On April 10 2012 04:58 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: how is top the most overrated position? being able to follow up on a gank, being able to keep the creep line where you want it, being able to cover your jungle / invade the other, knowing when to go towards drag (and not lose 1-2 towers out of it), all takes plenty skill...
and the pool isn't horrible either: despite the loss of irelia, there's still olaf, singed, vlad, nid, cho, riven, ls, udyr, gp, yorick, swain, ryze, nunu, fiora, shen, lulu, cass, rumble, and the random AD that can sometimes show up there
though i'm not arguing with the fact that hotshot sucks at olaf and dyrus is the only one i've seen consistently do well with him top
Top is the most overrated because everyone UNDERRATES everything that isnt top or ad carry. I would argue that mid and ad carry are properly rated in terms of performance, jungle and support are underrated for their contribution to the game, but top is overrated simply because most of the time the lane REALLY doesnt have all that much effect on the game until well into the game. I mean, many games the top laner doesnt even come down until the second or third dragon.
The pool of champions for top lane is HUGE. Thats not what Im saying. What Im saying is that the personal pool of top lane champions for individual players is tiny. HSGG plays udyr cho and shen well, and occasionally cheeses with nidalee. And thats it. Compare the average top laner who can play maybe 4-5 champions at a tourney level to his teams jungle or ad carry who is expected to be able to play every option. They dont even come close to the same level of mastery.
Top lane champions are all really different though. Like, it's easy for an AD carry to be viable on nearly all ADs because they all play really similar (except for Urgot). The transition from say Kog'Maw to Tristana to Ezreal to Corki isn't that much of a leap. A transition from Irelia to Rumble or Cho'gath to Kennen is a lot bigger. Even junglers are all pretty similar in how they play with only a few exceptions that aren't even all that common at high level play (such as Fiddle). I'll give you that APs can have more diversity but for the most part you're either picking a bursty AP mid or a sustained dps AP mid.
Comparing top lane champion diversity to AD carry champion diversity doesn't work imo. I think your top laner can get away with only being tourny level strength with 4-5 champions a lot better than your AD carry or AP mid can. Doesn't hurt that AP mid and AD carry are both easier to play.
hotshot is obviously overrated but saying that he "blows so hard" when he generally played pretty well throughout the tournament is pretty stupid. The champions that he really shines on might be really limited (maybe it's still only cho and nidalee that he's actually really goo at) but saying that hotshot was bad just from the final games (especially when he played so well in the first set) is ridiculous.That's about as reactionary as you can get.
The only people that actually seem to have a wide range of champions in the top position seem to be Darien and Dyrus anyway - not just in champion numbers but in a variety of very different champions that allow their teams to have many options for team comps.
On April 10 2012 04:58 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: how is top the most overrated position? being able to follow up on a gank, being able to keep the creep line where you want it, being able to cover your jungle / invade the other, knowing when to go towards drag (and not lose 1-2 towers out of it), all takes plenty skill...
and the pool isn't horrible either: despite the loss of irelia, there's still olaf, singed, vlad, nid, cho, riven, ls, udyr, gp, yorick, swain, ryze, nunu, fiora, shen, lulu, cass, rumble, and the random AD that can sometimes show up there
though i'm not arguing with the fact that hotshot sucks at olaf and dyrus is the only one i've seen consistently do well with him top
The pool of champions for top lane is HUGE. Thats not what Im saying. What Im saying is that the personal pool of top lane champions for individual players is tiny. HSGG plays udyr cho and shen well, and occasionally cheeses with nidalee. And thats it. Compare the average top laner who can play maybe 4-5 champions at a tourney level to his teams jungle or ad carry who is expected to be able to play every option. They dont even come close to the same level of mastery.
I kinda agree with this. It boggled my mind that people didn't just ban Vlad against TSM. Dyrus plays a really, REALLY good Vlad. Like, he's-convinced-Vlad's-completely-broken good.Beyond that, his Olaf is great but only in the right matchup, Singed is Singed and then.... what? Lee Sin and Udyr. He's good on them but not nearly as good as on Vlad. Similar thing with HSGG. They banned him out and the result was a HORRIBLE all-around performance on Olaf. You can say he was behind because of ganks or w/e (and he definitely was), but the build he chose was just horrible for the way that game was going. If he'd able to pick a champion he was better/more comfortable with, he'd probably have done better.
Top lane's really dependent on 1v1, so it's always a brutal lane to master several champions compared to other roles whose performances are really differentiated in skirmishes/teamfights.
Saying hotshot is a bad top-laner though..seriously?
hsgg's swain and galio are both better than his olaf... it's not like they banned him out, it's more like he overestimated his olaf, which sucks. i really doubt regi would've grabbed galio had clg not banned galio, so idk why they banned a champ that hsgg plays better than any of tsm.
also, im not gonna speak for "overrated" and "underrated," but i think any lane can carry a game, depending on the matchup. if dlift had 3-0'd ashe with vayne rather than graves, they might've won that game, but graves just doesn't snowball as hard. some lanes are easier for junglers to gank/camp and therefore snowball, but there's matchups in all 3 lanes that are possibly conducive to that... there's no reason to say one lane is consistently more important than the others.
and i dunno where you got the impression that people rate top/ad as the most important, i always got the impression that a one-sided mid ended games the quickest and most decisively... like when jiji was slumping and got raped, clg couldn't do anything to recover. conversely, same with the clg vs tsm games where jiji raped regi, (though tbh chaox lost his lane in both those games too). a dominant mid means control over all parts of the jungle, given good coordination, so isn't it the easiest lane to snowball a win off of? that was always my impression, at least
EDIT: also, twodown, i dunno why you're describing his nidalee play as cheese, it's probably one of the best, most consistent champs i've seen played by anyone in both laning and post-laning phase... he plays a solid nidalee, and if other toplaners put in as much time as he has into nidalee, they probably could too.
I think my biggest concern for Hsgg and Chauster switching would be can Hsgg save doublelift when he derps and gets caught in a bad spot like Chauster regularly does.
i've seen the scrims where clg tried to let hsgg support, he's kind of bad with warding and overextending, and chauster and sv would keep blaming him (likely rightfully so) whenever bot got ganked. though if they give hsgg enough time to practice the mechanics of vision-managing as support, he might do well. his support nidalee is really good, aside from the wardsupporting part of his play.
On April 10 2012 05:21 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: EDIT: also, twodown, i dunno why you're describing his nidalee play as cheese, it's probably one of the best, most consistent champs i've seen played by anyone in both laning and post-laning phase... he plays a solid nidalee, and if other toplaners put in as much time as he has into nidalee, they probably could too.
Lots of people consider Nida to be a cheese type of champion because her laning is stupid. Whether you play AP or bruiser Nidalee you almost always max heal first and you're just impossible to push out of lane while you also push way harder than just about any other solo top once you get 6 and your pre-6 isn't that bad either. With Nidalee it isn't a question of if you'll lose top tower but when.
On April 10 2012 05:30 Gorsameth wrote: I think my biggest concern for Hsgg and Chauster switching would be can Hsgg save doublelift when he derps and gets caught in a bad spot like Chauster regularly does.
Doublelift has said before that he doesn't like going bot lane with Hotshot. They played around some with Hotshot and Chau switching roles certain games, like if there was a top lane that they wanted to run that Hotshot wasn't confident on. The main problem is that Hotshot's only support he's good with is Janna and the fact that Double strongly prefers Chau to Hotshot.
On April 10 2012 05:21 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: EDIT: also, twodown, i dunno why you're describing his nidalee play as cheese, it's probably one of the best, most consistent champs i've seen played by anyone in both laning and post-laning phase... he plays a solid nidalee, and if other toplaners put in as much time as he has into nidalee, they probably could too.
Lots of people consider Nida to be a cheese type of champion because her laning is stupid. Whether you play AP or bruiser Nidalee you almost always max heal first and you're just impossible to push out of lane while you also push way harder than just about any other solo top once you get 6 and your pre-6 isn't that bad either. With Nidalee it isn't a question of if you'll lose top tower but when.
hasn't it become quite a bit harder since the heal mana cost / hp amount nerf? why wouldnt more people play her if it were so easy to win lane, never getting pushed out?
On April 10 2012 05:21 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: EDIT: also, twodown, i dunno why you're describing his nidalee play as cheese, it's probably one of the best, most consistent champs i've seen played by anyone in both laning and post-laning phase... he plays a solid nidalee, and if other toplaners put in as much time as he has into nidalee, they probably could too.
Lots of people consider Nida to be a cheese type of champion because her laning is stupid. Whether you play AP or bruiser Nidalee you almost always max heal first and you're just impossible to push out of lane while you also push way harder than just about any other solo top once you get 6 and your pre-6 isn't that bad either. With Nidalee it isn't a question of if you'll lose top tower but when.
hasn't it become quite a bit harder since the heal mana cost / hp amount nerf? why wouldnt more people play her if it were so easy to win lane, never getting pushed out?
I don't know why people don't play her more in pro games. Maybe because they aren't good enough with spears/don't want to invest the time to make her work for AP and probably because bruiser Nid is worse than other bruisers. But even with the nerfs her heal makes it really hard to push her out of lane and she clears super fast. She gets run a lot in solo q.
Only time I've seen Hotshot get pushed out of lane as Nidalee was against Yorick. But that's Yorick so lol.
On April 10 2012 05:45 ishboh wrote: as someone who recently came into watching lol on the pro level, what does 'baylife' mean? all i know is that TSM says it all the time.
On April 10 2012 04:58 SpiritoftheTunA wrote: how is top the most overrated position? being able to follow up on a gank, being able to keep the creep line where you want it, being able to cover your jungle / invade the other, knowing when to go towards drag (and not lose 1-2 towers out of it), all takes plenty skill...
and the pool isn't horrible either: despite the loss of irelia, there's still olaf, singed, vlad, nid, cho, riven, ls, udyr, gp, yorick, swain, ryze, nunu, fiora, shen, lulu, cass, rumble, and the random AD that can sometimes show up there
though i'm not arguing with the fact that hotshot sucks at olaf and dyrus is the only one i've seen consistently do well with him top
Top is the most overrated because everyone UNDERRATES everything that isnt top or ad carry. I would argue that mid and ad carry are properly rated in terms of performance, jungle and support are underrated for their contribution to the game, but top is overrated simply because most of the time the lane REALLY doesnt have all that much effect on the game until well into the game. I mean, many games the top laner doesnt even come down until the second or third dragon.
The pool of champions for top lane is HUGE. Thats not what Im saying. What Im saying is that the personal pool of top lane champions for individual players is tiny. HSGG plays udyr cho and shen well, and occasionally cheeses with nidalee. And thats it. Compare the average top laner who can play maybe 4-5 champions at a tourney level to his teams jungle or ad carry who is expected to be able to play every option. They dont even come close to the same level of mastery.
I think you're vastly overstating the "champion pool" thing. Pretty much every pro player in every position has 3-5 champions that they play every game given the option. For example, Saint is capable of playing pretty much every jungler but given the option he rarely plays something outside of Udyr, Mundo, Shyvana, or Maokai. How is this any different from HS always playing Cho, Shen, Olaf, and Nidalee?
On April 10 2012 05:45 ishboh wrote: as someone who recently came into watching lol on the pro level, what does 'baylife' mean? all i know is that TSM says it all the time.
its something annoying 15 year old progamers scream all the time and all the 20+ year old stream watchers have them as rolemodels and need to copy it, dont do it.
On April 10 2012 05:45 ishboh wrote: as someone who recently came into watching lol on the pro level, what does 'baylife' mean? all i know is that TSM says it all the time.
its something annoying 15 year old progamers scream all the time and all the 20+ year old stream watchers have them as rolemodels and need to copy it, dont do it.
EPT
