League of Legends, otherwise known as LoL, is a popular online MOBA (Multiplayer online battle arena) with just under 150 different champions. The Esports market has opened up huge with League of Legends being at the forefront of online gaming and especially for people who bet on Esports.
The aim of the game in League of Legends is essentially to destroy the enemy nexus, which is protected by a number of towers and inhibitors, while throughout the map there are multiple different factors which may add into the success of winning a game in LoL.
The MOBA splits into 3 lanes and 5 (traditional) roles, then further divided by playstyle and character design/mechanics.
Top lane, often known as “The Island” is more often than not the part of the map where this group of characters will be the least influenced by other players in the game, due to its location and it predominantly being a solo lane.
With a lesser focus on top side early game objectives the majority of your laning phase will be alone and if not, potentially will see some other roles such as the jungler and in rare cases a mid laner may roam to assist in top.
Top lane is on the opposite side of the map to the dragon which is a very good early game pickup and with the new elemental dragons, it has added an extra focus onto the bottom side of the map.
All of this being taken into account, top laners will often need (thou not essential) one or more of the following traits, in order to survive arguably the least forgiving lane in the game.
These are the pretty standard traits of stereotypical top laners, however in an ever diverse game a few and far between characters may slip into the role of top lane without having any of these staple traits.
Regardless of all of the above, in the grand scheme of this, macro (how well you play into a team/game knowledge) will more than likely be the king of top lane (and most other, if not all roles).
The player's ability to track junglers and notable other players will essentially be fully able to avoid any unnecessary deaths due to the foresite or knowledge of opposing players' pathings and being able to react to safely avoid any unfortunate outcomes.
Due to the nature of the lane, top laners tend to hold a lot of power and can easily with through split pushing (the opposite to grouping up) where they essentially tunnel vision on forcing 1v1 scenarios or at least forcing the opposing team to react to stopping them to capitalize on major objectives such as destroying turrets or inhibitors, even the enemy nexus in some cases.
The other scenario is a top laner may essentially become strong (aka Fed, meaning the have farmed/last hit enough minions or players to score gold and xp) enough to essentially spread their dominance over the rest of the map, influencing and aiding other roles and lanes to easier complete their current objectives.
Depending on current meta there are different classes of champions which can slip into the top lane role, some notable mentions include:
There are only really 3 properly recognised classes listed above, due to variation, more have been listed and below I will explain why.
Let's start with the biggest of the bunch.
Tanks essentially play a support role and their job is in theory to soak and eat as much damage and cc as possible, in order to mitigate damage from their carries and lesser resilient team members. Tanks essentially have relatively good base damage which will carry them through a lane while they build defensive stats and items to better allow them to front line for a team.
In a teamfight they will often be tasked with not only front lining but causing a fight or flight effect by pushing in to disrupt or crowd control members of the opposing team in order to score a kill and have the edge of an outnumbering scenario. This being said there are multiple tanks which also serve a disruptive role in the form of denying the enemy team from what they want to do.
A notable example is Poppy, with her ultimate ability being a hammer which sends the enemy team flying backwards and negating possibilities of the enemy team successfully engaging.
Tanks are a very safe pick in top lane as they often can survive the gruesome laning phase and then simply aid the team, resulting in less of a carry role however still a successful strategy for solo que. Tanks are a lot more successful in coordinated teamplay however, thus they tend to make the team come together and will be playing extremely aggressive in League of Legends competitive tournaments.
Tanks are very easy to imbalance due to the high base damage and other roles becoming stronger. Tank metas can easily compliment certain types of ADC’s however its not always the case as sometimes tanks can just become too strong and unkillable, paired with high base damage, it's not uncommon or impossible for them to totally ignore or even one shot smaller, more vulnerable roles/builds in league of legends.
Tanks will always have a very crucial role in the game and will suit players who have a good sense of macro, they can very easily make or break a teamfight and this will more than likely never change.
Juggernauts are a very niche class in League of Legends and can easily solo carry a game or even end up totally useless. Juggernauts are essentially characters which have incredible damage built into their kit and will build tanky to essentially duct tape up the holes in their playstyle.
They often lack the same amount of defensive or crowd control abilities that proper tanks have, also they tend to lack in mobility which a typical bruiser, duelist or fighter may have.
Resulting in essentially a slow moving death machine. Often taken down with crowd control or kiting, juggernauts need to build tanky in order to survive the brunt of attacks, however building to cover the weaknesses such as lack of mobility is also a viable playstyle, which comes at the price of if juggernauts step foot out of line, they won't have the proper defenses to survive as well as if they had a proper tank build.
Juggernauts encourage a very risk reward playstyle and are probably one of the few classes that can win or lose in champion select due to them having crowd control and tank killing classes picked into them.
Arguably the most renowned juggernauts would be characters such as the infinitely scaling Nasus. Or his hard counter Darius, with an incredible damage scaling in his passive and an ultimate ability able to slice its way through a whole team, seeing as it resets on kill. Darius happens to be very kitable and will often die in crowd control, a common stereotype mentioned above.
Regardless, juggernauts can be super flashy and are a very popular pick in solo que due to their risk reward potential 1v9 playstyle.
Bruisers are a class built to dish out a lot of damage and be able to sustain a reasonable amount of damage. They are not near to tanks on the defense scale and not near assassins on the one shot potential.
However this is subject to change depending on meta or build. They are arguably the most imbalanced class in the game as with a relatively “all rounder” type kit, they can easily be dropped off the game completely or can be way too relevant and win a game single handed.
They often serve as an engage role or a disruptive role in a teamfight, while still being able to hold their ground in the 1v1 scenario.
Items and build path (including runes) can alter the playstyle of a bruiser in very noticeable ways. They can easily lean towards being a tank or very easily go for a glass cannon (full damage) build, however most popular is to build items which have a bit of both traits.
Notably most bruisers build off tank items which may have raw defensive stats built in, for example Black Cleaver is often a bruisers go to item, which contains HP. On the other hand they will often see items like Death’s Dance, which provides a damage mitigation which essentially reduces 33% of damage taken and transfers that into a bleed (damage over time) in order to give the appearance of being tanky. Death’s Dance also comes with life steal and heals for damage done, essentially allowing for an aggressive playstyle to reward the champion with a sustain ability, artificial changing a relatively smaller build into something much tanky.
Grouped closely inside the bruiser class, duelist’s are built for the 1v1. They will often have a lot of outplay potential which rewards this playstyle extremely well when accompanied by a good build and most importantly, good micro and good macro.
Knowledge of your champion is at the utmost of importance on these classes as in competitive play, there is no room for error. Knowing the champions limits and knowing how not to have their weaknesses exploited in the matchup they face is vital to success in the duelists very unforgiving playstyle.
Duelists tend to lean more to a heavy damage build with little to no defensive items, seeing as they will be expecting or aiming to mitigate damage with their outplay potential. Most duelists tend to feature a very reasonable amount of ability in order to weave in and out of the fight for successfully landing killing blows and safely skim past dangerous enemy abilities.
Some notable mentions are Fiora and Jax, one of the age old top lane matchups. With our main focus here being on “Fiora, the grand duelist”. Fiora is the epitome of what a duelist is, hence the title. Fiora has a lot of single target abilities plus an ultimate which latches onto the target with intent to kill. Essentially she dances around the glorious fencer she is, attacking vitals and dodging when needed. Fiora’s W “Riposte” is arguably one of the strongest abilities in the game, mitigating damage and crowd control, and if successfully aimed, it will even change whatever incoming hard crowd control and output it to the enemy as a stun, as long as she aims and times it correctly. Thus providing her, a hell of a lot of outplay potential in the 1v1 scenario. That being said she can still thrive in a teamfight and will always be a late game true damage time bomb which the enemy will have a hard time defusing, given the player has a strong micro game.
Mages are very few and far between when it comes to playability in top lane.
Most notably Vladimir and Swain would fit into this category as they are able to have a bit of a beefier build than your stereotypical backline mage. These mages focus on getting in the middle of teamfights with AoE damage abilities, which often then heal the user. The other notable type of mage would be control mages, Lissandra for example.
Lissandra has a relatively safe laning phase as she has CC, survivability and a means to escape. She can often become a lane bully vs the more immobile top laners, like Darius.
Their role as a top laner would often lean towards surviving laning phase to then continue their normal job of a teamfight monster, similar to how it would play out in their respective roles of mid lane (and somehow support).
Some mages can fill the role of a top laner however often they will alter builds and playstyle to suit. There are a few occasions where it has happened in competitive play however its not unheard of and can be devastating when built around a proper team composition.
In solo queue you will see this happen more often than not, when a mid laner is autofilled into top lane and they are comfortable or naive enough to play their main champion and attempt adjust to the matchup accordingly.
Cheese picks are not uncommon in top lane, regardless this is just a wide set definition of cheese picks regardless of it being some champions main lane. However for many reasons which I may or may not mention, they are kind of cheese picks.
A prime example of cheese picks would be Heimerdinger (aka Pushdinger) where essentially they would overly push constantly looking for pressure on the enemy tower and nearly leaving laners on their own, keeping the primary structural mission at hand. They would build ZZ rot to even aid them in pushing power.
Pushdinger was a cheese pick, it doesn’t mean it was bad, it doesn't mean it was good, it simply had some kind of alternate win condition and could overly harass the enemy laner.
Cheese picks tend to lose out in 2 major areas in which cheese picks tend to fail. They don't get early kills and cannot snowball their lead (though this doesn’t apply to pushdinger), this hinders them from being able to transition an often incredibly strong laning phase, into a global map presence and pressure. Secondly they will instead be camped by the enemy jungler, with the aim being to shut down the cheese pick and get your top laner to a point where they can survive or even win the lane alone.
It's very common that cheese picks will excel if snowballing, or fall flat on their face if not. Often this promotes an incredibly toxic playstyle as players tend to either win and stomp or be totally useless. In a game where emotional quota is important, this is often a big deciding factor in the success of your team.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most individual and unique role in League of Legends, Jungle is arguably amongst the most diverse role in the game. Junglers come in all different shapes and sizes, with many junglers being landed in the role because they will not make it past laning phase, meanwhile other junglers will be played in order to counter and further stomp the delicate champions who suffer a weak early game and will hide in the jungle to PvE their way to strength.
With this section of the article, I will be leaving out how players choose to play their character as there are enough defining roles and aspects of a jungler to give a major overview, so we will leave to one side the defining roles of the champion with regards to how a player may choose to utilize that character further to their own preference and playstyle, however make no mistake, what a player chooses to do in the jungle can very easily define the way a game will go due to the major impact that junglers can have on the game, be it positive or negative.
Regardless, let's breakdown what makes a champion a jungler, or atleast what characteristics most/many junglers may feature.
With this said, please do note that this is League of Legends and the meta can shift to allow for anything to happen, though it will often be few and far between.
The characteristics which are possibly the most crucial to a champion being a jungler are:
These are the main traits you may find common in junglers thou often better gankers may not have the carry potential that a farming jungler may have, prime example are Lee Sin, being a very early mid game centric champion vs Master Yi who despite some possible dueling potential, will later on in the game if let to his own devices, will be able to thrive of his build and kit, in order to cut through a team like butter.
Separating junglers into different types of champions roles would be a little bit general here, especially seeing as the jungle allows for all shapes and sizes of champion to come into play. Categorizing a champion into whether they can or cannot jungle is relatively dependent on playstyle and though some may struggle more than others, it may still work, however this is the case a lot of the time in League of Legends.
So, instead of categorizing junglers into builds or roles (eg. tank/assassin etc) I will categorize them into what junglers may potentially aim to do in the jungle, or atleast what they would be possibly suited for.
Generally, this is down to the playstyle of the player and not the champion, however some champions will not fit nicely into each of the roles.
So the easiest way to sum up a farming junglers is to simply call them a “time bomb”. Farming junglers are essentially landed in the jungle role due to their lack of survivability or potential to be a typical laner. These champions are nearly exclusive to this role and playstyle as they would not reach their potential as smoothly if they were to go toe to toe with a proper laner. Thou this is league of legends, they are sometimes played in lane, yes there will always be exceptions however we don’t teach on the 1%.
Farming junglers will essentially be champions which scale incredibly well and will show up post 25 mins (not a set time, just an example) and totally dominate the map. With a proper build some champions scaling becomes far too much for the average champion to stand up against and often need to be taken down in unison with the team or generally outplayed with macro.
Notable farming junglers are Master Yi & Shyvana, they both gain incredible late game scalings and can easily become too much for a non coordinated solo queue team to handle. Rendering their late game incredibly powerful, this clearly comes at a catch which for this group of junglers while playing for late game is essentially early-mid game focused junglers.
Just when you think you're sat comfortably in lane, a ganking jungler comes in and turns your laning phase rather upside down. Ganking junglers are often early to mid game power spike champions, which either thrive well off their kit or will get an early power spike after items or even just components. They could be able to gank immediately after their first buff, for example Twitch, he is the king of taking red buff and following his allied laners into lane and cheesing a first blood abusing a level 2 power spike and the red buff. Others may do a near full clear and gank at level 3, once they have their abilities. Lee Sin, Nidalee and Elise are amongst the most prominent of this section as they have multiple abilities and gain an extreme amount from their doubled up abilities do to reactivations in Lee Sin’s case or shapeshifting to gain a second set of abilities like Nidalee and Elise.
Ganking junglers can create incredible pressure from go. At higher elo’s, being unable to track the jungler will result in safe play on the majority, as they can easily show up and turn the tables putting their team in the lead. Ganking junglers are also very prominent at lower elo’s as the majority of games tend to be won or lost in the laning phase, having a ganking jungler at hand to assist and sway the lane in your teams favor is often much more mentally calming, where as playing a safe game knowing that at 20 minutes into the game your Shyvana will pop off, is simply not fathomable to a player with a lack of knowledge, even if it was or would have been the better comp and outcome.
Generally most junglers will be able to pull off ganks and it is often a very needed play to be made in order to get your lanes snowballing. Shyvana can still gank, it's not super efficient due to pre 6 having a lack of CC, but in the right circumstances, with an overextended enemy lane opponent, it can still get the job done.