I'm about to play my promos to gold. Any top lane tips for carrying?
Any tips on how to carry as a top laner? Which champions can carry hard? What should I do when behind or when ahead? When should I splitpush or roam?
15 Comments
Almost always run teleport. Whether you just want to sit in your lane truly 24/7 to dominate your lane opponent or if you know how to countergank lanes, trust me, this is how you manipulate the entire map even after you put yourself in top lane.
Most auto attack based top laners tend to be the best for carrying in solo queue. Assuming you don't get absolute wrecked in lane, almost every auto attack based champion in the game is a threat towards towers and are fast-ish at clearing lanes, making them great split pushers and in general are able to punish their enemy top laners the most the moment they leave lane.
When you are behind as a true tank or AP champ - someone with CC, you have two choices. One, ask a damage dealer to come up to top lane like your midlaner or your Jungler if they are playing a damage based Jungler, let the enemy push the lane a little, then trap them with your CC while the damage dealer wails away. The other option is to leave lane and give up your first turret, join your team for a team fight, make absolutely sure you are able to take advantage of any and all CC/Utility you have, and if your team is able to win a given team fight, ask them to rotate top lane and help you take down the enemy tower. This way, even though you left top lane and your enemy laner is able to take your top turret, a good rotation would allow you to take their turret in return, along with help snowball the rest of your team since you just helped them fight.
Now when you are behind as a damage carry or as a no CC fighter...well you're gonna have a lot more trouble. Honestly, beginning to lose top lane as somebody without any CC at all is just about the same as losing top lane completely if it ends up snowballing. You have two goals at this point: Don't die, and try to out farm the opponent. If you can at least keep up in CS, you will eventually be able to catch up and become a relevant player mid to late game since you're auto attack based. Try your absolute hardest not to spend your abilities on farming the minions. Instead, wait for the enemy to blow a really important cool down on yours. For example, if I watch a top lane Lissandra use her Ring of Frost (the AOE snare) to shove the lane, this is usually a green light to start fighting if I have an instantaneous gap closer like Jax's Leap Strike or Master Yi's Alpha Strike. Abusing cool downs is how you win mid lane how you turn around a losing lane.
Now in the regrettable case that the opponent did snowball and there's really no chance that you can fight back in a full on 1v1, cut your losses and leave the lane. You literally cannot stop the enemy from snowballing anymore as a champion with no CC, you really shouldn't act like you can. It's hard to justify any single champion ganking for you either since you have neither the damage nor the CC to help in that sort of fight. If your Jungler isn't a Feral Flare Jungler, ask him if you two can switch places for a while - he handles the top laner while you farm the jungle and catch up, just be sure to warn them that the enemy top laner is snowballing and fed. If you see an enemy MIA and you can help another lane shove their minions/destroy an enemy tower, take advantage of this opportunity with a well placed teleport and shove the lane, maybe damage the turret or even destroy it too. This is why I advocate teleport, it's one of the best recovery/advantage creating Summoner Spells a top laner can take.
In worst of worst case scenarios, buy a sightstone. Be useful to your team as a whole and provide vision control. This is really your nuclear option as in 'I fell behind way too hard in top lane, please let me be useful as a support'
I have to get to my next class, so I'm going to cut this short. I'll be back with what you should do if you are fed and have carry potential.
Pick a hard snowball duelist champ if the comp allows for it. Something like nasus would be bad if all lanes are lost by the time you get strong.
Jax, Fiora, Zed, Ryze, Irelia would be prime. Shove top and keep shoving to 2nd turret if you dont have TP to force their jung to top relieving pressure for the rest of your team. Obv ward deep wards in their jung to not get ganked
Pick whoever you are comfortable with, dont worry too much about counterpicks and roam a lot if you like more dps heavy tops
Top lanes usually win as kill lanes such as lee sin.
He can go tank or assassin.
If you have a tough lane then max w and e.
Focus less on the outcomes of individual games. Treat these games like any other games. Play them to learn and improve, not to win. Kick yourself if you feed and get carried to victory. Celebrate if you do very well but lose them.
Promos are a very minor speed bump in the grand scheme of things. You will get to Gold eventually if you're good enough. Losing these next few games is not evidence that you don't deserve Gold. Winning these next few games is not evidence that you totally did deserve it. If you care too much about how these next 5 games go, it will impact your performance in them...and also in the games you'll play after them if you lose the series.
Duo with me, I'm also in promos for gold.
Although i don't play him much, wukong is a great champ to help carry for a team, i normally always run tp and pay attention to the bot lane as 1 successful tp can really snowball a game.
If you're ahead and have ways to easily get away along with strong waveclear, don't be afraid to proxy farm. I've found that most people in silver tend to chace, so you get lots of farm and tower damage while they get farther behind. Bonus if you keep attracting the jungler while yours gets some successful ganks off.
Late game, if you took tp, you should split bot while you team holds mid. When someone comes to stop you, you can tp in to fight or take baron. Make sure your team knows not to fight. If they don't stop you and your team plays it right, then you get free towers.
Putting your trinket ward in the river bush is one of the easiest ways to make your lane safer against ganks and can save your life. Put it there every time it comes off cooldown. Keep in mind that before level 9, you can only have it up half the time, so play a bit safer when it's gone. You can also time your recalls to coincide with your ward being down. It takes about 1/4 of the trinket's cooldown to walk back from base to lane. Use this to ensure maximum safety when you're in lane and not waste your vision when you're not there.
bring teleport or stay home.
Roam when possible, play champs with great 1v2 potential like Swain since ideally you want to crush lane hard and keep jungler attention away from your botlane. TP is vital, only scrubs need ignite to win lane, but map presence and map awareness carry games more often than not.
If you're somehow losing lane then build tanky, farm under turret and defend it with teleport, don't take risks and ask your jungler NOT to gank your lane, botlane dominance wins games and getting 1v2d at top often leads to a huge botlane gank.
I mostly played Darius to gold. I always ran teleport and would look for a good time to TP gank bot lane or look for skirmishes to teleport to, especially if we were contesting or about to contest dragon. I guess it depends somewhat on what champ you are playing, but I always found split pushing to be overrated unless you have the team comp for it. Most of the time your teammates don't know how to take advantage of it anyway.
Mostly just know what your team comp is good at and adapt your strats to it. TP was a godsend for carrying from top for me.