The best top laner was discussed in IEM. I remember the casters said something like maknoon and shy were the best top laners in the world. But today SWL maknoon got completely destroyed by Stanley. Stanley using Shen 3-0 maknoon Elise withou any jungler help. The second basically was the same situation. I know that one match does not mean everything, but I still think there is a skill gap between Stanley and maknoon.
So who do u think is the best top laner in the world now?
I believe pdd is the best.

ihasaKAROT

Netherlands4730 Posts

March 21 2013 15:00 GMT

I believe there is no such thing as 'the best top laner'.
I believe that 1 game is not a good sample.
I believe League of Legends is a teamgame and it doesnt matter how good you are individually if you suck as a team.

TheYango

United States47024 Posts

March 21 2013 15:07 GMT

I'm hesitant to call Stanley the best top laner in the world given how historically shaky his 1v2 ability has been. His 1v1 laning has always been stellar, but having less than outstanding 1v2 is a very exploitable weakness in the way the game is currently played.

Letmelose

Korea (South)3227 Posts

March 21 2013 15:20 GMT

I am currently writing a blog over this topic, but focused solely on Korean players. It's hard enough to judge the strengths of players from the same region. With so many factors influencing cross-regional games such as lag for online tournaments, jet-lag and crowd advantage in the case of LAN tournaments, limited number of games to judge from, the differences in schedules and the obvious fact that I know next to zero about foreign players apart from their cross-regional games makes judging individual talent next to impossible. Here are my thoughts so far on Korean top-laners.

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=404053
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=404212

I believe that two elite top-laners from Korea have competed in SWL Season 2, namely Maknoon and Expession, and they had varying performances. Maknoon has been getting manhandled by a lot of people since his successful OGN campaign, and I'm not sure if this is him slacking off, or if he is being outclassed. I'm guessing a bit of both. Expession on the other hand, has been stomping faces against a lot of people. Although his team has been performing very poorly, he had very good lane performances in general. What did you think of Expession's performance against PDD and Caomei?

Zhiroo

Kosovo2724 Posts

March 21 2013 16:10 GMT

I'd say Stanley, Shy, Maknoon, PDD and Caomei are top 5 in no particular order. But like someone said we can't really pick one and say he's the best because so much stuff changes in game.

TheYango

United States47024 Posts

March 21 2013 16:15 GMT

Expession deserves to be on there. Who you bump out depends on how you value various traits. For example, Caomei is probably the weakest out of all of those in terms of 1v1 laning ability by a wide margin. But he's a proficient 1v2 laner, and has a good sense of map movement/teamfight execution.

Badboyrune

Sweden2247 Posts

March 21 2013 17:52 GMT

omg what about dyrus

Letmelose

Korea (South)3227 Posts

March 21 2013 18:00 GMT

How many times have we actually seen the very best top laners from each region square off against one another? Do we even have enough number of games to judge from?

Here's a list of cross regional games between famous top-laners from Europe, China, Korea and Taiwan. I don't think we should even be attempting a list without watching all of these, otherwise we'll just be listing whoever left the most impression from a couple of matches we happened to catch.

sOAZ versus Stanley: 4 games from IPL5
sOAZ versus Reapered: 4 games from IEM Cologne
sOAZ versus Flame: 1 game from IPL5, 3 games from IEM Katowice, 1 game from IEM VII World Championship
sOAZ versus Shy: 1 game from IEM Katowice
sOAZ versus Caomei: 6 games from IPL5

Darien versus Stanley: 3 games from S2 World Championship
Darien versus Flame: 3 games from IPL5, 3 games from IEM Katowice, 1 game from IEM VII World Championship
Darien versus Shy: 2 games from IEM Katowice, 3 games from IEM VII World Championship
Darien versus Ssumday: 3 games from MLG Dallas Winter Championship International Exhibition
Darien versus Caomei: 1 game from Tencent Games Arena Grand Prix Winter showmatch, 2 games from IPL5
Darien versus PDD: 2 games from S2 World Championship, 1 game from Tencent Games Arena Grand Prix Winter showmatch

Stanley versus Shy: 4 games from S2 World Championship
Stanley versus Maknoon: 2 games from S2 World Championship, 2 games from SWL S2
Stanley versus Expession: 3 games from Battle Royale
Stanley versus Caomei: 3 games from NVIDIA Game Festival 2012, 2 games from ESL Go4LoL Pro Asia Season 1, 3 Games from SWL S1
Stanley versus PDD: 1 game from NVIDIA Game Festival, 1 game from ESL Go4LoL Pro Asia Season 1, 4 games from Battle Royale

PDD versus Reapered: 3 games from Battle Royale
PDD versus Expession: 5 games from Battle Royale, 2 games from SWL S1, 2 games from SWL S2
PDD versus Shy: 5 games from Battle Royale, 1 game from S2 World Championship

Caomei versus Reapered: 1 game from Azubu The Champions Summer
Caomei versus Expession: 1 game from Azubu The Champions Summer, 3 games from SWL S1
Caomei versus Flame: 1 game from IPL5

I've watched less than 10% of the games, can remember maybe a couple at most, and the details are sketchy at best. I'm not qualified to talk about this issue in any shape or form. How many of you here have seen say, more than a quarter of the games? I mean, you would need to have the most skilled top-laners your region completely listed out in your head, then use the above games to cross reference the relative skills of each gamers, which is a completely retarded method of ranking gamers. But I can't even do that!

emperorchampion

Canada9496 Posts

March 21 2013 18:05 GMT

The. Rain. Man.

Chrispy

Canada5878 Posts

March 21 2013 18:11 GMT

#10

Alright, fine... I'll be the first.

HotshotGG. Kappa

Leeto

United States1320 Posts

March 21 2013 18:12 GMT

#11

I believe in Kiwikid!

GhandiEAGLE

United States20754 Posts

March 21 2013 18:18 GMT

#12

Dyrus.
*picks nose*

Vlanitak

Norway3045 Posts

March 21 2013 18:19 GMT

#13

SKT T1 (2nd team) Impact this guy is gold waiting to shine, terrorized botlane with SBS and I think it was chauster or doublelift who once said they were the only bot lane in KR to beat them. Since then he has transitioned between teams (storm, tempest, storm again, skt t1) and switched to playing Top. from a potential side of things: Impact.
From currently proven and on top teams: Cao Mei and Expession

silencefc

United States875 Posts

March 21 2013 18:25 GMT

#14

Isn't top lane too snowbally to judge individual performances? Maknoon has said Shy is better than him in the same tournament where Mak dominated Shy in lane.

Gotta watch trends over a long period of time.

TheYango

United States47024 Posts

March 21 2013 18:27 GMT

#15

On March 22 2013 03:25 silencefc wrote:
Isn't top lane too snowbally to judge individual performances? Maknoon has said Shy is better than him in the same tournament where Mak dominated Shy in lane.

Gotta watch trends over a long period of time.

Only if you're using "who won lane" as the only measurement.

Decision making, map movement, teamfight execution, playing from behind, etc. It's really narrow-minded to look at top laners only in terms of how they do in lane. If that were the only way to judge them, then Caomei wouldn't be top 5.

And it IS possible to judge a player on how well they play, not just how well they did. You should be able to analyze a player's play completely regardless of the actual result of the game--it's just that most players have a hard time analyzing a player's play completely disjoined from the game's results (a player doing well makes people ignore their mistakes, while a player doing poorly accentuates them).

Eppa!

Sweden4641 Posts

March 21 2013 18:54 GMT

#16

It fluctuates a lot based on patch, meta, lan vs not lan and day to day.

Juicyfruit

Canada5484 Posts

March 21 2013 18:57 GMT

#17

Plus, surely at some point you can no longer distinguish yourself with 1v1 capabilities? The skill-cap ceiling for dueling is high but not infinite. Your actual abilities as a solotop laner will eventually cap itself out and the only way to distuinguish yourself at that point is with versatility, consistency under pressure, and mostly team-plays.

Kouda

United States2205 Posts

March 21 2013 19:00 GMT

#18

I think Expession is really good though, even if we can't say a definitive no1. top laner. Expession is godliek