Unlikely Top Laners and Meta Expectations

If you've been playing silver to platinum solo queue ranked games you may notice Pantheon going mid while Kayle goes top. Course those decisions may seem a tad off, but able to work. Now is the time of a break out of strange but extremely interesting champions who can now top lane with almost no problem at all. Solo top Taric, why not? I personally have not seen he be beat in a 1v1 scenario when he builds to be a dps off-tank champion.

Next up, have you seen a Soraka dominant a top lane? I have, her ability to reduce your enemy's MR can go into the negatives dealing more than enough damage with a spell that is spammed almost as much as Evelynn's Hate Spike ability. Now of course Taric and Soraka may be used best in the roles of say Support, but they are both hard to solo lane against and given most people who top lane rarely if ever see them till later in the game, they are hard to know how to face properly.

Now during the Preseason it would be best to explore options that may change the current meta since all in all the game has changed drastically since Season 2. For instance, did you know Darius has a hard time against Heimerdinger?

Top laning supports

Heimerdinger, Taric, Kayle, and Soraka are rarely seen as powerful in the game of league of legends. The truth is they are perfect counter picks for top lane, Kayle flips Singed, Heimerdinger dunks Darius, Taric bruises Jax and Shen, and Soraka can literally starfall any tank into their immediate death. Sure it is safe to say the current meta is optimal with top laning champions like Jax, Irelia, Darius, and so on but now that those champions have hard counters it would be safe to say that there should be room for those who can and will smash them. Ergo, this is now the time to expand on the basic knowledge of league.

Most top laners are known as bruisers or those who can take a beating while still dealing out damage in a fight. Supports are known to be squishier and more or less used for their utility and non-expensive builds. Kayle going for Guinsoo's Rageblade, Taric for Runic Bulwork, Soraka for Shurelya's Reverie, and Heimerdinger for Athene's Unholy Grail. Given most of these items would not be a bad idea to build on these champions you would still want to build them, but only after you get Items designed for early game dominance and not mid or late game.

Both Heimerdinger and Soraka in top would benefit from a Haunting guise for extra health, magic penetration, and ability power. Kayle strutting around with an early Doran's Blade and a Stinger is a nice way to assert lane dominance because of her high damage early game.

Lastly Taric can build alot of items directly countering his opponents while still being strong, as in Phage, Doran's Shield, and one of the defensive boots (Ninja Tabi or Mercury Treads). By level 6 each of these champions have perfect ultimates for denying the enemy from getting an advantage. Kayle becomes invincible, Heimerdinger slows and gains additives to his abilities for a short time, Taric gains massive damage, and Soraka makes sure her and her friends don't die too soon.

 

Meta Thoughts

These champions as weak as they may be thought of can really change the game and how it is played, being harsh counters to some of the more conventional top laners. I hope to see the current meta implement these amazing additions. Certainly most people will try to keep on with the current stages of the game though mid-lane has been more of a bruiser vs AP glass-cannons simply because of a more counter heavy match-up strategies. Though if champions like Wukong and Pantheon can stroll into mid-lane then I see no reason for them not to bring other champions upfront to counter top laning savants.

More to the point, our current meta is seemingly outdated once a Vayne strolls up top and literally nukes anyone who is a common match-up. If we really want to switch things up it would be more likely to make our AD carries move up to solo top lane while our bruisers grab mid-lane and glass-cannons hang out bottom lane with champions who don't really need kills or creep farm to be good in a team fight. Ironically that means that our Jungler is the only part of the team or meta that is optimal. 

Then again that was simply my thought behind how we currently play, to be honest the current meta is what it is because it gave most of the champions successful roles and made it so that the game would be easier to explain to everyone. The hardest role by far is the jungler and is easily the best seated since the changes that started the Preseason of our favorite Riot game.

Even so if we were to switch out roles and explore the options, I do believe that top and mid lanes can easily be swapped out on occasion of champion pools for counter heavy team compositions. At the same time bottom lane can easily switch from high damage champions to more mobility champions like Lee Sin to dodge and defend from skillshot based opponents, while still being able to farm from the creeps like most do.

Jungle can now be used in a tanky dps setting allowing from more damage without too much of a need from defense to successfully gank and defeat your foes. In it's current state the meta is still fine to follow but not exactly optimal if I do say so myself. Going into Season 3 of this game I am looking forward to see if teams can successfully proceed with what we currently understand as normal or if Counter based picks will instead be the one's to prevail to see who has a greater understanding of the game themselves.

Heavy counter vs current meta, I wonder what the victors will choose as their strategies.