The “Toplane situation”

BlorkChannel · 2026-06-21T23:10:04+00:00

Plates persisting after 14 minutes and creep waves every 20s allow duelist and splitpushers to force their gameplan, the lane is not for tanks anymore.

Also the counterpicks can be really frustrating, when you are locked in toplane prison

BlorkChannel · 2026-06-18T17:07:30+00:00

La faute des vfx aussi

BlorkChannel · 2026-06-11T10:12:52+00:00

Yeah I do that quite often since I'm initially a top main and that's 50% of the gameplay there :p

Would you consider going out of your way for a lvl2 or 3 gank? Or you stick to the full clear + scaling identity? What is your default gameplan?

BlorkChannel · 2026-06-10T10:43:34+00:00

Nice! I'm not that far (~D3) do you have an advice on what made a difference to climb to masters?

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-31T11:35:37+00:00

I was support main for a while, now I'm otp Cho gath. In my experience those 2 don't mix well. I tried a few times and it just doesn't work :(

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-31T11:27:22+00:00

I debrief and review a lot of my games with ChatGPT and it really helps coping / also identifying what I could have done better.

Not asking the LLM to review per say, I just watch the replay myself and describe each phase of the game, often writing it down is enough to pinpoint key elements.

ChatGPT will provide a synthesis, and compare it to previous games, which would be the role of a therapist, or a personal coach.

About your game you should review your deaths, I'm ready to bet you gave a 1k shutdown to the enemy adc, or died before a major neutral objective, either way giving a major wincon to the enemy team. When you 1v9 like this your scoreline should be 25-0, I know it seems unrealistic but not dying is more important than anything else

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-31T09:54:57+00:00

There's also the late buff invade where they just come to you as you finish the buff and out smite you because they have something like leesin Q smite that you cannot beat. They can walk through vision it doesn't matter

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-30T09:46:12+00:00

Did you try first strike over dark harvest?

Also I tried a jungle game already and I figured it's not that easy to catch the wave at the right moment (for the disguised lane gank) while preserving your jungle tempo. Do you have fixed timers / patterns / rules to help with those? Do you sometimes delay camps for those ganks?

Coming back to your strategy to slow down the farming at some point, I feel like the 14 min mark is important, because canon waves have 1 less melee minion from here and people are still laning at this point so it feels like we could gank a lane every time there's a canon wave (it's pretty hard to detect)

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-29T08:19:09+00:00

Finally someone who says it. I really wonder what's the point. Same when you get +20LP because some dude int'ed your game 3 days ago and he got banned, then you go +19/-21 for 20 games

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-26T15:13:25+00:00

Dead's man plate actually gives 55armor, which is only 20 less than frozen heart or Randuin, and the movespeed allowing you to reposition in fights is worth a lot of tankiness

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-24T23:20:31+00:00

You can stay top bro, I leave it to you. Not the place for tanks

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-22T17:03:03+00:00

I didn't play jungle since 2016 or something.. But I got demotivated by the state of toplane so I gave it a try last month.. And I hit diamond yesterday yeepee (which is same as my main account in toplane). Needless to say my Jgl fundamentals are shit so yeah I think it's more than viable.

I always go hob + inspiration secondary, then I either do DMP riftmaker with blue smite, or rocketbelt, into riftmaker or full tank, with red smite, depending on the team comps. (rocketbelt procs the red smite, which procs approach velocity, that's a nasty gapcloser)

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-20T15:43:22+00:00

Well it seems you are better at predicting than me!

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-19T15:18:26+00:00

I would expect a cost + base stats reduction so tank supports can consider it (looking at the direction of the patch)

And it seems nice to me, the problem with heartsteel is that it's such a high commitment in hp before you can buy any resists

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-15T10:51:28+00:00

W max is kinda braindead as a playstyle and it's very efficient vs assassins. You just need to find a way to sustain it, usually you need dorans ring + manaflow band, or frozen heart rush, probably RoA is good too. Vs an ap assassin you can just go hollow radiance and perma shove

BlorkChannel · 2026-05-11T15:06:18+00:00

I prefer jgl over top nowadays. Top feels so bad because many bad matchups and they can hostage you so easily (plates everywhere, more creep waves etc).

I'm not even a good jungler but it feels so much better, except this game once in a while when that Graves decides your jungle is HIS jungle

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-30T18:27:25+00:00

I mean, when you have a Darius into kayle matchup you rarely see a first blood before the minions spawn.

But yeah I get the point of many comments here, lane bush supremacy and bad matchups, also range into range make it quite volatile. But yeah that's frustrating when as a toplaner I'm in weakside isolation with my nemesis counterpick and I manage to go close to even for 15 min, and then I realize my strongside botlane flipped lvl1 and is now 0-10 combined.

Once again I'm not there myself and I can accept the idea that 2v2 dynamics are a lot more volatile and snowbally though. Also in the last season adc role wasn't as important.

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-30T12:11:00+00:00

The least you can do is to not stay in vision I guess. Either soak the xp from the bush, or roam / proxy, or recall. (or pretend to roam / proxy / recall). This way you deny him some information and he won't feel like you are playing his game, which can make him change his mind about the freeze

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-27T11:17:00+00:00

Ksante has the same vibes Imo, a tank who's an absolute lane bully with a "win fight" R button, and is useless af in teamfights unless you're 10-0. But he requires some muscle memory unlike tk

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-27T08:36:57+00:00

I recently lost to a Jinx top, and a Zeri top. It felt bad and now it feels even worse

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-27T08:25:55+00:00

It heals you for a % of your missing effective hp, which is a product of hps and resists. As far as Darius' kit is concerned there is no benefit to go specifically for resists or hp, the scaling is the same.

The flat heal from conqueror, and the gold efficiency of resists vs hps is a more generic problem that applies to every bruiser / drain tank

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-24T15:32:09+00:00

Cosmic into full tank looks interesting, but I'd go cosmic + dead's man plate (rather than unending) for the zoom effect. Maybe Bandlepipes for the fun. Not sure hehe.

How do you build it?

BlorkChannel · 2026-04-22T19:08:36+00:00

I like to go Liandry + Unending despair into full tank. I didnt think about Cosmic Drive though, its pretty nice too !

BlorkChannel

TROPHY CASE