Top Lane - hardest position in the game?

So I’ve seen a few people post on this in the past, and I wanted to chip in with my own thread (I want the likes lol).

I’ve decided to try and main top lane, my reasoning is I feel it’s the hardest position on the map. Many of you will no why this is but for those that don’t:

1 - Youll be facing a WP carry (usually) with or without a WP buff which puts you at an immediate disadvantage.
2 - You’ll almost always face the opposing enemy jungler for the majority of the match because of the way farm is distributed on the map.
3 - If your regen isn’t taken it involves you leaving your turret and exposing yourself to a potential gank in “that bush” or taking the long route around.
4 - The position of the store can result in your being locked out of shopping (it’s far riskier for a top laner to visit than the bottom laner owing to its position).
5 - Bad roams who don’t appreciate that they need to regulate rotate to top lane to relieve the pressure (god bless you guys that actually rotate up). I’ve gone entire games where my jungler for instance hasn’t ventured up to help once.
6 - Farm, you’ll find the enemy jungler will regairly rotate up to either take, or help take your regen. Over time this provides not only a gold lead but also a level disadvantage.

Thoughts? Do you agree with my thinking that’s it’s the most challenging position on the map? If you do, and you jungle/roam, please please consider rotation up to help your long suffering top laner.

Edit - Bottom jungler also has the advantage of having rotated with his jungle into their jungle to gain both gold and experience advantage (assuming their not retarded and fail to do this).

disagree.
jungler pathing is up to your jungler, i’ve had my fair share of junglers and roams who never visit me but babysit the toplane like theyre the second coming of jesus
your shop is also easier because you have 2 paths to take, you can go through the river or through the jungle.
there are a lot of strong toplaners that beat wp carries, grace for example is a dominant toplaner, book of eulogies + light armor and she can STILL bully you out. reza can also start bullying you out of lane after lvl 2.

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Top lane is the hardest simply because you are constantly in a 1v2. As XenoTeK said, the good top is the one who don’t die too many times, and if you don’t die at all you are a god. Top lane is usually the lane to snowball too due to this, which will make it the main objective for the enemy, being just one to defend it.

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In which case which is the hardest position in your opinion?

i think each position has it’s own difficulties, but in soloq, i think jungler would be the hardest.
in lower tiers, i’ve seen junglers barely getting their jungle and mostly being left with maybe goldoak and twin minions, and yet people expect you to be strong enough to gank to kill every time. in higher tiers i think people do respect the jungle more though.

So your basing your opinions on low tier skil play?

Interesting choice, actually feel the jungler is an easier position to play but one who has far more of an impact on the game. Jungle rotations are fairly standard, but where a good jungler excels is helping to pressure lanes whilst stealing farm.

i’m basing it on experience. in low tier, they lack respect, in higher tiers, each lane expects the world from you. like you said, it has a larger impact on the game, and it’s not just enemies who can mess with your momentum, but allies too.
a jungler requires their team to work with them more than laners do, because most ganks will need the enemy to be around the middle part of the lane (pre-turret destruction), and you’d also want someone nearby while clearing your jungle.

like i said, it’s the hardest in soloq where 5 different playstyles can clash

One of the best tactics is throwing a cam on the healing treant below you.

This enables you to steal it from the invaders with a lot of heroes.

If you get the lead in the top lane though by weaving in and out enemy jungle you can power level plus make a clear path to vain dropping cam near enemy base to use a Teleport boots with a member or two of your team

Hardest? I don’t know. Probably and in my opinion no. Most frustrating? Definitely. It’s just not fun in general right now and needs changes. Why I think it’s not the hardest? For a few reasons. The meta top lane heroes aren’t usually very mechanically demanding but not so much because of that. Top lane you can’t really do much if enemies know what they’re doing. If they’re taking your heal you can’t contest it unless they do something wrong. They can completely cut your way off from the map. Sometimes you would need to die and sacrifice your lane so your mid laner may not lose etc. It’s just very frustrating. But I don’t think it’s that hard as much as it needs good heroes picked for it. My point was you can’t always outplay your opponents in top lane. You just need to minimize the damage to your lane. Not always the case but mostly it is, especially in soloq.

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Top is far easier than captain and jungler. There’s only two mindsets to get used to as a top laner and the non-existent sidelane meta actually makes damage based top laners viable, albeit with a different hero pool, style of play and even build order. Most of it can be trained to be automated responses in a top lane situation.

As a captain and jungler you need to coordinate your movement across the map, which lanes you will need to visit more frequently and what you should do when your team gets a kill or a good push. They’re also key to maintain the macro integrity of a team by updating teammates on enemy rotations and “accelerating” a lane by helping them.

All lanes are hard if you have bad teammates, but if you get rid of that variable and everyone is even, mid lane is the hardest one. Midlane is hard because of the amount of poke that can occur and the rotations from top to bot always include mid so you have to seriously watch out for ganks. CSing is an issue as well because you are the hypercarry (because bot laners tend to be single target) and if you do not get that money then you are done for.

Top lane isn’t that difficult because when you play top lane you know the shit that is gonna go down. First thing you should do is place some defensive wards instead of aggressive ones because junglers and the carries always rotate to your top jungle after they pressure you in lane. Top lane you shouldn’t be aggressive when you aren’t aware of wear the jungler is but you should consistently try to outpoke the enemy laner when you are both isolated. But thats just mechanics. The sole purpose of top lane is to protect turrets and do the best at depriving enemy bot laner of gold. And of course don’t die. Top lane is fun and has a lot of picks to choose from so there really is never a wrong choice.

Top lane heroes aren’t very demanding of mechanics but neither are bot lane heroes. Bot lane is just easier because you get babysat more often due to the presence of WP buff and the jungler wanting it. A jungler who isn’t very good at invading will never go to top lane due to this reason because there isn’t any incentive. If someone from 3v3 carried their jungling presence to 5v5 they would go into the enemy WP buff while enemy jungler and carry are harassing the top laner. Top lane is frustrating especially when you know that no matter what stage of the game you can do nothing. We need more incentive for top lane jungle or faster spawn times for bot lane jungle to actually make the game shift from what we have now.

Honestly speaking captain is the hardest you have to keep an eye out for everyone and if someone does because you prioritized what you felt was the best option they’ll tilt in soloq. Not to mention in soloq if your team sucks no amount of support can score a win. If your team is good or decent though you can save the day

I feel like the OP is being misinterpreted .

The points he gives is solid and he determines the level of “difficulty” due to strategic Map objectives and how rotations work.

Unfortunately, Not every game is the same and each player has their own personal frustrations due to bad skills, bad play and bad rotations. or as I like to put it: team synergy

Each lane and position can be hard, it’s a matter of team synergy. I personally find Jungling easy. I like Mid lane and top lane. Just because I have perfected the rotations.

Another player could prefer Captain and Bottom, because they know how. It’s really up for interpretation.

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IMHO (NOTE: I AM A BOT LANER)

Lowest Skill Floor

  1. Jungle
  2. Bot
  3. Mid
  4. Captain
  5. Top

This is me speaking on my opinions of the MINIMUM STRATEGIC AND MECHANICAL SKILL needed to play these roles in soloQ. Anyone can be effective as a Jungler by babysitting bot (Hell, it’s what I do. I’m not a very good jungler, but I can guarantee being useful by giving my bot laner the good SUCC), but being effective as a Top laner means not dying when there’s a random number between 1-4 people in your lane who want you dead.

Highest Skill Ceiling

  1. Bot
  2. Top
  3. Captain
  4. Mid
  5. Jungle

Conversely, Jungle is the role I believe has the highest ceiling. There’s so many options available to you as the jungler that you have to juggle in your head, and messing up even once can be a major setback for your team. Top, on the other hand is the opposite. Once you’ve mastered the art of not dying, the only other thing you really need to have is the ability to find some sort of way to scale.

Meanwhile, Bot is brain-dead as ever.

I’m sure these are a little interchangeable, but you get the idea.

Mid gets the honourable mention for being the best role. It isn’t particularly hard to play in the safest lane (terrain-wise), but people do love poking you and pushing you into your turret, and your rotations to other lanes are important too, so yeah.

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Yeah I kinda agree but bot heroes still require more mechanical skills usually. For example Kestrel, Vox, Ringo (I know everybody and their mother says how easy he is but that’s skill floor not cap and not floor at higher tiers. But he’s pretty shit so you can count him out actually lol) all are more demanding than Adagio, Tony, Grace, Cath. There are exceptions for both like Reza and Gwen but generally I think bot heroes are harder. Not the lane though that’s true.

As I said I don’t think it’s the hardest due to it having no way to counter play if enemy is good. No matter how good you are you can’t do much. Mid is hard because your team kinda depends on you in general. There’s rotations, the lane is important, heroes aren’t easy you have to make decisions and they have a impact. Same for jungle and roam.

Well. IMO, the “hardest” Lane, is the one with the pressure being put on. Which is why I always insist on being the Jungler.

I’ve played every Lane, and i know each Lane is a never ending barrage constant attack. So when the laner dies, he’ll be behind, so it’s the Jungler / captains job to keep killing those minions and letting the laner a chance to catch up by taking some Jungle creeps (which is what i do before i rotate back to lane).

IMO the Captain, isn’t particularly “hard”. it’s the most stressful simply because (particularly in soloQ) you have to very quickly determine who’s worth saving, something that isn’t very easy to recognize because you can’t have eyes on all lanes, all the time.

So your Role as Captain will only become apparent when team fights break out. If you’re good, you’ll do the early invade and take down 2-3 enemies before the 2 minute mark, or fail miserably and then you’ll know if you got a team worth supporting.

Either way, I wish so so so much that more players would early invade. Win, lose or Draw - you learn SO MUCH from an early invade. and if you don’t, you need to polish up on your observation skills.

The ability to adapt to the situation is FAR more important than knowing how to stay alive. Sometimes a simple swap of lanes (for a more favorable hero match up) will be the difference in constantly dieing to winning.

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My point is that trying to defend a turret under constant pressure from the enemy is the hardest thing to do in the game. Bottom lane isn’t challenging, midlane doesn’t come under the same amount of pressure (early game) as it’s hard to siege.

From the very start of the match top lane is at a disadvantage, with the only realistic target being “don’t die” in the face of a 2v1 onslaught in which your often behind in farm, gold, levels. In comparison bottom and top lanes suffer from none of these disadvantages.

Jungle is arguable the most important position in the map, but it isn’t challenging in the same way. Your basic rotations are predictable in the early game. Roam is a challenging position but they should be supporting mid and arguable top lane; what I find In high tier 9s is they don’t appreciate how difficult it is early game for a top laner (you don’t want them falling massively behind and gettin snowballed).

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I agree, everyone seems to accept is the one where pressure is most readily applied, but this doesn’t seeem to equate to being “hard”. Bottom lane is a doddle in comparison where you’ll get constant support, better farm and potential WP buffs as well as having easier access to the shop early game.

I’ll play jungle quite often, and in comparison it’s far easier. Early rotations are obvious, and applying lane pressure in 2v1 is a lot easier (ice a 60% win rate from jungle). Sure it’s a more important role buts it’s not as difficult.