By applying these tips in your matches, you can easily win against “stronger” opponents without relying solely on skill. Especially, these tips help you maximize the resources available in the top lane, allowing you to survive and become a threat to the enemy team.
Here are 10 extremely important tips for the top lane:
Maintain the minion wave in the first 3 waves
When choosing strong champions in the early game, you need to proactively engage in fights from level 1 to push your opponent away from the minions, attacking them whenever they get close. At this point, you should push the minions as slowly as possible, so that by the third wave, you will have 9 to 12 minions pushing directly into the enemy turret.
At that time, you will reach level 3 and have many options, such as calling your jungler to dive the turret, intentionally allowing yourself to be ganked and fighting 1v2 with help from the minions, getting a solo kill on the opponent under the turret when you have a level advantage, and finally retreating to help the jungler invade or secure the Crab.
Choose counter champions
If you want to win your lane in the simplest way, you can choose strong counter matchups like Quinn vs Renekton, Irelia vs Aatrox, Kled vs Vladimir, Wukong vs Jayce,… This way, the difference in champion quality will help you dominate your opponent throughout the match.
Effectively utilize the 3 Teleports in the early game
For the first teleport, you should be a bit “selfish” and use it to return to the top lane to maintain the minion wave, ensuring the turret’s shield does not get worn down quickly. For the second teleport, you should aim for the bottom lane to assist your teammates. In the current meta, the bottom lane has a significant impact on the match, not to mention the opportunity to secure a dragon if you win the fight. The third teleport should target areas with major objectives to maximize your team’s snowballing potential. Remaining teleports in the match should ideally be used to participate in team fights.
Pushing appropriately
When pushing, you need to pay attention to the map; do not push too far if your teammates are not nearby to assist you in case of a gank. Only push aggressively when you do not see many enemies on the mini-map, as they might be waiting for you to overextend and make a mistake.
Understand when you are in a weak position
Even if you choose a favorable matchup, you can still find yourself in a weak position. For example, if your jungler is on the bottom half of the map, you need to avoid fighting since the enemy jungler could appear at any moment. Secondly, if you have a lot of minions pushing into your turret, you need to be careful with last hitting and avoid getting killed because if a fight breaks out, you will lose a lot of minions, and the enemy can poke you as you try to last hit, possibly leading to a turret dive if the enemy jungler shows up with a Rift Herald or something similar.
Know when to trade abilities
This depends on what abilities you have and what runes you are using, such as Conqueror, Grasp of the Undying, Fleet Footwork,… You should also trade when you have more minions than your opponent because, at that moment, the enemy will be hit by both your attacks and the minions. Finally, you should initiate fights when your jungler comes to gank, as this makes both you and the enemy low on health, but you will come out on top with your teammate’s help.
Ward in key positions for safety
You should place wards in the bushes on the enemy’s side (the bush near the third lane when on the blue team, the river bush when on the red team), and you should place a control ward in the area of the enemy’s blue buff (or red buff). When pushing higher, you will need to place wards in even more strategic positions.
Make strategic movements immediately after destroying the enemy turret
You can take the enemy turret by having teammates come to help, using Rift Herald,… but immediately after that, you need to make precise decisions to ensure you stay one step ahead of your opponents. For example, when you drop the Rift Herald at the top lane and it definitely takes down the enemy turret, you need to move down to the bottom half of the map to gank or secure a major objective, as the enemy will be lacking manpower to defend the top lane.
Remember cooldown timings to win even the smallest skirmishes
Nowadays, there are many websites that help you find information about a champion as well as their cooldown timings. This helps you decide when to engage against an enemy champion because no matter how strong they are, if they have no abilities available, you can easily overpower them.
Build counter items early
One of the basics of building counter items is to do so early so that the enemy cannot become strong, rather than waiting for them to get strong and then building counter items because by then, it will be too late.
Some basic counters include Butcher’s Knife against strong healing champions, Thornmail when both the top lane and enemy jungler deal magic damage, and Quicksilver if facing suppression or specific skills like Mordekaiser’s Realm of Death,…