Yes completely agreed and that’s exactly the reason I think it isn’t he hardest. You don’t have to make decisions as it’s only right play and wrong play. If you’re facing people that know what they’re doing you’re shut down. You can’t do anything about it and while it is frustrating it doesn’t mean it’s hardest one. It’s hard for sure but I don’t think it is the hardest. You can not really counter act enemies’ actions. Of course if you’re much better than the enemy you can just best them but that wasn’t my point. For example mid lane is very important and is under constant fights. They need to battle in lane, rotate to take their jungle, prevent or avoid invades, counter invade, rotate to other lanes or to jungler. In top if they cut your way to jungle you just sit there doing nothing as you really can’t. You either fail or you don’t but there’s no freedom of decisions and actions and that’s why I don’t agree it’s the hardest one.
OKay in SoloQ environment anything can literally happen so all the roles are hard, in a team against team match where everyone on both sides have synergy, mid lane is the hardest lane solely because of the mechanical difficulty of the heroes and the need for being a hypercarry.
Both side lanes are fairly straightforward, bot lane gets all the assistance and top lane is where you have to protect the turrets, but if you get ahead on your own then you can call it a GG.
Jungle and Captain are only stress-inducing positions, especially Captain. I don’t play Jungle or Captain much in SoloQ unless if I personally know the players on my side and trust them with lane (probably the best tip I can give to anyone who is struggling with ranking up when they’re a good laner). Jungle and Captain are stress inducing mostly because they have to be the ones to make the plays, they have to disrupt the balance and flow of the game.
Laners something I don’t understand go aggressive for most of the time for no reason and that is most likely why many people believe top lane is “hard.” It’s unfair but unfair =/= hard. If players tended to actually learn lane and vision control (something that is fairly easy to do from both side lanes) then they would find top lane easier. It’s more of a player thing, although when you are doing well in top lane and your team is doing super bad in mid-bot then it is just frustrating because the chances of you rotating it just 0%.
I just want to point out that there is always a choice. it’s a team game.
Don’t get caught into a one-track mind set. “I need to defend top”. Always be prepared to adapt to the situation.
It’s because of that mind set that players get caught into having tunnel vision. ultimately leading to the fall of mid lane, which IMO is the most important, since it’s the Dragon pushing lane.
The aim of the side lanes is to just hold it long enough to gain the advantage. always be trading 1 for 1.
They took top? you better be damn sure you’re taking bottom or mid. Being 1 turret down with no trade is very bad.
Kills don’t matter. stop trying to have a perfect KDA and take the goddamn objective. Rogue vs TSM proved that most recently.
Having a good Captain / jungler will and should make laneing much easier. If you’re a godly Laner and can hold off 2v1 or even a 3v1, then your team better be taking turrets. otherwise your efforts are wasted. (honestly how i feel everytime i lane)
It sux being the laner, being in control of only one aspect of the game and being let down by the rest of the team. The top lane is the enemies bottom lane. it’s o.k to let it die, as long as you trade 1 for 1 by taking your bottom, or mid.
That is exactly why Top is frustrating to play, you can defend but your teammates do nothing.
They run up to top lane in a desperate attempt to improve their KDA rather than taking the objective and either trade a kill or get killed, either way, it is a bad decision.
Objectives win games. early invades win games. Map awareness wins games. not your KDA score.
But what does that have to do with the topic? How do you do all that when we are talking you ARE the top laner not mid or bot. And we’re talking mainly soloq and ranked not competitive.
because I know alot of “sleeper” reader’s visit the forums for tips. and i don’t want them to read a post thinking “top lane has no choices”. I feel the topic has already been debated enough. I just wanted to elaborate on some points.
Tbh I think one problem is that wp buff is WAY too oppressive. The ability to bully harder and have a constant slow against less mobile heroes is honestly too punishing. Love being slowed for 10 years after being punted by Glaive in the early game 
You do if you’re better than enemies. If enemy team is same level of gameplay and they know what they need to do you really don’t have much choice for your actions. The best thing that comes close to decision making is should you sacrifice your lane to save mid if losing. But that tbh is way too limited and Russian roulette in soloq games
It’s the most cancerous position to play but it’s actually the easiest to play all you gotta do is play as defensively as possible and basically accept that your tier 1 turret will go down due to a 3 man rotation. The reason why 9 out of 10 top laners feed is because they have no idea how to play top lane they think its a lane you can win which you can sometimes due to very fortunate events but more often than not you won’t.