With the new season and year comes many changes to League of Legends, and many aspiring players looking to break into the higher echelons of the ranked ladder. Perhaps some of you are already about to break into that point and are looking to glimpse at what picks are common at the top level of solo queue. With Kyeong “Photon” Gyu-tae, we’ll discuss what Champions are the best to take games into your own hands, and why these picks are strong in the right hands.

The Criteria

To narrow down the picks, we first asked Photon what he considers the most important things that a top lane Champion needs at a high level of play, and what he considers for his list.

Photon: “It's about more blind pickable champions. Those Champions are kind of blind pickable which means if you know about the matchup, if you play well, you can go 50-50 at the very least, and it's about more like damage champions, not like tanks, so you can do more about the whole game. They can solo the game.”

The advantage of a champion being strong when blind picked is something not to be understated, it gives you an edge before the game even begins. We’ve all been in a situation where you decide to play an AD-heavy auto-attack melee champion and the opponent locks in the Malphite to answer. The game where you’re unable to play without jungle assistance and the opponent gets to scale into being more useful for free while laughing at you as you tickle them. A blind pick champion is one that minimizes the effect of a counter, so that you’ll be able to still play even in so-called bad matchups with enough knowledge and skill.

Blind pick champions are also to varying degrees, flexible in draft. With the recent changes to many champions like Sylas, Jayce, Aatrox, and a few others, they’ve been able to jungle quite effectively. For the opponent, it makes it difficult to guess where a champion may be going, forcing them to pick a matchup without the advantage of knowing who they might be fighting. While we’re not quite at the nightmare of a champion being able to be flexed in 5 different roles just yet, there have been metagames in the past where champions like Pyke have found themselves in multiple potential roles, making it extremely difficult to predict where they might be going.

50-50 is perhaps the more understated one, because the mentality of solo queue is that you win the lane, win the game, right? But as you climb, the skill gap between players is often not mechanical, but rather knowing how to navigate the game and use what they have at their disposal. Oftentimes, you’ll run into these so-called “weakside top laners” of solo queue, who are comfortable playing into losing matchups and know how to go even instead of letting it spiral out of control. Some may call it losing gracefully, even, but it’s an important mitigation to preventing the opponent from translating their lane advantage into a game-winning advantage. As a player, you want to be capable of playing losing matchups without giving too much away.

Damage champions I think is definitely more of a preference, as there are many players who play tanks and do relatively well on the ladder, but it often comes at the cost of relying on your teammates to use the windows provided by playing a tank. By playing a damage-oriented champion, you’ll take matters into your own hands, giving you control of being able to take down priority targets, be a major threat in the game, and generally have more control over what you can do. Split pushing, killing key targets, taking objectives, tower taking, and even pressuring your opponent typically is only accessible if your champion has the damage potential and pressure to achieve it.

I mean, with the exception of the notorious tank diver assassin juggernaut bruiser Ornn, tanks are often relying on some kind of follow-up from their team. If you’re a damage carry, a front line enabler helps, but you’re more likely able to dive right into a fight and actually kill key targets.

The List

In no particular order, Photon gave us his champion list and his explanations for each. We’ll discuss each champion and point out what makes these champions powerful for high rank players.

Jayce

Photon: “I think Jayce first. Just strong laning, ranged champion which lets you hit the tower. Unlike Akshan/Vayne/Lucian, Jayce is kind of a safe lane, you can poke them, even if you're behind, so you can hit the lane and farm. The waveclear is kind of important especially from behind.”

Jayce is sort of that quintessential top lane carry champion that many of the best top lane players made their name on (Photon is no exception, having carry performances as Jayce during his time in Team Vitality). Jayce is a notoriously strong laner, a high damage poke threat in teamfights, and one of the few assassin-like burst champions in the top lane. But for Photon, we’ll explain one of the key reasons behind Jayce’s strengths.

A Safe Lane

When you think of safe laning, most might think a champion that kind of passively farms, has strong waveclear, good disengage tools, and is resilient to pressure through lifesteal or being difficult to harass. Jayce, while a powerful laning champion, can also play a more defensive style of laning, using the advantage of his extremely long range through his Q – Shock Blast to clear minions, as well as switching into melee form to quickly clear waves that crash into the tower.

Some might consider being a ranged top laner as a “safe” lane due to your range, but Photon notes that unlike the aforementioned Akshan/Vayne/Lucian, you have way more room to play defensively. This is primarily because the effective range of Akshan/Vayne/Lucian often puts them in the middle of the lane or closer to the enemy tower, as they’re often the ones pressuring a melee top laner. They also struggle with a losing lane, where they’ve been pressured by the enemy jungler into being forced under their tower, with only Lucian having relatively serviceable waveclear.

Waveclear

While we have mentioned waveclear as a strength already, the ability to safely and quickly clear a wave is one of the most important aspects of high rank play, as the less time you spend on clearing a wave, the more options you have.

Consider the following, if you immediately clear an even-wave faster than your opponent, then they now have a disadvantage in tempo, where they’ll be trying to clear their minions while being vulnerable to harass or you leaving the lane with priority. The flip side is that you might face a similar situation where a wave crashes into you, and are forced to clear it quickly. Jayce has fairly strong waveclear tools in multiple of his abilities, between quick auto attacks on his W – Hyper Charge, AoE-damage on his Melee-Q – To the Skies! and W – Lightning Field, as well as a disengage option in his melee E – Thundering Blow after becoming vulnerable from using his spells to clear a wave.

In a nutshell, you basically can’t be punished as Jayce if you play it right, because even if you’re forced to use spells on the wave, you always have options to neutralize the lane.

Rumble

Photon: “Rumble is kind of the only AP champion you can blind pick in this meta, kind of, you can always go 50-50. He's good at laneswap, good at waveclear, good at laning, good at teamfight. Rumble is just a good champion everywhere. Rumble kind of has no weakness, Rumble is just good at everything. You can go 50-50 even though it's a hard counter.”

It’s kind of interesting to hear about Rumble from Photon, as the statement of “Rumble has no weakness” is a particularly bold thing to say. But in the context of high rank champions, Rumble embodies a champion that is relevant at nearly all stages of the game.

“Rumble has no weakness.”

I’ll repeat this again because Photon already described what he’s good at, which is sort of everything except hard CC and tanking.

Rumble is a lane bully who scales well into teamfights, having one of the most game-changing ultimates in his R – The Equalizer, while being able to survive rough matchups and punish opponents who can’t trade with him well. You have a champion who, for a top laner looking to carry their team, is going to be relevant at every stage of the game, always having a way to turn around a teamfight and singlehandedly win the game.

To describe his laning in an almost perhaps ranty but accurate description, the way Rumble trades with other top laners is one of the most annoying champions to play against. He’s effectively resourceless, which means you can never really drive him out of lane for running out of mana. He trades with his Q – Flamespitter while clearing the minions at the same time, often creating situations where you’ll have minions crashing into you as yours get cleared. If you happen to get caught by his E – Electro Harpoon, you’ll probably be eating a full enhanced Flamespitter to the face. He can also use the same E to clear minions from a distance if he’s under pressure.

Oh, and perhaps the most frustrating of all, is during the window where Rumble overheats and most players think he’s vulnerable because he can’t cast any spells, is one of the most deceptively strong. He gets attack speed, on-hit magic damage that deals maximum health damage, and will still burn you to death if he casted Flamespitter during this time, giving him constant damage that few champions can directly keep up with.

And during all of this, Rumble is casually scaling, waiting to join into a teamfight in a cramped space to press R – The Equalizer and melt your entire team even if he’s lost his lane. It’s quite the task to deal with for the opposing top laner, but this is one of the reasons why Photon may feel that Rumble has no weakness. It’s a rough time to deal with Rumble as any melee champion.

Ambessa

Photon: “Ambessa is a bit different from Jayce and Rumble. When she gets one or two items, she is stronger than those champions. When you get enough gold on her, you can 1v3 usually. With ult, you can kind of throw yourself at an enemy, an ADC or mid, so Ambessa is more like a teamfight and scaling champion. Ambessa's only weakness is her laning, she's not good at laning, so if you can survive her laning, you'll be strong the whole game.”

A champion with a weak laning phase might seem like an antithesis to the whole “champions that can solo carry the game” but Ambessa is one of those exceptions. She’s the sort of modern-day champion, with built in armor penetration, a big threat range with her R – Public Execution, and constant dashing through her passive – Drakehound’s Step, making it really difficult to escape an Ambessa already on top of you. But to get to that point, she needs gold, which often puts her at a weaker point in the game if the enemy opponent can pressure her enough.

But consider one of the listed important factors, going 50-50. For Photon, a good top laner can pick these champions and go 50-50 in nearly any matchup, letting them scale into the monsters they can become. You basically become a highly mobile who can shred tanks and carries alike quickly, with her threat range being nearly the entire screen, while having the capacity to outplay multiple opponents at once.

Think about it this way, Ambessa straight up gets a free 30% armor penetration and 15% healing at level 16, both highly coveted stats that lets her have more options to build other items rather than the standard route where every champion eventually finishes with an armor pen item. In terms of scaling, you’re getting a lot of gold value so long as you get to that point and effectively have an extra item’s worth of stats over your opponents.

Renekton

Photon: “Renekton is strong at early game and strong at laning, he can be good into certain champions like Ambessa, you can dominate against those champs. But it's kind of boring, I think. He used to be the ultimate blind pick, but I don't play it much in solo queue, but in theory you can just play him as a good blind pick and good champion.”

Good old Renekton. If you’re a pro player, you’re inevitably going to have to pick Renekton at least a few times in your career. So much that he’s become as notorious as Ornn as a pick to throw to your top laner to neutralize the lane and be a really big body late game, but with perhaps a little more agency.

In a nutshell, picking Renekton is kind of the god-tier blind pick of the old days because, well, Renekton rarely has bad matchups. He punishes a lot of carry AD champions like Riven, he’s threatening to champions with big shields due to his empowered W – Ruthless Predator breaking the shield before he bursts you down. He can dive in and out with his E – Slice and Dice, giving him a really difficult to punish trading pattern that also lets him dive past you to continue hitting you. Laning phase is often spent hitting minions, which Renekton can always dangerously hover between your minions and his to farm and punish you at the same time, having the option to heal with his Q. During this time, he’ll build a lot of rage which every top laner has to play very safe around, because his damage output will go through the roof.

Oh, and his R - Dominus gives him a big chunk of health and fury generation, which lets him access his big empowered spells really quickly, which lets him continually have empowered abilities to bully you with.

Did I mention that he’s also good at lane swapping, which is why pros favour him quite heavily?

Photon: “Renekton is good at lane swap because he's one of the champions you can 1v2 against the enemy bot, when you get level 6, you can push the wave in and kind of 1v2 with the ult. So, he's kind of fine at the lane swap, but later he's not good against AP champions, so people more likely play for like game 4 or 5 when Rumble and Aurora is gone.”

It’s understandable that you may not encounter lane swaps in solo queue, but it’s also telling of Renekton’s potential in solo queue that he can 1v2 in his ultimate. As an early game lane bully, you have so much pressure that can even help you win 1v2 fights against the enemy jungler or roaming support, which is invaluable for absorbing pressure and spiraling out of control.

Jax

Photon: “Jax is kind of between. He's weaker than Renekton at laning but he can scale, he's kind of in between Renekton and Ambessa. He's fine at laning and fine at scaling too. And you have CC, you can join teamfights, so Jax is kind of an okay champion for high elo.“

Somewhere in the distance, a Draven player mentions that Jax enters Evasion for 2 seconds: a defensive stance that causes him to dodge all incoming attacks...

Jax is a simple top laner with a very simple gameplan. He wants to weave in his auto-attack resets, use his jumps effectively, and counterstrike at the right time to mitigate the most amount of damage while giving him a window to deal his damage. For many top laners who early-game rely on their auto attacks to trade, it’s a very difficult time because Jax will always have that window where he’s mostly invulnerable to your main source of early damage.

For top level players, a simple champion with a very predictable game plan can also be a strength, because if said game plan is difficult to deal with for most champions, then you can focus on other things in the game while playing a very low-mechanically intensive champion. You’re not thinking of all the combos Jayce has, or controlling all the hoppy movement that Ambessa does, but instead just clicking on your opponent and bonking them on the head really efficiently.

It also helps that Jax is going to scale, being one of the notoriously best duelling top laners in the late game, with a fairly useful teamfighting ability with both his E – Counterstrike and his R- Grandmaster-At-Arms. He absorbs a ton of pressure and damage, all while providing a potential AoE stun that lets your team follow up, and a big damage threat that your opponent needs to answer.

Conclusion

Photon: “In general, those are kind of meta champions and good at teamfights as well, it's not like Malphite or Teemo or something you know, those champions are just good at teamfight, weakside, laning, good at poke. But Teemo might be good, Ambessa too, in the jungle, it'd make drafting harder. Like, if they pick Jayce or Ambessa, then they won't know where they'll go if they can go jungle in pro play.”

Photon picked champions that I think are heavily influenced by the mentality of wanting to have as much control in the game as possible. Consider the following quote from our discussion.

Photon: “I don't see high trust in solo queue. I think strong early picks is better for solo queue, cause people usually just give up at some point.”

Photon is forged from the notorious depths of Korean solo queue, widely considered the best ladder to prove your skills as a player. In theory, players might trust one another more at high ranks because they know that they’ve gotten to that point, but in practice, it sort of is the same all the way through the ranks where skill equalizes, you can’t really expect someone else to do the job. If you’re a skilled player, you want to be playing the champions that can take matters into your own hands, and oftentimes, that is the champions that are difficult to punish and focus on high damage output.

We thank Photon for his time. If you would like to check out his socials, click below!

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