League’s best top laners discover buying cheap support items is “the new meta”
Riot Games/UrpogSome of League of Legends’ highest ranked top laners have resorted to buying support items instead of standard items for top lane, with builds like Evenshroud Aatrox and Redemption Urgot gaining traction.
With bot lane getting two different patches in League of Legends Season 13 that have drastically changed the role’s items and relative strength in any given match (the most recent of which being patch 13.10), top laners have been feeling a bit ignored.
What’s more, pro play has also orbited almost entirely around bot lane in most matches, with ADCs and supports being prioritized both in draft and in the game. The game’s best players know where to invest their resources, and most other high level players have followed suit.
So, rather than trying to build expensive top lane bruiser items, many of the highest ranked players have resorted to buying support items instead. Redemption Urgot and Evenshroud Aatrox are just a few builds that have risen to recent prominence.
High ranked top laners and League pros start support item meta
With the most important objective in the early game and hardest scaling champion on the team all located in one area at the bottom of the map, top laners have been feeling a bit neglected. Even for those who win lane hard, a failing bot lane can mean that their lead has little impact.
Additionally, top lane items are notoriously expensive. Almost every top lane Mythic swings well above the 3000 gold mark, and other items like Titanic Hydra, Sterak’s Gage, and Hullbreaker all are also sitting at ludicrously high prices. Granted, they’re strong items, but getting enough of them built before the enemy ADC hard scales is no small feat.
There haven’t been many changes to top lane in Season 13, so top laners have brought about the change themselves by completely re-thinking the way they build.
One of the most prominent examples is Urgot one-trick Urpog showing off the math behind building Redemption on his main champion. Other high MMR players, coaches, and even pro players have given his build and the methodology behind it their seal of approval, and there’s good reason for it.
Redemption not only allows top laners to affect other parts of the map while pressuring sidelanes, it allows them to take trades effectively as well by healing themselves and damaging opponents.
Urgot isn’t the only top lane champion that gets a ton of value out of Redemption, either. Other players have been experimenting with this item for trading and sidelaning on different champions.
Yorick one-trick slogdog has been building Redemption and Imperial Mandate with some great results. Mandate is paired with Sherylda’s to make the slow on Yorick’s abilities (particularly his Ghouls) proc its passive, while Redemption is used for similar reasons to why it’s purchased on Urgot.
Aatrox is yet another top lane champ who’s been building support items, and veteran pro player Gabriël ‘Bwipo’ Rau explained the reasoning behind purchasing Evenshroud on the champion over other Mythic items like Goredrinker.
Not only does the 10% bonus damage passive proc on every hit of Aatrox’s Q if you hit the sweet spot, it also grants some solid base stats and a strong passive for the low price of 2300 gold. On top of that, Evenshroud also grants the player additional resistances for every Legendary item completed, bringing even more value to the purchase as the game goes on.
You want to build Black Cleaver first in most cases to get some AD under your belt, but Evenshroud is a much bigger value proposition than other Mythic items on Aatrox. It’s worth mentioning that Bwipo’s build here was popularized by Naayil, a known Aatrox one-trick.
It remains to be seen what other off-meta builds top laners cook up, but they’re clearly trying to innovate in order to stay relevant in a meta dominated by the other side of the map.
