How do you play lane (especially top) in a losing matchup or from behind now?
Ok, so I am a long time player since season 2 and I'd say I've mastered all the basics of the game and have a lot of experience playing at the gold-plat level in normals and ranked. Of course patches change things all the time so that experience sometimes doesn't help much if I don't keep up and play the game/read patch notes as frequently as I used to.
I now mostly play all 5 roles (mained jungle/support for 10 or so years before) and just played normals and arams for the last 6 years or so and I just got back into playing ranked/draft more often for the first time in years. I feel its harder to play passively in every role now but top is the worst so I will be focusing on top. I know about when to freeze, abusing level 2/6 spikes, how to deny if I'm ahead in a winning matchup and that i need to sit under tower if I died too many times or am in a hard counter lane. So those basic laning tips aren't helpful to me here.
That worked fairly well for a long time for me playing against better mechanical top mains as I never mained top. My macro knowledge is probably my best skill so I'd know how to affect the game without winning lane. However, in the last 3 or so years but especially this season it seems to be getting harder and harder to play passively and now its reached a point this season where it feels almost impossible in top lane.
Its the same types of champions that are the biggest offenders (aatrox, urgot, garen, gnar, gwen, quinn, sett, teemo, yone, warwick, yorick, illaoi, kench, malphite vs ad tops) and thats across multiple seasons not just one. These champions now seem so strong and unbalanced this season that its nearly inconceivable to win lane as a tank or weak matchup unless they're just a much worse player. Some of those were more popular in previous seasons like gwen or kench but my point remains.
What happens to me nearly every scaling lane is I end up 0/2/0 or at worst 0/7/0 because I can't do anything at all to defend myself and just die to tower dives over and over, also down at least 30cs. If I play as passive as possible I get denied hard and the enemy top has total pressure advantage so I will be down 40-80 cs by the end of lane and he can roam to grubs/herald/mid anytime and I cannot follow him because hes 2-3x stronger than me even without a kill. So its just as bad as dying 3 times giving up that much farm and pressure. Also, if I'm trying to play to win lane as bruiser vs bruiser, if they have a winning matchup it seems to be extremely hard now to 'outplay' them to win it. Even if they miss abilities or they fight you in the creep wave you still lose and fall behind they have to play so much worse than they used to for you to even have a chance of winning lane. Even so in the past if I died more than I shouldn't have I could scale up and eventually match or outscale the bruiser/carry top in teamfights but it doesn't even seem like that works either anymore. They are so strong they often are stronger than a late game tank in teamfights if they're ahead and roll through the whole team (especially yone, aatrox, kench and garen). In the past if you played it right you could easily shut down a fed bruiser top with strong tank play in teamfights. It just seems like the power gap is so big in a lot of top matchups and its so snowbally now the only success I have is if I'm in a winning matchup or if the enemy player is just really bad. And I'll be honest if I get 1 kill in a winning matchup I feel invincible also and the enemy top can't do anything either to come back. I almost never lose a lead in that state now they're just behind all game long until the end. Also get every objective topside in those games unless they send more people.
Sorry for the long post it was hard for me to shorten it I literally could write 2000 words describing every nuance and everything I've tried but it would not be readable just for help.
Ultimately, what are you supposed to do vs these champions trying to scale or play from behind? Is it just me having so much trouble this season laning vs them compared to the past? To me theres definitely a major problem if top lane only feels playable if you counter their champion. It has to be either major mistakes I'm unaware I'm making or the game balance is way off.