Top lane is largely about lane manipulation to set up for ganks, tower dives, or being safe from them. A large part of what differentiates top from other lanes is also 1v1 matchups/duels and side-laning. Top laners range from side-laning experts to teamfighters.
Top is the most separated role in the game. This is due to the game being played around dragons, so the game is usually ‘focused’ around the bot side. You can snowball the top side heavily with some jungle investment — but this might lead to losing some early dragons, therefore one has to utilize this lead to compensate.
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Table of Contents
Takeaways from Top Lane Guide:
- Wave manipulation is crucial for top lane due to being a long 1v1 lane
- In top, trading patterns is more important to understand than other lanes
- Most top laners are also side-laning which is different from playing laning phase
- Top laners range from side-laning experts to teamfighters
- Counter picks are important in top lane
Wave Manipulation
The top lane is the lane where wave manipulation is the most important, as it is a long 1v1 lane filled with very strong all-in champions. A freeze is very hard to break due to the lack of wave clear in top lane and it being a long lane, if you have no jungle support and don’t know where the opponent Jungler is, it is a massive gamble to try to break the freeze. As such you want to avoid such a situation, as once you start losing control of the lane it can be hard to get back without help from teammates.
Trading: Steep Mastery Curve
Another crucial part of the top lane is trading, top laners tend to do elaborate trades which play out differently depending on matchups. This depends a lot on matchup knowledge, not knowing how to trade will put you in a lot of trouble in top. In some losing matchups you have to learn how to trade in a way to lose gracefully and not get run over, in others you want to trade aggressively to get control of the wave.
Knowing matchups comes down to knowing win conditions based on champion, runes, and builds. As well as the inherent properties of the champions like what trading patterns you want, which skills are important, and wave clear.
Things to keep in mind for your trades:
- Jungle position
- Cooldowns
- Matchup
- Builds + Runes
- HP + Mana
Matchup knowledge takes some experience and thought. Due to the vast variety of top lane matchups, it may be the lane with the steepest mastery curve.
Side-laning: Game Knowledge Required
Something that top laners specifically need to learn but that also tends to take a long time and requires a lot of game knowledge is side-laning. Side-laning is a bit different from laning — as now TPs are unleashed, and you will be much more involved in contesting objectives.
A common problem is players over pushing — just continuously pushing and not warding up, watching the minimap and just hoping that they can 1v2, 1v3 if they get collapsed upon. This is high risk with high reward, but you can instead just play it with low-risk consistent reward over time by actually playing the map correctly.
If you can control the area between your sidelane and mid lane by warding and moving correctly with your team you can make picks, take towers for free, and get objectives as you will be able to push up the wave and pressure without dying and control more space since you have side-lane priority.
If you are a strong split pusher you want to set up waves so that the opponent side-laners have to give up something to join the fight. If you can try to stop their TP all the better.
You need to constantly have one eye on what your team is doing and on potential fights breaking out and where you can teleport to. Also when you can roam to help in a fight. Thus side-laning is much more about overall game knowledge — as the map will be more open with towers down and both teams playing more freely and thus is more in danger of being ganked/collapsed upon if you overextend.
Teamfighting vs Sidelaning
As a top laner, you can focus on team fighting, setting up for flanks, TPs, or side-laning, where you are trying to win the duel with your opponent to gain map pressure to force more people to rotate to help your opponent or to be able to move before your opponent. This influences how you build and what runes you take depending on how you think the match will play out.
If your most important role in the game is split pushing or covering the side lane then you tend to build a bit more towards that matchup as opposed to team fight itemization. You can see how to itemize based on class here.
Counterpicks
Due to all this it can be quite important to get counter picks and good matchups in top lane, even if you are picking something to win team fights. As even these picks need to survive lane, so often these will be those that are also well suited for the top lane and side laning against strong split pushers.
