Some of League of Legends’ best top laners have resorted to buying support items rather than traditional top lane goods, and here’s why.
Top laners have been feeling a little forgotten as bot lane has seen major changes to the role’s items and relative power in any given match. As a result, rather than attempting to build pricey top-lane bruiser items, many of the top-tier players have resorted to purchasing support items. Redemption Urgot and Evenshroud Aatrox are two builds that have recently gained popularity.
Top lane players prefer support items rather than bruiser items
Top laners have been feeling a little ignored with the most crucial goal in the early game and the scaling champion on the team all centred in the bot lane.
Furthermore, top lane items are notoriously pricey. Almost every top lane Mythic items exceeds 3000 gold. They’re powerful items, to be sure, but getting enough of them developed before the opponent ADC hard scales is no easy task. As a result, top laners have brought about the change by fundamentally rethinking how they build.
An Urgot one-trick demonstrating the build behind creating Redemption on his primary champion is one of the most renowned instances. Redemption allows top laners to not only impact different sections of the map while pressing their lanes, but it also helps them to accept trades efficiently by healing themselves and punishing opponents.
Aatrox is yet another top lane champion that has been accumulating support items, and veteran pro player Gabril ‘Bwipo’ Rau discussed why he chose Evenshroud over other strong Aatrox Mythic items.
The 10% additional damage passive not only procs on every hit of Aatrox’s Q if you hit it, but it also offers some decent base stats and a powerful passive for the price of 2300 gold. Furthermore, Evenshroud provides the player extra resistances for each Legendary item finished, increasing the worth of the purchase as the game progresses.
It will be interesting to see what other off-meta strategies top laners come up with, but they are definitely striving to innovate to stay relevant in the meta game.