League of Legends is a complex game with complicated roles and we know that beginner player can really struggle to get the hang of a lane. That’s why we built a comprehensive top lane beginner guide along with others in a series of comprehensive beginner guides to give beginners the kickstart they need to be many steps ahead of the pack.
Even intermediate and experienced players can also benefit from this series as we will share secret tips and tricks that will help you dominate your lane.
Top specifically, is the lane that is the most friendly to beginners but actually allows you to impact the game greatly. Though all laners can do it, the top laner is the one who can always split push to get turrets and apply pressure on the enemy team.
So it’s very important that you get ahead of your opponent. If you like 1v1s, duels, and fights to the death, the top lane is for you. So let’s get started and make you a better top laner.
Types of Top Lane Champions
Bruisers
The top lane is a really long lane compared to mid and this is why bruisers and tanks are the most ideal champions for this lane. They can’t go bot since they need EXP and levels to strive and mages and assassins can’t go top most of the time because they can be easily killed if they overextend.
Meanwhile bruisers and tanks have more health and dueling capabilities that allows them to stay longer in the lane and survive ganks or even 1v2 if the situation favors it.
Bruisers also known as Fighters are short-ranged champions that excel in both dealing and surviving damage. They are well-rounded champions that are best for dueling or 1v1s. Some examples of bruisers are Darius, Garen, Renekton, and Nasus. These are all great beginner picks if you want to play top lane.
Tanks
Tanks are there for one main purpose- to take and absorb as much damage for their team. They are champions who have the most HP, shields, health regen, and CC as well. Tanks are the ones who will be on the frontline taking damage and locking the enemy down.
They are usually the ones who are closest to the enemy team and decide the best timing to initiate a teamfight.
Great beginner picks are Oorn, Malphite, and Dr. Mundo. Especially Malphite since he can devastate your opponents in teamfights with his Ultimate.
Ranged Top Laners
Ranged top lane champions serve as counters for the common top laners. Since most champions in the top lane are melee, ranged champions like Vayne, Ryze, and Kennen can use their longer reach to bully bruisers and tanks.
Not all ranged champions are ideal for top lane though. Remember, this is a long lane and you need survivability to strive in top. That’s why squishy ranged top laners have either CC or dashes in order to survive.
A great pick is Quinn because whenever an enemy engages on her, she can just use her E to create space and turn the tides on them.
How to Win in the Top Lane
Winning the laning phase as a top laner means you can have more map control as it will allow you to split push and be more impactful in teamfights.
Counterpicking
In high ELOs the laning phase can be decided before the game even starts. Picking the right champion is essential in winning lane. You shouldn’t be first-picking Garen only to find yourself being hard-countered by Vayne and having a miserable laning phase.
The best thing you can do as a new top laner is select around 3 champions and master their mechanics, items, runes, and matchups. Using too many champions at once can have more negative effects than benefits. Less is more in this case.
Once you have created your top lane champion pool, you can now learn the different matchups and counters to these champions. You can also ban their main counters during picking.
Wave Management
Most beginner players make the mistake of just going crazy auto-attacking and using their abilities to kill all minions as fast as possible. This is called fast-pushing but is not effective all the time. Slow pushing is like a secret ticket to winning the laning phase and getting out of low ELO and boosting your MMR.
Slow pushing is exactly what it sounds like, pushing slowly. You can do this by creating a small minion advantage and keeping it. This will cause your minion wave to stack up overtime and become a giant wave.
A slow pushing giant wave will allow you to win 1v1s and ganks simply because you have a ton of minions backing you up and that is huge especially in the early game. Also, once you crash this giant wave into your opponent’s turret it will deal massive damage and he’ll also lose a lot of minion gold to the turret.
To slow push, you must create a slight advantage with your minion wave. It can be having one minion more than your opponent. Do not fast push the wave, instead you only have to last hit minions and pay attention to the damage your opponent deals to your own wave and keep your minion advantage by doing the same amount of damage. It can be quite tricky at first, but it is one of the most important things to have in the top lane.
Recall
You can have tons of gold but if it isn’t spent it would still be useless. Recalling at the right time, where you wouldn’t lose gold, EXP, and turrets, is vital to win lane. The most obvious one is after killing your opponent, but you MUST shove the wave to your opponent’s turret if you have the chance. This will make sure you’re in time to catch the next wave and make your opponent lose farm.
Applying slow pushing and crashing the wave to your opponent’s turret will give you the opportunity of having advantageous recalls and gain an item lead over your opponent. A single item lead can be what it takes to win a fight.
Teleport
You’ll see that most top laners bring Teleport most of the time. Since top is a long lane where you are far from your team, this is a very useful spell to have. You can use teleport for getting back immediately to lane so that you don’t lose anything valuable. Or you can also use it to make plays around the map by joining fights and claiming objectives. Only use the second option when you are sure that you will get a kill. Otherwise you would be screwed when you get back at a disadvantage.
Conclusion
The top lane is a great place to start for beginner players but it can still be as complicated as any other lane. If you want to have the best chances and the biggest advantage, you can check out the best LOL script available.With everything you have learned in this guide, you are ready to get started and are already ahead of your competition. So get out there and reach the top!