General tips for someone picking up Top Lane?

Tips are generally champion and match-up dependent, but I can give you a few.

1. Minions can and will murder you. Most mid-lane and bot-lane champions don't have to worry so much about them because they are ranged, but most top laners are melee so it will be an issue. Early in the game, minion damage is massive if you try to fight your opponent near their minions.
2. Sustain is king. While beginning the game with Doran's Blade or Doran's Ring might get you an early kill, choosing a sustain heavy start is much safer in the long run. I would typically recommend Cloth5 against physical damage, Flask4 against magical damage, and LongSword3 if you want early damage.
3. Build according to your opponent early in the game. Since top lane is isolated, you want every advantage you can get. This mean that mid-tier items such as Brutalizer, Tiamat, Seeker's Armguard, Haunting Guise, Hexdrinker, Spectres Cowl, Warden's Mail, and Giant's Belt are key purchases even if you don't intend to finish their upgrades early.
4. Teleport is typically safer than ignite. While Ignite can be useful for snowballing your lane, Teleport lets you apply map pressure, gain an experience advantage, gank other lanes, join dragon fights, and splitpush later in the game. Though against some champions (Riven, Zed, etc), Exhaust is a hilarious choice since it can mitigate so much of their damage.
5. Top lane is very isolated. Junglers will often avoid ganking top lane while dragon is available, so you can't really expect a lot of help if you fall behind.
6. If you are losing lane, build defensively. This might not work well on damage-oriented champions (i.e. Riven), but a bruiser with defensive items can usually outtrade one with offensive items.
7. ** Be very careful to avoid ganks between 3:00 and 6:00.** This is the point in time most junglers would consider an early gank top, since neither team should be able to easily kill dragon at that point. After the second wave of buffs spawn, Dragon is much easier for either team to kill, so most won't risk losing it for a kill top lane.
8. **Learn to manage minions. ** Holding the minion wave where you want it is a very important skill, as is trimming the minion wave so you don't take too much damage trading. Also, make sure you know how to farm under tower, because you'll often need to stay under it if you are behind.
9. Know when to roam. When you have pushed the minion wave under the enemies tower, you can use to opportunity to check enemy buffs or to gank mid lane. Typically, you can return to lane without losing too many minions to tower.
10. Know when to trade. If the enemy used an important cooldown (i.e. their CC, their maxed ability, etc) farming, it's a good time to make a favourable trade.
11. Killing a jungle camp at level one. Check with your jungler beforehand. A common strategy is to purchase a Doran's item, kill a jungle camp at level one, recall to buy potions and a ward, and teleport to lane. This gives you an advantage in items (health, damage, sustain), experience (assuming you do it quickly enough to not miss more than one wave), a safe level 2, and lets you farm under tower. --a-- Kinda cheesy, but some laners (i.e. Trundle) can solo buff camps at level one. If you think you can steal an enemy buff without dying, it can give you a massive advantage and set their jungler behind.

If you want to watch some professional top laners to see how they play, I would recommend:

• Wingsofdeathx
• Voyboy
• Sickmotion

If you want some simple champions to try learning top lane, I'd recommend trying:

They all have innate sustain and are pretty durable with good damage. You have to get used to their playstyles and itemization, but they are pretty straightforward for the most part.

Definitely not comprehensive, but it should be a good start. If you want to ask any specific questions, I can try and help you out.

Are you good at everything? cuz you can be anything you want top lane... and you will face literally everything there is on the rift top lane jungle rejects, bot lane rejects, mid lane rejects, other top lane losers, mid cancer, and bot cancers and just cancer in general

if so, top lane is the lane for you!

Go ranged, farm, win.

Top is pretty much the most boring lane in the game right now.

If you go melee and are against another melee -- don't die. Your lane is pretty much over if you do as you will just be snowballed out of lane or at least denied farm 90% of the time.

If you go melee and are against ranged just farm under tower as best you can and hope your jungler takes mercy on your poor soul.

- Spin to win... no real counters. Just sustain and farm and occasionally harass.

If you're not playing someone who quickly snowballs to the point of easily winning 1v3s bring teleport over ignite.

Don't be afraid to give up your top tower in exchange for another objective, like Dragon.

If you have not built all the sustain you will need for the rest of the game stock up on potions with each back.

If you're melee in a ranged vs melee matchup all you typically have to do is survive the lane. Don't take any risks, and be ready to ping your jungler away if they are about to try a gank you can't follow up on. If you're ranged in a ranged vs melee matchup remember that many melee champions have better base stats than you. Just because you can poke at them freely doesn't mean they can't kill you in a single all in, even if they are behind in farm.

If you're pushing top after taking the enemy top tower instead of roaming make sure to buy multiple wards for the enemy jungle. Extra stats are nice and all, but you're already winning, there's no need to give up the advantage you've just made for yourself by getting caught in a five man gank.

If you're roaming instead of pushing additional top towers focus on objectives more than kills. You're already winning, so unless a clear kill shows up you want to help get global gold and map pressure for your team.

Farm, farm, farm. Reliable CS is the most important thing you can do, nothing improves your chances of winning more than having a huge item advantage over your opponent. Learn how to freeze lane so you can get the safest farming, easiest way to do this is to only hit the minions when they have very low health. And prioritize the cannon minions, they are the most important minion and you have to make sure you get the last hit on them.

I don't care how much sustain your champion has, always fill your inventory with as many as you can afford each time you visit base, consider a if it's a tough matchup.

Never forget boots. If you are at base with 350 gold and still need more for the next item you planned on buying, don't continue saving, buy . The extra movement speed will save your life at least twice that game.

If you are matched up against a champion with a very strong early game, like , don't, for any reason, take the fight to them. That's what they want you to do so they can first blood before you can react and then snowball out of control. Play passively, focus on just sustain and CS, they sometimes get desperate for a kill if they don't get first blood and might make a risky play by level 6, which is where you can use your ult and turret to shut them down completely.

If you're new to top lane, I highly recommend taking .Yes you won't have flash, but ignite often guarantees an early game kill on someone who just barely got away, and teleport is an underrated spell that not only allows you to protect and farm your lane much better, but late game allows you to protect key turrets and follow through with game-winning backdoors.

• Advanced Tactics for Ranged Top -

If you have a range advantage over your opponent and your opponent has a limited ability to farm at range keep your random minion damage to a minimum at level 1. Use your auto attacks/spells to inflict damage when they step up trying to farm. Your auto attacks will draw enemy minion aggro pushing your lane for you, your abilities do not draw minion aggro (unless it adds auto attack dmg). Quickly lose minion aggro by running into an unwarded brush or stepping back in your minions. If you're positioning correctly safely in your minions it'll be hard to all in you early if you keep your hp up.

A little bit of a slow push is good. Should give you more minions to detour your opponent's aggression and gives you a temporary level advantage. Especially abuse level advantages. Ward and watch the map when you push. The slower you push the longer you have pressure but the less of a minion/exp lead you will get. Too fast a push gives your opponent free farm under tower.

When you get to top lane level 1 if your opponent is MIA he could be DC or something, or maybe if he has teleport and is doing a jungle camp for level 2 and extra potions. There's a freezing trick that may be a good way to respond to this, rarely done outside competitive play. Before the two minions waves collide body block the opposing melee minions with your champion so they form a row. When they're stacked like this they'll all kill the same creep of yours in the front when you walk them back behind your minion. This is how you get an empty lane pushing against you so you can freeze it even while last hitting.

Sometimes this trick is good if you want to play passive as a ranged vs. a melee who can't touch you in lane level 1. Maybe you want to avoid a gank/ force a gank in your favor top. Giving your melee opponent as ranged early pressure shouldn't zone you from cs. You can probably easily "trim" the wave so it's not so big by the time it comes near your tower. You may be able to tank a free creeps just out of range of your tower's shot so you can keep the line of scrimage just outside the safety of your tower. When you see your opponent try to do this, attack them, punish it.

Patience can really pay in laning sometimes. If you got a frozen lane just outside your tower eventually your creeps will pile up and become stronger and push because your sides reinforcements arrive sooner. If this happens multiple times before you push to their tower you may get a gigantic minion wave that would be impossible for him to fight you in. When you get a huge minion wave into his tower he will want to be there to farm it and save his tower. Thing is under this circumstance you can inflict massive massive damage to him trying to farm it. Even if he is strong and attacks you it's very likely your minion wave > his tower depending on how tanky you are and your positioning.

Yeah I play ranged top a lot.

• Respect early level minion damage, don't go ham into a huge enemy wave or you'll lose half your health to minions alone.

• Focus on practicing your trading with whatever champ you use. Know when you can trade well with who, I advise looking at what abilities need to be blown before a good opportunity arises (i.e. Riven Q, Renekton W, etc etc)

• Keep an 'eye' on where your opposing jungler is at in his route. If you can predict when he may be able to gank you (usually level 2 or 3 for a first gank for example) then you can know when to watch your opponent for a change in aggression. Is he backing off more than he used to? He probably has a friend.

• Communicate with your jungle. A good top/jungle lane can wreck a lane easily. Do your best to keep track of wards and give your jungler opportunities to gank, BUT remember you're not the only lane so if he/she is helping elsewhere do your best on your own. Do not become reliant on junglers.

there you go

don't be afraid to damage trade, or take damage, if you take a hit and run away and say you take another hit, or you do this and repeat a few times, they'll all in, ignite you and you're dead and it goes downhill very very fast, especially against broken champions that win if the game lasts longer than 30 minutes, i.e nasus, poppy, irelia, jax, and others that can 1v5 a full team with full build

Run off to a different lane that riot hasn't managed to fuck up yet with hypocritical 0 counter-play matchups, a broken summoner spell incentivizing passive farm lanes, and a terrible balance philosophy where they nerf any top with significant game impact so low elo adcs can feel like doublelift.

Learn differences between harass and trading, learn when to zone and when to push, learn when to take enemy tower and when to keep it, learn how to play and build when you are behind.

Start you learning experience from farmers with a dash (mainly hydra users) because even if you are behind you can more easily get back into the game when champs like Malphite are having hard time when they are down like 0/3.

Toplane is kind of a farm snoozefest. You're the most isolated from the rest of your team and the least likely to receive ganks and the least likely to get ganked because botlane offers dragon control whereas baron is not even important until the laning phase is over. So just get really good at farming better than the other guy so you're more relevant when you teleport to help other areas and when teamfighting starts.

Essentially, top boils down to "CS and don't die".

Bring otherwise late game you'll have to do with at least ONE lane doing bad. Instead of raging at them, just use your teleport to give them a hand.

Build Tanky when behind

Adapt to your opponent (don't always build sunfire on mundo first if against AP and vise/versa)

Farm is your goal--killing the opponent is good--roaming bot lane can be good--But never neglect your farm.

I wouldnt use tp below Diamond, teams don't play around it mid/low elo and pressure with ignite beats tp in team fights and lane. Once in a blue moon a solo queue team will actually use tp properly but it's just not smart to count on your team to be good. Also playing non meta tops can be a good start if you're scared of certain champs (Irelia, Rumble) or scared of people who played a ton of their champ, just to throw them off their game because they won't know exactly what to do since they've never been in that matchup. Everyone else covered the basics of sustain>dorans and minions op