6:35 while you ARE correct, you picked a hilarious bit of footage to back this statement with. "Dhalsim has underwhelming close quarters options" *Shows SF5 Dhalsim's shockingly good knockdown pressure and mixup game*
He also isn’t very good at fighting games or analyzing them at all, excluding smash. His tales are general usually and with massive portions of the argument left out
@@kennydg4979 Yeah, I just think he would probably have been better served with any of Dhalsim's previous incarnations. SF5 is probably the first game that gave him strong offensive tools because of how unfriendly to zoners SF5's mechanics can be, and the byproduct is that it makes him a lot more fun to watch. To be fair to Vars, not everyone can be an expert on everything and traditional fighting games are pretty niche, to the point where I wouldn't expect anyone to know much beyond the traditional "Grappler, Zoner, Rushdown" triangle and a basic idea of what the characters from Street Fighter 2 could do.
@@walkelftexasranger i think of gp as a control champ for a reason yes his q does dmg but there are many things to do like d shield second wind and if any top laner engaged succesfully on gp he is preety much done unlike mid where he can actually fight back
The only ranged champion i dont mind going up against is Gnar, his passive means he HAS to get into his melee form eventually or alternatively lose cs. This makes him uniquely vulnerable among ranged top laners despite all the advantages he has.
Urgot and Gnar are the only tolerable ranged toplaners in the game imo, their range isnt obnoxiously high for toplane standards like vayne for example. Gnar is super squishy and becomes melee when mega while urgot plays pretty much the same as a melee toplaner but just with low ranged attacks instead. Weird, almost as if those 2 were litterally designed to be played toplane and the others weren't :D
CRABGOD MAIN Urgot is in this place imo of “melee-range”. His combos require being close and his range is not too far away which makes him a balanced top laner. He’s also very easy to bait into ganks and all. Playing into top lane ranged is hell
Nah Gnar is equally as annoying as any of the others it not worse. I can’t imagine you were playing back when gnar was meta pick/ban in pro play. His lane is unfathomably safe. Like the video touched on, you have a long range slow, a very strong dash AND a max health MAGIC DAMAGE 3 hit passive that gives you a ton of move speed. The majority of top laners cannot afford to ever fight him in ranged form as it’s impossible to get close even if he mispositions. The only time you can fight gnar is when he’s melee, which unfortunately has the highest base stats of any champion in the game along with insane AD ratios on every ability. If you are not ahead in the lane, you’re going to struggle immensely to kill mega gnar. Which means he has insane neutral and the only time you can actually fight him is when he’s strongest? Not at all tolerable.
As a Top Laner, all i want is: - To 1v1 and bash each other's head - Complain about your team throwing and how every queue is a coin toss - Always shit talk Range abusers - Complain about Riot's balance and how is my main not as broken as (insert top 10 tops rn)
tbh this mentality is thrown out the window in Wild Rift. currently you have a very high chance of running into a Teemo or hell even a mage top looking to piss people off so I just say screw it and run whatever ranged character I'm feeling that day or I play Garen to just not care since free healing.
I still think that quinn should be reworked into a jungler, it just seems to fit her playstyle much better. Not saying that she shouldn't be a top laner anymore, but riot should increase her damage to monsters.
@@walkelftexasranger Quinn was originally designed to be an adc, but nobody played her there, and still don't because she gets outranged by the entire roster. Her ability to roam and get picks is also diminished in that role since she also has to face against whoever the support is. She honestly would be better suited for mid or jungle where she can make map plays.
@@Ratty524 u right that she doesnt have the range, but she also doesnt have tools like other marksmen her range has like the damage of vayne of waveclear/spellshield of sivir. not to mention her useless ult which makes her lose so much gold in stats
If there were champions whose ammunition was an energy bar or thing like jhin, replenished by melee mode, it would be cool. I think you could fairly balance it
@@edoardocesetti9900 i thing he mean by that a champion that uses ammo like aphelios but when runs out of it then he becomes melle till ammo repleanish
yeah but no one would play it, same reason Gnar is so unpopular and is mostly a pro play champ. having no control over, when and if your preassure will fall apart is a very big downside to a champion who relies on preassure to exist
@@baki6236 yes this is what I mean. Perhaps they could be a character that relies more on their tempo rather than movement abilities, and their ranged attacks were slower but hit harder. Then when they ran out of ammo, they get a short movement buff to close the gap and fight in melee. Then when they revert back, it's a backwards dash like kleds pocket pistol and back to range. Maybe a little too idealistic and betrays the shape shifting formula of fragile hard hitting
I do find it interesting Kayle wasn’t mentioned until late into the video. She acts like a ranged minion until 6 and if someone can’t capitalize, it’s almost gg at that point
lol, Kayle wins most (not all) 1v1 level 1's and 2's all-ins if she runs lethal tempo (obvsly with E start and Dorans Blade). Where Kayle struggles is level 3, because that the moment when bruisers have their full kit available and Kayles 3 level is much much weaker than theirs.
The enemy laner hates ranged tops because the laner has no means to counter them. It’s all in the hands of jungler to hard punish the pick. Allies hate ranged tops because it ruins team comps and extremely vulnerable to ganks where the top laner is doing thebauffs impressions but without the turret sieging
Exactly, nobody likes people who pick ranged top because they ruin the fun of your entire team and the enemy top, just for you to have a winning matchupw and selfishly enjoy the freest laning phase possible.
I know disengage is important for top laners, but it is the MOST annoying part of fighting them. I'm already fighting someone who can attack me from far away without me being able to do anything about it. if they don't use their biggest strength correctly (Their range and spacing) and I, an immobile melee champion, can get close to them, they should actually be PUNISHED, not just press a button and be able to completely negate their mistake. I know eventually you can eventually overcome this (As Vars said in the video, Darius with ghost + stridebreaker for example, or building Edge of Night to counteract Vayne E), but not being able to do ANYTHING until you get that advantage is really boring. It's boring to have the counterplay to ranged top laners be "Hope they aren't good"
The counter play is just farm and don't feed. The mid-late game will be punishment enough when they find out there is no tank/bruiser in their composition.
@@MarcoMancera18cool, convince your team to get to mid-late game instead of ffing. "Oh no my sett is 0/2, enemy team has a Vayne top game is over" The amount of times I've heard shit like that is infuriating. It's even worse when I'm playing a champ like Cho'Gath, and I've only JUST started scaling. Like level 10-11. You're absolutely right, mid late game there's nothing they can do. But you never get that far because your team gives up.
@@airbots4789 Once again League players become their own enemies. Sometimes the same guy who said just farm and don't feed is the one who wants to GG even when top lane has only got to 0/2 at lvl 8. It's like an override button I don't care how solid our plan is if top goes 0/2 we GG.
As a Gnar main I feel like he is the best example of this, Whilst in gnar form he will just fall to everything and everyone (before items) just like your regular ADCs. But at the same time there is no scarier champion in the game than a gnar about to transform. MEGA Gnar has the highest base stats in the game by a pretty big amount, he is a juggernaut and a diver combined and that is why he is so scary when he has the opportunity to be. He is one of the few ranged top in pro because of this reason, he is so good in mega form that his weakness of mini form is often times worth it
As a person who have not slept well today, I really liked background chill music and the all the plays on the screen. Topic is also well discussed! Thank you for the video!
I think you hit the nail on the head pretty well I think that a lot of the animosity is also that melee tops know that the ranged top they are fighting isn't that good a lot of the time. They either lack fundamentals and get all in'd or lack patience and macro and over push instead of freezing and killing the top ability to play. Top is a lane that typically prides itself of 1v1s and champs that thrive on it. So tops are being denied the fun of playing the lane, by someone who without the fundamentals is essentially a gimmick champ.
I mean, it's that mentality that made me hit diamond playing only tank karma top more than once. Most other top laners could win the game by just staying under turret and farming safely to out-scale me but they'd rather all win me (or 2v1 me with their jungler) and give me so much advantage they couldn't play the game anymore. Funny how after becoming a Gwen main instead I realized how it was relatively easy to deal with these match-ups if you don't have a massive ego. Yes, you play weak side. Yes, it's not fun. Yes, you can't really win lane. But odds are you'll win the game just fine if you play it patiently.
@@mitsuki1388I mean, it's not really about a massive ego. People play the game to have fun. And if I had fun by trading ranged attacks I'd play ADC. Like, sett is the whole toplane energy. I'm here to punch eachother till one of us drops dead. This is what I came here for. A ranged top lane will make my life miserable for the next 40 minutes. It's okay to die so that your team can win the fight, cuz at least I get to play once I respawn
@@mitsuki1388 Shit take, 90% of the time as top you have no influence over the first half of the game, in order to have the best chances of winning, you have to crush top, you need to be a sidelane monster, soaking and putting out pressure, it's all about being a monolith that locks part of the map if you're ahead, your argument invalidates the entire idea of toplane "just because I play karma tank top". A single click on a champion should not invalidate the entire identity of a lane, just by *being* there. I could go on and on, but I think that summarizes well my thoughts on the topic.
It should. What you are seeing is what is called ab arms race. The more range you have the more advantage you have. This is seen through out history. That is why the spesr was so popular among peasant armies and later bows and so on.
Jayce has good sidelane pressure, he has decent escapes and solid dueling. Kennen has excellent teamfight pressure, that's literally almost the entire reason he's picked at all. The reason ranged toplaners struggle is not that they lack pressure or pressure absorbtion, it's that they're high risk/reward and difficult to play. Harassing as them is obviously easy, but playing around the all-in and the jungler is more important for them because falling behind is easier and more devastating. As a side note, rush boots 2 against ranged toplaners and it is a lot easier to get on top of them and kill them without losing your entire health bar first.
Ranged top generally has awful sustain/escape tools as well, so a freeze by your tower is also a wonderful option, with hard pushes when they disappear until engages are an option.
Jayce's primary advantage is that in lane he is virtually impossible to beat without jg help by most tops. He can just auto you and hit you with energy balls whenever you try to farm and if you engage him, he can hit you away with e, forcing the trade to be short. This is balanced by being useless when behind and also being free farm for junglers cause jayce honestly sucks at escaping ganks and has a weak 1 v 2 even when ahead, so if you play him without respecting enemy jg, you'll probably get killed over and over. This is what makes Jayce honestly really hard to play, because he relies on well developed macro skills to balance out understanding when to be aggressive and when to be passive, even though you technically have the tools to bully enemy tops at all times.
@@67tedward You have made my point more clearly than I. He's not that bad at escaping ganks though, between cannon E, hammer Q, and hammer E. That's more tools than some get.
@@BLKCLVR Sure but for ganks specifically jayce really can only knock 1 person away, so the other player can still cc him and let the other catch up. Thundering blow is an excellent 1v1 disengage for that reason but not as useful as a duo escape. Not the worst escape out there for sure given his movement speed boosts, but compared to someone like gnar, jayce is going to die a lot if he overextends. In particular if you're standing outside enemy tower and harrassing them, I don't find jayce can reasonably escape all the way to the other side of top if the jungler's on top of him. This is mostly speaking from personal experience as a mediocre jayce player (don't main him but occasionally will play him casually) and getting punished for being over aggressive.
They don't work so long as your jungle has enough brain capacity to support object permanence. If the enemy team plays the most immobile ranged top laner on Earth, my jungler will look top, see the free gold, and then completely ignore it. In fact, I can only really remember one game where my jungler recognized the ranged top laner as free gold and actually came top enough to capitalize on it and carry the game.
I honestly dont mind ranged tops. I'm pretty patient and know my powerspikes. Lull the enemy into thinking I'm a passive player, ping my jungler, save flash for an all in combo. Ultimately itll be a comp diff like you mentioned, more often than not.
@@doomkingraye7692ranged tops arent fun. Thats it. Most of the time they fall off so if anything its also a huge middle finger to their own team. Tanks are kind of braindead but at least tanks and bruisers fighting in toplane is fun enough. And both people will contribute to their teams comp. Tell me how useful a vayne top is when theres already an ADC.
Last time i had to lane against a vayne top, i took syndra. Everytime she tried to walk up for a basic attack, she'd eat a q,e,w combo. Had to deal with a people playing adc mid do i basically pick her everytime i have to play against one.
I'm not competitive, so you can take whatever I say with a grain of salt. Toplane is one of my favorite roles not only for the reasons that top lane is good at it but also, and I know this might sound weird, I enjoy the fight, and I love how it sometimes feels like a way easier fighting game, to think about my advantages and disadvantages and compare them to the opponents, to reenact the "walking straight at me" scene from Jojo's right before the fight, the satisfaction of looking at an upcoming skill shot or engage dead in the eye and say "give your best shot" and then survive to punish there foolishness, to perform a beautiful and ferocious dance of weapons and compos against my opponent, and finally, when the battle is over and the dust settles, there will be only 1 victor left on their feet, and the defeated to consider all there mistakes and learn from them. Aka I enjoy a good and fair fight, I know this is weird but that's my truth. And for this reason, I despise range toplaners with a passion, they are some of the most toxic players, they are incredibly boring to both play with/as or against them, and their skill necessity is so low that they make Garen look like Azir, and they are just so cowardly, not to mention that they sacrifice so much for there team only for more damage/to bulie their opponent/to think that they are so good because they spring guns in a boxing match. I played a lot of wild rift during my school year and I know technically its not the same, but whenever I played either jg/supp or something else, I dread when I look at my toplaner and hope that they don't pick a ranged champion because even if we win, it just feels dirty and undeserved. I've made a promise that whenever I have one of those cowards in my team and I'm the jg, ill just forget about them and focus on my objectives and only gank/assist mid and bot, want to bring guns in boxing matches, do it on your own, il be assisting the rest of my team and il also root for the enemy toplaner and jg to make you suffer. EDIT: Gnar and Urgot are the exceptions, they are the only acceptable ones
@@BlackfeatherMain Graves is in a weird middle ground, I do enjoy playing him even tho I'm horrible at him, it's just that when his in toplane, and from what I've seen, he's mostly played with full lethality builds, and there for played like a range assassin like vayne rather than a sustain base fighter like rhaast (red kayn), I'm personally not a fan of it but I don't condemn it, at least he takes 100% percent more skill and balls then vayne ever does
@@tomthelordofzaun8375 I respect graves top players regardless of if they're assassin or bruiser because assassin graves players have to actually contend with the fact that they don't have a ton of range, and bruiser graves players acknowledge they're not doing a whole lot of damage.
Kled tends to be well against them as he has his ultimate to break the gap (Which is Unstoppable so they can't push him away during it. Always funny seeing them try), and Q pull and slow to keep them still. Especially if he hits his E which gives him two dashes. Problem only is Vayne for him really.
Good luck picking Kled as counterpick, when people play range Top laners only as counterpick. Somebody would have to be REALLY damn stupid to first pick Quinn or any ranged champion.
@@lordpaulphilippfernandez9904 You can rush Edge of Night on many melee tops to counter Vayne. She can basically never duel you whenever it's up because EoN Spellshield blocks her E, which she needs to peel you off, and none of her other abilities can pop the spellshield.
Ranged top are the manifistation of "dont tilt or you lose" THEY ARE ANNOYING,but if you stay calm and think a bit you will forme a plane to defeat them
The reason people hate ranged toplaners is because the right way to play against them is to give up cs and health, and playing passively is boring. And most ranged tops have a way to punish you if you dont play passively until certain item/level thresholds.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about Runes and Starting Items. Although they are generally very important, in top lane, the strength of early game runes and/or items is arguably what makes the match ups tolerable or brain damaging. For example, Dorian Shield, Second Wind and Bone Plating are fighters' saviours; while Press the Attack, Lethal Tempo and Phase Rush make them wish for old Stride Breaker. Like you said, ranged top is a gamble early game, so picking runes and good itemization will almost dictate the outcome.
All the hate and stimga, towards top ranged champions, is mostly due to the counterpick meta in toplane, not necessarily the fact that they're ranged. As mentioned before, top lane is an island, so counterpicks are more effective, and brutally unfun to play against. No one bitches about ranged top because they're ranged, but because if they are picked then it means they likely picked 2nd and thus counterpicked you. Compound that with the fact that we are very adept at identifying patterns, and the stigma against ranged tops is born.
Literally this. I've played Yorick into Quinn and shit on her, but I've suffered as Singed against Darius. Melee or ranged isn't the issue, but being counterpicked is, and if you blind pick a ranged toplaner (except maybe Gnar) you're either an otp or trolling
In fighting games it's less of an issue because everyone has a way to counter zoning. When I play lol there's this impression that the game is incomplete because of lacks stuff like that, universal tools that can deal with cheesing like this.
I have found Nasus to work very well into ranged toplaners, you go ghost and to and run at them on level 6 and always go trinity force and hullbreaker 1st and 2nd , both of them give movespeed so running at them is relatively easy
any good ranged top will just build up a big wave early since you can't walk up, dive you with the jungler when it crashes since nasus is useless at level 2 and now you're 2 levels down and basically lost the game. The higher the ELO the more likely this is to happen. it's why Nasus doesn't work in high elo.
@@dennisangjeli9774 or they won't let you stack and farm at all. And your 6 level won't do enough. Nasus works in high elo. But with the E maxing strategy.
I would rather instantly die (ingame) when I step out of position vs any assassin no matter how far behind they are than have to face more Red Kayn/WW/etc life drain champ who can make 20 blunders and they all go away as soon as they get another 1 uninterrupted second of dealing damage to heal themselves back to full.
As a Kled main I love seeing Vaynes and Vlads honestly Kled's engage is way too hard to kite if you play it right, and its a free kill if you arent dismounted
Quinn definitely does not buy vamp scepter first item and having mained her for 4 seasons I don't think I have ever bought it first item except for specific circumstances. Since before Shieldbow into Wit's was better than BotrK and you get Noonquiver first for that, more recently you get Kraken first and also build Noonquiver first. Have not played since the item update recently so not exactly sure what she builds now but it is probably Noonquiver still it is just too good.
For me, I hate ranged top laners BECAUSE they aren't as viable. It means that despite what's obviously more helpful for their team, these players enjoy being annoying so much that they'd sacrifice a better chance to win if it means they can be a nuissance. That's why I don't even consider champs like gnar to be a ranged top because those players can still fill the role they were supposed to
100% Additionally, kayle plays the opposite of most ranged top laners as she is vulnerable early but great at late game team fights (as long as she has a frontline)
Nah as an akshan OTP I can say that the mental damage is a huge reason why I pick him. I remember when I won a game where my whole team intend like 0 10 each and we won cause the enemy Gwen went afk
@@it_is_morbin_time He saying he hates ranged top because you (players) selfishly pick them for causing mental damage instead of for teamplay. And i agree that some people only pick ranged top champs to counterpick. Annoying af when you dont go afk and still stay having your team roast you.
@@Tyrone2714I agree. When my team is being feeder, I'm winning in my lane as Kayle so I'm ahead compared to other players. I ended up literally carrying my team.
I've been trying a Swain tank build and I want to try it top. Grasp with Heartsteel and Demonic Embrace gives infinite health and damage theoretically. He can take the pressure and I played a game where 4 people came after me just for me to outheal and get a kill. Swain is kind of viable because he has a root and his ult to sustain. I then just build tank on him so I'll survive and get be a frontline.
This is why K'sante as champion is broken and can't be fixed with numbers. He is a decent sidelaner and a monster teamfigher that absorb pressure like a sponge while occasionally still 1vs3 like a Fiora. Well design Riot
he has 44% wr globally, i think he's fine if you look at masters+ he has 49% ksante is good because he peels for the giga broken adc well, not because of all out
As an Ornn main, yeah ranged tops can be annoying but playing smart usually means you can still win the game even if you lose lane. I’ve never understood why ranged tops get so much hatred when it’s genuinely much more difficult to come back from losing early against another melee.
Well, Ornn is by definition one of the best pick into ranged champs ( Malphite also). However, if you play a champ without sustain or enough cc/or mobility, then you're out of luck.
Because its just not fun to play against a ranged top. There's no counter to getting right clicked from afar and without jungle assistance you end up hugging tower for 20 minutes until team fighting comes into play.
Feels like that yeah. I’d play Morde or Voli in toplane and get matched against a Quinn or Teemo and just spend the whole time getting blueballed into holding an unfavourable stalemate. Really boring and frustrating to play against but there was also a good chance that we’d end up winning the match anyway. So I’d just be sitting there having a really shit time doing nothing against an omnipresent opponent while my team beats the other lanes into an early FF. It’s unsatisfying and frustrating.
Agreed. Its funny seeing so many people in the comments like "top laners r so dumb they just want to all in and melee" without even mentioning the fact that fighting ranged tops just sucks and counterplay against it is almost entirely "get denied cs and xp and all in into stacked minion waves/ farm cs when laning phase is over". Its not fun. Sure the other team is most likely gonna lose (unless its low elo) but who CARES its not FUN and thats why people play games.
Agree, except with the part when you say "Ranged top laners can't comeback". I would say that damage focused ones can't, because even if Kennen is 0/10, as long as he has Zonyas and ults everyone he can win the match for his team.
I love playing Kennen, but I can't say I really considered that I should have a tank in another role to help with late game insurance. Another great video, thank you 👍🏻
as a ranged toplaner (yes i hate myself too) i must say the advantages are severely overstated here , sure it is true for the hard counters he mentioned but the 4 horsewoman of the toplane and alot more champs have very much an easy time to close the gap and/or outsustain you . Also as a squishy top u are an easier target to gank/dive , a winning lane is not guaranteed at all and because the movement abilities of ranged top are oftten short lived means pushing to tower alone in a long lane i always risky , but thats just my low elo opinion :)
While ranged tops are annoying to face, I feel like often times the frustration of players stems from the fact that they have a very narrow view of what should be played where. Thats why I really like the example of Sej Jungle, Galio Mid and maybe a frontline support like Leona. Team comps are far less solved in a soloq environment than people like to think, so when they face an annoying champion top they just assume it has to be cheese rather than an actual legitimate playstyle (Even though weaponizing the enemies tilt against them is fun and cheesy lol).
That and top lane is the lane that has the highest ego playing nowadays. They absolutely DO NOT know how to play a lane where they can't all-in/outplay their opponent and have to play weak side to win and they HATE being denied. I climbed multiple times to diamond as Karma Tank and it's so funny how people believed firmly she doesn't have a function when like... her function IS denying the other top lane the possibility to impact (or delaying that impact), she has even been used competitively with that function. They only recognize a top laner that is either a massive engage tank or a solo carry and forget that the role has flexibility to allow for more stuff.
@@logisticstep5212 yes, her kit is full of tools to deal with most top laners, she has a slow and poke with her Q, a snare and self-heal with her W and a shield with move speed in her E, it's relatively easy to touch her in lane but hard to stick to her. She can also run grasp of the undying and shield bash to really enhance this playstyle but it takes more skill to play properly. She's best used against lane bullies that fall easily and fighters that have weak lanes (they do outscale her but she can delay their impact), she can play ve tanks but they work in low economy so it's pointless. I used to climb pretty easily with her but the durability patch hurt her a bit, before that her WR healing was 20% of her max health 2 times which was broken, now she heals less so you need to be perfect in lane otherwise you can die.
@mitsuki1388 I have to add here that a friend I know tended to play Morgana top lane, which was very much disgusting for the enemy who couldn't farm well because they kept poking with the root and the soil but holy hell did it help when I was ganking with all her cc lol. It really was a pick I did not expect to go well but they did it spectacularly
I think its inaccurate to say they dont work, or as you ended the video with, that vayne, quinn and teemo are too inconsistent. The stats show that it can work, for example vayne in masters+ has an above average wr.
Usually I mostly agree, but on this one, there is just waaaay too much you get wrong. Quinn barely if ever build Vampiric at all, not to sure for the others, but I suspect they don't rush it as well. Quinn is likely to not build lifesteal, except from the Bloodline Rune, even with a crit build. As for them being useless if they do not win lane, this is only true for the early game ones like Jayce, for the rest, most of them are piss weak early then scale to oblivion, Quinn being a prime example. Thing is, Kayle and Vayne will struggle to come back massively and Vayne is not an effective split pusher as she is an easy catch. Quinn though, you are not stopping her from farming, ever post 6, she can roam, bait you to rotate and clear wave (she actually got fine wave clear too). You say they can not split push like a Fiora or an Illaoi, but that is only true for some. Quinn and Kayle excel at it, both differently though. Quinn can actually go for a bruiser build and outscale all the bruisers with it, managing to actually be somewhat of a front liner. Best part, it is actually stupid strong as a build, not something you only build if your team really need it, but something you can build every single games and it will always be good. As for Cassio, her E last hit is not mana regen. If one champion always run out of mana, it is Cass. Her E refund cost only make her able to last hit, it won't do shit to help her clear and keep mana up, if she has to clear, which she is shit at. You say Ranged Top Laner remove your agency, but that isn't quite true. Sure, if you are Darius or Garen into Quinn, you can't do a thing, but those are not champion that exactly have agency in their nature, especially Garen, it is literally pure stat check without any skill expression in the kit itself. Being skilled on those bruisers is basically just knowing when to fight, how to position to stay strong between fight opportunities and managing your waves properly. Also, ranged top as a whole tend to be insanely vulnerable to ganks and all have rather high average deaths if you look at the stats. It is just how it goes for most of them, they make the melee dude cry for help, he gets help and the ranged top literally can't do a thing, once they get ganked, which garantee they go behind for a while. Typically, they come back with a vengeance, unless you can keep them down. Now, for the few like Jayce who are actually good early and mid game, this is a bit different and I do not play those, so idk. Aslo, you might want to put GP as a ranged top at this point, he literally outrange nearly all of them, quite significantly and at very little cost. Although, you just pick Kayle and smash his barrels way faster than he can ever hope too, it is free gold.
Played several times vs ranged toplaners. Won like 8/10 games, and I am confident to say that it was the enemy toplaner fault because their team couldn't facecheck,sidelane or deep ward despite having fed memebers. Even though I won the games, I had 0 fun in all of them . The ranged toplaners rush swifities into afk farm and some autos every time I go for a last hit, it was incredibly boring
I don't have too big of a problem with them (I still dislike playing against them however), due to Yorick being my toplane pick of choice. I can go at least even most of the time, and a single misplay from the enemy means I get a free lane.
thats the thing about ranged top, you can bully the enemy, but 1 gank and you are done, the melee will just kill you over and over, i despise ranged top, but every time i meet a vayne i just cry for help, they get ganked and they die cause they were trying to harass me, i feel like if you play ranged top you are not trying to win the lane, you are trying to destroy the enemy mental
Vayne is just a mental block for me. I usually play stuff like Sett/Darius/Mundo and Vayne is an absolute nightmare. I hate her so much. But getting to cage her and throw ghouls at her as Yorick once was probably the best feeling I've ever had as I got to crush the champion that has single handedly ruined more games for me than I care to count.
In solo q, low elo in particular it doesn't matter if you have a good engage or if you can put pressure on the map because people don't even take advantage when they win a teamfight
most fighting game zoners don’t have get off of me tools Netherrealm studio: how about we make a zoner that can zone you while having good combo damage, invincible wakeups and 50/50s
I think that ranged tops are so hated because they fundamentally go against the ideals and power fantasy of queuing top. Two big meaty champs going at each other constantly trading and trying to all in the other. Darius v Sett, Ornn v Riven, Fiora v Camille. 2 champions fighting and trying to outplay the other. Ranged tops ignore this by just hitting you for free without allowing you to hit back even if you get on them, it removes the skillful trading from the equation entirely.
Yes, 100% agree. A cowards way of fighting. The guy who never bothered to learn the enemies’ abilities and trade patterns, hoping to win out of sheer lameness.
Of course, most ranged champions are top, because there's literally nowhere else for them to be. They are incompatible with current league. They "don't work" because they generally just don't provide much if anything to the team. You take them top, so you can actually play them for like 15-20 minutes, and then don't care about the rest of the game. Exception given to quinn, who is just an absolute terror against squishy teams. (When ahead. Else she's literally just an int-ier Nunu.)
I've had some Quinn games where I got pushed hard early game, because someone like Urgot just says no to my disengage, but I was able t become a late game nightmare because my team could handle Urgot, while I take out their midlaner and support. I mostly jungle, but occasionally I'll mid as Orianna or Swain or top as Quinn because the jungler's most important skill is map awareness, and if you're able to transfer that to Quinn, even if you lose lane, you can become a nightmare for the enemy team with pokes against their squishies, or transfer it to Swain and poke their jungler with your eye while they're farming without leaving lane
@@rimmer62 Jungle is actually where he should go, thematically. But he has literally no tools for that, outside of shrooms, which he doesn't get until level 6. And it's not good until at least level 11. Support is also a surprisingly appropriate role, with his abundant vision control, and blind for the adc. But he lacks the range, tankiness, or actual lockdown of real supports. Yeah, basically comes down to the fact that he basically has 2/5 of a real champion's kit, at best, for most contexts.
Regardless of how well off ranged top laners are, no one will ever enjoy going against them because they aren't fun, discourage interaction and most of the time end up being less useful than an actual top laner literally any other point they aren't "fighting" the top laner
As a ranged top lane enjoyer, I think they are completely unplayable in the current meta of tanks. Frankly I think the reason 90% of laners hate them. They force the enemy to actually play in a skillful way, this may sound funny coming from a ranged laner. But it’s true, you can’t just keep brute forcing things. Also ANY mistake it’s pretty much game. They can brute force well timed all outs and make you go 0/4 or stay under tower 24/7. I agree with your pressure points immensely. You’re sacrificing a very important team slot too, double adc’s on a team isn’t great for a reason. And I promise you 95% of league players don’t know how to play with them effectively. All in all I think the problem with ranged top laners is the problem with why top lane is the most frustrating role in the game. Tanks and support roams. It’s such a volatile out the way role, that it feels 90% of the lane can be thrown upside down by a support deciding it’s time to go top for a second. It’s a team game, yet top lane feels so out of your control. Even with melee matchups. I don’t know what riot could do to fix this, but something really has to be done. They took away global TP because of the unfair influence over leveled top laners have had on bot lane, but they never really compensated and now top lane is the one getting hard screwed over by random roams. Even when playing immobile melees, I’d much rather fight a ranged laner that “doesn’t let you play the game” over another beefy tank you can never kill. Those really force you to not play the game, yet they’re praised
Being forced to play safe for 90% of lane isn't skillful, it's just boring. That's why nobody likes you up there, it just becomes a waiting game of hoping you make a mistake. Not sure why you say "It's a team game, yet top lane feels so out of your control". That's the whole reason it feels that way. Every single team game feels like that besides rare exceptions like CS. Trying to deal with a tank is much more interactive than trying to deal with an ADC, regardless of viability. Tanks actually encourages you to think about buys(barely but still), you can still do things, and they usually have counterplay. Meanwhile with ADCs the strategy is just to run them down as fast as possible and nothing else.
@@bevvvy1374 gotta add a TL;DR for this one, I don't think ranged laners that sit under tower playing safe are skillful. But doing that will never get you consistent wins. I think the unfairness of ranged laners is exaggerated immensely and that people should hate tanks just as much if not more than ranged lanerss, because they truly encapsulate what makes the laners "unfun". I disagree completely with a lot of what you said. With what I mean with it feeling out of your control is that you can't do anything. Jungle roams all over and influences the lanes, support is broken beyond belief being a jungle 2.0. mid lane can roam. And adc.. well adc is kind of the same tbh. Being forced to play safe in a bad matchup while still finding opportunities for ganks and other scenarios is skillful. Frankly that's every counter matchup in top lane, which ranged laners are. If you're playing poppy into a Darius you're gonna play safe 90% of the time, same goes for yone into Jax, any adc against a malphite. They at least force you to adapt your gameplay, you might not find it fun to play safe but I think it's infinitely healthier for the game over pulling up RUclips on the side while a gragas, ksante, ornn, Sion, or malphite sits in lane being unkillable unless you're playing one of like 3 champs. I want to clarify though my list of champs is in order of most played (all top), Kayle > riven > jayce > Samira. I won't be defending any ranged top laners who sit under tower all game farming till 3 items. That is boring, but those people will get no where like that besides piggybacking of their team. And what you said about it becoming a waiting game "hoping you make a mistake", that's the entire laning phase in even slightly unfavorable matchups. It's just more forgiving vs another melee laner. Until you get to challenger there's so many mistakes you make just in laning phase itself. Noticing the mistakes and windows of opportunity is 100% a skill in the game people need. I'd also like to mention you cannot itemize against tanks, you have bork, and divine. That's it. Divine is a shit item barely anyone wants, and bork is good on a handful of champs. And even with bork those champs will do at most 3-5% of a tanks HP per auto when they get it. Which seems like a lot till you realize that's 90% of their damage. Old kraken was pretty good but had an even more niche pool of champs that could build it, and most would rather opt for something else even then. Armor pen items don't really count as you only build them 3rd, maybe 1/100 times you build them 2nd. And by that point laning phase is over and the tank has outscaled your pen.
@@marijnlastname3132 This has to be a joke post, waiting for your jungle to make your lane playable is skill expression? The simple answer to why people don't hate tanks as much, you do have the option to fight them and itemize around killing them. Doesn't matter what your opinion on Divine Sunderer or Black Cleaver/Grudge is, they work and do allow you to kill them even if it takes time to get there. Those tanks are also not forcing you off CS and killing any potential fight for the entire laning phase. Against any competent ranged top, if you are playing a purely melee character, you're fucked. It's entirely on the onus of the ranged top to make a mistake for you to even have a chance. You can say jungler or roaming support will solve this, but those are not things within your control. You have no input on the outcome of this lane besides reducing your CS or death deficit. You keep going on about how terrible it is to fight tanks, yet ranged tops reduce everyone to playing like a tank, what are you even talking about?
@@kioken101 my entire point is that ranged tops are all counter picks. If you're a slow melee you just got counter picked. No one blind picks ranged top, it may be annoying to play against but it 100% is a skill issue. Sadly the jungle is part is hard to defend. The sheer amount of impact jungle has on top lane laning phase is insufferable and something needs to be done, not just for ranged tops. But as the game currently stands yes, you are supposed to wait for your jungler because if they get a gank off it's near gauranteed to kill a ranger. If the gank fails you'll at least have breathing room. I keep complaining about tanks because they make the game pointless. You'll never zone a tank, I mean you might have fun pressing some abilities in melee range. But its just a matter of time before they outscale you in teamfights or brick up any sidelane. You can at least kill a ranged top post lane phase. When it comes to itemizing, yeah you can buy "anti tank" items. But my point is they have no effect. Anti ranger items are usually in the form of gap closers, and they've all been removed because of how oppressive they were on juggernauts. I wish there was a healthy item to counter rangers up top. But sadly there isn't right now. My entire point is that both tanks and rangers deny you the game. The only difference is one gives you the illusion of counter play. Why aren't both universally hated. Especially considering that tanks have been strong for a while and ranged tops died out as a viable strat ages ago.
As a top lane who just played against a ranged "thing" (i refuse to call them Champion) fuck you and your opinion until it bleeds. It is NOT fun. Doesn't have ANYTHING to do with skill, and im pissed even tough we still won the game. You just abuse the range and deny any kind of gameplay. Let me last hit a minion, oh no my health. Let me try to fight at all, oh no my health. I finaly got your ass with my ult, oh no you ran away with 1hp and i can choose to either follow you out of rage in hopes of getting one kill after 15min of being denied any semblence to fun or swallow my hate and go back under my turret. May you always have a bad ping and thunder strike down your pc.
im a kennen main, and i like making people rage quit 10 mins into the game, because they dont know how to play against me. But once you understand how to play aginst a ranged top, you shit on them all the time
Problem with ranged top Laners is that their roles is to be a mild inconvenience to traditional top Laners. They win lane by not letting the enemy play the game, but they often lose the game due to the fact that they are really bad on the late game, with few exceptions, and when they ARE late game champions, they are usually abusable by the jungler and become dead weight to your team. Also you usually sacrifice your team's front line by going an ADC top, or make it so your jungler has to strong side them if they don't want the ranged top Laners to be steam rolled by the enemy jungler.
well that depends , , if i pick kaisa top or jayce even if i dont do perfectly in my lane my poke will create insane pressure on ur team. doesnt matter if ur a beffy ornn if ur backline gets one shot by my non stop poke ur pressure become irrelevant, if u a split push bruiser well again if ur team gets destroyed by my poke then we can grab baron , drag , tower and now ur getting flamed for not helping team . i agree with vayne or askhan top they need to dominate early , but that cant be said for every range top
Underrated comment. Most of the time you just dance until you get enough lvl and an opportunity to jump the ranged top. It's just infuriating to purposely miss cs, cause that is not how we are taught how to play.
my favorite thing is to pick something like a ornn and aim for the teamfights later, but tbh you can just pick something like a camille, an irelia or a jayce (if ennemy picked it just pick malphite) and break their legs there are champs that are designed for all-ins and have totally their place at toplane but people would rather not pick anything else than their main and get shat on
If wanting to be able to do something by myself in the first 10-15 mins of a game that lasts 20 mins half of the times when i am playing a fucking videogame is considered wanting to be the main character im dam guilty.
In my games I can't remember the last time I actually played against a melee top laner When i'm also playing a top laner. I don't know if that's because of iron standards or something like that, but it just feels weird.
The reason why we don't liked ranged top laners is because it screws over the role's objectives. The only way top lane is useful in the current meta is if one side gets fed. You either get fed, or the enemy gets fed. If both of you stonewall the laning phase, neither of you do anything for the entire game. Picking a ranged top laner means I have ZERO way of snowballing the game. It isn't a matter of taking dshield and second wind and playing safe under turret, that works to survive laning phase, but what am I going to do after that? This isn't a problem strictly with ranged top laners because there are some tanks who do the same thing (stonewall laning phase). Malphite is one.
A little off topic but this video made me understand a little better what was working back when I played Taric Top, an off meta pick at the time that I had roughly a ~72% win rate on over 200 games When I got ahead in lane I had just enough offensive pressure on top of all of Taric's natural defensive tools to keep the enemy team from exerting any pressure on my own team... even when they were ahead. Even when I was behind all those defensive tools were just as potent, it's just the kill potential isn't high enough to catch people off guard
@@mistywww3199 idk, imo his whole identity feels kinda rough all the items that could really benefit him are nerfed on him cause he's ranged and the ranged items don't let him be tanky enough to survive longer fights.
Believe me as a teemo player the last thing I want is to play against bruisers but its the only role he has a chance in unless you do some insane cheese. I would love for riot to rework him into a jungler or midlaner.
Only urgot, jayce, gnar and elise are respectable. They actually go into melee range and fight up close. Every other one of those champs on top is cancer and those that play them there do not deserve to breathe our oxygen.
Teemo strength is that you can use shrooms to secure your perimeter against junglers. The downside that during team fights he is useless. You have to use shrooms really smart in order to soften the other team before the team fight starts.
especially seeing as the counterplay is so easy- rush ninja tabis and then all in. that's all it takes to win lane. good spacing and itemisation is all you need
Back when I still played league I very rarely played Quinn top in a very particular matchup. When they enemy locked Vayne top. They try to cheese you with a ranged top laner you counter pick with another ranged toplaner who can very easily gank other lanes if you get ahead and if you don't get ahead you make sure that Vayne doesn't get a lead herself and you can still punish with superior map coverage.
Another obnoxious thing in top lane are tanks when tank meta is up, for example just get boots with malphite and the lane turns into an afk lane where you can't do anything
It's not "WHY ranged top-laners don't work" - it's "WHEN ranged top-laners don't work". And some top-laners hate them because they don't know what to do against it. There's nothing unfair or unsporting about them. There's just a skill gap, because anyone who plays ADCs is used to kiting melee supports but top-laners are not used to dealing with ADCs until mid-game.
kting a melee support in a 2v2 lane is very different from a solo lane if the enemy is playing kennen and you're playing olaf or tryndamere or something, you will never win doesnt matter if you're better at the game than the kennen, he will just disengage everytime & poke you out of lane
@@lashedandscorned I was a top-laner from S1 to S7, and it's still my 2nd most played role. Ranged top lane picks are meant to negate your pick. You don't need to win that lane as melee, just don't feed and eventually you are more relevant.
Speaking of Ranged Top Laners, could you analyze the Support Toplane meta? When Sona, Soraka, and some others dominated the game? (Not with smite, prior to that)
I'm honestly fine with pretty much all champions personally... I don't enjoy playing assassins or bruisers (bar Urgot), but I can understand what they bring to the table and can just play something/differently to deal with them. I do have to keep Shyvana banned cause my teammates can't deal with them or something...
6:35 while you ARE correct, you picked a hilarious bit of footage to back this statement with. "Dhalsim has underwhelming close quarters options" *Shows SF5 Dhalsim's shockingly good knockdown pressure and mixup game*
He also isn’t very good at fighting games or analyzing them at all, excluding smash. His tales are general usually and with massive portions of the argument left out
@@kennydg4979 Yeah, I just think he would probably have been better served with any of Dhalsim's previous incarnations. SF5 is probably the first game that gave him strong offensive tools because of how unfriendly to zoners SF5's mechanics can be, and the byproduct is that it makes him a lot more fun to watch.
To be fair to Vars, not everyone can be an expert on everything and traditional fighting games are pretty niche, to the point where I wouldn't expect anyone to know much beyond the traditional "Grappler, Zoner, Rushdown" triangle and a basic idea of what the characters from Street Fighter 2 could do.
Literally came to say this, lmao.
Literally hit him with a 50/50 😭😭😭
at this point i feel like having to do tk teleport is a bigger disadvantage than sfv dhalsim close range buttons
Gangplank is a ranged toplaner . Change my mind
After the q on-hit change he became a bit less ranged but it's kinda true.
Ranged Top laner who sucks into ranged Top laners...yep that's GP.
He's melee but has to play as if he's ranged basically
@@walkelftexasranger i think of gp as a control champ for a reason yes his q does dmg but there are many things to do like d shield second wind and if any top laner engaged succesfully on gp he is preety much done unlike mid where he can actually fight back
To add onto this discussion Urgot is a melee toplaner
The only ranged champion i dont mind going up against is Gnar, his passive means he HAS to get into his melee form eventually or alternatively lose cs. This makes him uniquely vulnerable among ranged top laners despite all the advantages he has.
Vulnerable ? I mean, 75% of the time, you don't want to face a Mega Gnar xDDD. But theoretically, you are correct.
it's almost like he was designed to be a toplaner *cough* quinn *cough* ashkan
Mega Gnar is so strong he will stat check basically every top laner if he doesn't oneshot them during his perma cc. I rather fight mini
@@_senka any bruiser easily beats mega gnar
Mega Gnar stats beat literally any other level six except fiora and that’s hitting all vitals and parry.
Urgot and Gnar are the only tolerable ranged toplaners in the game imo, their range isnt obnoxiously high for toplane standards like vayne for example. Gnar is super squishy and becomes melee when mega while urgot plays pretty much the same as a melee toplaner but just with low ranged attacks instead. Weird, almost as if those 2 were litterally designed to be played toplane and the others weren't :D
YES.
CRABGOD MAIN
Urgot is in this place imo of “melee-range”. His combos require being close and his range is not too far away which makes him a balanced top laner. He’s also very easy to bait into ganks and all. Playing into top lane ranged is hell
Vayne has the exact same range as Urgot
@@SorcererShangTsung probably more annoying because of how much she can move. She feels way more annoying
Nah Gnar is equally as annoying as any of the others it not worse. I can’t imagine you were playing back when gnar was meta pick/ban in pro play. His lane is unfathomably safe. Like the video touched on, you have a long range slow, a very strong dash AND a max health MAGIC DAMAGE 3 hit passive that gives you a ton of move speed. The majority of top laners cannot afford to ever fight him in ranged form as it’s impossible to get close even if he mispositions. The only time you can fight gnar is when he’s melee, which unfortunately has the highest base stats of any champion in the game along with insane AD ratios on every ability. If you are not ahead in the lane, you’re going to struggle immensely to kill mega gnar. Which means he has insane neutral and the only time you can actually fight him is when he’s strongest? Not at all tolerable.
As a Top Laner, all i want is:
- To 1v1 and bash each other's head
- Complain about your team throwing and how every queue is a coin toss
- Always shit talk Range abusers
- Complain about Riot's balance and how is my main not as broken as (insert top 10 tops rn)
🤣🤣🤣
Kled is OK into range other than teemo and Fiona since you don't gain courage during blind or fiora block
I had a match where I won top against the enemy Sett, but our jinx fed their Vel'koz so we lost anyway.
tbh this mentality is thrown out the window in Wild Rift. currently you have a very high chance of running into a Teemo or hell even a mage top looking to piss people off so I just say screw it and run whatever ranged character I'm feeling that day or I play Garen to just not care since free healing.
I still think that quinn should be reworked into a jungler, it just seems to fit her playstyle much better. Not saying that she shouldn't be a top laner anymore, but riot should increase her damage to monsters.
Make her Mid/ADC (her kit is perfect for those two roles) and get her the fuck out of Top lane.
@@walkelftexasranger Quinn was originally designed to be an adc, but nobody played her there, and still don't because she gets outranged by the entire roster. Her ability to roam and get picks is also diminished in that role since she also has to face against whoever the support is. She honestly would be better suited for mid or jungle where she can make map plays.
@@Ratty524 I actually think she was good ADC back in the day, because her trades were really cancer to deal with.
She scaled like shit tho.
Rework her into an adc, the role she was supposed to be before shoved into being a "i shit on specific melee matchups"
@@Ratty524 u right that she doesnt have the range, but she also doesnt have tools like other marksmen her range has like the damage of vayne of waveclear/spellshield of sivir. not to mention her useless ult which makes her lose so much gold in stats
If there were champions whose ammunition was an energy bar or thing like jhin, replenished by melee mode, it would be cool. I think you could fairly balance it
Graves exists ans domeone plays him toplane
@@edoardocesetti9900 Woooooooo I love perma shoving waves into enemy turret wooooooo so fun.
@@edoardocesetti9900 i thing he mean by that a champion that uses ammo like aphelios but when runs out of it then he becomes melle till ammo repleanish
yeah but no one would play it, same reason Gnar is so unpopular and is mostly a pro play champ. having no control over, when and if your preassure will fall apart is a very big downside to a champion who relies on preassure to exist
@@baki6236 yes this is what I mean. Perhaps they could be a character that relies more on their tempo rather than movement abilities, and their ranged attacks were slower but hit harder. Then when they ran out of ammo, they get a short movement buff to close the gap and fight in melee. Then when they revert back, it's a backwards dash like kleds pocket pistol and back to range. Maybe a little too idealistic and betrays the shape shifting formula of fragile hard hitting
I do find it interesting Kayle wasn’t mentioned until late into the video. She acts like a ranged minion until 6 and if someone can’t capitalize, it’s almost gg at that point
lol, Kayle wins most (not all) 1v1 level 1's and 2's all-ins if she runs lethal tempo (obvsly with E start and Dorans Blade). Where Kayle struggles is level 3, because that the moment when bruisers have their full kit available and Kayles 3 level is much much weaker than theirs.
@@bohomazdesign725 yeah lvl 3-5 is her only weakness (excluding the patience the kayle player needs)
I use to main her and I agree that she is an annoying cheese pick that is unhealthy for the game if she is strong.
She is melee until 6.
I play riven, irelia and Kayle and can confidently say that kayle can get HARD countered if she’s picked blind
The enemy laner hates ranged tops because the laner has no means to counter them. It’s all in the hands of jungler to hard punish the pick.
Allies hate ranged tops because it ruins team comps and extremely vulnerable to ganks where the top laner is doing thebauffs impressions but without the turret sieging
Exactly, nobody likes people who pick ranged top because they ruin the fun of your entire team and the enemy top, just for you to have a winning matchupw and selfishly enjoy the freest laning phase possible.
I know disengage is important for top laners, but it is the MOST annoying part of fighting them. I'm already fighting someone who can attack me from far away without me being able to do anything about it. if they don't use their biggest strength correctly (Their range and spacing) and I, an immobile melee champion, can get close to them, they should actually be PUNISHED, not just press a button and be able to completely negate their mistake. I know eventually you can eventually overcome this (As Vars said in the video, Darius with ghost + stridebreaker for example, or building Edge of Night to counteract Vayne E), but not being able to do ANYTHING until you get that advantage is really boring.
It's boring to have the counterplay to ranged top laners be "Hope they aren't good"
The counter play is just farm and don't feed. The mid-late game will be punishment enough when they find out there is no tank/bruiser in their composition.
@@MarcoMancera18cool, convince your team to get to mid-late game instead of ffing.
"Oh no my sett is 0/2, enemy team has a Vayne top game is over"
The amount of times I've heard shit like that is infuriating. It's even worse when I'm playing a champ like Cho'Gath, and I've only JUST started scaling. Like level 10-11. You're absolutely right, mid late game there's nothing they can do. But you never get that far because your team gives up.
@@airbots4789 Once again League players become their own enemies. Sometimes the same guy who said just farm and don't feed is the one who wants to GG even when top lane has only got to 0/2 at lvl 8. It's like an override button I don't care how solid our plan is if top goes 0/2 we GG.
As a Gnar main I feel like he is the best example of this, Whilst in gnar form he will just fall to everything and everyone (before items) just like your regular ADCs. But at the same time there is no scarier champion in the game than a gnar about to transform. MEGA Gnar has the highest base stats in the game by a pretty big amount, he is a juggernaut and a diver combined and that is why he is so scary when he has the opportunity to be. He is one of the few ranged top in pro because of this reason, he is so good in mega form that his weakness of mini form is often times worth it
Can I just say - I would never have expected an Aviators song in the background of one of your videos but it fits pretty well
ranged top laners are not broken they are just really annoying to play against and make the game unfun by just existing
As a person who have not slept well today, I really liked background chill music and the all the plays on the screen.
Topic is also well discussed!
Thank you for the video!
I think you hit the nail on the head pretty well
I think that a lot of the animosity is also that melee tops know that the ranged top they are fighting isn't that good a lot of the time. They either lack fundamentals and get all in'd or lack patience and macro and over push instead of freezing and killing the top ability to play. Top is a lane that typically prides itself of 1v1s and champs that thrive on it. So tops are being denied the fun of playing the lane, by someone who without the fundamentals is essentially a gimmick champ.
Yeah, I love sitting under turret for 15 minutes wasting my time. So engaging.
I mean, it's that mentality that made me hit diamond playing only tank karma top more than once. Most other top laners could win the game by just staying under turret and farming safely to out-scale me but they'd rather all win me (or 2v1 me with their jungler) and give me so much advantage they couldn't play the game anymore.
Funny how after becoming a Gwen main instead I realized how it was relatively easy to deal with these match-ups if you don't have a massive ego.
Yes, you play weak side.
Yes, it's not fun.
Yes, you can't really win lane.
But odds are you'll win the game just fine if you play it patiently.
@@mitsuki1388I mean, it's not really about a massive ego. People play the game to have fun. And if I had fun by trading ranged attacks I'd play ADC.
Like, sett is the whole toplane energy. I'm here to punch eachother till one of us drops dead. This is what I came here for. A ranged top lane will make my life miserable for the next 40 minutes. It's okay to die so that your team can win the fight, cuz at least I get to play once I respawn
@@mitsuki1388 Shit take, 90% of the time as top you have no influence over the first half of the game, in order to have the best chances of winning, you have to crush top, you need to be a sidelane monster, soaking and putting out pressure, it's all about being a monolith that locks part of the map if you're ahead, your argument invalidates the entire idea of toplane "just because I play karma tank top".
A single click on a champion should not invalidate the entire identity of a lane, just by *being* there.
I could go on and on, but I think that summarizes well my thoughts on the topic.
It should. What you are seeing is what is called ab arms race. The more range you have the more advantage you have. This is seen through out history. That is why the spesr was so popular among peasant armies and later bows and so on.
Dyrus saying he'd like to have the opportunity to play league is always going to be my 'toplane impact' quote from now on lmao
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Jayce has good sidelane pressure, he has decent escapes and solid dueling. Kennen has excellent teamfight pressure, that's literally almost the entire reason he's picked at all. The reason ranged toplaners struggle is not that they lack pressure or pressure absorbtion, it's that they're high risk/reward and difficult to play. Harassing as them is obviously easy, but playing around the all-in and the jungler is more important for them because falling behind is easier and more devastating.
As a side note, rush boots 2 against ranged toplaners and it is a lot easier to get on top of them and kill them without losing your entire health bar first.
Ranged top generally has awful sustain/escape tools as well, so a freeze by your tower is also a wonderful option, with hard pushes when they disappear until engages are an option.
Difficult to play lul
Jayce's primary advantage is that in lane he is virtually impossible to beat without jg help by most tops. He can just auto you and hit you with energy balls whenever you try to farm and if you engage him, he can hit you away with e, forcing the trade to be short.
This is balanced by being useless when behind and also being free farm for junglers cause jayce honestly sucks at escaping ganks and has a weak 1 v 2 even when ahead, so if you play him without respecting enemy jg, you'll probably get killed over and over. This is what makes Jayce honestly really hard to play, because he relies on well developed macro skills to balance out understanding when to be aggressive and when to be passive, even though you technically have the tools to bully enemy tops at all times.
@@67tedward You have made my point more clearly than I. He's not that bad at escaping ganks though, between cannon E, hammer Q, and hammer E. That's more tools than some get.
@@BLKCLVR Sure but for ganks specifically jayce really can only knock 1 person away, so the other player can still cc him and let the other catch up. Thundering blow is an excellent 1v1 disengage for that reason but not as useful as a duo escape. Not the worst escape out there for sure given his movement speed boosts, but compared to someone like gnar, jayce is going to die a lot if he overextends. In particular if you're standing outside enemy tower and harrassing them, I don't find jayce can reasonably escape all the way to the other side of top if the jungler's on top of him.
This is mostly speaking from personal experience as a mediocre jayce player (don't main him but occasionally will play him casually) and getting punished for being over aggressive.
They don't work so long as your jungle has enough brain capacity to support object permanence. If the enemy team plays the most immobile ranged top laner on Earth, my jungler will look top, see the free gold, and then completely ignore it. In fact, I can only really remember one game where my jungler recognized the ranged top laner as free gold and actually came top enough to capitalize on it and carry the game.
I honestly dont mind ranged tops. I'm pretty patient and know my powerspikes. Lull the enemy into thinking I'm a passive player, ping my jungler, save flash for an all in combo. Ultimately itll be a comp diff like you mentioned, more often than not.
toplaners who complain about ranged because they are not interactive play tanks... bunch of clowns
not saying tanks are bad, just they are not very interactive, my most played toplaners this season is Sion
@@doomkingraye7692ranged tops arent fun. Thats it. Most of the time they fall off so if anything its also a huge middle finger to their own team.
Tanks are kind of braindead but at least tanks and bruisers fighting in toplane is fun enough. And both people will contribute to their teams comp. Tell me how useful a vayne top is when theres already an ADC.
Last time i had to lane against a vayne top, i took syndra. Everytime she tried to walk up for a basic attack, she'd eat a q,e,w combo.
Had to deal with a people playing adc mid do i basically pick her everytime i have to play against one.
Any adc for syndra is free kill. You can even bait their dashes and then 100 to 0 them
As someone who plays adc mid sometimes (MF) syndra is indeed a pain to deal with XD
I legit permaban Syndra whenever I play mid. Her trade combo when actually spaced is so fucking bullshit
If you want to fuck vayne top just pick arcane comet malphite. Lanes over
Vars, have you ever given a list of your favorite champs to play, and why? I would be curious as to your go to personal picks, as a fellow top laner.
He's Riven OTP, you can figure out what is his favorite champ
@@walkelftexasranger hes talked shit about riven before, i dont think riven is his favourite champion
he plays Renekton & Darius iirc
@@inbeing3464 You can talk shit about your favorite champion
@@bevvvy1374 as a fiddlesticks main, i cant relate
I'm not competitive, so you can take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
Toplane is one of my favorite roles not only for the reasons that top lane is good at it but also, and I know this might sound weird, I enjoy the fight, and I love how it sometimes feels like a way easier fighting game, to think about my advantages and disadvantages and compare them to the opponents, to reenact the "walking straight at me" scene from Jojo's right before the fight, the satisfaction of looking at an upcoming skill shot or engage dead in the eye and say "give your best shot" and then survive to punish there foolishness, to perform a beautiful and ferocious dance of weapons and compos against my opponent, and finally, when the battle is over and the dust settles, there will be only 1 victor left on their feet, and the defeated to consider all there mistakes and learn from them. Aka I enjoy a good and fair fight, I know this is weird but that's my truth.
And for this reason, I despise range toplaners with a passion, they are some of the most toxic players, they are incredibly boring to both play with/as or against them, and their skill necessity is so low that they make Garen look like Azir, and they are just so cowardly, not to mention that they sacrifice so much for there team only for more damage/to bulie their opponent/to think that they are so good because they spring guns in a boxing match. I played a lot of wild rift during my school year and I know technically its not the same, but whenever I played either jg/supp or something else, I dread when I look at my toplaner and hope that they don't pick a ranged champion because even if we win, it just feels dirty and undeserved.
I've made a promise that whenever I have one of those cowards in my team and I'm the jg, ill just forget about them and focus on my objectives and only gank/assist mid and bot, want to bring guns in boxing matches, do it on your own, il be assisting the rest of my team and il also root for the enemy toplaner and jg to make you suffer.
EDIT: Gnar and Urgot are the exceptions, they are the only acceptable ones
What about Graves? I feel like he's a champion that isn't quite as insufferable as, say, Vayne or Quinn toplane
@@BlackfeatherMain Graves is in a weird middle ground, I do enjoy playing him even tho I'm horrible at him, it's just that when his in toplane, and from what I've seen, he's mostly played with full lethality builds, and there for played like a range assassin like vayne rather than a sustain base fighter like rhaast (red kayn), I'm personally not a fan of it but I don't condemn it, at least he takes 100% percent more skill and balls then vayne ever does
@@tomthelordofzaun8375 I respect graves top players regardless of if they're assassin or bruiser because assassin graves players have to actually contend with the fact that they don't have a ton of range, and bruiser graves players acknowledge they're not doing a whole lot of damage.
seeing old Mundo at 1:40 brought back memories...
Best anti-AP champ ever designed.
Too bad he got reworked :/
Kled tends to be well against them as he has his ultimate to break the gap (Which is Unstoppable so they can't push him away during it. Always funny seeing them try), and Q pull and slow to keep them still. Especially if he hits his E which gives him two dashes. Problem only is Vayne for him really.
not just kled but divers counter ranged top
Good luck picking Kled as counterpick, when people play range Top laners only as counterpick.
Somebody would have to be REALLY damn stupid to first pick Quinn or any ranged champion.
@@walkelftexasranger you haven't seen low elo it seems
Vayne IS a problem for most toplaners. You need double dashes just go reach her, and then she has invisibility and multiple dashes to kite you.
@@lordpaulphilippfernandez9904 You can rush Edge of Night on many melee tops to counter Vayne. She can basically never duel you whenever it's up because EoN Spellshield blocks her E, which she needs to peel you off, and none of her other abilities can pop the spellshield.
Ranged top are the manifistation of "dont tilt or you lose"
THEY ARE ANNOYING,but if you stay calm and think a bit you will forme a plane to defeat them
The reason people hate ranged toplaners is because the right way to play against them is to give up cs and health, and playing passively is boring. And most ranged tops have a way to punish you if you dont play passively until certain item/level thresholds.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about Runes and Starting Items. Although they are generally very important, in top lane, the strength of early game runes and/or items is arguably what makes the match ups tolerable or brain damaging.
For example, Dorian Shield, Second Wind and Bone Plating are fighters' saviours; while Press the Attack, Lethal Tempo and Phase Rush make them wish for old Stride Breaker.
Like you said, ranged top is a gamble early game, so picking runes and good itemization will almost dictate the outcome.
yeah, that secondwind/boneplating + dorans will surely make u able to tank vaynes truedmg %hp dmage... sure...
second wind and dshield got nerfed hard, they're both bad and dont do that much to avoid top ranged tops opressive lane
All the hate and stimga, towards top ranged champions, is mostly due to the counterpick meta in toplane, not necessarily the fact that they're ranged. As mentioned before, top lane is an island, so counterpicks are more effective, and brutally unfun to play against. No one bitches about ranged top because they're ranged, but because if they are picked then it means they likely picked 2nd and thus counterpicked you. Compound that with the fact that we are very adept at identifying patterns, and the stigma against ranged tops is born.
Literally this. I've played Yorick into Quinn and shit on her, but I've suffered as Singed against Darius. Melee or ranged isn't the issue, but being counterpicked is, and if you blind pick a ranged toplaner (except maybe Gnar) you're either an otp or trolling
In fighting games it's less of an issue because everyone has a way to counter zoning. When I play lol there's this impression that the game is incomplete because of lacks stuff like that, universal tools that can deal with cheesing like this.
Like a top lane main once said
"Lighting Rush backwards, Lighting Rush forwards!"
6:17 wow that aurelion ult looks so cool
ok? you've seen it before though right????
@@dominicguye8058 not the ashen lord one.
I have found Nasus to work very well into ranged toplaners, you go ghost and to and run at them on level 6 and always go trinity force and hullbreaker 1st and 2nd , both of them give movespeed so running at them is relatively easy
It's a low elo solution tho
@@uncreativeperson8497I think I used to see strategy like this in LPL.
any good ranged top will just build up a big wave early since you can't walk up, dive you with the jungler when it crashes since nasus is useless at level 2 and now you're 2 levels down and basically lost the game. The higher the ELO the more likely this is to happen. it's why Nasus doesn't work in high elo.
@@dennisangjeli9774 or they won't let you stack and farm at all. And your 6 level won't do enough. Nasus works in high elo. But with the E maxing strategy.
my man had to dig so deep for kennen gameplay he had to go back to old mundo times
I would rather instantly die (ingame) when I step out of position vs any assassin no matter how far behind they are than have to face more Red Kayn/WW/etc life drain champ who can make 20 blunders and they all go away as soon as they get another 1 uninterrupted second of dealing damage to heal themselves back to full.
play trundle or olaf vs ww or kayn top
volibear works too
trust
also get executioner's on your first back
As a Kled main I love seeing Vaynes and Vlads honestly
Kled's engage is way too hard to kite if you play it right, and its a free kill if you arent dismounted
Quinn definitely does not buy vamp scepter first item and having mained her for 4 seasons I don't think I have ever bought it first item except for specific circumstances. Since before Shieldbow into Wit's was better than BotrK and you get Noonquiver first for that, more recently you get Kraken first and also build Noonquiver first. Have not played since the item update recently so not exactly sure what she builds now but it is probably Noonquiver still it is just too good.
Thank you for putting into words the thing I've been trying to explain to my friends for so long
I'm guessing this was recorded before prowler had the active removed, meaning no more extra dashes for champions like renekton
I take an unhealthy amount of sadistic pressure whenever I kill a ranged top laner. Nothing in life brings me more joy than seeing 0/5 top vayne.
For me, I hate ranged top laners BECAUSE they aren't as viable. It means that despite what's obviously more helpful for their team, these players enjoy being annoying so much that they'd sacrifice a better chance to win if it means they can be a nuissance. That's why I don't even consider champs like gnar to be a ranged top because those players can still fill the role they were supposed to
100% Additionally, kayle plays the opposite of most ranged top laners as she is vulnerable early but great at late game team fights (as long as she has a frontline)
Nah as an akshan OTP I can say that the mental damage is a huge reason why I pick him. I remember when I won a game where my whole team intend like 0 10 each and we won cause the enemy Gwen went afk
@@it_is_morbin_time He saying he hates ranged top because you (players) selfishly pick them for causing mental damage instead of for teamplay. And i agree that some people only pick ranged top champs to counterpick. Annoying af when you dont go afk and still stay having your team roast you.
@@Tyrone2714I agree.
When my team is being feeder, I'm winning in my lane as Kayle so I'm ahead compared to other players.
I ended up literally carrying my team.
Kennen exist
It depends on which champions we play but I usually find it much easier to deal with ranged toplaners than malee ones
I've been trying a Swain tank build and I want to try it top. Grasp with Heartsteel and Demonic Embrace gives infinite health and damage theoretically. He can take the pressure and I played a game where 4 people came after me just for me to outheal and get a kill. Swain is kind of viable because he has a root and his ult to sustain. I then just build tank on him so I'll survive and get be a frontline.
Came here for the video.
Stayed for "No More Heroes".
You sir, have a good taste in music.
This is why K'sante as champion is broken and can't be fixed with numbers. He is a decent sidelaner and a monster teamfigher that absorb pressure like a sponge while occasionally still 1vs3 like a Fiora. Well design Riot
He is blak and gay he IS suppossed to be realy strong
@@Yokai_Yuri Thank they didnt make him a woman, that would be the one horsewomen of top.
His R is just dumb lol being able to fist someone through half the map with zero counter play then one shot them is so fair
he has 44% wr globally, i think he's fine
if you look at masters+ he has 49%
ksante is good because he peels for the giga broken adc well, not because of all out
@@josebaltoomarnilson4762 wr is the only thing that matters
This is great and all, but I still can't figure out why in the world Xayah would flash at 0:45
As an Ornn main, yeah ranged tops can be annoying but playing smart usually means you can still win the game even if you lose lane. I’ve never understood why ranged tops get so much hatred when it’s genuinely much more difficult to come back from losing early against another melee.
Well, Ornn is by definition one of the best pick into ranged champs ( Malphite also). However, if you play a champ without sustain or enough cc/or mobility, then you're out of luck.
Ornn is definition of annoying trash
Because its just not fun to play against a ranged top. There's no counter to getting right clicked from afar and without jungle assistance you end up hugging tower for 20 minutes until team fighting comes into play.
how to beat ranged top as ornn: go armor refillable. farm a few waves and sit back. get tabi. farm more get warden. and auto do 0 dmg.
genuinely as an ornn main seeing ranged top normally means a free lane
Grasp Senna just gives me peace at heart, fav champ + innate typical adc scaling while gaining tank stats is fun
Feels like that yeah.
I’d play Morde or Voli in toplane and get matched against a Quinn or Teemo and just spend the whole time getting blueballed into holding an unfavourable stalemate. Really boring and frustrating to play against but there was also a good chance that we’d end up winning the match anyway.
So I’d just be sitting there having a really shit time doing nothing against an omnipresent opponent while my team beats the other lanes into an early FF.
It’s unsatisfying and frustrating.
Agreed. Its funny seeing so many people in the comments like "top laners r so dumb they just want to all in and melee" without even mentioning the fact that fighting ranged tops just sucks and counterplay against it is almost entirely "get denied cs and xp and all in into stacked minion waves/ farm cs when laning phase is over". Its not fun. Sure the other team is most likely gonna lose (unless its low elo) but who CARES its not FUN and thats why people play games.
Agree, except with the part when you say "Ranged top laners can't comeback". I would say that damage focused ones can't, because even if Kennen is 0/10, as long as he has Zonyas and ults everyone he can win the match for his team.
I am on the toilet thank you for your comment
At least I can sleep easy knowing Vayne top players are going straight to Hell
I love playing Kennen, but I can't say I really considered that I should have a tank in another role to help with late game insurance.
Another great video, thank you 👍🏻
League is not a game you win by destroying the enemy nexus
It's a game you win by making the enemy Top never want to play Top ever again
Ayo what was that clip at 8:53? It was badass.
as a ranged toplaner (yes i hate myself too) i must say the advantages are severely overstated here , sure it is true for the hard counters he mentioned but the 4 horsewoman of the toplane and alot more champs have very much an easy time to close the gap and/or outsustain you . Also as a squishy top u are an easier target to gank/dive , a winning lane is not guaranteed at all and because the movement abilities of ranged top are oftten short lived means pushing to tower alone in a long lane i always risky , but thats just my low elo opinion :)
Seeing the cho’gath fighting the vayne gave me flash backs to my first time top laning. It was an absolute nightmare and I got destroyed lmao.
While ranged tops are annoying to face, I feel like often times the frustration of players stems from the fact that they have a very narrow view of what should be played where. Thats why I really like the example of Sej Jungle, Galio Mid and maybe a frontline support like Leona. Team comps are far less solved in a soloq environment than people like to think, so when they face an annoying champion top they just assume it has to be cheese rather than an actual legitimate playstyle (Even though weaponizing the enemies tilt against them is fun and cheesy lol).
That and top lane is the lane that has the highest ego playing nowadays. They absolutely DO NOT know how to play a lane where they can't all-in/outplay their opponent and have to play weak side to win and they HATE being denied.
I climbed multiple times to diamond as Karma Tank and it's so funny how people believed firmly she doesn't have a function when like... her function IS denying the other top lane the possibility to impact (or delaying that impact), she has even been used competitively with that function.
They only recognize a top laner that is either a massive engage tank or a solo carry and forget that the role has flexibility to allow for more stuff.
@@mitsuki1388karma top?
@@logisticstep5212 yes, her kit is full of tools to deal with most top laners, she has a slow and poke with her Q, a snare and self-heal with her W and a shield with move speed in her E, it's relatively easy to touch her in lane but hard to stick to her.
She can also run grasp of the undying and shield bash to really enhance this playstyle but it takes more skill to play properly.
She's best used against lane bullies that fall easily and fighters that have weak lanes (they do outscale her but she can delay their impact), she can play ve tanks but they work in low economy so it's pointless.
I used to climb pretty easily with her but the durability patch hurt her a bit, before that her WR healing was 20% of her max health 2 times which was broken, now she heals less so you need to be perfect in lane otherwise you can die.
@@mitsuki1388 You really are a hypocrite, talking about ego.
@mitsuki1388 I have to add here that a friend I know tended to play Morgana top lane, which was very much disgusting for the enemy who couldn't farm well because they kept poking with the root and the soil but holy hell did it help when I was ganking with all her cc lol. It really was a pick I did not expect to go well but they did it spectacularly
Nice video. Friendly reminder that Prowlers dash got removed though so your Renektion-Quinn matchup dynamic doesn't fit anymore;)
I think its inaccurate to say they dont work, or as you ended the video with, that vayne, quinn and teemo are too inconsistent. The stats show that it can work, for example vayne in masters+ has an above average wr.
Because they are only picked when they are in a good matchup
those three you listed are very niche counterpicks. nobody picks them unless its to counterpick
"Ah what a nice day to play sett"
*opponent picks teemo*
"maybe not"
Usually I mostly agree, but on this one, there is just waaaay too much you get wrong.
Quinn barely if ever build Vampiric at all, not to sure for the others, but I suspect they don't rush it as well. Quinn is likely to not build lifesteal, except from the Bloodline Rune, even with a crit build.
As for them being useless if they do not win lane, this is only true for the early game ones like Jayce, for the rest, most of them are piss weak early then scale to oblivion, Quinn being a prime example. Thing is, Kayle and Vayne will struggle to come back massively and Vayne is not an effective split pusher as she is an easy catch. Quinn though, you are not stopping her from farming, ever post 6, she can roam, bait you to rotate and clear wave (she actually got fine wave clear too).
You say they can not split push like a Fiora or an Illaoi, but that is only true for some. Quinn and Kayle excel at it, both differently though.
Quinn can actually go for a bruiser build and outscale all the bruisers with it, managing to actually be somewhat of a front liner. Best part, it is actually stupid strong as a build, not something you only build if your team really need it, but something you can build every single games and it will always be good.
As for Cassio, her E last hit is not mana regen. If one champion always run out of mana, it is Cass. Her E refund cost only make her able to last hit, it won't do shit to help her clear and keep mana up, if she has to clear, which she is shit at.
You say Ranged Top Laner remove your agency, but that isn't quite true. Sure, if you are Darius or Garen into Quinn, you can't do a thing, but those are not champion that exactly have agency in their nature, especially Garen, it is literally pure stat check without any skill expression in the kit itself. Being skilled on those bruisers is basically just knowing when to fight, how to position to stay strong between fight opportunities and managing your waves properly.
Also, ranged top as a whole tend to be insanely vulnerable to ganks and all have rather high average deaths if you look at the stats. It is just how it goes for most of them, they make the melee dude cry for help, he gets help and the ranged top literally can't do a thing, once they get ganked, which garantee they go behind for a while. Typically, they come back with a vengeance, unless you can keep them down. Now, for the few like Jayce who are actually good early and mid game, this is a bit different and I do not play those, so idk.
Aslo, you might want to put GP as a ranged top at this point, he literally outrange nearly all of them, quite significantly and at very little cost. Although, you just pick Kayle and smash his barrels way faster than he can ever hope too, it is free gold.
btw the music in the background is No More Heroes by Aviators(one of my favorite composers, I was happy to hear his music in this video)
you forgot to mention that ranged top laners are always pushed out so they make easy targets for ganks
However this is top line and jungler wont walk over here
Played several times vs ranged toplaners. Won like 8/10 games, and I am confident to say that it was the enemy toplaner fault because their team couldn't facecheck,sidelane or deep ward despite having fed memebers. Even though I won the games, I had 0 fun in all of them . The ranged toplaners rush swifities into afk farm and some autos every time I go for a last hit, it was incredibly boring
I don't have too big of a problem with them (I still dislike playing against them however), due to Yorick being my toplane pick of choice. I can go at least even most of the time, and a single misplay from the enemy means I get a free lane.
thats the thing about ranged top, you can bully the enemy, but 1 gank and you are done, the melee will just kill you over and over, i despise ranged top, but every time i meet a vayne i just cry for help, they get ganked and they die cause they were trying to harass me, i feel like if you play ranged top you are not trying to win the lane, you are trying to destroy the enemy mental
@@SandySalesman That's why I never pick ranged top in ranked games, only in norms
Personally I’d rather fight any ranged champion than yorick so I can see why you would say that
Vayne is just a mental block for me. I usually play stuff like Sett/Darius/Mundo and Vayne is an absolute nightmare. I hate her so much.
But getting to cage her and throw ghouls at her as Yorick once was probably the best feeling I've ever had as I got to crush the champion that has single handedly ruined more games for me than I care to count.
In solo q, low elo in particular it doesn't matter if you have a good engage or if you can put pressure on the map because people don't even take advantage when they win a teamfight
I play kennen in the midlane 👍
Good ending
most fighting game zoners don’t have get off of me tools
Netherrealm studio: how about we make a zoner that can zone you while having good combo damage, invincible wakeups and 50/50s
Note to self: Always wear pants when playing top lane.
u cannot get caught with ur pants down when u did not wear some in the first place.
Riot saw this video and started making an official ranged top laner in the form of the next champion idk her name
I think that ranged tops are so hated because they fundamentally go against the ideals and power fantasy of queuing top. Two big meaty champs going at each other constantly trading and trying to all in the other. Darius v Sett, Ornn v Riven, Fiora v Camille. 2 champions fighting and trying to outplay the other. Ranged tops ignore this by just hitting you for free without allowing you to hit back even if you get on them, it removes the skillful trading from the equation entirely.
I want an 1 vs 1 against my enemy, but it's always a 2 Vs 1
Yes, 100% agree. A cowards way of fighting. The guy who never bothered to learn the enemies’ abilities and trade patterns, hoping to win out of sheer lameness.
Thank you for finally putting a finger on why I hate going vs vayne top but when I'm alt role I hate seeing vayne top on my team
Of course, most ranged champions are top, because there's literally nowhere else for them to be. They are incompatible with current league.
They "don't work" because they generally just don't provide much if anything to the team. You take them top, so you can actually play them for like 15-20 minutes, and then don't care about the rest of the game.
Exception given to quinn, who is just an absolute terror against squishy teams. (When ahead. Else she's literally just an int-ier Nunu.)
They go top bc their early game sucks. But its still good enough for top lane.
true teemo place is where ?
jungle doesnt work
mid doesnt work
adc is crazy bad
suport is inting
I've had some Quinn games where I got pushed hard early game, because someone like Urgot just says no to my disengage, but I was able t become a late game nightmare because my team could handle Urgot, while I take out their midlaner and support. I mostly jungle, but occasionally I'll mid as Orianna or Swain or top as Quinn because the jungler's most important skill is map awareness, and if you're able to transfer that to Quinn, even if you lose lane, you can become a nightmare for the enemy team with pokes against their squishies, or transfer it to Swain and poke their jungler with your eye while they're farming without leaving lane
@@rimmer62 Jungle is actually where he should go, thematically. But he has literally no tools for that, outside of shrooms, which he doesn't get until level 6. And it's not good until at least level 11.
Support is also a surprisingly appropriate role, with his abundant vision control, and blind for the adc. But he lacks the range, tankiness, or actual lockdown of real supports.
Yeah, basically comes down to the fact that he basically has 2/5 of a real champion's kit, at best, for most contexts.
I play kennen mid nowadays, its great. Most midlane match ups are favorable for me. (Minus a few like syndra)
Regardless of how well off ranged top laners are, no one will ever enjoy going against them because they aren't fun, discourage interaction and most of the time end up being less useful than an actual top laner literally any other point they aren't "fighting" the top laner
exept gnar who can always get into the enemy team ult a bunch of ppl and his job is done
I wake up every morning and hope that every ranged top laner has a bad day
My thoughts on ranged top laners is just like heavy weapons guy:
KILL THEM ALL!
As a ranged top lane enjoyer, I think they are completely unplayable in the current meta of tanks. Frankly I think the reason 90% of laners hate them. They force the enemy to actually play in a skillful way, this may sound funny coming from a ranged laner. But it’s true, you can’t just keep brute forcing things.
Also ANY mistake it’s pretty much game. They can brute force well timed all outs and make you go 0/4 or stay under tower 24/7.
I agree with your pressure points immensely.
You’re sacrificing a very important team slot too, double adc’s on a team isn’t great for a reason. And I promise you 95% of league players don’t know how to play with them effectively.
All in all I think the problem with ranged top laners is the problem with why top lane is the most frustrating role in the game. Tanks and support roams. It’s such a volatile out the way role, that it feels 90% of the lane can be thrown upside down by a support deciding it’s time to go top for a second.
It’s a team game, yet top lane feels so out of your control. Even with melee matchups.
I don’t know what riot could do to fix this, but something really has to be done. They took away global TP because of the unfair influence over leveled top laners have had on bot lane, but they never really compensated and now top lane is the one getting hard screwed over by random roams.
Even when playing immobile melees, I’d much rather fight a ranged laner that “doesn’t let you play the game” over another beefy tank you can never kill. Those really force you to not play the game, yet they’re praised
Being forced to play safe for 90% of lane isn't skillful, it's just boring. That's why nobody likes you up there, it just becomes a waiting game of hoping you make a mistake.
Not sure why you say "It's a team game, yet top lane feels so out of your control". That's the whole reason it feels that way. Every single team game feels like that besides rare exceptions like CS.
Trying to deal with a tank is much more interactive than trying to deal with an ADC, regardless of viability. Tanks actually encourages you to think about buys(barely but still), you can still do things, and they usually have counterplay. Meanwhile with ADCs the strategy is just to run them down as fast as possible and nothing else.
@@bevvvy1374 gotta add a TL;DR for this one, I don't think ranged laners that sit under tower playing safe are skillful. But doing that will never get you consistent wins. I think the unfairness of ranged laners is exaggerated immensely and that people should hate tanks just as much if not more than ranged lanerss, because they truly encapsulate what makes the laners "unfun".
I disagree completely with a lot of what you said. With what I mean with it feeling out of your control is that you can't do anything. Jungle roams all over and influences the lanes, support is broken beyond belief being a jungle 2.0. mid lane can roam. And adc.. well adc is kind of the same tbh.
Being forced to play safe in a bad matchup while still finding opportunities for ganks and other scenarios is skillful. Frankly that's every counter matchup in top lane, which ranged laners are. If you're playing poppy into a Darius you're gonna play safe 90% of the time, same goes for yone into Jax, any adc against a malphite.
They at least force you to adapt your gameplay, you might not find it fun to play safe but I think it's infinitely healthier for the game over pulling up RUclips on the side while a gragas, ksante, ornn, Sion, or malphite sits in lane being unkillable unless you're playing one of like 3 champs.
I want to clarify though my list of champs is in order of most played (all top), Kayle > riven > jayce > Samira. I won't be defending any ranged top laners who sit under tower all game farming till 3 items. That is boring, but those people will get no where like that besides piggybacking of their team.
And what you said about it becoming a waiting game "hoping you make a mistake", that's the entire laning phase in even slightly unfavorable matchups. It's just more forgiving vs another melee laner. Until you get to challenger there's so many mistakes you make just in laning phase itself. Noticing the mistakes and windows of opportunity is 100% a skill in the game people need.
I'd also like to mention you cannot itemize against tanks, you have bork, and divine. That's it. Divine is a shit item barely anyone wants, and bork is good on a handful of champs. And even with bork those champs will do at most 3-5% of a tanks HP per auto when they get it. Which seems like a lot till you realize that's 90% of their damage. Old kraken was pretty good but had an even more niche pool of champs that could build it, and most would rather opt for something else even then.
Armor pen items don't really count as you only build them 3rd, maybe 1/100 times you build them 2nd. And by that point laning phase is over and the tank has outscaled your pen.
@@marijnlastname3132 This has to be a joke post, waiting for your jungle to make your lane playable is skill expression? The simple answer to why people don't hate tanks as much, you do have the option to fight them and itemize around killing them. Doesn't matter what your opinion on Divine Sunderer or Black Cleaver/Grudge is, they work and do allow you to kill them even if it takes time to get there. Those tanks are also not forcing you off CS and killing any potential fight for the entire laning phase. Against any competent ranged top, if you are playing a purely melee character, you're fucked. It's entirely on the onus of the ranged top to make a mistake for you to even have a chance. You can say jungler or roaming support will solve this, but those are not things within your control. You have no input on the outcome of this lane besides reducing your CS or death deficit. You keep going on about how terrible it is to fight tanks, yet ranged tops reduce everyone to playing like a tank, what are you even talking about?
@@kioken101 my entire point is that ranged tops are all counter picks. If you're a slow melee you just got counter picked. No one blind picks ranged top, it may be annoying to play against but it 100% is a skill issue.
Sadly the jungle is part is hard to defend. The sheer amount of impact jungle has on top lane laning phase is insufferable and something needs to be done, not just for ranged tops. But as the game currently stands yes, you are supposed to wait for your jungler because if they get a gank off it's near gauranteed to kill a ranger. If the gank fails you'll at least have breathing room.
I keep complaining about tanks because they make the game pointless. You'll never zone a tank, I mean you might have fun pressing some abilities in melee range. But its just a matter of time before they outscale you in teamfights or brick up any sidelane.
You can at least kill a ranged top post lane phase.
When it comes to itemizing, yeah you can buy "anti tank" items. But my point is they have no effect. Anti ranger items are usually in the form of gap closers, and they've all been removed because of how oppressive they were on juggernauts. I wish there was a healthy item to counter rangers up top. But sadly there isn't right now.
My entire point is that both tanks and rangers deny you the game. The only difference is one gives you the illusion of counter play. Why aren't both universally hated. Especially considering that tanks have been strong for a while and ranged tops died out as a viable strat ages ago.
As a top lane who just played against a ranged "thing" (i refuse to call them Champion) fuck you and your opinion until it bleeds.
It is NOT fun. Doesn't have ANYTHING to do with skill, and im pissed even tough we still won the game.
You just abuse the range and deny any kind of gameplay.
Let me last hit a minion, oh no my health.
Let me try to fight at all, oh no my health.
I finaly got your ass with my ult, oh no you ran away with 1hp and i can choose to either follow you out of rage in hopes of getting one kill after 15min of being denied any semblence to fun or swallow my hate and go back under my turret.
May you always have a bad ping and thunder strike down your pc.
Vars: -...melee champions. Immobile melee champions.
Also Vars: *shows Ornn
im a kennen main, and i like making people rage quit 10 mins into the game, because they dont know how to play against me. But once you understand how to play aginst a ranged top, you shit on them all the time
I hear Aviators in the back yet no credit to him
Problem with ranged top Laners is that their roles is to be a mild inconvenience to traditional top Laners. They win lane by not letting the enemy play the game, but they often lose the game due to the fact that they are really bad on the late game, with few exceptions, and when they ARE late game champions, they are usually abusable by the jungler and become dead weight to your team.
Also you usually sacrifice your team's front line by going an ADC top, or make it so your jungler has to strong side them if they don't want the ranged top Laners to be steam rolled by the enemy jungler.
well that depends , , if i pick kaisa top or jayce even if i dont do perfectly in my lane my poke will create insane pressure on ur team. doesnt matter if ur a beffy ornn if ur backline gets one shot by my non stop poke ur pressure become irrelevant, if u a split push bruiser well again if ur team gets destroyed by my poke then we can grab baron , drag , tower and now ur getting flamed for not helping team . i agree with vayne or askhan top they need to dominate early , but that cant be said for every range top
Matching againt a ranged top laner is compleately fine, you just have to accept that youre not the main character for 10 minutes.
Underrated comment. Most of the time you just dance until you get enough lvl and an opportunity to jump the ranged top. It's just infuriating to purposely miss cs, cause that is not how we are taught how to play.
my favorite thing is to pick something like a ornn and aim for the teamfights later, but tbh you can just pick something like a camille, an irelia or a jayce (if ennemy picked it just pick malphite) and break their legs
there are champs that are designed for all-ins and have totally their place at toplane but people would rather not pick anything else than their main and get shat on
If wanting to be able to do something by myself in the first 10-15 mins of a game that lasts 20 mins half of the times when i am playing a fucking videogame is considered wanting to be the main character im dam guilty.
Why is no one talking about the 80% wr spike during 2017 1:05 ????? WTF
In my games I can't remember the last time I actually played against a melee top laner When i'm also playing a top laner. I don't know if that's because of iron standards or something like that, but it just feels weird.
We've had a surge of either ranged or cheese picks in top recently in low elo.
@@lilylut I just want to play a good game
The reason why we don't liked ranged top laners is because it screws over the role's objectives.
The only way top lane is useful in the current meta is if one side gets fed. You either get fed, or the enemy gets fed. If both of you stonewall the laning phase, neither of you do anything for the entire game. Picking a ranged top laner means I have ZERO way of snowballing the game. It isn't a matter of taking dshield and second wind and playing safe under turret, that works to survive laning phase, but what am I going to do after that?
This isn't a problem strictly with ranged top laners because there are some tanks who do the same thing (stonewall laning phase). Malphite is one.
Vayne mains be like:
MaX HeAlTh PeRcEnTaGe TrUe DaMaGe Is BaLaNcEd
A little off topic but this video made me understand a little better what was working back when I played Taric Top, an off meta pick at the time that I had roughly a ~72% win rate on over 200 games
When I got ahead in lane I had just enough offensive pressure on top of all of Taric's natural defensive tools to keep the enemy team from exerting any pressure on my own team... even when they were ahead. Even when I was behind all those defensive tools were just as potent, it's just the kill potential isn't high enough to catch people off guard
The only ranged top I don't hate is Urgot, cause realistically he plays more like a melee champ than ranged
Ngl i forgot he was even a ranged champ lmao
The only reason you think that is because he is very weak right now, if urgot was good then everyone would hate him
@@mistywww3199 idk, imo his whole identity feels kinda rough all the items that could really benefit him are nerfed on him cause he's ranged and the ranged items don't let him be tanky enough to survive longer fights.
@@firestorm_7567 yeah his entire gameplay loop is so melee range focused I sometimes even for get to use his abilities at long ranges
Believe me as a teemo player the last thing I want is to play against bruisers but its the only role he has a chance in unless you do some insane cheese. I would love for riot to rework him into a jungler or midlaner.
I think they gotta just give him a whole new ultimate and put his shrooms as a basic ability used similarly to ziggs q
They almost did with the potential rework, when they were going to change his passive and e.
i respect some urgot jayce kenenen cass ryze vlad(actually not him) quinn
Only urgot, jayce, gnar and elise are respectable. They actually go into melee range and fight up close. Every other one of those champs on top is cancer and those that play them there do not deserve to breathe our oxygen.
@@radekvaverka8921 Ken has to go into melee for ult and E
Teemo strength is that you can use shrooms to secure your perimeter against junglers. The downside that during team fights he is useless. You have to use shrooms really smart in order to soften the other team before the team fight starts.
it will never not be funny seeing top laners mald over having to play against ranged top
especially seeing as the counterplay is so easy- rush ninja tabis and then all in. that's all it takes to win lane. good spacing and itemisation is all you need
Back when I still played league I very rarely played Quinn top in a very particular matchup.
When they enemy locked Vayne top. They try to cheese you with a ranged top laner you counter pick with another ranged toplaner who can very easily gank other lanes if you get ahead and if you don't get ahead you make sure that Vayne doesn't get a lead herself and you can still punish with superior map coverage.
Its not hard to beat its just fucking annoying
Another obnoxious thing in top lane are tanks when tank meta is up, for example just get boots with malphite and the lane turns into an afk lane where you can't do anything
quinn is the best girl i love playing her
I stopped listening at 7:20 duo to the impressive alistar protection over quinn
It's not "WHY ranged top-laners don't work" - it's "WHEN ranged top-laners don't work". And some top-laners hate them because they don't know what to do against it. There's nothing unfair or unsporting about them. There's just a skill gap, because anyone who plays ADCs is used to kiting melee supports but top-laners are not used to dealing with ADCs until mid-game.
kting a melee support in a 2v2 lane is very different from a solo lane
if the enemy is playing kennen and you're playing olaf or tryndamere or something, you will never win
doesnt matter if you're better at the game than the kennen, he will just disengage everytime & poke you out of lane
@@lashedandscorned I was a top-laner from S1 to S7, and it's still my 2nd most played role. Ranged top lane picks are meant to negate your pick. You don't need to win that lane as melee, just don't feed and eventually you are more relevant.
Man we need a Xerath video next brodie🤙🏽
Speaking of Ranged Top Laners, could you analyze the Support Toplane meta? When Sona, Soraka, and some others dominated the game? (Not with smite, prior to that)
@VarsVerum
I'm honestly fine with pretty much all champions personally... I don't enjoy playing assassins or bruisers (bar Urgot), but I can understand what they bring to the table and can just play something/differently to deal with them.
I do have to keep Shyvana banned cause my teammates can't deal with them or something...
The downsides of ranged toplane were very well explained. Every video you show a very clear understanding of game design
As a top main, I hate ranged top laners not cause I think they're op its cause its just not fun to face