After The Shy stirred up the Korean ranks with Top Lane Kalista, he created a real sensation as many players, from low-ranked gamers to pro players, began to imitate this playstyle. However, those cases show little effectiveness and a lot of “failures,” with players often lamenting their teammates’ Kalista ending up with over 10 deaths in a match, which is no longer surprising. Most of this stems from mistakes in players’ mindsets and movements, not from The Shy’s creativity.
First, we must understand the essence of Top Lane Kalista; this champion is brought to the top lane solely to dominate the lane and nothing else. Essentially, she is a more advanced, higher-damage version of Teemo, using her long-range advantage and superior mobility to crush an opponent’s lane.
This means that Top Lane Kalista is only strong when dominating the lane; she is not a champion like Aatrox or Vladimir, who can teleport in and unleash crowd control and strong damage on enemies. Thus, in Invictus Gaming’s matches, The Shy spends most of his time pushing the top lane and does not engage in many fights with teammates.
However, when in the hands of ordinary players, they often retain the movement and mindset of a typical top laner, meaning after taking down the first tower, they leave to fight with teammates. This action makes them inherently weaker than usual, especially with the Bloodthirster build, which caters to skirmishing. Therefore, when playing Top Lane Kalista, you should play a bit selfishly, not caring too much about teammates in fights, just push the top lane alone.
Another mistake also somewhat relates to the above, as players often choose compositions that rely too much on Kalista. It’s true that this champion is strong late game due to her role as an ADC; however, given her lane-dominating nature, it’s acceptable for Kalista to split push and leave her teammates behind. At that point, you must choose champions with high combat ability for the other four positions instead of overly cautious champions to support her.
Still with The Shy and Invictus Gaming, this team, when using Top Lane Kalista, always has a lot of damage and skirmishing capability from the other four members.
As shown in the image above, IG’s lineup faced VG at LPL, we can see that besides The Shy, the mid and ADC positions of this team are very strong in their damage-dealing roles with Syndra and Varus. Furthermore, Thresh is always a good offensive support, while Jarvan IV has both base damage and good crowd control. In short, IG can comfortably play with four members, allowing The Shy to split push without fearing a damage disadvantage in fights against opponents.
Meanwhile, other teams that do not understand this strategy tend to use Kalista as the centerpiece and try to support her.
For example, in the match between GAM Esports and V Gaming Adonis last weekend, VGA had Top Lane Kalista and the team’s decision was to pick Cho’Gath with Glacial Augment in mid lane. As a result, VGA’s mid lane lost heavily due to the mismatched champion against Azir, leading them to lack damage and forcing Kalista into team fights, which is not her strength. Consequently, VGA had one strong lane and a hope to win, but they lost this advantage and ultimately lost to GAM.
The final mistake in using Top Lane Kalista is the inappropriate itemization for this position. Many players still build Runaan’s Hurricane when going top due to old habits; however, it is redundant as this item does not support dueling and pushing towers. Bloodthirster, with its added Crit and AD, is the perfect item for Kalista; if you want additional attack speed, Galeforce, with its bonus range, is the best item rather than the hurricane.
