Climbing to Challenger is one of the greatest achievements you can get in League of Legends, even more so when getting to the top of the ladder in the Korean solo queue.
Most of us look to take advantage of the meta to play the best picks possible and increase our chances of victory. But, there is one player who is managing to reach Korean Challenger with Bel’Veth in an unconventional role, top lane, and a unique build, made specifically for the role.
First discovered by LoL analyst Molecule, the top lane player has been spamming her for the entire season so far, with more than 600 games (according to their OP.GG), averaging a 55 percent win rate.
Even if they play other tanks in the top lane, such as Ornn, Zac, and Poppy, they only have a couple of games played each. But why are they climbing solo queue with top lane Bel’Veth?
Unveiling top lane Bel’Veth’s power
There are a couple of reasons why Bel’Veth is working as a solo laner. The combination of these factors, paired with an ad-hoc build to take advantage of these strengths, is what allows them to find such success with the pick.
The first reason is that Bel’Veth is great against melee champions that want to fight for extended periods. Thanks to the champion’s Royal Maelstrom (E), Bel’Veth can greatly reduce the enemy’s damage during a trade, while also dealing damage and sustaining thanks to the gained lifesteal.
With most top laners being melee and having designed kits to engage and fight close combat, Bel’Veth naturally finds herself in a commanding position. On top of that, she has mixed sources of damage, making it harder to itemize against her. She also has multiple dashes with her Q, allowing her to dodge incoming abilities.
Lastly, she can get a good amount of scaling thanks to the Lavender stacks. Considering she gets one stack per large minion, it means that she can essentially get free stacks every three minion waves, as long as she’s able to farm it.
Bel’Veth top lane build
By looking at the player’s builds and runes, we can better understand Bel’Veth’s strengths as a top laner. The Korean player always goes for Conqueror as the keystone rune, followed by Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, and Coup de Grace. This setup is specifically chosen to improve her trading and skirmishing ability.
For the secondary rune tree, however, there are a couple of choices, and it usually depends on the matchup or the enemy team composition. Their most common secondary runes are Bone plating and Revitalize from the Resolve tree. That said, they can swap them out for Second Wind if they’re playing against ranged matchups, and Unflinching, for the added Tenacity.
There are times when they opt for Domination tree, taking Sudden Impact and Treasure Hunter. This is usually typical in matchups where they can win out early and wants to extend their lead even further by taking kills.
Build-wise, the player always goes for Ravenous Hydra as the core item, followed by Iceborn Gauntlet. Picking up the Hydra is essential to fix Bel’Veth’s weak wave clearing, while also granting her attack damage, ability haste, and lifesteal. In other words, all the stats she needs to become a force to be reckoned with.
Iceborn Gauntlet, instead, is to boost the resistances and get the Sheen proc to slow down enemies. It’s the best item to chase after enemies, while also increasing Bel’Veth’s champion size with the Mythic passive effect.
While it’s rare for them to play matches that go to the late stages of the game, they usually pick up Sterak’s Gage for the third item purchase. The item grants both offensive and defensive stats, as well as an extra shield when Bel’Veth’s brought to low health to survive burst damage. As soon as she drops low, she will have her E ready to heal up and recover the health lost.
To round off the build, they buy Gargoyle Stoneplate to strengthen both armor and magic resistances and Guardian Angel for the extra revival effect.
Bel’Veth’s maxing order also differs from her jungle position. You always want to max Above and Below (W) first because it’s the best way to harass the enemies during the laning phase, and it can be used to wave clear.
The W has a 100 percent bonus AD scaling, meaning that the damage will go up when building items. On top of that, the ability deals magic damage so the enemies will have a tough decision to make when building resistances. Once W is maxed out, they always go for Void Surge second (Q) and Royal Maelstrom (E) last.
