I love playing and fighting champions. A champion vs champion fight where both get to show off their kits is amazing, especially as a toplaner.

Riven vs Camille, Fiora vs Renekton, Jayce vs Jax etc…

Its fun to fight and try and outskill your opponent within reasonable limits, and whenever you lose being able to look back and say “Ahh if I did this or if I dodged that, the fight would be different”.

In that way, you still feel like you learn something, even when you lose.

I want to preface the next statement, by saying that I am in no way complaining about the champions. They are fine in 99% of cases(even Ksante, yes I said that). Its only items in combination with some champions

Some items in the game, especially in toplane makes champions perform way outside of their intended window.

Items in question are Heartsteel, Iceborn Gauntlet, Stridebreaker and Hullbreaker(Yes, its nerfed).

When it comes to Iceborn Gauntlet, it makes very little sense. A giant slow, a fk ton of HP, 50 Armor, and damage resistance from the champion you are fighting. For 3000 gold, which is 300 gold cheaper than most bruiser items.

When Malphite, Illaoi, Ksante gets this item. The lane goes from 50/50, to these champion are unkillable, and the item in combination with their kit becomes very toxic.

If the counterplay to Illaoi is to dodge her E, the massive slow makes sure that she always are able to hit it.

If you want to fight Ksante and dodge around his Q, the slow enables him to consistently land it on you. You can never escape him if you are without dashes. Even Riven can struggle to get away from him.

If you want to play around Malphites cooldowns via an in an out style, where you poke him, back off, poke him back off because thats how you beat Malphite who lacks sustain. With Iceborn Gauntlet, Malphite with Grasp just All Ins you and straight up kills you, while you cant get away from him.

I have even seen some players experiment with Iceborn on Fiora, Yone, Yasuo and Yorick with varying results.

Without Iceborn, these champions are still strong, which is fine, but when they have the item, its basically unplayable if you are an AD melee champion. Its not about the champions countering a certain kit. Its all enabled by the item.

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Heartsteel mostly have 3 abusers. I have no issues with tanks being very tanky and unkillable. I have an issue with Tanks being able to oneshot carries.

Dr Mundo, Chogath and Sion all deal plenty of damage and are hard to kill without the item. But with the item, not only do they onetap squishies after stacking it, but they get so much HP that they can statcheck you for the rest of the game, unless your name is Fiora, which is a banned champion in many cases. With demolish, they walk up and one tap towers as well.

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Stridebreaker has many decent users, but mainly 2 abusers, and that is Garen and Darius.

These 2 champions already run a lot of movement speed in their builds. They are juggernauts and the only real counterplay you have is to space them and kite them. But as soon as they can activate Stridebreaker which has VERY generous AOE range, its game over, and you will sit in the entire duration of Garen E, while Silenced and slowed, and he will ult you from 50% HP for True Damage. Same goes for Darius, but it takes slightly longer time. Even against bad players, the item always allows them to escape.

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And then we have hullbreaker, which im sure people are tired from reading about. You already know this item feels bad to play against. But combine Hullbreaker with the playstyle that is enabled from Iceborn or Heartsteel and the game is simply not playable.

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I understand that top is not a favorite subject in this forum. I also understand that the game is not catered to top lane in any way. But the role already has little agency. And when you combine that with the fact that one toplaner is not going to be able to play the game, thanks to items that makes statchecker champions really overwhelming, the lane is simply not fun.

In most cases, these champions with these items are Counter-Picks. So you cant say “hurr durr just pick Morde into malphite free win hurr durr”… You can beat bad players with these items. But good players make sure that you wont have any agency in the game.

I am tired of sitting in champion select, and sigh every time an item abuser gets locked in. I know im not going to have fun after 8-9 minutes. I dont want to play these champions and abuse them myself.

I want to play vs the champions. Not the items.