Ranked Diaries: Top Lane Tales

With mid-low level ranked games, I find that you don't really have a set role. You always have to end up playing something else, because that one guy is always “best support EU”. So with that I ended up getting stuck with probably the worst role I play, or so I thought. Whenever I play top lane I never have a good game. Until now.

So with any lane I play that I'm not used to I will try and play a champion I know is easy to play, and I will find and use a build. Tryndamere isn't the best top lane but he is easy to lane with and if you get lucky you can snowball, not to mention the built in sustain with his Q. The thing I will say with top lane Tryndamere is that he is incredibly vulnerable to early game poke, so ranged champions give him a bad time, and since top level top lane is usually ranged or has some form of ranged poke, Jayce and Elise for example, Tryndamere has become somewhat obsolete. The only reason I got away with it, I think, was because I was against a Shen.

First of all, the the idea I had when trying to play this was that the Shen has nowhere near as much in the way of lane sustain as me, so I can burn his pots fast with some passive aggressive harassment; just focusing on farming and hiting Shen when he gets into range. This went well for more or less the entirety of the game and I just bullied Shen under his tower, which in the long run allowed me to keep him out of team fights by keeping his farm and health low, so when he ulted into the team fights, he wouldn't do as much damage with his taunt as he was already weak and behind so he can't tank much damage.

Something I did notice after playing Tyrndamere a few times after this game, is that he tends to be a go big or go home champion; if you get ahead then you snowball, dominate, and then you can carry the game with your amazing attack speed and passive crit chance, but if you don't get ahead, then you have a really hard time being useful at all. You take turrets quickly and you can wave clear efficiently, but if you end up going even, or losing the lane, then Tryndamere is almost useless for the rest of the game.

I did mess up royally during the laning phase when I ulted and dived the Shen under tower, Tryndamere's Ultimate lasts for 5 seconds before he becomes vulnerable again, and when you have already taken four hits from the tower, the next one is going to annihilate any healing you do, unless you have a full AP Sona with you, which I doubt. So naturally I died, however by this point I was already 2 kills and about 15 CS ahead, so the lane was mine. It got to the point where I couldn't be killed unless there were a minimum of three enemies bearing down on me, which was naturally quite fun.

I won this engage with ease

Another game I played in the top lane was split push Shen. When playing bruisers I naturally tend to split push if I feel it's going to help us with map dominance. I have lost a lot of games for my team because I have tried to split push and then a team fight is forced and I am not there to help my team, not entirely my fault but a good portion of the issue. However this game was strange. Being Shen my ultimate eliminates the disadvantages of split pushing, allowing me to make sure there was at least one lane open for pressure and, when people needed me, there to tank a fight. Split pushing allowed me to get incredibly well farmed meaning I had a lot of tanky items, as well as a Sunfire Cape for that extra wave clear. The early and mid game was a loss for me in lane and my team didn't look like they were doing much better; we gave a few kills but nothing too bad. Once the mid game was coming to a close however, I had been left to farm and our Vayne had also become quite farmed and was starting to become a problem. Even more so when she had a Stand United shield from me and then a taunt, meaning that they couldn't kill her, or get away. Needless to say we won that game.

The point I'm trying to get across with this article is that it is not always a bad idea to leave your comfort zone, and sometimes it works out for the best, and you learn some interesting new things about the game. So don't be afraid to play those roles that you aren't used to, just grab a build and play your game!