Is Top Lane The Worst Role In League of Legends?

With the recent "adjustments" (let's be real they're 100% nerfs) to the summoner spell Teleport, I wanted to make a video discussing my thoughts on why Top Lane feels like the most useless role in the game. Whether it's true or not depends on each person's opinion, but it's definitely one of the least influential roles in the game.
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#LoL #TopLane #Teleport

[@Discotechque]

The good thing with the TP nerf is you can't hashinshin yourself during laning phase.

[@bigmanbigbread4457]

Hashinshin TP into obvious tower dive has entered the chat room

[@jacobmorris8869]

you can’t what?

[@riz3778]

whag does that mean?

[@lukavidakovic2385]

@@riz3778 dying tping back and dying instantly again

[@user-is1oo8lr1r]

Hash was always rly good with the tp and he enjoyed playing top as a fighting lane sadly he would get cheesed all the time by junglers and cheese top laners because they knew he doesn't sit far back and hug a tower and pray his team wins

[@caetanoba1]

Imagine being ganked, escape, but the wave it's in a bad position. Now ur dead

[@EricBlanchBrines]

nah, this one is better min 8 u lose tower cause of herald... then the enemy toplaner frezze the lane and u cant go becouse their jgl is waiting for u.. welcome to min 15 lvl 5-6 with 60minions at most

[@gabobadohado4512]

@@EricBlanchBrines yk every lane can get the herald not just top lane Same can happen bot and mid if the tower is gone and the enemy freezes the lane

[@Hoovy_Main]

@@gabobadohado4512 yeah except that: herald is closest to top, top champs are usually the worst at breaking freezes and losing that cs impacts you the hardest since you cant roam like mid

[@Betroid]

If my top is getting camped then there should be no reason botlane isnt 4-0

[@natsudraga2252]

@@Betroid facts! so often i get camped manage not to die and farm but my jng has died bot twice and the got drag both times because they kill my jng and just take it

[@icigs3964]

11:08 The real problem with this solution is that in fact, the map is symmetric, the only real difference between the bot lane and the top lane are the pits of the dragon and the nashor so if you swap them, people will just swap the lines too and the adc and support will go to the top lane while the "toplaner" will go to the bot lane. And nothing will change apart from start calling them "botlaners" instead of toplaners

[@vez3834]

Agreed. Botlaners would just go where the dragon is.

[@Aevasrealm]

Turrets are weaker on bot

[@aaronscott7467]

technically, bot turret is weaker to ranged champions, but I concur.

[@ldalexandrite]

You forgot that bot lane turret is way more fragile compared to others. Not a ranged champion thing, they _literally_ take more damage. (Also if you’re a ranged character your damage is slightly reduced against turrets anyway)

[@icigs3964]

Is pretty clear that people didnt read comments before writting because there were 3 in a row telling that the bot turret is weaker. Just a little reminder to all of you, the bot lane didnt go to that lane because the turret is weaker. The turret is weaker because is the lane where they go. Weakening that turret is something that riot did just a pair of seasons ago ( in fact if i remeber right that turret is like always, riot reinforced the other two lanes to avoid hard lane bullies get too much advantage).

[@Goldfisher]

There is a third problem with herald that I think both this video and the (current) comments section missed. Herald is an objective often controlled through bot lane. If you watch pro play you know exactly what I mean. Once herald spawns, the team that gets pressure bot can rotate up to midlane, which puts the team in a position to do herald because if a fight breaks out they will have superior numbers. So you could gank top to get herald, sure. But you could also just gank bot and then still get herald anyway.

[@EVERYTYME]

Don't ever bring strategies from pro play to soloqueue. They're irrelevant since we have no voice coms/team practice. That strategy will never work in soloqueue

[@aidanspence1178]

Yeah, I agree with the first two. In my (limited) experience from low elo, the enemy jungler and top laner being accounted for is a necessity for Herald plays. A winning top lane will almost always shut Herald down for the enemy team, which is huge. Unless the midlaner roams up, which they don't like to do too often.

[@eVill420]

@@EVERYTYME it does work in soloQ but only once you get to like master tier

[@stankobarabata2406]

@@EVERYTYME It would work if people get their head out of their ass, read the short sentence written in chat saying "all come herald" and just trust the decision, especially after winning a botside fight. Again, I'm only saying that certain people are just too stuck up to accept someone else calling the shots. That's the entire problem with soloque and why so many games are frustrating.

[@germandiaz1742]

This is true but not a good play moveing your bot lane to take shelly its not gold/exp eficient shelly gives you 2,5 plats you cant take 3 by yousuelf in that amount of time if the other bot its no there + the wave gold and exp. I think Chainging Shelly its the only way something like she easier to kill depending of the amount of ppl hiting her to a max of 3 so mid and jungle can play for it.

[@Bro.Synchro]

The number 1 problem with top lane being almost always unfair Is the pick order role you pick first you lose you pick after them you can counter pick

[@hussain26049321]

You can flex mid

[@Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol]

Just be better 4head

[@moony5308]

@@hussain26049321 thats mostly exclusive to flex picks like sett, sylas, vladimir, graves, pantheon, irelia, tryndamere, viktor, kennen

[@Cynsham]

@@hussain26049321 assuming your mid will even allow it

[@where_is_sauce]

Riot letting top be blind pick and the rest be visible would be great

[@lightdrgn20]

An issue for top lane, if you roam while your opponent stays, you lose at least half a tower. Even worse if they are a split pusher.

[@skipperpet]

yorick gaming

[@lightdrgn20]

@@skipperpet, you don't have towers in that case.

[@Telados]

You roam, get a kill and lose two waves and two plates

[@ordoe]

Enemy roams, Yorick pushes ingibitor, enemy mad

[@didr4511]

The problem has always been the pacing of the game, the constant need for them to keep making these “exciting” changes has shifted the game from actual strategy and game state analysis to a flashy micro oriented “who does more damage in the least amount of time” meta and top just doesn’t matter unless you pick one of the four horseman (riven, irelia, Camille, Fiona) otherwise without to you have no impact till 15 minutes and by that point the games more or less being decided most games end at 25ish mins so if you asking me to wait 55% of my game time to have macro impact that’s just dogshit design

[@Broly91571]

Nothing frusterates me more than going 7 kills on riven by 15 and roaming to have a bot lane 0/15 and a mid who fed all the early roams from jungle and me kills to have such a snowball that their top laner is tilted split pushing top while you cant even get close to the 4 item caitlyn or jinx lol

[@HappyChimeNoises]

I think in theory Top is the worst lane, but soloq is a completly different game to the theory. 'In theory' elise is a bad champion because she relies on lvl 3 ganks working, snowballing early game and winning before 30 minutes. What kind of player would die at 3:10 to a gank top? In reality early game junglers like that are some of the best and almost every game even master+ a 3:10 top gank will work. Same for top - in theory the role cannot affect bot lane, cannot roam well and is the worst in the game. But when you're playing soloq in all ranks below master, top is often the one carrying the game or at least a big threat to shut down. Imo all the complaints stem from the fact that top is a LONG lane that is not dangerous to gank. It's free gold for both junglers and the champs have been nerfed over and over so that snowballing in top lane isnt as good anymore 1v1. (also with damage increasing you can often still return kill 1v1 even after a bad start so it feels like your lead doesnt matter) If Jungle, mid and support are SO impactful, that is just because they all have to have somewhere to go, which is often ganking top or making plays away from the lane(so top cant join).

[@junkjake8626]

I actually really like return kills being a possibility and I feel like it would be a lot worse if the lane was decided by the first kill because then you’re just stuck in a lost lane for 15 minutes all the while they are zoning you off cs making a huge top gap from one kill. But yeah the the constant increase in damage by riot is a problem and I think it would be helpful if they focused more on nerfing then buffing.

[@Terribly_Grimm]

Another problem is how polarizing top matchups are, one game you're fighting a Yone, next game is Akshan, then Malzahar If you're playing a melee champ some of these matchups are so obnoxious and absurdly one sided and your jungler doesn't exist like they do for bot or mid

[@sirnick12]

Honestly the damage increase seems to be one of the bigger problems when it comes to carrying as a toplaner. Back in the day if you won your lane and got a big advantage thruogh the tankiness and pressure in team fights (consistent cc and dmg as it is hard to kill you) you had a big control of fights and could aggresievely force them. Now you cant realy do that as when you get really ahead the only difference in teamfights is that if focused you get melted by carry roles in 4 seconds insetead of usual 2. And that is not nearly enough for even one full ability rotation, and those rotations is where most of your damage and pressuer as toplaner comes from (outside of champions focused on aa, but they are a different beast usually more focused on splitpushinh whole game)

[@Elphiin]

Big part of the top lane complaint also comes from being the role that revolves around counterpicks 90% of the time (not being able to leave plays a big part in this as well). Sure, it sucks to lane bot vs cait if your pick has lower range but your sup/enemy sup will also change the outcome, on toplane you just need to get blind first pick and your day might just get ruined by a certain catfish or something like that.

[@PTTLRD]

@@Elphiin fukin catfish lmao ik exactly who ure talkin about.

[@neklin7150]

Vars you forgot that if you swap locations for dragon and baron, roles will just swap with them. Dragon being at the bottom is the very reason why 2 people playing at bot is the norm in the first place.

[@mr.pierat4118]

nah two people are bot because bot towers have less defense in the early game

[@neklin7150]

@@mr.pierat4118 that norm is much older than the patch that introduced this change

[@wilfredfegelein8215]

@@mr.pierat4118 it's the other way around lol

[@Elphiin]

@@mr.pierat4118 towers got changed to how they are for that reason, if dragon a herald changed places lanes would just swap and then next patch riot either swaps around towers resists or just gives it to both towers to fix the problem.

[@floofzykitty5072]

@@mr.pierat4118 it's the other way around. Towers got changed to have less defence bot AFTER people were putting two people there since... y'know... the very beginning of League. Top laners will always be put nearest to the least important objective.

[@goldencell4755]

It now has the least amount of influence over the early game as a lane. If you're not leaving and unavoidably missing out on exp and gold on doing so, you leave the entire outcome of the early game in the hands of your teammates without your influence.

[@savage_serpent1383]

chad pantheon tp pre 6 roam mid double kill on jungler

[@azu2729]

Exactly why i've been moving over to the jungle recently. i constantly watch my team regardless of what I'm playing and the lack of early impact KILLS me even if I really enjoy how top lane plays...because like. Yes, top obviously has some impact on the game over all, but even if i go 5/0 or something like that I still need to babysit the lane for half the game and by the time I don't have to, an enemy I have a weakness to could easily be 10/1 and people don't seem to listen to pings from top as much as they seem to note my pings when I'm basically anywhere else....

[@sighman9209]

More about your ability to control the wave than anything else. As a rule of thumb, if your opponent is killing minions or recalled and you'Ve bounced the wave off tower you'Ve got time to recall, roam or invade.

[@m.douglas8492]

I really liked Rav's idea of pepper plants in topside jungle that give you a bunch of movespeed, letting you roam far easier.

[@chattychatotchannel]

that's a really cool idea!

[@floofzykitty5072]

That would be cool, but then junglers would just use them to clear faster and then power farmers would become the meta. They would have to have some kind of senseless pre-requisite such as "cannot consume pepper plants if you have Smite".

[@ramonvolp3663]

@@floofzykitty5072 might as well place them in the top lane, and they would expire when leaving river? idk

[@evilerroryt8448]

Adding pepper plants would just make it easier for the jungler to kill you why would you want that...

[@malmarci]

Add pepper plants and we bring supports and ADC up top, eat the peppers and make life hell for mid laners

[@SmegmaDaddyXL]

the map is essentially symmetrical, swapping dragon and baron positions would do absolutely nothing for the top lane role except swap lanes with bot, duo lane goes bot because it's the stronger objective, putting it top side just means you put your duo top and solo bot.

[@gniewomirkosiacki2927]

Riot made it not viable to swap lanes, because in one sesons that was meta - right now you can't do that because of plates, ones in botlane actually can take dmg pre 5 min

[@ChincerDante]

Switching then would creature a situation where bot is the solo lane, and have slightly more snowball effects due plates being able to be taken earlier, so bot turret would result in the 'top" laner getting a lead easier while bot(no in top lane) can contribute to dragon faster and easier since their turret isn't getting demolish so fast

[@suhito4628]

That's wrong lmaooo, the reason people even go 2 bot lane in the first place is because the bot lane turret is weaker than the rest.

[@ChincerDante]

@@suhito4628 before turret plates was a thing the only thing stopping bot from going top was the value of dragon, and even then during a season the most optimal way for pro players was to just rotate top, pull a lane swap, conceed bot turret to take top turret and then do the same, rotate bot and let the enemy take top. Riot purposely made bot turret the only one without extra protection for 5 minutes to force a simetrical bot lane, but the fact remains that dragon was the main reason bot has been a dual lane for a large history of the game (until the lane swap tactic became way too prevalent)

[@chris4231]

@@ChincerDante Before the Rift Herald and changes to plates the difference between top and bot was dragon proximity. So even if you made drakes literally useless, people would still go 2v2 bot just because drakes still give an advantage, insanely small, but it's still better than top. To all smarties out there, no, I'm not saying drake was useless before Rift Herald. All I'm saying is that the fact that bot was the 2v2 lane before Herald doesn't prove anything about the strength of drakes. The other thing is that League community is not rational. In a perfect world every in game behavior would be the best strategy available, but that's not how it works. Let's assume Herald is actually much stronger than drakes, but junglers hard camp bot anyway, because they believe drakes are broken. In this hypothetical scenario should Riot nerf drakes even more to make junglers gank top or should they buff drakes instead? I believe that there are no good solutions to this problem. A good representation of this is yone and yasuo. Both insanely strong right now with low win rates. I believe that these champs have low win rates because most people don't know that Yone and Yasuo scale very well, and because of that they play aggressively from level 1 when these champs are actually weak.

[@spectrophobia4042]

Right now top lane is the weakest role with the strongest champions. What I would like to see in terms of changes for it is less polarizing champion matchups. It sucks when you lose lane because you had to pick your champion first in the draft, and then your only hope is that you jungler ganks for you, which isn't fair to the jungler, who may want to play around botlane instead.

[@felipejuhasc4394]

That is why they nerfed Aatrox, which was one of the few champs that could in theory handle any type of champion, A darius?Sure, Ranged top? Can handle after 3, A mage? Put some mercury and your good to go, even that soraka top meta i was able to handle playing him

[@monsterks993]

Just abuse Shen U can first pick has literally no bad matchups and his ult is just fucking broken

[@kassaken6521]

@@monsterks993 Abuse trundle, not many melee champs can 1v1 him early game with ignite.

[@adventofnull]

@@kassaken6521 vayne top shudder

[@traine4126]

@@kassaken6521 trundle is impossible to first pick since if he gets counter picked he is unplayable. He is just a broken ass counter pick

[@michelveit8238]

Top Lane doesn‘t feel like a lane you play to win anymore. It just feels like a lane, where you try to ensure your enemy doesn’t get fed. At the state of the game right now it is not possible to get as fed as the adc, especially not consistently. You can get more xp but not more gold. Its harder to farm because most of the time you are melee vs melee, you only get one kill not 2, early kills mean almost nothing because you almost can‘t get platings before 5min and then you have 9 minutes left to collect all 5. Surely you can completely destroy your enemy, probably harder than any other position except maybe jungle, but it‘s really really hard to get ahead of the rest of the map, especially the adc.

[@jasonchangdalekrule]

I actually tend to disagree. having the winning sidelane splitpush lets you pretty much sit mid and stall 4v4 while your sidelane solo wins the game (and if they answer the side with another person, then the siege is 4v3)

[@lajosszucs6579]

@@jasonchangdalekrule that only works if your team realizes that league is a team game, but most of the time they don't Whenever you splitpush it becomes a coinflip of your team inting to a blitzcrank hook or not

[@mywifeleftmesonowimayoutub7729]

Maybe they can rework tp to have two different cooldowns based on what you teleport to. Want to influence botlane by tp to a minion? Double the cd. Want to tp to turret so u can get back to lane or counter dive? Half the cd. This would give pressure to botlane, but only once every 10 min, not influencing the lane tragically like it did.

[@thebernardoespinacovers6081]

Tbh.. if i want to.. they should have made it an item tbh... That would weaken roaming tho :/ Or rework the jungle camps and the Map as to where it would mirror everything.. The Blue buffs would stay in Top and vice versa.. and make toplane get more Camps instead of Botlane.. like Top gets 7 jungle camps while Bot gets four and also give a "lane" camp next to Toplane that's equivalent to a gromp that acts like a mini rift herald so that when you kill an enemy and the wave, you would need to kill the camp near your lane so that you wouldn't have enough time to teleport to Gank.. or have the non teleport users get an incentive if they don't pick teleport.. The Dragons and Baron would stay the same though.. That's what i thought if they want Toplane to not be an island..

[@stevensadlowski2794]

@@thebernardoespinacovers6081 do you forget that the players just would swap ? So adc and supp go top and toplaner would go bot

[@thebernardoespinacovers6081]

@@stevensadlowski2794 no.. Dragons are more important.. so if they swap, then the jungler would still pressure botlane..

[@BioTheHuman]

Or maybe make TP cd based on distance travelled (how much far away to you go from your channelling point). Sure, it would be still annoying in late game. My suggestion is to put a teleport gate (similar to hexteck ones) that it is connected to the bot lane. In this way top and bot can interact with each other more easily. Top can use the gate to group at drake and then after it use it again to go back etc. It would be strong, but it would be funnier imo. Moreover, give visual and audio queue when enemy is using it so that you can adapt and react to it being used, obviously, other top laner can interrupt the channelling.

[@awp1565]

One of the issues also relates to the matchup counterpick thing. Usually roles have pretty defined classes of champions. Mid lane its usually mages and assassins, adc has high dps marksmen, junglers are usually bruisers and assassins with a few exceptions and supports have enchanters, tanks and the ocassional mage. Top lane has every class mentioned theres too many champions in top lane. One game you can go from playing a bruiser vs bruiser matchup to playing against an ad carry as a melee and being virtually powerless. I have no idea how it could be fixed but a lot of players hate this role because of how polarizing it is.

[@marcelohomenxmacaco2557]

Just simply creating/reworking champions that where created for the other lanes and them keep them relevant in the lanes they where created for. Viktor Stoped being revelant mid, and started apearing Top. Vayne stoped being 1v9 adc bot, goes top. Pantheon wants to go sup. No nerf him until he goes back to mid/jg. Goes top and is very mediocre, still tries to be a sup. Queen, one of the best roamer and jg, nerfed, top. Kennen, good starter on mid, acceptable sup, nerfed, top. Karma stoped being a good mid/sup? Pick her top and build full armor on master+, and just become an Immortal piece of garbage that never lets her team die and can split forever. Itens get reworked, shield gets buffed, goes back to sup/mid. Ryze Trash Because of Itens, Goes Top and abuse the crap out of his mobility. Lucian is cancer on every single lane of the game, except jg and sup somehow? Well, you can bet your damn arm he will get 56% winrate top and mid will cry for help with 48% winrate.

[@jacal92]

That feeling of despair when your under tower and you see the notification of herald being by the enemy jgler.

[@calebwillingham6481]

This would change the game quite a bit overall, but I wonder if changing the spawn rate or speed of waves could help. It's difficult to leave top lane for very long because your opponent can quickly get an xp or gold lead and even turret plates with just a wave or two missed. Many top laners don't have great wave clear until the mid game, so you can't really shove the wave and roam quickly early on. But if the waves came at a slower pace, that could open up more windows to take herald, to invade the enemy jg, etc. Wave management is so important top, but it doesn't feel like tempo from that wave management matters except in the possibility of getting ganked or perhaps to help against an invade. You shove the wave, back to make sure you're keeping up in items for the 1v1, then sprint back to lane just in time to catch the wave and repeat the process while everyone else is influencing the map.

[@aaronscott7467]

On the contrary, top laners tend to have very good wave clear, which is why shoving and roaming doesn't work as well. Because demolish exists, shoving and roaming still nets the enemy a plate on average plus all the farm you lost, leading to a pretty substantial gold differential if your roam didn't net you a kill. The best option would be to remove tower plates, thus removing the need for an early game champion to stick in lane, thus allowing them to impact the map more. It also has the reverse effect too, in that it allows late game champions to safely scale once their tower falls because there is just less pressure on them in general from a lane opponent.

[@zacharybenson2702]

Ok, so i don't think anything like this needs to happen. Most of the time when the happens to top laner either they are play bad (No offense), or the enemy is just really good. There is an easy solution to this. Its called freezing the wave and then slow pushing it, if you freeze the wave at your tower for two waves then start a slow push stacking 2 or 3 waves together then you can get a cheater recall where you can recall back to base and loose nothing for it. This is because like you said most top lanners don't have great wave clear until mid game. so if you stack up 2 or 3 waves together then they wont be able to push to your tower until your back and then you can just set up another freeze and do it all over again, and do please note that this trick can be used in any lane, I've been using it for years and I'm an ADC main

[@raygun2180]

Wait isn’t the speed of the waves mid the thing that actually helps them roam better because it’s easier to stack up and crash big waves under someones tower?

[@arforafro5523]

@@raygun2180 Mid's great at roaming because its right in the middle of the map.

[@raygun2180]

@@arforafro5523 Yes. But ALSO what I said :)

[@AEVAN00B]

Freezing is really OP. When this happens your options are: - call the jungler (sub-optimal for them) - hashinshin it (respectable but risky) - good deff for minions (reportable) - proxy/roam (risky) - soak exp from bushes/inner tower (leads to a cs canyon) With how prevalent diving is, now it's no wonder Top lane can be neutralized so effectively.

[@kklap3219]

freezing is rly op, until you realize they are suddenly stacking waves on you and ur being dove 1v3.

[@mayguardian1]

and u might say oh u can freeze in every lane? but mid is so short the freeze can easily be broken by jungle or support gank. and with bot u commit so much pressure to holding a freeze. the enemy support can just roam mid while ur stuck zoning their adc off the wave.

[@Fuzzymandias_]

As an Aatrox main because of Hashinshin I can guarantee "hashinshin it" is the most fun option. Im hardstuck silver btw

[@danielbananiel123]

What does hashinshin mean?

[@AEVAN00B]

​@@danielbananiel123 Hashinshin is a streamer known for always playing aggressively, even/especially when behind. Sometimes he can still get kills and carry games despite starting a game 0/3, other times he tilts/feeds while typing essays in all chat about Riot's crappy balance team

[@marz4444]

I would fix it by doing something with the rift herald. Something like if you get 2 of them in a game, the second one is much stronger and drags more pressure on the top side of the map. This would demand attention by both the junglers who want to get the second one and teams who want to stop teams from getting a second one. But nonetheless, great video as always Vars!

[@sandycole2347]

I don’t understand everyone calling for herald buffs it is so strong already, it’s worth more than the first or second drag

[@spicytunah8043]

The best way to buff the second herald is to increase the duration of tower plating to 20 minutes and reward 100 gold per plate. This vastly reduces the amount of snowballing a lane can pull off but it also gives the option for laners to actually collect all 5 plates in a game, therefore equalizing the field as a whole.

[@Elphiin]

Herald is quite strong, people just dont know how to use it on soloq, any heralf buffs would make pro play even more centered around it and im pretty sure herald is already much more valuable than dragon in pro play.

[@stormdragon2529]

@@sandycole2347 the problem with herald is that it can be killed very easy and its not guaranteed to deliver an advantage like dragon. if you spawn it at the wrong time or position , the enemy can just kill it instantly without giving you any towerdmg or plates.

[@Nazuiko]

@Angryfps I like this idea, just make the herald eye give % true damage to turrets + increased attack speed while within 350? units of a tower (to give the primary advantage to melees, avoiding the issue of a marksman just grabbing the eye). If that doesnt work, you *coiuld* give it to the entire team as a 3-5min buff, which will DEFINITELY guarantee immense pressure from the 8th minute top side

[@MCNshot2shot]

You did touch on a posable solution when you talked about the s5/s6 tank meta. Slow down the game, increase tower defenses the closer you get to nexus. perhaps let tower plates stay up longer or decrease gold income to extend gome time.

[@davidrosales1594]

The thing is that longer games are tedious, most players don't really enjoy playing tanks, and playing against them feels really lame

[@ziglaus]

@@davidrosales1594 yes, yes, yes to all of those

[@PaladinfffLeeroy]

@@davidrosales1594 I love tank meta. Nothing better than a good noddleslapping teamfight in the morning/afternoon/evening. I fucking love playing tanks. My problem is with all of the hypermobility that has been introduced into the game. And all of this QUICK FAST "EXCITING" GAMEPLAY. Maybe the playerbase does indeed not enjoy the slower game time but I think that might be due to the audience that Riot has started to favour over what the audience used to be. The more hyper action always moving never stopping dopamine rush addicts that play Irelia or other flashy fancy over favoured championed because they "look" cooler on a big screen with 10 sweaty men playing them. But that is just how I feel. I think Riot should ditch the hyper mobility and nerf what is already in there OR double down and give EVERY champion a good mobility tool/mobility stopping tool (Poppy E, Vex passive). The playerbase themselves are too polarized at this point. A friend of mine loves playing champions like Udyr and Cho'Gath but these days it really feels like these champions cannot do anything unless they are backed up by overpowered items (Like Chemtank used to be in Udyr meta). It has become insanely difficult to hit an Irelia or Akali or Yone with a Cho knock-up for the payout you get from it. Playing against Irelia, Akali, or Yone feels really lame to me because they get all of the favour from Uncle Rito. For Fucks Sake, Yone is near impervious to CC. ALL of his dashes CANNOT be stopped with ANY crowdcontrol. Which is RIDICULOUS. While also having 2 knock-ups.

[@ioannapavlou8271]

@@davidrosales1594 "playing against tanks feels really lame" from this sequence alone I can accurately guess you are not a mid not a top main your either an adc or sup main maybe jungle.

[@davidrosales1594]

@@PaladinfffLeeroy I totally agree with you in your point about hypermobilty, it just feels shitty to play against, but I also think that those kind of characters are necessary for the game, they just need to be toned down in a way that the skill expression thing is actually real, make the champs not only flashy but effective, but only when they are played properly. And I respect that you play tanks, but I'd rather fight a cocaine addict than fighting a rock that gets to delete me the moment I get close.

[@alejandrolopez4276]

Well, for me the answer is yes... I got diamond playing top during the last season, so I decided to continue playing top for the placements games ( I ended up 4/10). After that I switched to jungle rol and I got a strong result 7/7 wins. The tp change made the top lane way more irrelevant than it was before... I want to hear your opinion about this topic. Sorry if I wrote something wrong, I'm still learning english

[@jackcanox4015]

Your english is good! And i agree with you, jungle is not an easy role in my opinion but it can have a great impact on the game while in top especially after the tp nerf...you are kinda stuck there in a 15/20 minutes long 1vs1 which i find extremely tedious and unrewarding!! Every mistake is super punishing and if you get counterpicked well...those 15 minutes can be very...very long. I am surely not as good as the game as you are but at least in silver/gold where i am toplane is *utter garbage* i don't even gank there most of the times! It's just not worth and ends up beeing a net negative even if we get a kill or 2, i also usually do herald alone as a jungler and it's actually safer since if the toplaner comes to help everyone and their mother will come and a huge fiesta will begin. Maybe it's they way i personally play (i main sejuani and trundle) because i am an objective hoarder and i MUST HAVE 4 drakes and 2 heralds at 30 min but i am just not incentivised to gank top, my goal as a jungler is to get all the relevant buffs for the team and make sure the main lanes (mid and bot) get to carry since i feel junglers should be enablers and not carries.

[@nechocat1234]

@@jackcanox4015 is not just your opinion, jubgle is one of the most important roles and one of the hardest, junglers basically have to control all the lanes at the same time and the team most lokely won't help you

[@ioannapavlou8271]

Disclaimer: mid jungle player here The whole point of this video was saying bot is all the focus and that Top wasn't made to roam but well splitpushing can be as effective. See babus he got to challenger being so useless that they need to focus him but they gain nothing doing so. If you see other Top lane players who don't get 20 deaths per game they also splitpush or can roam much earlier what makes Top lane bad can be overcomed. If you win lane great you can roam if you know how to extend your lead or just splitpush and force the enemy to send more than 2 champs as Top laners where made to be good at 2v1ing it is the role which has the easiest access to that. If they don't send anyone you will just become a beast and they will be having no Top side jungle camps not Top side turrets and you know the 5 people recalling thing. The problem with is the counter picks and how based it is on laning phase also lanes which are heavy one sidded aren't as many as people think like riven vs renecton riven has a stronger level one and out scales. But yeah jungle feels the best role to play as counterpicks aren't as important and as long as one person is winning you can win

[@stormdragon2529]

have you tried swapping to ignite,ghost and trying to hard win your lane? this is pretty much the only way a toplaner can have a high chance at winning. even for me who was a TP picker until s11, last season i swapped to ignite and i could win lane much easier and apply preassure on my own instead of relying on my teammates. that only if you have good wave management and macro understanding

[@gergovogronics850]

@@ioannapavlou8271 This. Topif impactful, it's just that there are impossible matchups, and if you die twice in a 1v1 the enemy can even dive you.

[@infrnlmssh9719]

The problem is that y'all lookin' at this backwards. It is not that top lane has the least impact in the game. It is that top as a position evolved because they are the lane/role that least need that impact/attention. Before the roles were cemented, it was not uncommon to see 2 people toplane and one bot. But eventually everyone figured out what was most efficient. Looking at the evolution of roles it starts with the ADC, like this: Objective: Destroy the Nexus. We need damage. Dedicated damage. Thus ADC is created. Getting objectives helps us get Nexus. Defending towers helps us not lose. Thus we have 3 laners. We have the jungle monsters and 2 people left. One of them should probably go kill them. Thus we have junglers. The last person should help one of the other 4. Given that the ADC is the carry, it makes sense to go help them. Thus we have supports. Now the impactful champions that are a quite vulnerable, should probably stay in the safest lane. Thus we have the mids. Should we send the ADC and support mid then? Nah, 2v2 is safe enough to go on a sidelane. Also dragon is botside. So we send them bot. Squishy mages and assassins go mid, then. Along with some niche marksmen. Allowing them to survive/roam. And then, there's toplane. If you can hold tower, you can go toplane. You are really not a big part of the overarching strategy. The impact of the roles was decided by the meta, not by the players skill or by Riot. Even though at ths point, everyone still has an impact. Then Riot messed with it. Step 1: Nerf ADC to the ground (XP nerf then crit nerf) because they are "too impactful". Except the role evolved to be the most impactful naturally. And they messed with it trying to artificially lower its impact. Step 2: All laners go: "Wait... So you're telling me that the game-deciding factor (ADCs) is up for grabs, that they can't fight back and the only thing I need to do to shut it down is show up at their lane???" BOOM!!! Roaming Nunu and Pyke mid. Akali and Kat and all toplaners and their mom bring TP. Step 3: All ADCs without escapes feel like crap (I've had better experiences and impact playing Jinx in the jungle than botlane) Assassins dominate midlane, mages sucked a bit mid but replaced ADCs. Riot nerfs teleport, so top feels not impactful at all. No one is happy. Riot may have made the game but they fail to understand the organic way the metagame evolved and what it entails. And they making wild changes to it only makes things more frustriating, instead of just adding content and nudging it a bit. Top Lane evolved to be the least impactful role in a team/game sense, it doesn't matter the champ you play toplane.

[@bielhelp]

Maybe the only way to fix this mess is giving each role an "starting bonus" and allowing player change it, if bot sides agree to an role change. And to top lane could be something like speed and armor? So they can reach the objectives faster and do their only job in the game (AKA receiving damage).

[@mohamedamajoud7952]

@@bielhelp that will be abused heavily and impractical

[@Yoshinko]

This is the reason why some high elo players started taking mages like Vex and Brand APC instead of garbage ADCs (Even low elo, as in Gold too since I'm getting Brand APCs once in a while whenever I solo play support) Why take a late-game scaling ADC that you tickle and dies when you can take a mage, build damage, do double the damage of said ADC way earlier and since mage items are busted, you stack HP on top of DMG with Haste and massive amounts of survivability with Zhonyas and Crown. Even ADCs that can build like mages, build like mages. Kai'sa builds Crown and AP now and only builds Muramana to have enough AD to evolve whichever her skills need AD to evolve. You could say that then you lack Physical DMG and, yes that's a possibility, except that MR items are garbage. You build Void anyway, have 800-900 or possibly more AP late game with most mages having scalings out of this world easily dealing 700-800 or more dmg to full build tanks even with all MR items with the addition of possible peal if your support is not a monkey and didn't pick an enchanter to your AP bot, so you're more than likely to get a Leona, Nautilus or another engage lockdown tank support that can also enhance your dmg if they build Evenshroud and Abysal Mask Additionally, your top is more likely to be Tryndamere, Jax, Yone, Irelia bringing the team the "lack of Physical DMG".

[@philippplx7147]

i said it elsewhere but ill add it here too a) part of the problem is riot trying to force lanes/roles. Look at dota and how much free choice you have in terms of position, build path and role on single heroes. b) meta is changing to roaming toplaners, including double support comps, you heard it here first

[@OccuredJakub12]

I had an idea that does shake up the whole game and its very structure: have portals in each of the alcoves which any player can use to teleport freely between top and bot lane. These portals would have a cooldown around 1 minute or so, and I think they'd allow not only for Top to not feel like an island, but also give supports a quick way to assist struggling top, for winning tops to help out bot lane while maybe the jungler stays at top lane to keep it safe for a bit, it allows a supp or adc that lost their partner to give up on their lane for a moment while they try to assist Top, it'd just be a ton of fun ways for all the players to move around the map strategically.

[@rainix3098]

That is actually a fking interesting idea :D

[@kentakyw1376]

i already thought of that, if you make top and bot connected, they would be ganking each other A LOT, then, jungle will be playing to those lanes and mid lane will be sort of the new top

[@reeson]

@@kentakyw1376 only that Midlane can just as well join in everywhere as it is still in the middle of the map next to every objective

[@Mimaximan]

This would make the laning phase last like 5 minutes which is bad. It would also completely change jungle pathing which I don’t mind. Surely it could be fixed by having the cooldown be lot longer (like 5min). It would make the portals count much more and the support would still babysit adc

[@stefanomartinelli7344]

Since we have smite that Is only for junglers, why not change tp to top only to do exactly that with a short cooldowns? Like 2 minutes, but It goes to a specific area only. Or maybe something like an ex-teleport, like flash keystone, that takes Place of normal teleport with a minute cooldowns. It teleports only to specific places in botlane, has a long casting time of 6s and gives vision of you to the enemy team. Thought that would completely make not taking TP like trolling, since the potential of ganking bot every 2-3 minutes and have map presence Is way stronger that ignite or other summoner spells. Maybe Gates like for the extech dragon?

[@axelpalazuelo3498]

what about buffing herald? Making her stronger so the jungler requires the toplaners help to kill her and giving a global buff to the whole team. Maybe the fast back the herald provides to the owner of the eye could be given to the whole team temporarly, or if it is not enough to add another buff, but always keeping the property of being an early game advantage only so the dragons can still be the permanent buff and the baron the late game buff

[@GrimoireM]

One option I'd like is if you could take Herald over to deny Dragon (get the soul stack but no gold) so that there's another indirect method to get ahead without having to break towers or accelerate the game. Top lane matchups due to their isolated nature wind up being more effective at freezing, and so letting jungle go for the deny so you can keep getting ahead on your area of the map winds up being more worthwhile than simply punching through your opponent's towers (you still can get plates, but going past their first tower becomes a problem without enough of a snowball. If there were an option to use Herald to stall out the earlygame while still getting an advantage for the late game I think that would be a good way of making the role have more impact, cause it and ADC (on average) both benefit from slowing things down and collecting farm till they hit their breakpoints. It also gives the team that's behind a way to slow the game down that isn't aram, which is something we need more of.

[@IYPITWL]

@@GrimoireM what would that do? The soul stack is the only important part of dragon.

[@lordmango6060]

I like this idea. What if the team that gets _two_ rift heralds gets a permanent boost? Like maybe a faster back for the whole game, or extra damage against objectives

[@yesser6215]

i feel like this would make the proplay herald rotations even more important

[@GrimoireM]

@@IYPITWL yeah that's a fair point. Something that leans into slowing the game down is ideally what I'm after here though. I do like Lord mango's suggestion of making herald its own effect, but I'm leaning towards something that manipulates gold generation directly rather than adding stats, so the effective gain eventually vanishes. Something like +1 Gold Per 10 (Benefiting everyone on your team equally but not by much) and Allied Minions grant 2 less Gold when killed (specifically taxing the enemy's laners but not their jungler or support. It has notable effects on the Bounty system). For a net differential of roughly 80 Gold per minute. Two stacks effectively kills off one of the enemy team's lanes for the rest of the game, meaning the enemy has to come after your champion and objective bounties consistently to make up the differential. It probably seems like it has less impact at lower levels, but it means you can legitimately create a situation where 'just farm' is how you get out of the coinflips you're in, and that's the primary goal behind it. It makes building around an earlygame top and lategame adc combo viable, because the best toplaners are the ones who actively punish and waste the enemy team's time.

[@MAMAJUGO]

Alternatively, they could go full madman and force each toplaner to lane against the enemy adc and support together, DotA offlaner style

[@catpriest]

As a former dota veteran, I'd say It's actually fair. It would be tough for both toplaners. Riot could swap objectives each 5 minutes, or else. And players run around the lanes. It's so refreshing like how blood flows in ur veins.

[@lemonrose1254]

As someone suggested changing the map layout, and lane layout might be super interesting. It would completely change league in uppredictable ways, but it might solve top lane problems or atleast partially solve them. Along with changing role dynamics. I think this would be the most interesting and satisfying approach because the thing league is known for is lanes, so changing a fundamental of it would really inject some life into the game.

[@killer_tripod]

Changing the map by switching dragon and baron or switching support to top are 1. The exact same thing because 2. ADC's (And supports) would just switch to whatever side dragon is on and nothing would be changed. There's no rule in the game that forces certain types of characters to play in certain roles, hence the existence of ranged top laners. I'm just surprised I don't see other people realizing this.

[@d180jnr]

I'm just baffled by why they would want the game to be more focused on the laning phase... the most fun moments in league come from teamfights and action not trying to scrap xp and gold from your lane because you've been A) Counterpicked B) Getting camped C) Misplay once and then stay behind all game

[@CommanderClips]

because they've been removing split-push strat since like season 7. They removed all good split push items like Banner of Command and Zz'Rod. After that, they added extreme amounts of burst to the game, leading to the teams that are behind cant teamfight because they all get bursted. Now that Riot has slowly realized this, they're adding split-push strat back into the game by adding Hullbreaker and Anthemeas chain. They made the problem and now they are trying to fix it. As a top laner, I play scaling champs so I like the TP changes... gives me more time to focus on my lane rather look for dragon TPs. I am pisslow elo so i can say the changes haven't hit low elo that bad. That being said, they do need to do something about counter picks. Blinding picking as a top laner is the scariest thing... literally made me learn Fiora because of that.

[@aaronscott7467]

Personally, it's the single misplay becoming so punishing that is the biggest problem, and that extends far beyond laning phase too. You misstep once? Oops, now you've been bursted, causing your team to lose all pressure, meaning the enemy team can get baron and siege mid for at least one turret, meaning a 500 gold swing (in total) for each member of the team that got the kill, plus you. The game has just gotten too fast, while also adding incentives for top lane to not interact with their team when they are frequently at their strongest

[@stormdragon2529]

because laningphase is the only period of the game where you personally can affect the gamestate. the game already is a lot about macro and objective control, you really want them to make it even moree team coordinated focused? in low elo its no problem since already everyone goes aram at 18 min, dont give a F about laningphase , disregard farming and just perma teamfight. but for Diamond+ , focusing on macro solely its stupid to win the game since its soloq, and its really hard making coordinated plays with your ego inflated teammates,

[@vindifference]

If you wanted them to just focus on the teamfights, then just make it ARAM on the rift. That was the creeping problem in the first place. These days, once mid game comes it's just map-wide ARAM for some reason. Stopping to cs instead of helping the 34th fight starting up half a map away is considered a sin.

[@Kelorel]

When they say that, everyone knows it's because bot laners complain about top laners tping bot all the time. Top laners often TP bot to get control over bot side so securing dragon is easier if your bot lane is ahead, which is nice if you're a top laner in a losing matchup and know you're gonna get camped so you can't play the game. TP is the only alternative to this problem. If a top laner had to pick first and got counter picked, and camped by the jungler, if the enemy top laner decides to split push because there is no reality where you beat them, you're still expected to match that laner even though you get slaughtered every time. This also makes roaming much harder because if the much stronger top laner catches you in the jungle, you're usually guaranteed to get run down immediately. Top lane is the only role where a bad matchup can mean you're not allowed to play the game for 20-30 minutes (or however long the game is). Every other role has options to deal with this problem.

[@EricBlanchBrines]

with the nerfs to the tp.. the toplane become more heavy what the last season was.. the first toplaner that gets their jgl to gank them.. they win the lane... and this season im quite bored of already having the enemy jgl at min 8 with herald and lose 1º tower from that

[@indrickboreale7381]

Whiny ADC mains couldn't handle the chadness of roaming toplane

[@MrPablichenco]

I used to play Taka a lot, in fact i were a jg main on VG

[@cherno8336]

@@indrickboreale7381 whiny too mains can't handle not having free kills

[@TheCianhogan]

I think your third solution is the right way to go, but not by just swapping Drag/Baron, instead remove jungle symmetry. If Top lane jungle camps were worth more, or a third camp is added on that side, then it increases the value of that side of the map for the jungler and the top laners. You can punish harder when stomping by clearing more camps from enemy jng, splitpushing can net even more gold/xp as a result. On the flipside, you have more resources to catch up with if you can't walk past your tower. Overall, make more resources available in the jungle on the top side. An idea that might be a little too crazy, would be to remove top alcove, and instead create another avenue of jungle above the entire top lane. This would result in the lane no longer being the edge of the map and it becomes less isolated as a result.

[@TestarossaF110]

👍

[@glitch4933]

it would literally make no difference because botlane would just go top too

[@TheCianhogan]

@@glitch4933 Nope because of Dragon

[@gabrielantunez7642]

Just fuck jungle the least played role with the least agency

[@kelmirosue3251]

Or, hear me out, make the top Alcove have something as sort of a "mini-objective" like a buff or something where whoever get's it get's X buff does Y for Z seconds. This way it incentivizes junglers to go towards top to get the buff AND herald. And not only that but make a sort of mini-competition for those who are behind, sure they'll get a buff. But they might lose 1-2 waves and HP if they go for it as well. At least then I think it'll be less of an issue overall. Hell maybe the buff could be "deal bonus damage to neutral objectives and turrets" to incentivize split pushers AND junglers to go for it

[@Aerobicsx]

Option 1: Remove herald replace it with original dragon that gives global gold to the whole team, spawns twice before baron like herald. Option 2: Have the dragon randomly spawn in top or botside at start of game, then cycle to the other side after it dies, the empty pit on the opposite side to the drake could become a zone you can control similar to skarners crystal spires that give vision and move speed in that area for whatever team controls it etc. Just some ideas.

[@supertacticaldroid1751]

Maybe keep herald but make herald give gold because Herald is cool

[@hambelperhurger5049]

The problem with option 2 is that once the teams know where it's spawning, the duo lane will follow the dragon

[@Ale-km3ux]

@@hambelperhurger5049 then don’t telegraph it,make dragon and herald (and subsequently baron)have a 50/50 chance of spawning in each pit, and only let the players in know in which one 30s before it spawns, giving enough time to make a play and set up a fight

[@danmarculescu9043]

11:11 if hipothetically the drake would go on the top side, teams would go adc-supp on toplane because in that way the support could exert more vision around it and it would be easier to kill the drake in the early stages of the game (pre 10) like it does now. The drake-herald swap wont do anything but switch lanes and bot would become the new solo lane.

[@jasonchangdalekrule]

interestingly, this isn't true because riot made specific changes a few seasons ago so that bot turret plates are squishier than top turret plates in the earlygame. We would get midgame macro (where toplane always lanes away from the currently up objective) from very earlygame (bot and top would laneswap right before first drake spawn for instance)

[@Greapes]

It’s not useless, but it is the most useless out of the lanes

[@shelovesdefoe5726]

Nah it’s completely useless

[@PaladinfffLeeroy]

@@shelovesdefoe5726 It's either insane or non-existent. A Tryndamere who got ahead early will bulldozer the entire toplane if you don't send at least 2 people to stop him, which gives you team a number advantage. But a Tryndamere who lost lane will lose really hard and do almost nothing.

[@bulletcola7890]

@@PaladinfffLeeroy doesn’t that just mean that the opposite top laner is now powerful due to that lost lane? That sounds more like a champion thing than exactly a role thing despite possibly being intertwined.

[@Cynsham]

@@shelovesdefoe5726 it either single handedly wins or loses the game for your team. your top either gets fed out of their mind/ has huge impact on other lanes through roams, or they contract yasuo syndrome and run it down 15 times and have the map impact of a melee minion

[@tobias97erdt]

@@Cynsham wait you talk about toplaners "simply roaming" you just hearn in this video that this is really not the case. Roaming brings the opponent ahead unless you make 2+ kills from your roam. You won't profit enough to compensate the plating gold you gave away

[@NekokunPlays]

I would like to say that while I agree with just about everything you said, there is one thing I would like to mention. A toplaner can have pretty nice pressure early on, if they get a kill or two, because it is very likely to draw the attention of the jungler to try and shut you down instead of ganking mid or bot. If you get really ahead, you can play a short term risk long term reward kind of game by being really pushy while keeping your river nicely warded to draw attention and pressure away from other lanes

[@jenokrivanszki7762]

it useless they can 3 man you on top and get your shutdown gold easily then you are on 24 sec death timer and you are now behind with xp-gold and turret plates-tower.

[@Blue_Spirit7]

Maybe they could make roaming from top easier and viable, like making top river flow downwards, which makes that champions that follow the current become ghosted, that way they can gank mid, and due to being down early they can also gank bot or get to drake, while going to top takes the same time as always since the current doesn't affect you if you go against it, that way you balance out and are no longer an island, maybe if the river changed direction periodically, it would create play potential, similar to how a jg would go towards the river with a scuttle, the team may favor to gank the lane which has a river flow towards it

[@kentakyw1376]

that would be amazing

[@antongrigoryev6381]

That sounds interesting. Generally, there's almost no reason for the Rift to be so symmetrical. It comes from Dota, where jungler isn't a consistent role (as far as I know, I may be wrong) and the usual composition is 2/1/2. But in League, where there is already very asymmetrical gameplay due to Champion placement, there's no reason to keep the map symmetrical.

[@shikikankillzone4239]

I imagine that happening, and then my jungler trips in the current and gets eaten by a Fizz

[@Sharphe]

I think a big change that could work is changes to champ select. The low amount of bans as well as multiple bans being used on the same champ is a problem for all lanes and I think it would help top a lot if more bans were allowed or that both teams could agree on bans per role i.e mids agree on a ban and tops would etc

[@alanyang7801]

I love how I said that top lane would be hard nerfed with the tp changes and I got flamed by a buncha salty bot laners. Y’all still got mid and jg to maul your ass so good luck with that lol. My point is, top is an island and now even more so.

[@jacal92]

Don't forget how riot nerfed top lane items for multiple patches

[@davidrosales1594]

@@jacal92 with reason to be fair, they were quite broken, I remember healing more than half my health, mutiple times in a teamfight with Goredrinker.

[@bgtv5909]

I said this too to all my friends who none of which are top laners. And they all said, this is a necessary, good change for the game. And top lane is literally so useless it infuriates me

[@jacal92]

@@davidrosales1594 then it leads to top laners like irelia resorting to using adc items, they nerfed all toplane mythics and turned deadman's into garbage.

[@davidrosales1594]

@@jacal92 And even nerfed they aren't bad at all, the problem is that while ADCs are punished for trying to use other classes mythics (except the crown, because it is busted), for example you can't build Goredrinker on ADCs because they don't get anything from it, bruisers aren't punished for taking ADC mythics, and that's because they suit them better in most cases, Riot should actually nerf those mythics when builded on melee characters, make Shieldbow's shield and stat spread weaker if you are a melee champ, you already have your shield item in Steraks, or just lock them like when you couldn't build Hurricane in melee champs, that way you can balance and improve those mythicals, without having to worry about it being too good for a guy that isn't supposed to use it.

[@NicC49]

I think it'd be cool if drags could spawn both top and bot randomly, (if drag only spawns top then ADC and support would play top), that way good junglers need to balance top and bot properly.

[@swagmaster2276]

had the exact same idea

[@CelVini]

Or just swap Dragon with Herald/Baron permanent

[@jackcanox4015]

Damn bruh you have 1200iq or something

[@genghiskhansbabymomma5649]

I think top and bot might just swap based on where the dragon spawns though

[@NicC49]

@@genghiskhansbabymomma5649 I don't think people would switch if the location of spawn was hidden untill someone gets vision on the pits.

[@golemqueen1988]

What if after first dragon, the next one could spawn in baron pit or dragon pit? Which in some games will shift teams focus to the toplane and will bring people there so that they no longer need to worry about always needing to affect the other side of the map. I'm not sure where shelly would move to, or how this would interact with baron, but I think this deserves some thought.

[@andreadimartino3369]

i thought of this too and i think it would help but not fix it, there's bound to be a role with 2 champs, and even without dragon it's gonne be more value to kill 2 mfs

[@Pyrrha_Nikos]

Then you make it impossible to create a gameplan. Imagine your top laner is gp vs Renekton. And your bot is Draven - Nautilus vs Jinx-Yuumi. Your gameplan is leave top in an island because you die 2v1and snowball bot and get dragons as a win condition. Cool. Now, after the first dragon, it spawns top side. Well, you now lost the game because your win condition lost to rng and it gives their hyper scaling bot lane which you worked your ass to shut down 5 free minutes to farm and scale. What if it happens twice? Now you have Jinx 10 minutes of free scaling. You lose to rng, even if you made the right things

[@jaderalacevich1184]

@@Pyrrha_Nikos you said right, but it's not rng, it's alternating things

[@alexanderhamilton4258]

@@jaderalacevich1184 If it's done randomly, then yes, it's rng that cost the game.

[@surpdawurp9265]

An idea that can help improve the state of top lane would be to remove the Rift Herald and introduce a new Dragon-like monster in which would give either permanent stats or gold off the bat rather than being the potential to take a few towers.

[@connorkenney6938]

Nice vid on my favourite role. I wonder if we could eventually get more diverse summoner spells depending on what role you choose. An example: you could buff your tower or use it to debuff an opponent’s tower to make dives easier.

[@DronesOverTheMoon]

That title would go for Marksmen rn

[@DronesOverTheMoon]

@Noah P i said marksman not bot lane

[@peperoni9757]

People underestimate marksmen. One rotation to a fight can change the entire game and bring your jungler ahead. Adc players are just weaklings and don't play with a carry mindset.

[@DronesOverTheMoon]

@@peperoni9757 nowe dont underestimate marksmen. they just cant fucking do what they are supposed to do since everyone does so much damagd

[@peperoni9757]

@@DronesOverTheMoon That's the entire point. They can do so much damage that they need it be squishy. Just position well and play with the team

[@greymane1994]

What if Baron and dragon pits are random? Like every time the dragon and rift spawn they have a chance of appearing in either pit, provided that there isn't already a dragon, rift herald, or baron already there. This would mean that one vision control over the pits to determine which buff it is becomes more important, and 2 means that top will get more pressure so that they can get the objective early, if it's a dragon.

[@lysbr2975]

That is a very interesting idea. Doesn't auto switch bot and top, but also adds another layer of complexity. Do you leave shelly so the next dragon spawning in 60 secs spawns bot, or rush to kill her so there is a chance the dragon will spawn top since you already have a lead there.

[@Stone7C1]

i think you missed the most obvious problem with switching drake and herald on the map. the map is symmetrical. this means adc/supp would now just go top lane, and top laners would solo bot, and it would be the exact same game as before. the reason why the duo is placed bot is exactly because of the numbers advantage at drake guaranteeing the objective in many cases, when your team wins a fight in bot lane.

[@noiizyy6666]

Two solutions: 1. Remove Jungle role 2. Build a new map that based around the jungle role

[@muff1nb0y46]

Rift herald is kinda bs tho (even as a jungle main I feel like this objective is so op i'd rather rush it instead of drakes). Removing shelly would make the lane less snowbally

[@sunnydargonnel]

Imo, jungle is the most tactical and skill-expression-ly role. The difference between a good and a bad jungler is their capacity to read the map and twist the current situations to their favor.

[@Superbootsk1]

In my opinion they should double down on the split pushing aspect of the lane since it is so effective at doing that...but teamfight champs would struggle. No easy fix. Oh and even if you switch drag and baron, who's stopping them from rotating bot and top?

[@chris4231]

It's impossible to take plates top when 2 players are hitting the tower. Riot did that so pro players don't go 2v1 top when they got bad matchups. That happened a lot I think during 2016. Also then top mains would stop complaining about an island and switch to saying 1v2 lane because jungle OP.

[@yfamous1522]

@@chris4231 I mean Both statements are true lol

[@corbinanderson6587]

My terrible idea for adding extra toplane influence is to have a hexgate style teleporter between Lane coves, allowing toplane to freely interact with bottom and vice versa. At the very least it sounds like a fun addition to a bonus mode.

[@beach4612]

Do you have a match ID for the Gwen Gameplay by chance @4:30? I might be in the clip and would love to know if its true lol

[@Gamber63]

imo this tp change really changes how top plays out now, as utility needs more planning to help the team, but carry can indefinitely apply side lane pressure, top is more volatile than ever, this same goes to bot due to no more 5v5 bot fiesta anymore

[@indrickboreale7381]

Shen's R and Pantheon's R are even stronger now

[@Gamber63]

@@indrickboreale7381 yeah only if ur tp only purpose when laning is getting back to lane, otherwise by 14mins lane might be over already

[@duwanglover3424]

Top lane is an island and nothing will fix that. And I personally think that’s rather good for the game. It’s a role that you can sit back and focus on either CS or fighting 1v1s rather than concern yourself with problems like Dragons or (generally) ganks. It might just be me, since that’s where my friends threw me when I first started, but I think it’s probably the healthiest and kindest role for new players to go to. Hell most of the time when I mention I’m new to a champ, the enemy top will give advice on how to either play that champ better or how to better play against them.

[@darwintruong4161]

I think they should take a page out of smite and make top lane “short lane” and bot lane “long lane”. When I play smite, solo lane felt way more impactful because it’s easier to roam around while being easily returnable to lane. Granted when I played I was a mid laner, but the point stands that my solo laner was able to come and help when I needed it. Meaning mid lane could possible get a solo laner and jungle gank.

[@SM-ys8lw]

holy fucking shit, i havent played smite in like 7 year, that's brings back memories

[@fuzzypickles8692]

Out of curiosity, If you made this video in today's day with the current meta and after the ADC video, how much different would it be? What's better or worse about the role compared to then with the new voidlings?

[@exirs]

Long story/video short... Yes, it is.

[@user-pr1dh2bw6k]

There could be another solution though: Changing the symmetry of the map. The map layout as seen in topside completely isolates the lanes from assisting the JG without losing too much against their opponent. However, roaming could be a potential avenue by which the toplane could impact the map without the need of a snowball, making them feel less isolated. This could be done either by changing the layout to both having some sort of tribush or adding blastcones, although these are only some suggestions. At least to me, it seems the issue comes from a sense of lane isolation at the early game, which this could be affecting.

[@matthewtabanao2094]

Hey Vars im sure you have heard of this game but could u do why no one plays videos on a game called Mobile Legends which is pre much LOL just on ios ( before the official LOL on mobile came out )

[@Pyearrrow]

They should prob add an additional buff when killin shelly, like increased dmg to monsters or increased dmg to tower as a team buff, that way if you youre a top laner and take shelly youll give your team additional buffs and ways to win the game

[@chicolopes1928]

I think the biggest problem with top, that ties in with how isolated it is, is that it's the lane where you feel the power gap between meta and non meta picks the most, or in general is the lane most heavily affected by champ select. Even if you don't feed you'll generally have a miserable and boring laning phase

[@kloakekloaker1020]

It's really sad because top has the most interesting and diverse champion pool imo. But if you don't play something like a melee adc with lethal or a 200 year champ u are kinda atm.

[@Havok0ne]

When you're completely fine dominating top, doing 5/0, perfect farm, getting the first turret. And suddenly You see that: enemy ADC is 10/0, support has13 assists, jungler and midlane are both 5/0 and your team agrees to surrender with their 4 votes 😂

[@Lolmetallio]

Yo vars. I would love you to make a new video on the state of top lane with the new tp, gold, and exp change. Much love

[@aeshenveil4934]

Can you do a vido on the VGU poll. Thanks!

[@delroynathan7794]

I had this idea where marksmen would 1v1 top lane, we’re given more exp thus giving them a better chance to affect games than the position their in now. Not far off from your second point of swapping support to top lane. Just imagine watching world class players playing marksmen going 1v1 in pro games, it would be such good entertainment because marksmen rarely have the opportunity to show off their mechanics and skills since majority the time bot lane is decided by support diff. Plus it would work out for tanks since their class mainly overstat, where they could share exp with a support be behind a level but still at a safer place where they can contribute to team fights.

[@shirorapture8277]

I can already tell this was at least partially inspired by some of HappyChimeNoises' recent videos, ah.

[@Waelly17]

Haha yea i realised sm was up when i was having so much success with random top laners like yuumi lulu soraka twitch legit anything that can poke and peel =gg

[@AnimeFrankReynolds]

I don't understand why top lane needs to have early game pressure. In theory, they have access to the most resources before 14 minutes, if the game is going to be longer (which is what riot is aiming for) having a spot that coasts by would be good for that outcome of having a longer game. In practice, the matches are too much of a coinflip currently, which I think has a solution that you can find by looking back to the old mastery system, there were masteries that gave out situational defensive stats, like [seigemaster] bonus resistances at your own tower, [stoneborn pact] flat damage reduction, or [strength of the ages] giving you extra health at cannon minion intervals. If riot made the defensive options better for the pre-6, counterpicking would be less powerful, and put top lane into a more scaling role like it was before Runes Reforged. Even this solution will have unwanted effects though, as it would change everyone's early game defensive options, maybe bringing a tank meta again. It's not an easy fix, as you said in the video, but I think durability would be the area to tap if we want more consistancy from a laning phase perspective.

[@grimlockgreg3063]

I think a good idea for a buff is to make rift herald more valuable, like for example if you take it out your team would get bonus resistance or damage to the baron when it comes up, or have a miny baron effect to the one who has the eye of herold ( like it make non cannon minions Barron empower)

[@hansj4832]

I'd love to see what a 4v4 game of League of Legends would look like - which of the five positions would drop, and how would the rest change? Would one of the lanes be abandoned? Would laners do jungle clears? Would we end up with the jungler doing support? I've also had an idea for a 4v4v2 mode where the junglers are on their own team and their objective is to stall out the other teams - maybe there's a time limit they have to reach. Can't help but think this would help with a lot of balancing issues, since a winning laning team has to get powerful enough to beat both the other laning team and the jungle team. Plus queuing up for the jungle team would be a great way to vent.

[@shacolin6546]

I agree. There's no easy way around top lane's situation. However, getting Shelly to spawn at the same time as Dragon and allowing either 3 rift heralds a game, 2 rifts and a 15 minute spawn baron but most importantly: 2 shellys before plates go down. First and foremost, with Shelly at 5 minutes, regarding objectives alone, there's as much incentive for a team to play around top than around bot. 2 shelly's before plates go down into either baron or a third shelly expand the applications for this objective. Instead of an objective you take to cash in some gold and maybe open the map, it possibly turns it into as a legitimate win condition like dragons are. That allows a team to play around top side and win more consistently. I don't think it fixes the top lane problem, but it mitigates it alongside giving players more options, therefore making it better. My point regarding top lane is over. It is ranting time now. I hate what Riot did to teleport and despise their justification even more. In my opinion, teleport did more bad than good for the game and in its pre-rework state, the game would be better off without it. So I think it needed changes. I don't think a complete removal is the way to go because the good things teleport did were worth going after a solution. Now, what is the bad thing about teleport and what is the good thing? The good thing is the playmaking potential. Ganking, counter-ganking, flanking, you name it. The bad thing about teleport is the get out of jail free card element. Where whatever you want to do, against a teleport user, you gotta do twice to get practical benefit out of it. Teleport is so good at it that if a teleport user dies to a non-teleport user and the later gets low during the trade (which is likely), the teleport user has control of the lane despite being the one getting outplayed. The reason teleport did more bad than good for the game is because 9 times out of 10, it is a get out of jail free card. The remaining 1 teleport out of 10 of genuinely satisfying plays to watch or execute don't justify the frustration of the other 9 "so my play wasn't worth anything" moments. What riot did was the opposite. They erased what was good about teleport out of existance while leaving the toxic element untouched. The justification for that? [...]there's too much disruption happening too early and too often[...] THAT IS A GOOD THING. It means players are proactive. They are looking for things to do. Doing something is supposed to be more rewarding than doing nothing. The current game state? Players can (doesn't mean its optimal, but they can) win the game sitting in lane all early game long and doing nothing. But players cannot win games by ditching lane and permaroaming, so there's not even a reason to skew league even further into planting all players down a lane because leaving is so risky nobody even bother. Even junglers are increasingly more encouraged to full clear than ever. The last 3 junglers to be released were Lillia, Kayn and Viego. The last two to be reworked, Fiddlesticks and Volibear. What these champions all have in common? They like to full clear. A lot. 4 of these champions have some of the fastest full clears in the game. Remember the changes Riot made to "increase jungle diversity". Garen, Darius, Zed, Diana... All of those ended as farm heavy full clearers. The only champion I remember with both mobility and hard cc Riot encouraged into the jungle was Qiyana. I read Riot's article, their criteria for these changes favor champions with high popularity and low difficulty. So why haven't Leona been given a thought? Neither Zed nor Qiyana are easy champions and they made it, so why not Camille? Feels like every patch riot releases with only a few exceptions the game gets closer to another Ardent Censer-esque meta where nothing happens for half of the game and by the time things start to matter, is already by the time half the champions in the game are obsolete. Took so much effort for Riot to fix the game during seasons 8 and 9 and it is unbeliveable they're reverting the good they have done.

[@hermie0600]

Wont switching dragon and baron/shelly will just switch the lanes? Like wont ADC and Support go top instead?

[@abreuxiii]

What's your opinion on alternating dragon spawn pits? First spawns bot, second spawns top and so on. Shelly and Baron spawn wherever there is no dragon and switch locations once a new dragon spawns

[@Crause88fin]

If dragon and herald pits would switch places, why wouldn't the adc/support pair just always switch to top instead? There's no decided rule or forced law to have the pari in the bottom end of the map. It's just how the meta slowly evolved.

[@leonardsap13]

Bot tower has no protection

[@DeadlyGrub]

@@leonardsap13 Duo bot was the normal before this change was even in effect because dragon was valuable. Dragon being flipped would still mean Bot will go top.

[@Livor_]

Yes

[@thaoriginalraygreen]

Something off-topic : does anyone know the music used at the beginning? I can't quite put my finger on it but I know its from something I played lol

[@animejuggernaut2553]

My main problem with top is the lack of safety options. Ok, bad luck/bad matchup, now we behind. Our options: 1. Pray the jng ganks/babysits and PRAY u get the kill and not wind up giving him a double. 2. Pray your mid get's so ahead that they can gank and help u out instead. 3. Play normally, and get killed a bunch cause they had the lead, top diff. 4. Play safely aka getting zoned off cs and have a gigantic cs diff since it's mostly meele in top lane and it's easy to zone opponent off cs if they behind. 5. Do option 4, and they build up a large slow push and kill u under tower anyway with lead + all that minion dmg. 6. Same as option 5, but now you also have their jng under your tower for your ass. It's just too coin-flippy on who get's that 1 initial lead. We need some way to safely get cs and not die a bunch if we behind. I was thinking maybe something like either make top lane towers do less dmg to minions to make it easier to farm under tower, and slightly increase it's range so we can't get harassed under it anyway (Looking at u mundo cleaver spam -_-), or increase it's dmg against champions to prevent the ducking tower dives!!!! I've had my opponent get just 1 kill on me and 1 tower plate, he comes back to lane, deadass towerdives me, kills me, and goes back alive. And ya, it's totally my fault for not playing safe......... If that's done and maybe we get some kinda speed-up plants in top lane so we can at least impact mid, you can either try to crash wave and roam mid, or at least actually have a safe way to farm.

[@Kyujin]

I'd remove the early turret protection from top and put it bot. It's a small change but that would give more value to early ganks top.

[@minutenreis]

and increases the volatility of the lane

[@Cynsham]

rift herald is already a nightmare to deal with as a top laner. giving your turrets even less ability to defend a dive from the enemy team seems like a perfect way to make top feel like more of a coinflip than it already is

[@tobias97erdt]

@@minutenreis turret platings essentially punish toplaners for roaming and they are the easiest method to build a lead on toplane from a winning position. By removing it makes bully matchups become less of an issue

[@kijan97]

aaaand now we're back to the top/bot swap meta.

[@Kyujin]

@@kijan97 If they do so then the bottom toplaner has impact over drake

[@dummyspice4584]

I do have to wonder if perhaps there were a way to "fix" toplane by giving them some special starting items which would help them continue earning XP and gold outside of their lane. Alternatively, I think it might be interesting if the speedboosts from Scuttlecrabs were increased, but only in river to make getting out of top easier. As a third, wildcard, option you could put some tunnel or teleporter on the corners of the map behind the bushes of top and bottom lane. That way top-lane would be "closer" to botlane and it would help deal with the problem teleport had because it would also allow support or ADC to get to toplane too

[@eve.483]

Well considering role swapping exists that would be hard

[@SarahET]

With the new change to teleport being in 12.1 instead of the preseason, I feel like riot will need to make bigger changes DURING the season this year. Also, one way I'd try to fix top lane is make it so the pressure can be exert without a jungler, make shelly give enough resources if you're behind to actually make an impact and you don't lose gold by doing it. This way a losing top laner could solo Herald and turn the matchup around

[@leanderwassilikos830]

If the a stronger objective is implemented to top lane wont the lanes just switch and adc and sup go top and top laner goes bot? Wouldnt really chanege anything but annoying the players...

[@Bolderox]

My hottest take ever is i believe that everything that is bot and mid should be swapped, the adc and support should be mid lane, centralizing the game, making top lane be able to impact the game by moving only one lane. Which also involves the bot tower differences being put in the mid tower instead, etc... I just don't understand how having a shorter lane is a bad thing when mid lane has the best avenues options to stay safe imo, with 3 wards you can cover most of the lane with vision. 6 ways in and out, and if they are centralized, all other roles can rotate without much trouble.

[@myfairlady343]

Riot never forced a duo bot onto league. Thats just the min max meta people figured out. Nobody is stopping you from truning the meta upside down in some friends

[@Bolderox]

@@myfairlady343 no, but when the bot tower does not have the fortification that mid and top does, it creates and doubles down on the 2 bot lane playstyle unfortunately

[@snozer6966]

Why I wanna try an experiment in one of my games where not and top switch positions to see what would happen.

[@colinbrown5646]

I think the solution to Top Lane is more to find a way for Top Lane to provide support to Bottom Lane WITHOUT leaving lane. How? Add an objective within the alcove or linked to it. An idea I have been thinking about is basically two mining facilities. The two mining facilities are within holes in the wall that are linked via the alcove. For each mining facility that is controlled by a team, that team gets some bonus, from perhaps a simple passive gold boost to some other kind of stat boost. This allows Top Lane to influence the map without removing the agency other lanes have due to a random Top Teleport roam. It also adds more reason for Jungle to help Top, as perhaps controlling both mining facilities is as influential as getting a Dragon.

[@amandaslough125]

That would be like making Skarner's passive a map gimmick instead. Would be an option.

[@fred__the_mad8312]

I always thought that if riot just made the objectives rotate everything would be better. Let me explain: my idea is 1st dragon is bot and 1st herald is top, second dragon is top second herald is bot and so on (obviously they would have to tweak the spawntimes a bit and do some changes here and there but you get the idea). What i hope to achieve with this is the preassure shifts from each side of the map in an alternating way. Only problem that comes to mind is what if bot gets the first drake then backs at the same time as top and swaps? I have to admit i haven't figured it out yet, any suggestions are apprisciated

[@Amauvy]

so if you do drag but no herald, you wait a bit & do both ?

[@aaronparry2636]

My recommended solution would be to find a way to stick support mid instead of bot. Whether that's by alternating drag and herald/baron spawn, by lengthening mid lane and shortening the others, or some other means. If the extra man is mid, then top and bot both gain more roam incentive and top is less alienated from the early game. It would likely mean that immobile champs are even worse off in the meta than they already are, but it would even out the importance of the two solo lanes.

[@imminotaur400]

that could possibly be done by removing the tower resistances from the mid lane tower and moving it to the bot lane tower.

[@rjcwithrice]

Would it help if they swap the location of baron and drake?

[@amethonys2798]

6:38 this is also a big problem with top lane here. Mages in unfavorables GENERALLY have enough waveclear to get a shove "whenever" they want to shoot for a roam. Top lane can, in a vacuum, roam mid or go for an invade as they are fairly "close". The issue is these options are only REALLY possible for the winning top laner. Going back to the Trynd/Gwen match up, if Gwen wants to attempt at shoving with Q or something she straight up gets all-ined and loses most of her health for walking into melee range and using her damaging ability on the wave. It isn't an option. The other option is NOT pushing and going for a "bad" roam in a gamble you get something to offset the wave and a half you lose top along with the 2 plates Trynd gets. Meanwhile, Trynd can do literally whatever he wants in the lane since he will permanently have priority. He can crash a wave and contest enemy blue/red buff. He can steal scuttle. He can roam mid. In mid in a unfavorable match up of idk control mage into assassin you can probably at least make the wave neutral at any point and go for a mediocre roam if the lane is somewhat south since your waveclear is ranged and decently hard to punish. Now it is entirely possible the second you E the wave as Viktor that Zed will WR all in you, but that also depends on other scenarios like how hard Zed is tracking your jg or whatever.

[@kingkold1000]

There was MOBA with a 5v5 map based on the rift called Heroes of Order and Chaos.Their approach to the Top lane island issue was to place portals where the alcoves are, making it possible for Bot and Top to gank each other early and often. I doubt that could work in League, but it was fun in HoC.

[@killcount6994]

If you are diamond or higher, top lane can be less impactful than some other roles. For the other 99% of players. No. It's not the lane. It's you.

[@Waelly17]

Based

[@pif7635]

Facts.

[@benthebloon9588]

based

[@bleh8407]

adc copium

[@SufferingPlanet]

The other issue with "Solution 3" is if the meta shifts and decides "dragon control" is more important, then "bot lane" would just move top with the marksman and support taking over top and the top laner now bot.

[@toshizen809]

I used to play on top lane back then but as time passes on I have realized how difficult it is to carry on SoloQ because of how little you can influence the outcome of the game so I decided to move into the Jungle role but I still do miss doing 1v2s as a top laner

[@Paperkhamun]

What if the dragons and herald swap places at random? Then priority would change based on which objective was up.

[@secretlyaslug2325]

I imagine this would end up like chem soul where if it's one random option it sways the direction the game goes super hard.

[@MAMAJUGO]

Imagine forcing singleplayer gameplay for 14 minutes in a multiplayer game lmao

[@mist1714]

Why not just pkay global pressence toplabers, gp, shen, galiio, panth

[@aidenshanton4530]

@@mist1714 damn what a good answer. It's not like it is a horrible game design to make is so only 4 out of like 40 top laners can have an impact on the game in the first 14 min. Making only those 4 and hyperscalers useful in higher levels of play.

[@mist1714]

@@aidenshanton4530 if x champion becomes meta, it will bring others stuff in too, if you global away vs a fiora, shes gonna take ur tower, get out of ur box

[@Betroid]

It’s one of the very reasons I Mained toplane for 4 years

[@VieneLea]

I've recently moved to toplane from bot/support and I'm loving it. Finally my lane performance isn't 100% reliable on an idiot duo laner, I'm not in a constant 1v2, and even if I get camped by an enemy jungler all the time I can easily dial back and play more safe and that just means the rest of my team plays on the EZ mode. If I get fed I can actually carry games through splitpushing, and if I fail and feed the better toplaner then at least the loss is on me, I can watch the vod and improve, and I don't feel like the game is completely out of my hands.

[@mrbuster3106]

what is that music at the end ?

[@Salgo96]

10:20 Love how you've not mentioned vayne as she actually is one of the adc's that can go top aswell. Also if you'd buff top to gain more xp, gold etc. wouldn't that just shift the meta to move adc top and have a jungler focus around that? I'm sure a lvl 13 darius can deal with a a lvl 9 supp+adc but can a lvl 9 darius+supp deal with a lvl 13 adc? I doubt it.

[@coolchrisable]

well not necessarily rember there was a time when solo lanes did get more exp and gold ( since they where by themselves) and adcs still didnt go top expect for literally a select few like vayne and quinn the main problem is that dragon is bot lane and getting it gives you a perma buff ( even before soul) while having shelly gives you just the rift herald with is pretty easy to stop. hell when dragon use to only give gold and a buff of letting your team do burn dmg over time people still didnt priotize top.

[@MAMAJUGO]

No offense, but all your third solution of swapping dragon and herald would do is making adcs and supports to start being played top, and top laners to start being played solo bot, and then the island would be bot lane It's not like the map isn't mirrored or something

[@ryankhosravi3136]

The reason two players go bot is because the tower is weaker than the other two lanes, not because of dragon.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

@@ryankhosravi3136 duo bot was the meta way before they nerfed bot tower. I believe they did it to end lane swaps.

[@Poxyquotl]

I think the best thing they can do is try to level the playing field as much as possible between the champions in the game. I agree with most of what you said, but the main thing that bothers me is the match ups. If you have even a decent champion pool counter pick is such a huge advantage that it can decide the lane before it starts.

[@trashman6829]

IMO an interesting way to put pressure back in the top lane is to shift jungle xp from being evenly spread across top and bot to putting (a) higher xp reward objective(s) in the top lane that mainly benefits the jungler. While scuttle crab was sort of like this, it was too easy to solo, only rewarded the last hit, and spawned too early. Something that could benefit both players a fair amount without putting the top laner behind would be great not only to increase top lane's map awareness (and by extension, its impact on the earlier stages of the game), but also to incentivize junglers coming top more often for selfish reasons

[@ONAROccasionallyNeedsARestart]

Suggestion: Replace or add a plant at top of the river that instead of offering heals/mana, it offers a short speed boost instead. In theory, this would give top laners the ability to quickly leave lane for a quick mid-gank without using summoners (which could then be saved to return) OR give junglers even greater incentive to roam top as the time sink of ganking is less there. It is a tiny push to incentivise combat around the top of the river that localises its benefits in that region in a way that can't easily be transferred elsewhere.

[@alruneblake]

Soo Scuttle then.

[@XsyrusX12345]

I think a good experiment would be to remove the Herald. Herald feels underwhelming and people only do it if they have nothing better they could do right now, like counter Jungle, counter gank, gank etc. And then do this: Let 2 drakes spawn at once. One on top and one on bot. Both are different and if one falls, the other flies away so there is never a single dragon on the map. If Baron spawns, it's decided randomly which drake stays and which one leaves. Example: Top Drake is an Infernal and Bot Drake is an Hextech. Baron spawns, and the game decides if the Hextech stays or if Infernal takes over his place. This should only happen as long as there is not decided which soul appears. As soon as Soul is decided, both top and bot drakes are the same. When Baron spawns, the Baron pit Drake fucks off and we get the situation we have right now, bot pit is Drake and top pit is Baron. You can't farm two drakes at once this way because the one who did not die leaves the Rift, but the Jungler could decide which drake he wants to take for his team AND he could decide which lane is more helpful at the given moment. You would also take out some of the randomness of the first two drakes, because you have one more option. Cloud spawns bot and Hextech spawns top? Let's fight for the Hextech then. Botlane is too tricky to gank? Gank top then and take the Top Drake. Toplane is behind. Gank bot and take the Bot Drake. This way Toplane would lose it's Island status because it gets involved into the game through Drake objective. Toplanes biggest problem is that it's not invovled at all in the game, with the nerfed TP even less than before. There is also almost no reason to gank toplane. If your laner is losing the chances are high that a gank will kill both you and your toplaner. Champions like Darius, Renekton, Sett, Mordekaiser etc. are notorius for doing 2v1 if they are ahead. So why would you gank if your toplaner can't even help you if you waste your time up there? And like Vars said. If you successfully gank top you will mostly just get some shared plates, maybe the Herald and that's it... Meanwhile the enemy Jungler smashes your Botlane and takes drake. Toplane is not involved in the game and it's not even worth it 90% of the time to help and get them involved. The trade you take there is just not worth it.

[@tobias97erdt]

The double dragon approach is interesting however this has a chance to create huge feelsbad moments if 1 team gets their drake only slighly faster than the other. My suggestion would be to make one dragon hide away as long the other is in a fight with a cooldown of 30 seconds for every dragon to prevent junglers from trolling the enemy team

[@XsyrusX12345]

​@@tobias97erdt Another option could be that if one dragon dies, the other stays for 5 more seconds as long as it is in a fight. If you can't manage to kill it in this 5 seconds, it flies away. In my humble opinion there is nothing wrong with feelsbad moments. It's the same with "Tower First Blood". You gank bot, you attack the two platings tower with 3 people....and the enemy toplaner takes the tower while yours just got 300 more hp... It also opens the option to do drakes without confrontation. If you know that their team is just stronger at the given ingame time, you can try to sneak a drake if you track the enemy jungler correctly. He ganks bot to prepare drake? Sike, I was already in the top pit doing the drake there because I had Toplane priority and a neutral Midlane. That way you also mitigate done damage to your team by hindering enemy plays if you move correctly on the map as Jungler. In this example by taking a drake on the other side of the map while the enemy jungler wanted to prepare botlane drake but had to kill your lane first. He might get the kills, but not the objectiv. You might take the "worse" drake, but a "worse" drake is better than no drake and a dead botlane. It also helps junglers who fell behind. At the moment, if the enemy jungler is ahead and non of his lanes failed, you are forced to give away every objective or force a fight while being behind. With 2 drakes, you have the option to deny drakes without forcing unwinnable fights.

[@Darkcelestrian]

A fix I could see would be to remove herald's tower charge and let it get the same elemental buffs that drag has, just make it so that both cannot have the exact same buff at the same time. That way both lanes are closer in objective value and by the time nashor spawns laning phase will be over

[@cindershearth1159]

What if the River flowed towards the mid giving something like a 10% speed boost moving towards mid and a 10% reduction towards Top or mid?

[@dravendraven1471]

If you play Tank Draven with glacial augment on top. Then no You are not useless.

[@Houndfluff]

give the items and runes coward

[@Houndfluff]

we require more toplane dravens