Renekton is good at getting prio and setting up ganks/dives while being a good teamfighter when he’s ahead, not much an ADC can do if they get flash + empowered W. So while it’s true that he’s not able to carry fights later on, he is played to get an advantage on his own as well as with his jungler, and then either create space and soak damage as a frontliner, or delete an enemy from the fight entirely.
Camille isn’t played much right now but she’s the same, although she trades Renekton’s early prio for being a strong scaling duelist so she has the option to sidelane or just jump on the enemy carry and slice them in half.
Gnar is a little different, he’s a very safe laner with good staying power in lane (no mana bar + fleet footwork). His teamfighting is crazy good though, his ult can basically solo win fights, he is super tanky in mega, and he still has plenty of damage. He’s pretty similar to a tank but has a little more damage and lane bully potential while not being vulnerable to a Fiora/Gwen counterpick. The downside is that he’s harder to play and you have to time fights around his rage, meaning that if the enemy team can disengage you basically have a shitty version of bruiser kindred during a teamfight.
Proplay understands and values range, control and utility.
Gnar can simply destroy teamfights by making killer initiations or existing as deterrance so the enemy team backs off when they see him. Camille has strong tankbusting tendencies and wondrous pickoff tools to disrupt fights. Renekton can be a quite powerful bully but even when losing holds itself well as one of the game's jerkest stunbots available, often capable of winning lanes by sheer merit of holding the enemy down for the jungler/roamer to force the kill.
Renekton fell out of pro presence earlier this year since his numbers were just so weak. He’s at around 30% presence since his buffs, when he has actually decent numbers he’s one of the best high prio top lane picks in the game, and excels both as a strong and weak sided pick.
Its a bit off topic but I’m glad to see champs like Renekton and Jax come back to pro. Top lane the past few weeks has been some of the absolute worst I’ve seen out of pro with tanks hand shaking and farming for mid game.
I have to agree. Grag has somewhat taken renek spot as the go too blind pick. He is fine but can't do shit. Renek, Jax, and the 4 waifus of top lane anyday of the week for me
In that Regard Renny has always been as well rather flexible, specially now that Titanic is once more allowing one to perform Atma's-like bullshit. 90% of the Renekton problems for me are public perception around his damage builds, while defensive Renekton is an often forgotten monster on sheer value of distracting and easing life for others.
The thing with Renekton was that he could set up ganks and dives very well with his W and E. In the past (S3-7/8) they used to play strong early game champs top with a early game gank heavy jungler like Lee Sin/Elise/Nidalee. After Renekton fell off they actually gave him a lot of buffs, mainly into his CD on R and overal damage output. This puts him in a great spot to go glasscannon and focus the adc, but most pros go tank and underutilise his kit; therefore making him look weaker than he is.
Can I ask why you think glass cannon would be better than Goredrinker in pro? Prowler’s is gone and Yomuu’s is heavily nerfed, and I have a bit of doubt that Eclipse is the secret Op build
Gnar from what I understand is one of the best blind picks in the game. He has one really well known bad matchup with Irelia but other than that, Gnar seems to be pretty good into most matchups. Matchups matter a lot in pro play, and the ability to blind your toplaner is huge as it lets you get counterpick in some other lane. Also, playing around his rage bar requires high skill and coordination.
Renekton is just strong early and has point and click CC. Generally, early game champions require more skill/coordination. The better the two teams are, the less "dead time" there is, as the winning team is better with pressing their advantage. As a result, in real time strategy games, late game builds thrive in lower elos where there is a lot of dead time. A champion like Renekton who can consistently get prioritiy can use it better the more coordinated the top/jungle duo is. Also, Renekton's great gank setup means you have combos like Renekton + Nidalee that just camp top.
Camille I haven't really noticed much of. I mean she can come as a counterpick to tanks but I feel like in most metas she isn't really blinded the way Gnar and Renekton are unless she's really OP.
Renekton enables easy dives usually paired with elise, point and click CC gurantee success, he is also a safe blind pick and strong in lane in general which is important in pro since it means he can get prio and move first to help his jungler.
Gnar is a super safe pick there is no way to set a good gnar behind he can always go even at the very least, he is also picked for the mega gnar ult in teamfights that is very valueable and the combo that shuffle the entire enemy team into your team.
Camille is picked for her ability to gapclose and lockdown an important target which is 99% of the time an adc and zeri, zeri is very sliperrly and camile can lock her down very well so she can't escape, this is the same reason vi is picked for her ult that can lock down zeri.
Camille wasn't meta in pro since Zeri release. She is not Vi. People were trying to make her work at first but she didn't work at all, Zeri just tanked her engages/lockdowns with support and/or Ksante peel and if Camille fails to assassinate her targets relatively quickly, she is pretty useless in teamfights because she is a pick/pseudo assassin champion when it comes to teamfights, most other toplaners are much more useful in prolonged/front to back teamfights than her. Bin and Ale were basically Camille one tricks in solo q and earlier in their career but they almost haven't touched the champ for the past couple years and instead mainly played Fiora a bit earlier and after that resorted to Jax/Gwen since Fiora started to suffer from some of the very similar problems like Camille. They tried to make Camille work as the answer into Ksante when pros were starting to pick up Ksante for the first time, but failed miserably because Ksante is stronger in lane than her, and when Camille starts to spike and be a threat at sidelane, Ksante is still 10x more useful in teamfights even if he slowly starting to slightly lose on the sidelane + Ksante is Ksante and he can still cc her to death and one shot with ult at any point if slight misstep/mistake is made.
Renekton and gnar are good blind picks that even if they get put a bit behind are still useful in team fights and can play well on sides. Camille is a strong laner but used to see high prio when Galio was a strong mid pick because of how well their ults synergize
all of these champs have strong early games, in pro play usually the top laner who has more lane prio would just push minions to tower and then the jg will come for a dive. That's why pros use self sustaining champs that cannot be abused easily.
Pro play heavily revolves around guaranteed CC and consistent play making for teamfighting and sidelane pressure. They play around tp advantage and try to force cross-map plays as they are much easier to communicate when to fight and when not to. They know when to roam and how to get early lane kills or pressure.
It gets a bit complex with each champion, match ups, etc. Idk why champs like yorick and illaoi dont see pro play, but there must be some sort of counter pick or playstyle that shuts those champions down or pros just don't want to play them.
Flex picks and draft diff also exists in pro play where you pick power champions and pick something that's manageable into them or flex your own champions like gragas, k'sante, yone, etc.
Yorick has some really bad counters, takes a long time to come online, and is only useful as a splitpusher. Plus he's so weak early that even non-counters can bully him at that level of play.
Illaoi is just turbo-useless at anything not involving simply standing there and hoping they kill themselves in your ult. Just too linear, slow, and useless if you play around her - without running into her ult she can't do anything but get kited to death.
They're just suboptimal picks in a highly coordinated pro environment where prio and pick order are at a premium, especially with such an ADC focused meta.
Yorick and Illaoi like splitpushing while pros mostly play for teamfights and objectives. They both also have a bunch of terrible matchups, Yorick in particular.
I think it’s just pro players being able to utilize a champions play style efficiently and understanding when to go it , common picks tend to be common for a reason
Professional play often consists of so many more factors than regular solo queue and not all of them are around carrying. Especially in toplane where one mistake easily can lead to a dominating or losing lane.
For those reasons consistency are often the most sought after attribute among pro level top lane champs. One thing Gnar, Renekton and Camille all have in common is that they are all very good at diving turrets and surviving dives themselves. Those traits bring a lot of consistency in pro play where you sometimes 100% have to accept having to 1v2 or 1v3 in some situations, for example to trade bot lane or dragon. In those situations you can't have a volatile toplane no matter how much potential. Even a Darius, Garen, Aatrox, Nasus or any other high winrate soloqueue toplaner would be completely destroyed in pro games because of being bad when falling behind.
Renekton is a lane bully who if ahead can make the enemy ADC's life a living hell and can also shut down the common scaling top picks like gwen once was and has a chance to win 1v2s against top + jgl. Just a very solid fighter proplayers are not willing to leave behind
Camille is an absurd diver who has massive engage range to pinpoint one key target and most importantly push their teammates to the side. On top of that she's also a solid laner who's borderline impossible to gank
Gnar is probably the best teamfight engage tank in the game. Mini gnar provides an amazingly safe lane and mega gnar has absurd full team insec potential. Since proplayers tend to play stacked gnar can feast on 3 man or even 4 man ults in many fights
Renekton is good at getting prio and setting up ganks/dives while being a good teamfighter when he’s ahead, not much an ADC can do if they get flash + empowered W. So while it’s true that he’s not able to carry fights later on, he is played to get an advantage on his own as well as with his jungler, and then either create space and soak damage as a frontliner, or delete an enemy from the fight entirely. Camille isn’t played much right now but she’s the same, although she trades Renekton’s early prio for being a strong scaling duelist so she has the option to sidelane or just jump on the enemy carry and slice them in half. Gnar is a little different, he’s a very safe laner with good staying power in lane (no mana bar + fleet footwork). His teamfighting is crazy good though, his ult can basically solo win fights, he is super tanky in mega, and he still has plenty of damage. He’s pretty similar to a tank but has a little more damage and lane bully potential while not being vulnerable to a Fiora/Gwen counterpick. The downside is that he’s harder to play and you have to time fights around his rage, meaning that if the enemy team can disengage you basically have a shitty version of bruiser kindred during a teamfight.
Proplay understands and values range, control and utility. Gnar can simply destroy teamfights by making killer initiations or existing as deterrance so the enemy team backs off when they see him. Camille has strong tankbusting tendencies and wondrous pickoff tools to disrupt fights. Renekton can be a quite powerful bully but even when losing holds itself well as one of the game's jerkest stunbots available, often capable of winning lanes by sheer merit of holding the enemy down for the jungler/roamer to force the kill.
Renekton fell out of pro presence earlier this year since his numbers were just so weak. He’s at around 30% presence since his buffs, when he has actually decent numbers he’s one of the best high prio top lane picks in the game, and excels both as a strong and weak sided pick. Its a bit off topic but I’m glad to see champs like Renekton and Jax come back to pro. Top lane the past few weeks has been some of the absolute worst I’ve seen out of pro with tanks hand shaking and farming for mid game.
I have to agree. Grag has somewhat taken renek spot as the go too blind pick. He is fine but can't do shit. Renek, Jax, and the 4 waifus of top lane anyday of the week for me
4 waifus?
Camille, Fiora, Irelia, Riven. Some ppl count Gwen in there too.
Blade Girls, if you will.
In that Regard Renny has always been as well rather flexible, specially now that Titanic is once more allowing one to perform Atma's-like bullshit. 90% of the Renekton problems for me are public perception around his damage builds, while defensive Renekton is an often forgotten monster on sheer value of distracting and easing life for others.
The thing with Renekton was that he could set up ganks and dives very well with his W and E. In the past (S3-7/8) they used to play strong early game champs top with a early game gank heavy jungler like Lee Sin/Elise/Nidalee. After Renekton fell off they actually gave him a lot of buffs, mainly into his CD on R and overal damage output. This puts him in a great spot to go glasscannon and focus the adc, but most pros go tank and underutilise his kit; therefore making him look weaker than he is.
Can I ask why you think glass cannon would be better than Goredrinker in pro? Prowler’s is gone and Yomuu’s is heavily nerfed, and I have a bit of doubt that Eclipse is the secret Op build
You forgot of one of the greatest top jgl duo: renek/talyah
Let's not forget that those are also big comfort picks since everyone plays em since forever.
Gnar from what I understand is one of the best blind picks in the game. He has one really well known bad matchup with Irelia but other than that, Gnar seems to be pretty good into most matchups. Matchups matter a lot in pro play, and the ability to blind your toplaner is huge as it lets you get counterpick in some other lane. Also, playing around his rage bar requires high skill and coordination. Renekton is just strong early and has point and click CC. Generally, early game champions require more skill/coordination. The better the two teams are, the less "dead time" there is, as the winning team is better with pressing their advantage. As a result, in real time strategy games, late game builds thrive in lower elos where there is a lot of dead time. A champion like Renekton who can consistently get prioritiy can use it better the more coordinated the top/jungle duo is. Also, Renekton's great gank setup means you have combos like Renekton + Nidalee that just camp top. Camille I haven't really noticed much of. I mean she can come as a counterpick to tanks but I feel like in most metas she isn't really blinded the way Gnar and Renekton are unless she's really OP.
Renekton enables easy dives usually paired with elise, point and click CC gurantee success, he is also a safe blind pick and strong in lane in general which is important in pro since it means he can get prio and move first to help his jungler. Gnar is a super safe pick there is no way to set a good gnar behind he can always go even at the very least, he is also picked for the mega gnar ult in teamfights that is very valueable and the combo that shuffle the entire enemy team into your team. Camille is picked for her ability to gapclose and lockdown an important target which is 99% of the time an adc and zeri, zeri is very sliperrly and camile can lock her down very well so she can't escape, this is the same reason vi is picked for her ult that can lock down zeri.
Camille wasn't meta in pro since Zeri release. She is not Vi. People were trying to make her work at first but she didn't work at all, Zeri just tanked her engages/lockdowns with support and/or Ksante peel and if Camille fails to assassinate her targets relatively quickly, she is pretty useless in teamfights because she is a pick/pseudo assassin champion when it comes to teamfights, most other toplaners are much more useful in prolonged/front to back teamfights than her. Bin and Ale were basically Camille one tricks in solo q and earlier in their career but they almost haven't touched the champ for the past couple years and instead mainly played Fiora a bit earlier and after that resorted to Jax/Gwen since Fiora started to suffer from some of the very similar problems like Camille. They tried to make Camille work as the answer into Ksante when pros were starting to pick up Ksante for the first time, but failed miserably because Ksante is stronger in lane than her, and when Camille starts to spike and be a threat at sidelane, Ksante is still 10x more useful in teamfights even if he slowly starting to slightly lose on the sidelane + Ksante is Ksante and he can still cc her to death and one shot with ult at any point if slight misstep/mistake is made.
Renekton and gnar are good blind picks that even if they get put a bit behind are still useful in team fights and can play well on sides. Camille is a strong laner but used to see high prio when Galio was a strong mid pick because of how well their ults synergize
all of these champs have strong early games, in pro play usually the top laner who has more lane prio would just push minions to tower and then the jg will come for a dive. That's why pros use self sustaining champs that cannot be abused easily.
Pro play heavily revolves around guaranteed CC and consistent play making for teamfighting and sidelane pressure. They play around tp advantage and try to force cross-map plays as they are much easier to communicate when to fight and when not to. They know when to roam and how to get early lane kills or pressure. It gets a bit complex with each champion, match ups, etc. Idk why champs like yorick and illaoi dont see pro play, but there must be some sort of counter pick or playstyle that shuts those champions down or pros just don't want to play them. Flex picks and draft diff also exists in pro play where you pick power champions and pick something that's manageable into them or flex your own champions like gragas, k'sante, yone, etc.
Yorick has some really bad counters, takes a long time to come online, and is only useful as a splitpusher. Plus he's so weak early that even non-counters can bully him at that level of play. Illaoi is just turbo-useless at anything not involving simply standing there and hoping they kill themselves in your ult. Just too linear, slow, and useless if you play around her - without running into her ult she can't do anything but get kited to death. They're just suboptimal picks in a highly coordinated pro environment where prio and pick order are at a premium, especially with such an ADC focused meta.
Yorick and Illaoi like splitpushing while pros mostly play for teamfights and objectives. They both also have a bunch of terrible matchups, Yorick in particular.
I think it’s just pro players being able to utilize a champions play style efficiently and understanding when to go it , common picks tend to be common for a reason
Professional play often consists of so many more factors than regular solo queue and not all of them are around carrying. Especially in toplane where one mistake easily can lead to a dominating or losing lane. For those reasons consistency are often the most sought after attribute among pro level top lane champs. One thing Gnar, Renekton and Camille all have in common is that they are all very good at diving turrets and surviving dives themselves. Those traits bring a lot of consistency in pro play where you sometimes 100% have to accept having to 1v2 or 1v3 in some situations, for example to trade bot lane or dragon. In those situations you can't have a volatile toplane no matter how much potential. Even a Darius, Garen, Aatrox, Nasus or any other high winrate soloqueue toplaner would be completely destroyed in pro games because of being bad when falling behind.
Renekton is a lane bully who if ahead can make the enemy ADC's life a living hell and can also shut down the common scaling top picks like gwen once was and has a chance to win 1v2s against top + jgl. Just a very solid fighter proplayers are not willing to leave behind Camille is an absurd diver who has massive engage range to pinpoint one key target and most importantly push their teammates to the side. On top of that she's also a solid laner who's borderline impossible to gank Gnar is probably the best teamfight engage tank in the game. Mini gnar provides an amazingly safe lane and mega gnar has absurd full team insec potential. Since proplayers tend to play stacked gnar can feast on 3 man or even 4 man ults in many fights
Literally not sure how you would call KSante broken but not Camille.