Although it has only recently appeared, Top Lane Janna using Smite has created a huge stir in the League of Legends community, from amateur to professional levels. This strategy has even been adapted into a playstyle where Supports are utilized in solo lanes to exploit the Bounty system and funnel resources to the carry. In professional tournaments, not only Janna and Karma, but also Soraka, Ivern… have emerged with similar playstyles.
However, it seems that the professional players (especially those in the Top Lane role) are not pleased at all with this trend. One of the best Top Laners in the LEC, Alphari, has openly criticized this playstyle as “no different than cheating” in an interview with Inven Global. Alphari even admitted that he told the Vitality coaches directly that he did not want to play Janna.
VIT Alphari: “I hope I won’t have to see Top Lane Janna in the LEC. I also don’t want to have to play that champion. In team meetings, I’ve told the coach that I won’t use Janna until strong teams adopt this playstyle and I’m forced to follow. Honestly, I believe playing Top Lane Janna is no different than cheating, and you won’t enjoy facing it at all.
I’m really upset because in Season 12, the Top Lane is left in such a neglected state. As you can see, Top Lane Janna really doesn’t engage much in lane. They don’t care about farming or doing the basics, so I hope it gets nerfed in the future. I also think Riot should revert Teleport back to its old state because it’s boring if you’re just playing alone on top for 40 minutes. This is truly a terrible preseason for Riot; they ought to nerf Janna, revert Teleport to its previous state, and everything will be better.”
Of course, as a Top Lane player, Alphari has his reasons for opposing this playstyle. Essentially, when facing Top Lane Janna, you will be “playing with minions” for most of the match. With the Teleport changes, players can hardly do anything except farm early on while Janna can freely roam and create significant pressure on other areas. This makes players feel extremely “powerless” and frustrated when playing Top Lane.
In fact, Riot has also taken steps to adjust this, as in the upcoming patch 12.4, the gold from the Bounty system will significantly decrease if a team possesses more than one Support item. Hopefully, with this change, the dominance of the solo lane Support playstyle will be nerfed and not be as effective anymore. It would indeed be unpleasant if this strategy became too strong and forced top superstars like Faker, TheShy, Scout, Flandre, ShowMaker… to play Soraka or Janna.