Trading

Respecting Your Opponent

Learning to respect the opponent and how your lane matchup will play out is critical to your success in top lane. Many games played top lane can lead you to gain more knowledge about how certain lanes will be played. For example, many players will struggle going into Darius lanes until they realize that if they dodge the outer edge of Decimate, they will avoid him gaining a lot of health back. Darius like many other top laners are lane bullies who will win nearly every trade they take early on. This is where respecting your opponent is critical to your success, as playing safe in lanes against lane bullies can often tilt the opponent into overextending or making bad plays. If you end up falling behind in lane your core objective should be to stay alive and farm, not throw even harder to make the game even harder for the rest of your team. Getting ahead of your laner will often open up more opportunties for aggressive trades to contiue gaining an advantage.

Darius Decimate

Retaliation Trading

Retaliation trading occurs when your opponent attacks you in lane and you use your abilities and auto attacks to try and match or deal more damage than your opponent. Retaliation trading can also net a kill on your opponent if you know you can beat them and they overextend. Retaliation trading is most effective when the opponent doesn't have high utility spells. For example, fighting a Fiora is much easier if you can bait out her Riposte before trading. This will allow you to deal full damage without the risk of her blocking any damage.

Fiora Riposte

Taking Advantage of Cooldowns

Being able to pressure ypur lane opponent into wasting valuable spells or summoner spells can give you an advantage against them while these spells are on cooldown. Fiora Riposte was an example that I used in the "Retaliation Trading" section above as a valuble cooldown to bait the opponent into using. The summoner spell "Flash" is by far the best spell to bait out of your opponent before going all in. Without Flash your opponent cannot escape fighting you in a tough situation for them. When their Flash is expended you (and possibly your jungler) will have a five minute window to all in them with a low chance of escaping.

Abusing Early Level Powerspikes

Hitting level two and three before your opoponent in lane can lead to a good early trade or a kill if played properly. If you position aggressively before hitting your level two and three powerspikes on most champions, you will be able to trade with them or push them off of the wave. One problem with trying to abuse a level advantage early on is the posssible of an enemy jungle gank. Ideally, you will place a ward near the river or tribrush to get early notice of a potential jungle gank. If you are playing a champion with some form of crowd control, try to catch your opponent mispositioning. If your opponent gets caught out of position, you should be able to chunk them out, or kill them.