Is Top Lane The Worst Role In League of Legends?

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

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#LoL #TopLane #Teleport

[Discotechque]

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

[caetanoba]

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

[icigs]

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

[Bro.Synchro]

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

[Goldfisher]

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

[HappyChimeNoises]

I think in theory Top is the worst lane, but soloq is a completly different game to the theory.
'In theory' elise is a bad champion because she relies on lvl 3 ganks working, snowballing early game and winning before 30 minutes. What kind of player would die at 3:10 to a gank top?
In reality early game junglers like that are some of the best and almost every game even master+ a 3:10 top gank will work.

Same for top - in theory the role cannot affect bot lane, cannot roam well and is the worst in the game. But when you're playing soloq in all ranks below master, top is often the one carrying the game or at least a big threat to shut down.
Imo all the complaints stem from the fact that top is a LONG lane that is not dangerous to gank. It's free gold for both junglers and the champs have been nerfed over and over so that snowballing in top lane isnt as good anymore 1v1. (also with damage increasing you can often still return kill 1v1 even after a bad start so it feels like your lead doesnt matter)
If Jungle, mid and support are SO impactful, that is just because they all have to have somewhere to go, which is often ganking top or making plays away from the lane(so top cant join).

[lightdrgn]

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

[didr]

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

[goldencell]

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

[m.douglas]

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

[neklin]

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

[mywifeleftmesonowimayoutub]

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

[spectrophobia]

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

[SmegmaDaddyXL]

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

[michelveit]

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

[awp]

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

[calebwillingham]

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

[Havokne]

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

[jacal]

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

[PlanADidntWorkOut]

Freezing is really OP. When this happens your options are:
- call the jungler (sub-optimal for them)
- hashinshin it (respectable but risky)
- good deff for minions (reportable)
- proxy/roam (risky)
- soak exp from bushes/inner tower (leads to a cs canyon)

With how prevalent diving is, now it's no wonder Top lane can be neutralized so effectively.