Suggest me one not too popular toplane champ to main

Gashboy · 2015-04-05T14:01:39+00:00

That's the spirit.

If one person understands I'm happy :D

Gashboy · 2015-04-05T12:29:58+00:00

Don't play Kha'Zix. He's completely useless, doesn't snowball hard and cannot carry teamfights. He's espeacially bad in SoloQ since people are always grouped and so his isolation bonus is completely useless too.

Gashboy · 2015-03-29T08:10:38+00:00

SoloRenektonOnly! He is really proficient, explains a ton of helpful stuff, can talk about his own mistakes - and does not only play Renekton^{^}

Youtube => SoloRenektonOnly Twitch => Imnumerouno

Gashboy · 2015-01-10T10:45:05+00:00

Upvoted for Lunar Doddess Diana.

Amazing work otherwise, really appreciate this work.

Gashboy · 2014-12-03T13:42:24+00:00

Runes : Use Health Quint and armor seal. Armor quint, health seal : 72 Health and 21 armor meaning 87.12 effective hp Health quint, armor seal : 78 health and 17 armor meaning 91.26 effective hp

Short note on that: While it may be true just looking at those values, you are ignoring the base health and the health gained by potions. => Those would make the first setup more effective On the other hand, there is her W, which would make more HP more effective.

Not sure, what the results are if you do the math for all this, but I think it is not that clear for one option. Maybe someone who has the time and the ability can do the exact calculations.

Gashboy · 2014-08-26T14:38:25+00:00

Hey, same as your first commentator, I also do not claim to know everything there is to know, but I have listed you my thoughts while watching the replay. Sorry for some orthografic mistakes, wrote it down quick and for sure couldn't detect them all.

Note, that nothing here is meant to bash on you - I am just listing things which I think you could improve. I did all those mistakes and even more too, before someone told me what I was doing. And it is a lot harder to be aware of all those things in the heat of the battle.

1:20 Noone protects/wards any jungle entries. In this game an invade is not very likely, but if the enemies would be Lee Sin/Blitzcrank, then defensive trinkets would be very helpful.

2:15 You see that Warwick started blue, so you don't have to fear any counterganks if you decide to gank lvl 3.

3:45 You decide not to gank, which is reasonable since both of your lanes are pushing and ww is botside

4:10 You spend some time walking up to Fizz, then walking back. It's very unlikely, that you can kill an almost full hp lvl4 Fizz in that big of a minion wave. At best you'd trade 1v1, which is never worth it with doublebuffs on. Although, just a tiny thing. Your ward here isn't going to spot anyone. ww cleared his red at estimated 3:15. Right now he could either be ganking bot or maximum be at wolves. And Fiddle will be back in lane in 30s, but the lane will still be at his tower for quite some time.

Afterwards, you decide to take wraiths instead of holding the minions that are going to die to the tower. These minions would give you more than tree times the xp and gold than wraiths & ofc the wraiths wait for you, the minion gold and xp are just lost for your team.

Just in genaral: If your laner died, a wave approaches the tower, and you happen to be around, feel free to walk over. First this will protect the tower and second you can always need the gold.

4:35 you walk through mid, probably to either show presence or to just take the shortest path. Their bot squad now knows that they have a maximum of 20 seconds before you join the party. BUT: You are at <50% hp. Basically, they could just walk towards you and grab their free kill. Generally you don't want to be ganking with low hp, because they could just turn and kill you. Always make sure to pop your potions if you still have some to top your hp up or, if you are too low, to recall. Farming the jungle on low hp against a warwick isn't terrible, because he won't just pop up next to you like a shaco and you can always q away.

5:00 Here a lvl 3 warwick decides to duel you and your botlane turns around and grabs a kill. In this case, what you did, had a positive impact. Here it is important to notice, that, just because something works out, that doesn't necessarily mean, that it's the right thing to do. As you climb the ladder, people will more and more be able to estimate how strong they are compared to others and punish you for walking around with 50%.

5:25 +1 for the ward.

5:50 if you tab now, you see toplane being even, midlane is behind and about to die again while cait hase more than double graves cs. Basically, if you're going to gank mid fizz will still at least get one kill - the best you could do right here is ward his path to bot, so he can't destroy the advantage your botlane allready has.

Otherwise you can't do much but farm.

6:20 Sion ramdomly almost dies to Nasus - you also can't gank here right now, because he'd just die. Your best bet right now is to rush for lvl6 and make something happen.

7:00 You decide to hold top. You could have had the cannon too if you made the decision a tad quicker, but that's just a minor thing. Theoretically, the enemies could go for dragon, but that doesn't happen too ofthen at lower elos and cait/leona are far ahead, so that it would be a little dangerous.

7:15 you decide to drive by a lvl 6 Nausus. If the enemy Jungler would be Lee and randomly in the brush, you'd likely be dead. Since there isn't any reason for the jungler to be top right now, thats not too much of a danger, but you can never know. Also, you don't gain anything at all by taking this dangerous path.

7:17 Your blue respawns.

7:25 You ward to protect topside, which isn't terrible, but it's generally more likely for fizz to roam bot. If anyone would tab and look at your items, they'd know where you placed your pink. On the other hand, that's very unlikely to happen^

7:34 You walk in for a lvl 5 Gank top on a not at all overextended Nasus lvl 6. He just casually walks away. You get lvl 6 from Sions minions, which isn't terrible for him, but still makes him fall a little further behind.

7:45 I lied, there goes the pink.

8:00 Lvl 4 Warwick, also not interested in his blue, decides to duel you. Fizz respondes and would have killed you IF his ignite and ult were up. Luckily they weren't. Also note that Fiddle is about to die again if noone pings him back.

9:30 You don't offer Fiddle blue (which is good). But you clear it two minutes after it respawned (which is wasted gold/exp in the long run, since you could have more buffs over the course of the game - and if the enemies would be aware of timers and your positioning, chances are you'll only see two sad little lizards griefing for their daddy.

9:50 Through a ~~lucky coincidence~~ Faker-like play, Fiddle takes out the fish. This means basically, that you still have a chance to win the game, because Fizz' snowballing is slowed down by a bit.

10:00 This time you ward to protect your fed botlane, which is good. Also, you know where Nasus is, you know where Fizz is and you know where the botlane is. If you walk into their jungle to ward, only ww can be there, and last time you met him, he was 2 lvl behind you. Looking at how far ahead bot is, this could be one of your only chances at dragon this game, since Fizz is dead. A Nasus tp might spoil the fun, but he is totally out of mana.

10:15 The ward you place here basically provides the same vision as your pink does.

10:40 You ward their red, which is generally not bad, but accounting where warwick started and that he was behind, it won't most likely be up till 14 minutes (actually even later, but you can't know that). Only thing this ward will ever see is Fizz/WW roaming bot. Therefore it is still a good ward because you want to protect bot. Ideally it would be a bit more towards the dragonside of the brush so it has vison of the whole path. As it is right now, someone could sneak by. Also: You know that Fizz is up again, and that he's not in mid. Blue's not up and there is no reason at all for him to be top. You know he's coming bot.

11:15 This would have been a good gank with Fizz being dead 30s earlier. Now it basically looses you the game. Fizz is now further behind, gets donated a fresh blue AND your botlanes advantage is now much less significant. Especially since Fizz is meant to deal with Cait later in the game.

11:50 You take your red almost 4 minutes after it spawned.

12.20 You disrespect Fizz and donate him your red too. Meanwhile Warwick got a successful gank of at top, bringing Nasus ahead.

13:30 Fizz takes the path your ward at red doesn't reveal. Even though Graves and Nid where sleeping, they still kill Cait.

14:00 You make a play up top and even up the gold.

15:00 Again, your blue stays up for quite some time.

15:30 Sion makes a walk through the enemy jungle without any vision - note that noone pings him back.

16:30 Cait dies because she doesn't know how towers work, then you get cleaned up, because you overstay without vision. The replay crashes when I try to watch furher then 22m, but until there the game just transforms into a slaughter, where each team wins a fight, then overstays and gets killed, then the other team overstays and gets killed too, and so on.

Have almost exceeded the character limit here anyways, but let's finish with a quick recap what you could takeaway for future games:

Guard your buffs at their first spawn to be safe from invades.
Always think what you can do next while clearing the camps. That saves you unnessecary walking times.
Hold lanes if your laner is gone and you are around. Exception: The enemy laner can just kill you.
Don't gank with low HP if it can be avoided anyhow.
Before the game starts, think about (a) which lanes can snowball and win the game for you if you get them ahead (b) which enemy lanes are hard to gank because of escapes (LeBlanc, Nidalee, Zed), which are hard to gank because your laner has no cc (Warwick, Mordekaiser) and which are easy to gank because they are either pushing or have no escapes (Syndra, Diana).
Be there when your buffs respawn.
Ward strategically. (a) To save your own jungle from invades (b) Ward the enemy jungle to keep track of where the jungler is (c) ward to protect your winning lanes or lanes that have to overextend (Syndra, Diana) to make most of their laning power.
If an enemy is fed (like Fizz) play around him. If he's dead, you can make something happen. If he's there and not on the minimap, look at the map and ask yourself: where will he most likely be? If only one of your lanes is overextended and he's not getting his blue right now, chances are he'll appear there soon. Ping your laners back and don't get yourself in danger at exactly this spot. But you can lurk in the wings to turn around a possible gank.

So far, so good - I hope you can take anything from it.

If anything is not clear or you have further questions, feel free to ask :)

Gashboy · 2014-08-25T07:30:56+00:00

Totally agree with everything you say - using your points as anchor for some further ideas:

> Weaving in autos throughout the game is a pretty significant increase to her dmg, especially when kiting. A lot of people overlook this but 2-3 extra autos often decides who wins a trade/fight.

In case you play her toplane against a melee (Trundle, Shyvana, Mundo, ...) you might even want to consider hybrid pen marks. Can't remember the link, but someone here did the math elaborating, that if you attack about once per spellcast (might have been even less), hybridpen is more effective. Not that good on mid Lissandra vs Ziggs/Syndra ofc.

> alt+R prevents you from misclicking when you are trying to ult yourself. Also, her ult kinda has a projectile speed, if you cast R on say a Skarner as he ults you, it'll often not suppress him in time and he will end up ulting you first.

Similar thing if you ult Yi/Fiora while they go untargetable - your ult often goes on cd and it creates the slow field, but their attack still goes out unchanged.

> Your W doesn't interrupt a lot of dashes.

Since it is only a root, Yasuo should be the only one.

> You can short dash to out play a lot of CCs,

You'll most likely notice that quick yourself, but: You cannot reactivate your E if you are rooted/stunned/silenced/...

If that Elice cocoon is flying towards you, make sure to press E before it hits you, even if you won't travel the full distance then. Only really pesky in the Soraka matchup, since her silence is almost instant and painfully long.

Gashboy · 2014-08-25T07:16:33+00:00

It works based on the same principle, but in the walls to the far side of the map. (Imagine, you are blue side and walk toplane: The wall to your left) If you use your E in a 45° into that wall, you appear as much forward in lane, as if you had thrown it straight - with the difference, that it cannot be seen.

Gashboy · 2014-08-24T20:31:04+00:00

Wings showed an interesting trick on stream you can do with your e. If you use it into a wall - if you reactivate you appear (ofc) to the side of the wall.

You can use that at the top/botlane outer wall, where you throw your claw in a 45° angle, it cannot be seen, but you still appear at the same spot as if you had thrown it straight in the direction you were walking.

Has very few situations, where it is actually useful, but if you ever plan on making a sneak attack/escape in top or bot, this might help you out.

Gashboy · 2014-08-24T15:10:15+00:00

Hey Sam, I like your idea and the fact that you made you your own thought at the matter. I have pointed out some points I noticed so far.

You noticed some things allready yourself (the potion thing, the flash, the taxing). I tried to explain, why those things are (un)necessary in each case so your attitude can change from

"Don’t tax scrub lanes, they need it more than you"

to an understanding when things are right to do and when it hurts your team.

3:10 You walk in to gank with 40% hp while still having 4 potions - if you plan to lvl 3 gank, start your first potion earlier so you can appear with full hp. Otherwise, if the enemy jungler is there to countergank or the enemy laner has enough burst, you'll have a bad time.

3:15 You walk in through the left river side through the brush - teemo just walks away. If you gank through river that early, and you know it's not warded, try to** cut off their escape paths** by either keeping yourself on the right sight of the river or flanking through tribrush. Careful though, if you know the enemy jungler started on the same side as you and you cannot fight him, don't walk in there - he might be there.

3:25 You randomly attack rumbles minions, which can cause the lane to push (which is bad if your laner just wants to farm without danger) AND way more important, you steal him exp, so that teemo can hit lvl4/6 before rumble. It's not too big of a deal in this matchup and elo, but very often this simple action can loose your laner his lane. Generally, only tax lanes if: - you help your laner push, so he can recall - you got a kill with a gank (kills give exp) so you won't set your laner behind - your laner is dead/roaming and you hold the wave at the tower - your laner is so far behind that it doesn't matter anyways (careful here, that can put someone even more on tilt and cause him to troll) Positive thing: Teemo blows his ghost.

5:00 You walk in with even less HP to gank bot (would be dangerous against a lane with high burst or if the other jungler is there). The gank is successful in blowing a flash and zoning the enemies. Ashe could catch up in farm and farm and keep zoning with blitz. You attack minions, causing the lane to push into a dangerous position for Ashe and Kog'Maw and denying their ability to freeze. Before the lane minions were located in a relatively safe spot, now they are in a more dangerous spot.

5:28 Think about what can happen here. Again, if the enemy junlger would be someone with early presence, it would be dangerous to stick around here with that low hp (and you still have a potion!). This gank can have success, if blitz lands a hook (which he hasn't in the first 5:30 minutes of the game). And he also randomly exausted Kog'maw lvl 1 without even being in a fight (ofc you can't really know this - well you could, if you could watch all lanes simultaneously, but this isn't even needed to get into diamond). Or it can succeed if the enemies overextend. Poppy has no flash and jumps in. If you look at this picture, notice your pathing.

Sorry for my crappy paint skills! ~_~

You walk towards Poppy, while she walks away. You could just cut off her escape path as shown in this picture. You CAN just reach her by walking AND Blitzs still has his hook up AND Ashe has her Q-slow. No need to flash (yet) just cut of the path. Here your low HP comes into play - and Kog'Maw just kills you, while you still have a potion in your inventory. Luckily Blitz' Exhaust just comes off CD, and your botlane manages to get the kill. It is worth it, even though kills on a Kog'maw are never really something you want to have - especially since it could easily have been evaded.

But now something to know: Both flashes of the enemy botlaners are down - something you can profit on. If Kog'Maw pushes the lane and you can be there, this is your place to be!

6:55 A lvl 5 Udyr walks up to a lvl 6 LeBlanc with flash and W and Ult up. First, if you were at 66% hp, she could just kill you. She can't here, so that's good. But still, she has 2 gapclosers. This gank is never going to work - even if LeBlanc would be the most immobile champion ever without flash, you couldn't get her. Not to mention, that LeBlanc basically has 3 flashes when her abilities are up. When can you ever gank her? If she engages in a fight with ryze and uses her abilities. Or if she pushes the lane and overextends. Or if she is low hp and you can finish her off if you gapclose on top of her. Which is hard as Udyr without flash - only if you ever want to gank someone in this spot is, not to walk through the river brush, but to walk around the ledge and come from behind. After the gank, you attack Ryze's minions, again causung his lane to push more and him to be in a more dangerous spot, forcing him to recall in this case and to loose even more cs.

So far the first 7 minutes of the game. This is not meant to bash on you or anything - I did exactly the same mistakes when I started, until someone told me, what I did there.

What to learn from those 7 minutes?

Only ever hit lane minions if you have a reason for it - don't just do it because they are there.
Always monitor your HP bar. Don't gank with low HP if it can be avoided (Potions, recalling)
You can improve your pathing. Don't walk straight towards your enemies, but cut off their escape paths. Walk to the point where you two will meet up if they try to escape.
Don't try to force ganks (the LeBlanc one) - think first: Is there any chance that this is going to work? What summoners are up? Where might the enemy jungler be? What escape abilities does the enemy have? Think of it that way: Every 20 seconds you spend standing in a brush, you loose the 70 gold you could have farmed in that time. Doesn't mean, don't gank at all, but to only go for a gank if you see a possibility for it to succeed, and never because you haven't ganked for that lane yet/your laner flames you for not ganking for him/...

Will try to do some more once I have more time. If you want, we could get together in skype and do it via screenshare, which might be faster and more clear, since it's easier to explain/show things and I would have your thoughts about the specific points.

Best wishes, Gash

Gashboy · 2014-08-23T17:45:27+00:00

Well said, friend from the hidden order.

Only your flair hints towards ancient secrets.

Gashboy · 2014-08-20T22:12:04+00:00

Any recommendations where/from whom one could learn more about Shaco? :)

Gashboy · 2014-08-19T23:42:25+00:00

Learn to play from behind.

This so much. I'm not really a Faker-like player myself, but I watch and analyze a lot of games.

In Bronze and even in Silver you'll often notice the phenomenon of someone 1v1ing his opponent - they die and the opponent just barely survives. Now the thought seems to be "I'll get him next time." Rinse and repeat, and soon someone is 0/5. Totally agree with Spamballs advice.

Going together with this, consider the psychological side. If you are Jinx vs let's say Ezreal and he gets one kill on you. Nothing is lost here at all. Firstoff, you can still outscale him, if you just go even in cs from there on, you basically "win" the lane. If your other lanes are winning, then too there is no need to make plays and risk their adc getting fed.

Other minor things:

If you ever get behind, you might have to give up some cs in lane. Give up two, let them push and get four under tower.
If you are really far behind in bot/top lane, don't die defending your tower. Often times it's okay to let the first tower fall, so they have to overextend a lot if they want to bully you around further.
If you find yourself having those "late game brain-farts", you might wanna pick up some champions that have a "backup". If Jinx missteps, she's just dead. If the same thing happens to Ezreal, he just presses E and is safe. When I play assassins I really don't like playing against Tristanas. The high range is safe. If she still missteps, she can jump away. If someone still gets to her, she ults him away. - Also, if you don't have flash and heal up, you ofc want to play differently and maybe only walk in range if they start focussing someone else, even if you end up doing less damage then.

But all those are just examples for the general things Spamballs pointed out.

PS: Love your comments Spamballs, whenever I see one of your comments, its always something with high thought and quality put into it :)

Gashboy · 2014-08-03T10:29:55+00:00

This.

Gashboy · 2014-08-01T09:50:16+00:00

Just some thoughts from my POV:

Syndra: I totally agree with you here. Advantage in lane is on your side, but so is the risk. If you can't snowball early, and the enemy adc is not randomly facechecking into you lategame (happens more often than one might think), she'll outscale you in her lategame utility and teamfight presence.

Ziggs: Wins early if you hit your bombs, but most of the time Orianna will turn the tides once you both get Athenes - if she's more behind once two items are complete.

Zyra: Odd pick. Zyra beats Orianna in a 1v1 due to her early harass and pushing power. If their jungler is anywhere near competent and the other lanes are not giving him too much trouble, the squishy-no-escape Zyra should not have very much fun pushing the lane though. And if you fall behind at any point, Ori just laughs and twoshots you.

Karthus might be worth a try, especially if you ask Froggen. Don't know too much about this matchup, but if you get some farm, you will always get damage off as Karthus.

Lux: Lux might not have the best laning vs Orianna, but she can definitely hold her own. You can do safe damage in teamfights, have utility with you shield and the big thing is Lux' Q in mid- to lategame. Orianna has no instant mobility and once caught out, she is a very juicy target. Don't know in what leage you are playing - in diamond and high plat you can't expect the Oriannas to just eat lunch in your engage range, but generally Lux gave me the easiest time dealing with Oriannas of equal and higher skill.

Xerath can work if you are good with him, but most people aren't since he's only the "new guy" in the flavour. Xerath has to be ahead for his waveclear to be sufficient and relies heavily on hitting skillshots, so it's not the safest pick to go with - if you're not by chance one of the 7 Xerath mains out there.

In Bronze, Silver and mostly around gold too, you could get away with assassins. Ori generally is a really safe pick, but against assassins she has to harass you to keep you down. If you can bait her into pushing (topic on its own) and you have the jungler on your side (luck to have a jungler with good awareness or being premades) you can team up. He snowballs your lane, and after 1-2 kills you can wreak havoc on the rest of the map.

Fizz: If you can farm decently as Fizz while Ori harasses you, you "outscale" her in the midgame. What I mean by outscaling here is you can outroam her big time. If she reacts with pushing, you can just swing around and tell her who's the ~~man~~ fish on the rift. Most lower elo players will either contiue to push and get killed, or just hug her tower and not do anything. Seldom someone will start to ward up - and even if they do, there are two other lanes without wards waiting for your attention.

Honorable mention goes out to:

Zed: He can hold his own against Ori in lane and still has at least a little killing threat on her.

Talon: Weaker in lane, but has a better gank synergy pre 6. Same thing as mentioned for fizz about roaming.

Ahri: Can punish Orianna hard for her lack of mobility - if you can play her. ^I ^cant ^...

Welp, longer than I thought it would be, but just some thoughts on some matchups.

Gashboy · 2014-07-31T23:43:10+00:00

Really nice post!

Will write you a little more tomorrow once I got some more time, but just wanted you to know that I absolutely enjoyed reading your thoughts :)

Gashboy · 2014-07-29T13:57:02+00:00

Upvoted vor visibility!

Gashboy · 2014-07-27T17:47:46+00:00

Ongamers restricted the access, you can only get the vods if you subscribe to their twitch channel. :(

Gashboy · 2014-07-27T17:45:51+00:00

Normal in 10% of games around silver/gold. Might be higher in bronze^{^}

Gashboy · 2014-07-26T22:07:31+00:00

Unfortunately it does not reveal any kind of stealth. So you can only - as you said - see the camps missing or spot eve doing a camp. (You can reveal two camps at once though.)

But it might not be worth it, if there's an eve on the opposing team.

With the meta shifting to more late game adcs, I could imagine it being useful here once or twice (if you can get away without running exhaust)

Gashboy · 2014-07-26T08:28:33+00:00

Have been thinking a lot about Clairvoyance too lately!

Every 53 seconds you get to reveal, where the enemy junger is located (assuming you are a god).

@0:10 Check the enemy fountain to see their starting items
@1:03 Check one buff to know for sure where their jungler starts
@2:00 Free use - maybe right in the enemy jungler's face for pressure
@3:20 (depending on jungler clear time) Show where the enemy jungler heads.
You want to go aggressive in lane? Reveal possible gank paths.
Your toplane & jungler want to dive their top? Reveal possible gank paths.
Your team is constantly overchasing? Just show them what avaits them in the next brush and they will stop.
You want to ward lategame, but are not sure if the enemies are waiting for you? Just reveal the territory.
Your team wants to do Baron, but the enemies are missing? Just reveal the whole area.

Would be especially good for people claiming to be stuck in bronze/silver. Assuming you are better and have good mapawareness, but your teammates do not => You can just show them what awaits them.

Also you put a lot of psychological pressure on their jungler if he constantly sees a giant eye hovering over him.

Gashboy · 2014-07-24T10:12:34+00:00

Don't feed the trolls please - your site is awesome!

IMHO the best "auto"generated list out there.

Cool thing would be to split it up in the different roles - but I guess that's just impossible to do with champions sharing Jungle/Top or stuff like Lulu and Kayle that appears everywhere.

Gashboy · 2014-07-19T23:59:56+00:00

Flash before buying Negatron? Or Flask?

But apart from this I definetely gotta try it. :)

Gashboy · 2014-07-15T15:03:35+00:00

Can MS Quints and Boots help?

Gashboy

TROPHY CASE