I've always loved Yorick's design, but I never committed to learning him because I assumed he was one of those "braindead" champions that lets you win without actually teaching you how to play top lane.

After finally giving him a proper shot... I think I was completely wrong

I've only played 2 ranked games so far, but I won lane against a Mordekaiser and an Ornn (not sure if those are supposed to be "easy" matchups, but they felt kinda easy), and I had way more fun than I expected

What immediately stood out to me was how different Yorick feels compared to every other top laner I've played. The biggest surprise was releasing Maiden into a side lane. Like it genuinely felt unfair. I was contesting Soul point while my Maiden and ghouls took both T2 and T3 top by themselves. No other champion has given me that feeling of being a walking siege engine.

I'd really like to learn Yorick properly, so I'd love to hear from people with a lot of games on him:

• What's Yorick's overall game plan during the early, mid, and late game?
• How do you properly manage Maiden and ghouls, especially in lane and into hard lane bullies? I found it difficult to control the wave when Maiden and ghouls kept pushing
• When should Maiden stay with you, and when is it correct to send her down a side lane?
• Who should I perma ban?
• What are Yorick's biggest lane win conditions and power spikes throughout the game?
• When should you build bruiser vs the HP stacking setup (Heartsteel, Bloodmail, Sundered Sky, etc.)? I don't know why, but tank Yorick just seems to make so much sense on paper
• Is there an up-to-date matchup spreadsheet or guide that the community recommends?
• What separates an average Yorick player from a great one? What habits or concepts should I start learning early?

Thanks in advance for all the advice I'll get

I'm a jungle main, but I've decided to seriously invest in my secondary role, top lane. I rarely get autofilled, but I climbed from Gold to Emerald in about a week, so I know that whenever I do get top, I'll usually be facing players who actually know the role

I enjoy champions that want to fight constantly and have strong skirmishing potential. I've tried maining champions like Pantheon, Sett, and Zaahen, but none of them really clicked for me. In the current meta, I feel like they struggle too much into ranged champions, and even when I win lane, I often feel like I don't have enough impact if the rest of my team is losing

I decided to give Jax a try. I played 2 ranked games with literally zero prior experience on the champion and hard won both lanes against Tahm Kench and Garen (I don't know if those are supposed to be favorable matchups, but they felt surprisingly easy)

What immediately stood out to me is how powerful Jax feels. He seems to have answers into almost every type of champion. Ranged champions don't feel nearly as oppressive because of Leap Strike and Counter Strike, and if you get even a small lead, he absolutely demolishes towers. Getting one kill and taking half a turret in a few seconds is incredibly satisfying. No other top laner has given me that feeling

So I wanted to ask some experienced Jax players a few questions:

• What's Jax's overall game plan during the early, mid, and late game?
• What are your main win conditions in lane?
• Against what champs should I be looking to trade, all in, freeze, or just scale?
• When do you take Grasp vs Lethal Tempo?
• Are there any matchup specific tips that every new Jax player should know?
• Is there an up-to-date matchup tier list or spreadsheet that the community recommends?
• Finally, what separates an average Jax player from a great one who can actually win games and carry as a top laner? What habits or concepts should I start learning early?

I was wondering if it might actually be better to rush Stridebreaker, or at least delay Trinity Force by buying Tiamat first

I've noticed that in a lot of matchups, even if I'm managing the wave correctly and keeping the lane even, some champions simply outshove me. Garen is the biggest example. I don't really struggle in the 1v1, but I do struggle to match his tempo.

He clears waves so quickly that he gets priority almost every time. By the time I finish clearing the wave so I can reset, he's already there. Even when I get him low enough to kill, he just runs away and I can't stick to him long enough to finish the kill

That got me thinking: Wouldn't Stridebreaker solve both of these problems?

It gives Tiamat for much better wave clear, helping match champions that constantly shove, and the active slow seems like it would make it much easier to stick to targets that would otherwise just run away.

Or is delaying Trinity Force's spike too big of a sacrifice? Has anyone experimented with rushing Stridebreaker or grabbing an early Tiamat before finishing Trinity? I'm curious if there's something I'm overlooking

I'm primarily a jungle main, but I recently switched my secondary role from mid to top

I used to play a lot of Zaahen jungle before Riot gutted his clear, and now I'd like to pick him up in the top lane. The problem is that his runes and builds seem a lot more flexible than they used to be

Runes

From what I've seen, the three main keystones are Conqueror, Hail of Blades, and Grasp, and I'm not sure when each one is optimal

From my understanding:

• Conqueror is the default scaling option
• Hail of Blades gives you a much stronger laning phase but scales worse
• Grasp is the one I understand the least

Is the stronger early game from Hail of Blades generally worth giving up Conqueror's scaling?

And when should I take Grasp? Against tanks, I'd assume Conqueror is usually better since they don't pressure you much, which lets you scale for free, so idk

Items

I'm also confused about the current top lane build

When I played Zaahen jungle, my core was usually:

Sundered Sky → Stridebreaker → Death's Dance

But looking at top lane builds, I barely see anyone buying Sundered Sky anymore

Is the standard core now something like:

Trinity Force → Stridebreaker → Death's Dance → Endless Hunger

Or does the build change significantly depending on the matchup?

I recently picked up Pantheon because I've always loved the champion. I'm primarily a jungle main, so I never played him much, but I recently switched my secondary role from mid to top and want to start learning him properly

I've looked at Spear Shot's OPGG, and he seems to build Sundered Sky → Black Cleaver → full lethality almost every game

But most build sites recommend Eclipse and bruiser build, which I've almost never seen SpearShot do

So I have a few questions:

• When should I build Eclipse first item?
• When is it better to go full bruiser vs the Sundered Sky → Black Cleaver → lethality setup?
• If you had to recommend a default core build for someone learning Pantheon, what would your first 3 to 4 items be?

Thanks in advance

https://preview.redd.it/lrrzy7pshuah1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=7f0bb240c141c4df404793f1da3dc77a2d845abb

Btw this is a repost. I already posted this post before but I used AI to correct the grammar and wording mistakes because I am not English, and I got a lot of insults from it and people called it AI slop, sorry for that.

1) UNDERSTAND YOUR CHAMPION IDENTITY
This (in my opinion) is the most important one. You have to understand what type of player you naturally are. When I was climbing, I always tried the "S+" champions, the "1v9 hypercarries" bullshit, and even though I used to get fed, it never felt right, because I am a person who is more laid back and enjoys being chill and controlling fights rather than being the spotlight. Hence I play Karthus, a champion who is supposedly bad, yet I make it work extremely well because he fits my playstyle perfectly. If you're the type of person who truly enjoys being mechanical and getting fed, then champions like Yi will work better. If you're like me and enjoy scaling and controlling, you'll like Karthus, Fiddlesticks more, this is very important

2) BECOME AN OTP
I used to believe that I was an otp because I had my 3/4 main champions, but that didn't mean anything. After losing 5+ games, I would switch between my main champions, or try the meta champions just to cool off, or use another champ because "he fits better in our team", that shit means nothing. Genuinely, the best thing that I did was just choosing 1 champion, and maining that champion no matter what drafts we had or how bad my champion was against the enemy team. Even if you lose 15 games in a row, you still play the champion and don't switch. The long-term results will reward you more than short-term wins.

3) F*CK DUO QUEUES
This is a personal one, but if you only play duoQ and your WR is meh, you need to know that when you play duoQ, Riot purposefully gives you weaker teammates or stronger opponents to balance out the fact that you have an advantage. The issue is that if you and your friend belong, let's say, in Plat 1 skill-wise, and play in Plat 3 rank-wise, you don't have enough skills combined to hard carry games. I have so many useless lost games on my account because I only played duo Q, and every single game, the scenario would be: We play, the enemy bot gets 10 kills by minute 8, the game is over, and we can't do anything or learn anything.

4) PLAY FOR YOUR WIN CONDITION
You don't have to play for every lane and gank every lane. before a game starts, you need to decide who you want to play for, AND, if the person you wanted to play for is bad, you need to play for the most fed person on your team. If your top laner goes 4/0 in the first 8 minutes and your bot late is being destroyed and you lose access to drakes, you don't have to force a play there because of the objective. You only play for top, you gank top, you help him destroy the tower ASAP, and you free him so that he can impact the map. You invade top lane a lot, play through him, and help him get free asap. The same goes for bot or mid. You play for your wincon, play with them, you ping when you want to invade and go together, and win the game together.

5) YOU ARE THE WIN CONDITION.
Last one that really helped me, you are the reason the game is lost or won. If you have 3 losing lanes and complain about "loser queue", I want you to look at yourself in game, and see: are you the main impact on your team? If yes, why are you not able to push your lead? If you get baron, you don't let your teammates push lanes and you steal the enemy jungle while you "hover" your teammates, you push a lane yourself. If you gank a lane and get a kill, you don't just go away and reset, you help them push waves (without stealing), get plates, set up vision around the zone and enemy jungle or go in the bush and wait for the person to come back in lane and kill them again. You MUST act and play like you are the only win condition of your team, because you are.

-

A lot of people will say that my advice doesn't matter since I am only a plat player and there's no difference between gold and plat, and maybe that's true. But the fact is that I went from being hardstuck in gold to hardstomping emerald lobbies against junglers who have way more experience than me. In less than 2 weeks.

Those are some of the things that have helped me the most. I know there are many important topics like tempo, uptime vs downtime, resource vs resource, etc... But the topics I just mentioned are what made ME improve the most, the fastest.

Let me know if you need any more explanation on one of my points!

https://preview.redd.it/s3si2iwe80ah1.png?width=820&format=png&auto=webp&s=07edeb9aebac8d0efeade29f969ec8e5590b02ea

Over the past month or so, I was in a huge rut in League.

I dropped from Plat 2 all the way down to Gold 4. After getting completely outjungled by some really good players, I lost confidence in myself and started role-swapping, trying different champions, and experimenting with everything just to figure out my identity as a player.

Needless to say, that only made things worse.

I was hard stuck in Gold with terrible win rates, even though I genuinely knew I was capable of playing at a much higher level. Eventually, I went back to my main role and started looking for the fastest-clearing junglers because I absolutely love playing for tempo.

That's when I discovered Karthus.

I tried him in a few normal games, and honestly, he felt insanely strong for a champion sitting at a 48% win rate. So I took him into ranked and... what the hell?

I almost instantly climbed from Gold 2 to Plat 3.

My stats have been ridiculous. I'm almost always MVP, usually top damage, top CS in the game, and in most skirmishes I'm two or even three levels ahead of the enemy jungler. Even in games where I get heavily cheesed early, if I stay disciplined and keep power farming, I eventually outscale and take over.

So my question is:

How on earth does Karthus only have a 48.9% win rate on U.GG? He feels unbelievably strong. Is this champion secretly broken and just disliked or found "boring", or did I finally find the champion that perfectly matches my identity as a player, but he's not actually that broken?