From Island to Kingdom: Establishing Presence as a Top Laner Without Teleport

As a general rule nowadays, most top laners run Teleport. In fact, not taking Teleport as a summoner spell can cause your team to flame you before the match even starts, due to the aforementioned expectation. Teleport offers utility to the team by allowing the top laner to maintain global presence, able to quickly join team fights or contest objectives, and often approaching from unsuspected angles.

This raises a question: How can you create advantages for your team as a top laner without Teleport? This may seem like a frivolous question to answer at all, but you also have to remember that the meta of teleporting top laners is a somewhat recent development. It was not so long ago when League of Legends players would exclusively see top laners with Ignite or Exhaust. If a certain method saw success in the past, chances are that these same methods can also find success today. The purpose of this article is to provide insight into how to adapt to playing top lane without taking Teleport.

Kill Potential and Survivability
If you substitute Teleport for Ghost, Barrier, or Heal, you now have much more survivability than the opposing top laner (assuming that they have Teleport). For example, Ghost provides you with another escape tool for situations where your Flash is on cooldown, and you are either being ganked or about to die from losing the 1v1. Offensively, Ghost can also help you to better synergize with your jungler’s ganks or to get in range for that last bit of damage needed to secure a kill on the enemy top laner. If you take Ignite or Exhaust, your kill potential on the enemy laner escalates heavily. While these summoner spells don’t offer your team advantages, per say, they do offer YOU advantages in lane, which can translate into team advantages later in the game if you have a successful laning phase. We all know that if most top laners (Riven, Irelia, etc.) kill their opponent once, it’s usually gg.

Vision Control
Since you don’t have Teleport, dying in lane punishes you much more heavily, as it takes you longer to return to lane. Due to this, your vision game needs to be on point in order to prevent unnecessary deaths. In the image below, you can see three different colored circles. The red ones represent where your ward placement should be emphasized PRIOR to taking the outer turret. Gank paths for the enemy will be limited at this stage. The blues indicate ideal warding positions AFTER the outer turret falls, but PRIOR to destroying the inner turret. This will allow you to be aware of incoming ganks from the enemy jungler and mid laner. Finally, the white circle indicates the scuttler spawn, which should be a priority to control throughout the game in order to ensure further safety. Place your pink wards in the circled areas where you think they will be most beneficial.

Timed Pressure
Without Teleport, there will be times when you are the sole inhabitant on Top Lane Island. There are going to be instances where your lane opponent has teleported away to help in a fight or secure an objective, leaving you to farm uncontested. These are ideal situations for you to push top lane, and push HARD, especially if you are aware of their jungler’s location. There is no point in running down the map to chase down your counterpart, as you will be far too late to contribute to whatever is happening. Instead, turn your “isolation” into “domination” by taking a turret or two, in addition to stealing away jungle buffs if they’re up. This will ensure that the enemy team is punished when their top laner teleports, instead of them potentially gaining advantages at no cost to them.

Lane Mentality
As a top laner without Teleport, there is added pressure on you to win your lane. However, approach winning the lane in this situation as something you COULD do, rather than something you NEED to do. The latter outlook can easily cause you to tilt after a single misplay. Remember, your primary goal is to punish the enemy for teleporting (and if you can interrupt their Teleport, DO IT!).

Additionally, remember that at some point, laning phase should end. Once you start knocking on the doors of their base, this is a good time to begin rotating and helping your team in full capacity, as someone will almost always come to kill you once you start beating on inhibitor turrets. You should still focus on maintaining your vision control and stealing away jungle camps when you can, but sticking with your teammates will eventually become more important to you, especially since you don’t have Teleport.

Heeding this advice can help you to not only claim the island that is top lane as YOUR island, but can also serve to establish your in-game presence and expand your zone of control into a kingdom...YOUR kingdom.