganked, or focus on farming while they do nothing but harass me.

Riven actually loses a lot of lane match ups in terms of raw stats. What makes Riven scary is using her CC in tandem with her mobility to get in, stun people for free auto attacks, then immediately get back out without ever getting hit. In other words, I would recommend that if you're trying to improve in top lane in general, try to avoid Riven for now. If your opponents really are better than you, they (unlike most players on the boards) will be able to beat you through raw stats alone since you probably don't know all the tricks that makes Riven strong. For now, I recommend far more simple champions to help give yourself a grounding on how to play Top Lane as a whole before you try more mechanically advanced champions like Riven again.

Try a champion like Garen, as he has the simplest kit yet at the same time the widest amount of beginner skills to teach.

Being mana-less and having far easier skills to execute, Garen would be able to teach you how to respond correctly to the opponent ((Counter)engage with Q, shut down their burst with W, use E for trading/dueling power). You'll notice that other top laners have similar tools to Garen as well, for example Wukong ((Counter)engage with E, damage soak/redirection on W, Q for dueling power). Even Riven has these tools.
His entire kit is still functioning while getting ganged. His Q cleanses slows and if you time it correctly against opponent abilities can help you avoid getting locked down. His W will help you counter enemy burst and hard CC. His E allows you to trade back against potentially both of your opponents without ever demanding you to stop. Each of these are their own miniature skills to learn, such as knowing which of your abilities negate enemy strengths, reinforcing the timing of defensive abilities, and giving you a lot of context to work with in terms of turning around trades.
A quick google search brings up this. If you click the Garen win rate tab, you should notice how high Garen's win rate is against many ranged or pseudo ranged Champions. How do you think it's possible that Garen is capable of doing this? More importantly, how do you think you can apply that skill with other champions to handle harass? This is a skill I think you need to learn for yourself instead of me just explaining it to you, but basically put there is a trick to fight ranged champions as a melee. Try to figure out what that is.

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Even if I sometimes out farm the opposing laner, they usually level up faster anyway.

Consider for a moment that if you get 60% of the farm, but miss 40% because you die a lot or back a lot, while the enemy laner only gets 50% of their farm, but miss 50% because they're only bad at CSing.

Of course they will out level you. This is where the art of trading is at its most important. It does not matter if you out farm the opponent if you do not know what to do with it or maintain your advantage.

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How do I improve?

Emphasize your basics. Really simple champions will teach you really simple skills that will really help you improve as a player.

HGG8/13/2015, 4:17:57 PM1 votes

INTRO Top lane is THE duelist lane. More often than not, there will be a clear winner before the laning phase end, signified at least by CS . It is my favourite lane and the one I started League with. PRO TIP 1 I noticed early on that you need to have two picks up your sleeves. Your main pick (i.e. your Riven) of course. And, you need another pick to either counter whatever counters Riven hard (Jax or w/e you feel uncomfortable playing Riven against) or to safe farm the crap out of the lane (i.e. Shen or Maokai). With these in mind, you can develop your Riven skills ONLY IF the match-up is favourable. PRO TIP 2 Also, as mentioned that top lane is duelist lane, pick order is very important, your Riven better be boxbox level if you first pick insta-lock. It is hard to hone your skills if you get counter picked Jax everytime (not saying Jax is hard tough Riven slayer but he does have an easier time than others). PRO TIP 3 Not all match ups are alike. Think about what your general strategy is first. If you know you are going to get rekt by teemo top then get items to sustain-farm and hope your jungler is going to help you out. And how about the dmg combos they usually do? Simple case is shen; you can nullify his Q blade toss with your shield if you just anticipate it. He toss the blade, you shield/dash to him, give him a combo (no need to go ham), back to farming. OUTRO Playing Riven, from my own experience, tend to make me a bit too over-confident about what I can do. I mean... boxbox can do it. Why can't I, right? But you and I ain't boxbox, so we follow proven and tested strategies to give us the most possible advantage. And maybe... one day..