oh shit legit just found out about u yesterday 2 questions 1. what do u think gets most overlooked by toplaners 2. do u believe sticking to a purely fundamental approach on mechanical champs like riven ends up being better than one that plays less fundamentally and goes for a lot of outplay opportunities and riskier more rewarding plays (while one tricking)

Hey man! 1: Definetly the core basic fundamentals which are: Reset timers, jungle interaction & wave management. And especially the reset timers is often overlooked. 2: Absolutely! Fundamentals will ALWAYS grant you leads when done properly, where as a flip playstyle has no consistentcy and will never improve you on the long-term as a player. Hope that helps!

interesting what u define as core fundamentals i wouldve of definitely thrown in stuff such as trading, csing, warding, map awearness and probably not had jungle interaction which is interesting to consider too do u think those other things i defined as fundamentals are not core basic fundamentals or are not as important as those 3 or do they just come along with the 3 natrually

Your idea of fundamentals are not position dependent. Having good map awareness, ability to CS, trading, warding, are all things that every player needs to know. His fundamentals are for top lane specifically.

those fundamentals apply for every lane tho but ig they hold more importance top?

All of the fundamentals apply to every lane. His stuff, like wave state, jungle position, etc, are things that effect top lane more heavily. You still need to know jungle position and wave state as an adc for example.

Wave management is super important top. If you understand wave management but CS poorly you can still win your top lane matchups if your lane opponent doesn't understand wave management. It's really easy to build up XP leads and lane control throw wave managment. Trading in the top lane happens a bit, but most tops tend to understand matchups better because when you lose a trade badly you tend to lose more than your HP. You can get severely punished for a minor mistake via wave control and that's more important than trading. Hence, most top laners know their trade windows and matchups better because minor mistakes lead to loss of wave control. I can ALWAYS tell pretty early when I play against someone who doesn't main top with how they play the matchup and how the manage the wave. A lot of mids have top as a secondary, but can definitively say that most mids aren't that good at top lane. Typically supports and adc mains are better top laners than mids or jungles because the fundamentals are similar.

Other stuff like mechanics/map awareness/csing/Cooldown tracking is also extremely important, and will ultimately make you a better player, but those core 3 is what I focus mostly on whenever I'm coaching or playing the game myself. Also: Jungle tracking/wave management/Reset timers are the same regardless of what champion you're playing in toplane, so therefore they're the most important ones.

What are your thoughts on OTPs in general but also in high elo? What's the difference between D2-D1 -> Masters -> GM -> Chall in your opinion?

Hey! I always recommend for anybody that is trying to climb to have a small champion pool. Anywhere between 1-3 is perfect, so IMO it's good. The difference between elo's is generally speaking the mastering of their fundamentals. I've seen countless of very talented mechanical players in master/diamond, but they're not able to make their gameplay consistent due to their lack of fundamental.

I asked about OTPs because everyone in high elo seems to hate them. They complain that the game is at a lower level because drafts are worse but IMO it's the exact opposite. Even though the drafts do suffer, the overall level of the game rises because dealing with someone who mastered their champion is way more difficult than someone with a slight draft edge (while being mediocre at their champion).

this is true, however most people complain when a onetrick gets their champion banned and then they first time another champion in the game, this is usually the problem

Thanks for this AMA! The unranked to challenger stuff is ok I guess, however, what I would LOVE to see instead is a HARDSTUCK to Challenger series. I was hardstuck Silver 4 last season over 800 games, bought a new account, and was Gold 4 in less than 20 games, not implying that had I played more I wouldn’t have dropped back down, just pointing to the fact that new accounts see much greater LP gains and less on losses. No one doubts the skill of a challenger to take a fresh account and rank up to challenger, difficult as it might be for 99.99% of the player base. I think however, it would be EXTRAORDINARILY more instructional AND entertaining if you were to be the first to do a hardstuck to challenger series where you take over an account with a large amount of games so that we could understand better how to 1v9 out of low elo. Any thoughts on this?

I would love to be able to do so, but I don't have an account like that, I absolutely understand your point tho yes

This may be quite a difficult question to think about but at the same time a fun nostalgic one; What season or span of patches do you think Riven was at her peak in terms of 3 different aspects:- 1. She was META, if ever. 2. Most fun period you've had playing Riven due to her balance state at the time. 3. Time of multiple diverse build paths to enable different types of gameplay styles; Assassin, Bruiser, Drain Tank, etc. Love the content Alois, Keep it up.

Around season 8 Riven was the most fun for me because of Kleptomancy Riven. It made her gameplay much more diverse and her items were also extremely strong. Back then you were able to play inspiration + domination which was an insanely strong combination. 8, A lot of people played Lethality Riven in season 8, but I played her as a bruiser with deaths dance but with an insane gold income due to klepto, that was definetly the best time I found.

When and how did you become the GOAT?

💙

get back to the discord :bonk:

On what should I focus the most for improving? I am stuck in D1/low master. What seperates me the most from challenger player? I know they are better in each fundamental but where is the biggest gap? For context I am Darius/Sion/Jax but i mostly play Darius.

The mastering of Reset timers, Jungle interaction & your wave management and then doing those 3 things in Harmony. You have to learn to start thinking ahead with waves in order to make your gameplay efficient, and always put yourself in a good spot and your opponent in a tough spot

Ty for your reply i did notice i am severly lacking with my timers in comparison to most high elo top laners

My biggest problem is messing up by back timers and losing CS, eventually this lets my opponent get a lead. Do you have any advice on when it's best to 1. shove the wave and recall 2. get a tower plate then recall 3. or recall immediately get back to lane

1- It's all about thinking ahead with waves, ultimately you want to make sure that you can cleanly crash the wave into the enemy TURRET, not into enemy upcoming wave. So check your minimap to see where your wave is at, that is also where enemy wave is at, and plan accordingly 2&3- Depends about tempo of your opponent, if you end up losing more than getting the plate it wasn;t worth it.

Thanks! I just watched the laning phase video you had in the post, very good stuff and very helpful.

What do you think of renekton right now? Plus mythic choices?

Why is Akali played toplane ? I'd assume assassins aren't too great against tanks and bruisers. I never understood that. Also what do you think of Kennen ? It looks like his winrate is down in the dumps at the moment and I recently realized it's one champion I almost never see. And yet, being ranged and having one of the best teamfight ults in the game, I would assume he'd work top. Finally, what would be a good champ to one trick top and can have big impact on the map ? It's for an alt account just for fun. I'm thinking of Shen, Quinn or a splitpusher. But I also like champs that have great build diversity like Teemo, Kog'Maw or Neeko.

AKali is played in the toplane for mixed damage topsides and vs certain matchups. She deals very well with some melee champions and was sometimes picked as an answer into Gnar. Kennen IMO is very weak right now, doesn't have too much pressure in lane and therefore isn't too strong. IMO Shen / Jax / Camille fit your criteria the best, unless you want to perma roam, than you can play Quinn as you state

Nice, thanks for the answer

When did you stop onetricking?

Around mid season 8 when i started playing professionally

How do you play riven vs pantheon top? It seemed like I could never interact with him (can barely even touch the wave) and he can set up dives very well.

I've played a lot of games vs Pant as Riven on stream, so what you can always do is go into my match history and search a specific matchup and sync it with my vods on stream How I approach it: Very safe early game, and once you are level 6 you can start winning because he doesn't spike on his ult whereas you do. Make sure to build HP in this matchup, like a dblade + a ruby crystal, because pantheon always wants to work towards his Q execute. If you avoid this, and avoid early deaths, you should be golden!

what do you do when you face a better player? Speaking like being D4 and facing a booster, smurf or duo of smurfs. what do you do when you are facing a camp from the jg? whats the rule of thumb for splitpushing if you are the only fed player?

1- Not sure how to go about that, I will beat them anyways😎 2- Your biggest role here is mindset: Don't get chuncked for free, don't contest bounces and every lasthit you get is a gift. Just hope your botside / midjgl gets ahead else it's really frustrating and I call that "toplane experience" 3- If your team can get engaged on 4v4, or can't walk up into dark vision 4v4, you should not be standing in the sidelane because your teammates can not play the game.

thank you :D

Your video covers the cheater recalls pretty well, but it doesn't go into detail for when you're in the weakside of the matchup and can't get priority on the wave. As a GP main I typically look for a wave 3 crash so I can recall for Sheen on 540 gold + future's market. Some matchups don't allow me to do this, as I can't contest the wave early. A good Riven, for example, won't allow me to slow push the first 2 waves. In these scenarios sometimes I'm forced to take the bad recall after the 4th wave, or even stay until I'm on 1100 gold for Sheen & Cull. What does a good recall look like for someone in this scenario? Also, what advice do you have for someone who often falls victim to 3 camp botside into top gank? It feels really cheesy and deep warding early level 1 doesn't work against it. Thanks :)

When you get pushed in early, what I suggest is thinking ahead with your resources and making sure you have enough HP + mana to contest the bounce to get a good clean crash later on. Vs early ganking junglers like kindred/elise/reksai etc I Recommend either letting yourself get pushed in, or doing a 2nd wave crash into making the wave bounce to you so you're not forced to walk up for lasthits anymore.

Thanks for the reply! Do you actively think about/plan how you're going to play the first waves of each game, or is it something you do subconsciously?

I always make a plan every game, and it starts with early warding enemy jungle start + looking at my own jungler start, and then the matchup + how my opponent plays it, and from that I make a plan!

What do you think about ADC in top lane?

Pretty strong, I think Vayne / Tristana can be played top and function well, but you definetly can get shutdown pretty hard by jungle ganks

How do you see a less mobile picks like Xayah?

For this specific question (or questions like these) you can just go to drututt's or lourlo streams. They experiment a lot with ranged champs, you might find what you need there. I don't think Alois tried to make weird stuff like Xayah work more than once or twice, he seems more like a Riven, Camille, Fiora, Irelia, also maybe Jax, Gwen, Jayce, Gnar, Renekton, etc. type of toplaner :D

What are your thoughts on Riven in the current meta?

Hey! Definetly in one of her weakest states since item change in patch 13.1B. Think she's A- or B tier

When will you play malphite?

>When will you play malphite? Just now he's having a malphite game on stream xD

I play it vs heavy AD comps, examples like Jayce viego topside for example. Malphite function really well vs double AD topside & it's especially good if enemies have low mobility

Very nice video, looking forward to onewhere you explain the pushed-in side! One critique point I have: I really don't like when you show random gameplay while you explain a concept. It really takes focus away and I had to go back and watch it again without looking at the screen to ge that you explained.

I’ve kinda learned about how to play safe when i’m not in a winning matchup, but what about when you are crushing your lane opponent early on ? should you push every wave when possible or freeze to force them to come out or miss last hits ?

If I'm crushing my opponent I want to setup the wave into a position where it will be pushing into me, as it will force them to walk up for lasthits. This way they are under continous pressure. Alternatively u can slowpush and dive with your teammates if you set it up! That's what I would do

Hello, This season im aiming to hit diamond, My peak rank was gold 2 but this was over 80 games, I've never really grinded a season out to finish, i typically hit gold and lose interest. My main champs are Nasus and Kayle, but im looking to deviate from Nasus due to how punishable he can be in top lane. What 3 champs do u recommended picking up and mastering in the top lane? I have Jax, renekton , irelia experience. but everyone else is pretty much forigen. Also when you say Jungle interaction what does this mean?

One of my golden rules for toplane is this: The first 4 waves matter the most, they will decide most of the outcome of your laning phase. If you get ahead in first 4 waves lane feels nice, if you fall behind the lane feels miserable. So I want to know what enemy jungle is up to in the early game and I do that by leaving a ward. In this current meta I would really recommend Jax, IMO he's a very well rounded toplaner that can play every style: Agressive, defensive, good gank setup, good splitpush & teamfighting + scales and CAN play early!

Thanks for the reply, yeah i defo know what u mean by the first four waves, if u get shoved in it feels like your always playing to react and dont have control over back times ect. I've been working on jungler tracking as i feel like this is defo gonna help me climb in the long run. gonna put the hours in on jax, learn matchups ect and see where I end up.

Goodluck chief!

Thoughts on Teemo top?

Think it doesn't function well in higher Elo's because people will punish you harder in your vulnerable spots

Good to know 😊 I’m finding I’m winning almost all my matchups in top with varying builds. Recently I rush bramble vest which gives me quite a lot of sustain - this is Bronze/Silver though so a lot of the wins are based on mistakes

Hey and thanks for the AMA! What is the correct play to make when your enemy is not in lane, you are slowpushing but can't crash the wave before the enemy arrives (or the next wave arrives) and you have no TP. Would you still try to push it in and die for it or swallow that loss and go for a recall anyway?

I would really have to see a clip of the situation so I can give a proper response

I sadly don't have a specific game in mind right now but I always struggle in that exact situation

I started to play tank top laners since I was annoyed with not having a front liner on my team. Do all of these same fundamentals still apply to tanks even though they aren't necessarily as good at trading as someone like Riven? I'm watching your first video right now and you take heavy trades. For instance I have been playing pretty much strictly Mundo, who is not a particularly strong trader or laner in general, does the gampelan change since he can't particularly trade super well early on?

My second most played champion currently is mundo, and depending on the matchup, he can definetly still pressure in the early game! Most concepts still apply, perhaps the first 4 waves sometimes not so much

A bit late but do you think jayce is a decent/good champ for lowish elo?

where are you now

do you still talk to yimit

Sometimes ye

Why am I so shit