Top lane in League of Legends is stereotypically known as ‘The Island’. In this guide, you will learn that although you may be alone with the enemy top, your role in the game as a whole is huge. From when to split to wave control, you will improve your performance with minimal practice.
Welcome one and all to the island best known as top lane; where nothing happens and for some reason all that is accomplished is farming. Or is that all? Top lane, sadly, has been stereotyped in memes and internet culture as being an isolated place where nothing happens because both laners only farm and what fighting can be done usually occurs in a draw between two DPS Top laners or a wet noodle slapping if Hyper Tanks like Ornn and Dr. Mundo meet up.
What isn’t well known is that Top Lane has just as large of an impact on the overall game as any other lane and I’m not just talking about having a CS advantage. As Top Laner, your job is to have TP up for teamfights (or in the case of you bringing Ignite top, actually being at teamfights). When it comes to the end of the laning phase, you also must keep side waves pushing and know when to split off and push for a Tower or come running in to save a fight. Basically, it comes down to managing minion waves, knowing when TP is off cooldown/knowing when the objective is up and is going to be taken, and of course the Nasus classic of when to split push (Hint: it’s not constantly).
First up on the docket is the almost unheard-of topic of wave control. This is going to be the hardest skill to master in my own opinion as you must watch your minions to tell if they are pushing or not. Especially early, knowing when your wave is pushing and how to get it to push back towards you is crucial to setting up good ganks for your Jungler and keeping your opponent from wanting to walk up to CS. In the late game it gets a little easier, as you can count the difference in number of minions in lane and can tell if the minions will be pushing or if you have to push for them, but let’s start with early game before jumping too far in.
Controlling wave early game in lane is a lot of knowing when to last hit versus when to basic attack as often as possible. The first wave especially should be as much last hitting as possible to keep the wave in the middle of the lane. After that, it all depends on how the enemy pushes the next wave. If they play very passively, only last hitting the minions, then you should expect a gank to be coming for you early on around the 3-minute mark if you push it in.
My best advice in this scenario is to match your opponent and play passively as well or, if you are playing a champ who can win fights early, to fight them and make them miss out on last hitting, letting the minions stay where they are. If they are pushing aggressively, let them. This just makes life easy for your Jungler to come gank when they are pushing near the Tower.
Keep last hitting minions and when your wave dies, slowly make your way back to outside Tower range and stand there till your wave makes it to lane to stop what enemy minions are left. This causes the next enemy wave to also end up near the edge of your Tower. This is exactly where you want to be because your Tower won’t be pushing the wave, but the enemy is also so far up that either they CS and risk getting ganked or they stand back and miss out on CS and XP. If the wave is close to Tower, it’s called freezing the wave. You want to only last hit to keep the wave there, or if the wave is still pushing towards you, attack a little more or use abilities to even out the wave to be more equal in health to your own.
If they try to freeze the wave near their own tower, you must be very careful. First, see if you can figure out where their Jungle is. If they show either bot or mid, you are safe to ward river and begin to hard push minions so they reach the enemy tower and will bounce back to the middle of the lane. You will want to use abilities and whatever else you must do this quickly, especially if the Jungle is mid lane or you notice their Mid Laner leave as they are probably coming for you and you have about 20-ish seconds until they are on top of you.
Once the wave bounces back to the middle (orange on image) and the waves have basically reset to the original point where the game starts, you have two options: Either continue farming hopefully getting the wave to push in on you to freeze it in your favor or once the wave has crashed on tower before it bounces back to the middle resetting it, back and buy items because it will take a while for minions to get to your tower and for that laner to either get turret plating or even back themselves.
Around the 5-to-8-minute mark, Dragon spawns with both Junglers probably looking to claim it. Assuming your Bot Lane and Support are playing their lane properly, they will try to assist your Jungler in taking Dragon, especially pre-6 as the Jungler will struggle alone. If Dragon is up and Jungle pings that they are going there, push your lane like no tomorrow. This way, your wave will be pushing on the enemy tower and if need be, you can either walk to Dragon if you have Ignite or you can Teleport behind the enemies on a well-placed ward, or at least in the middle of the fight so it goes from 3v3 to 4v3. Of course, this also means the enemy can follow up with a TP of their own or the Ignite walk of shame. However, if you push the wave, they will be missing out on a lot more XP and Gold than they will get from helping in the teamfight, putting them behind.
In the Mid/Late game, all the Tier 1 (outer) Towers are destroyed, so there is a lot of room without turret protection or turrets to auto push waves for you. As the Top Laner, your job (primarily if you have TP) is to push the wave opposite of the next major objective (Dragon or Baron). This way, when it comes to fighting with them, the wave is pushing in, and you can just TP like you have been there the whole time. If you are taking Ignite, you must be a lot more careful of enemy positioning because a fight can start without you, meaning you must have finished pushing before your team commits to the actual objective, so you have the time to walk to the objective.
The same idea applies to mid-game side lane coverage as early game, except you want your lane to push slowly all the time if someone is not going to be there. If bot lane has a full wave of enemy minions against two of yours with reinforcements on both sides coming in, you will want to clear the full six plus at least two in the next wave, or the wave won’t push. Basically, make sure you have not only more minions than the enemy wave, but also more overall health of minions as waves can build up and suddenly the most recent wave has already crashed for you, but the enemies haven't even arrived yet meaning you will have to push more than one wave.
Usually your ADC/Mid/Jungler will cover the lanes outside of the furthest one from objective, but that doesn’t mean they always will cover it, nor should you always be in the side lanes.
If the furthest lane is pushing or is in a position where you could easily be caught out of place by the enemy, feel free to join the rest of your team mid lane, or back and head top to clear that out.
If the enemy team is putting their full team mid, go there
If someone responds to the bot lane to stop your push, rush mid for a free teamfight victory and take objectives.
If no one responds to your push and is still pushing top, match them and push back or let them push so you get CS for free, again leaving them open to be ganked. This also means, minions will chip away at their tower putting the enemy behind
Always know when your TP is up compared to the objective timer. You want to make sure the TP is ready to be used the second an objective is up. Especially before 5 minutes, you should pocket your TP until the first objective or for a TP behind another enemy laner. Using it to get back to lane is not in any way worth it this early, as the cooldown is 7 minutes making you useless for the first objective and the minions you gain from having TP-ed instead of walking are fairly negligible. Accept you made the mistake of losing a fight early and move on trying to control your wave. Outside of not rushing back to lane (unless you can save tower and even then, only if it’s the first tower or you are guaranteed to get the team first tower because of it).
This covers everything you need to know about Top Lane macro. I guarantee it won’t be easy to master and I wish I could do more to help you become a master, but it just takes time to learn. I can, however, tell you the best ways to learn. Go in the Practice Tool and experiment with how you attacking/not attacking the wave affects it. As Top Lane tends to push for blue while bot pushes for red, it also gives you the ability to learn how to control waves pushing in or being pushed in. However, nothing beats trying to practice against actual people as even bots don’t control waves very well. Hopefully, this helps for people looking to turn the ‘island’ into a ganking paradise... for you at least.
