My second attempt a topic of this nature. Lesson learned - not toxicity nor will players be named.
I continue to struggle. When I play captain, my laners are awful, and no amount of rotation/support seems to help. When I lane, my captain does not rotate. Can those with experience of this game share their opinions on the role of the captain, how the captain ought to be played, and when/where/how the captain should rotate?
I am of the opinion that if I go top lane, and I immediately finedI am 1v2 (and at times 1v3) and they’re already taking my camp and have taken out my scout cams and have vision on me, I have every right to ping “I need help” and ping for my captain. As a captain, I would absolutely respond to this call and make my way top even if it’s within the first few minutes of the game. Would you or would you not? If I am wrong, I would like to know and I’ll suck it up.
I mainly play captain, top lane, and jungle in tier 10. Here are my thoughts on the topic.
Firstly, your captain should spend as much time as possible in mid lane. This will earn you the most gold, and keep your mid lane in a good position. If you leave mid lane in a 1v2 to help top lane you are only moving your problems around (unless your mid lane can 1v2 well or is ahead already and can hold his own).
The best way to help out top lane is to make a single, quick collapse with your mid laner, hopefully secure a kill and be done with it. Assuming your mid is not doing this and as a captain you have to choose between losing mid and losing top, save mid.
As a top laner, make sure you pick someone who can hold their own, clear waves, and escape collapses. Joule, Malene, Reza, WP ardan are the best right now. I find my captain heading to top just means we have two member getting beat up in stead of one. As I said before a mid/captain collapse is most efficient
Thank you. I’ll try to improve my selection when going top and prioritize wave clear and playing defensive. I just always find the bot jungler and bot laner of the opposing team harass the top laner making life a bit difficult. Your post does help, however. Thank you.
Well so far i am at 11 wins out of 16 games playing captains only, captains are great this patch in my opinion they get so much gold of mid lane minions ambient and they have so much base damage.
It’s entirely situational. As a captain main, I would prefer to babysit my mid for a few minutes. However, if my mid is just fine without me, even if it’s a 1v2, I’ll try and rotate top, if not for anything but presence or for a quick push to have their bot back off. I would try to stay for only as long as needed because if the enemy is any good, they should rotate to mid and force a 1v3.
If I recall correctly, you chose Skaarf for top. I would advise picking a tankier hero because as someone said earlier, losing mid is much worse than losing top and your captain may make that call despite your pings. If I were to choose, I may just let top fall and hope that they back off after they take the first turret. Honestly, very few of my games were decided because of top lane.
But to your point, captain should have the best map awareness, followed closely by the jungler, and should rotate well. If fact, I may ask where the jungler is because he may be putting pressure on bot when it’s not entirely needed.
That should help. When you’re top lane, you’re kind of taking one for the team — you need to deal with getting beat up so your other lanes can have an edge. The better you are at just surviving while outnumbered, the better your team will do. When you are in a 1v2 or 1v3 you’re creating opportunities for your team in the other lanes.
Mostly you want to avoid glass-cannons up there. Wave clear and survival are the keys.
As a captain, you should take some pressure off of top lane occasionally, but you aren’t going up there to save them. I might rotate up and give the top laner time to shop or to teleport and come back, but I’m not going to stick there and clear out enemies.
Lower tiers have a wierd thing where all the laners want to avoid picking mid. It’s easy to tell the difference between a team full of tier 7+ and a team full of tier 5-, because the lower tiers look at mid as the high-pressure lane. So top is usually someone looking for an “easy” lane, and they tend to flip out if they don’t get help. In lower tiers it’s pretty normal to see a top laner die once then just totally abandon their lane. Don’t be that guy.
Top lane is the one you pick because you know how to handle your shit and you can cope with losing a turret or dying in a 1v3 with no help on the way. It’s the Alamo; it’s Bastogne or Tobruk.
Can’t stress how real that is. Basically every time I get low tier in high elo playing top there’s 2 possible outcomes. First one they go 0/14 pinging I need help OK and spam pinging a player of choice. I mean it’s not my fault you went CP Baron or Ringo top. You picked it, you play it, you suffer. Or second option as you said they die once and they’re like “Nope. Not my problem. I’m outta here.” I don’t get it. How can someone even think that’s viable thing to do lol. Completely abandon 1 lane just because you don’t wanna play it. They wouldn’t roam either though lol.
I think Baron is a ok choice. Great wave control. Just play defensive by keeping your distance and spamming your A. It’ll be a tough tower for the opposing team to take and you shouldn’t die.
His wave control isn’t really good when it needs to be - early game. He’s one of the easiest targets to kill. Doesn’t do damage, moves basically as much as turrets do. He’s a terrible hero especially in top.
I actually prefer top lane a lot now lol. Feels more impactful to me. If you can win top you win the game most of the time. Now that they’ve nerfed minion candies too it’s getting a bit easier to hold my lane. Also I kind of one trick WP Ardan who’s really broken and can win 1v2s and Reza whos good at stealing camps and also is really annoying to deal with.
On this one, I so much hate when I am top 1vs3 and survive for like one minute(and more) not giving them the turret and both other laners/jungler/captain farm super calm and not pushing at all. At the end the turret falls and my team didn’t create opportunity from the long 3 enemy players engagement with me.
He needs a lot of time (and gold) to get started and have a good lane cleanup. Till he get there, he will lose hard the lane if enemy bot/jungler are his skill level ofc. CP baron is late game hero, same as WP baron with the exception that WP baron can do something at the mid game too if he farms good.
You definitely need to rotate to top from time to time, but you have to limit your presence there. I like to keep a 1-2 minion wave rule. Rotate back to mid after you help your top laner clear 1-2 minion waves. Your base damage is stupidly good, so you can be aggressive towards the enemy bot laners. Just. Don’t. Die. You’ll be more behind than you already are just by helping your top laner out.