Just wondering. I hardly ever see anything but Supportcrank these days. Not that Supportcrank isn't amazing.

He has no sustain, no ranged harass (q grabs minions).
No Aoe clearing.


So.... No?

Actually, once you hit 6, his ult is one of the most efficient ways to remove a large wave of minions that I've ever seen.

But the problem with sololane Blitz is that he dumps all the damage output in the first 2 seconds of a fight, unless said fight is under your tower. Then he dies because he gets horrendously outdamaged.

You can play him, he has good match ups, but more-so bad ones, which is why you rely on getting the ganks you can so easily set up.

Once you get your items, you become a tank, a damage dealer with low cd's and a disruptor/peeler.

But yes, no sustain. So play carefully and just abuse your E early levels.

Yes, he is viable. He's a passive farmer until level 6.

Top lane Blitzcrank is more of a Damage heavy bruiser. I go top with him from time to time. I usually start with a manamune, then build a RoA to give me free wave clears. After that I will usually build tanky items that give mana. Frozen Heart, Banshee's, Etc. Trinity force is squeezed in there if I need more burst, but his W and AA usually do a crapton of damage.

Blitz going top is amazing because his ability to do damage by himself, in stead of needing an ADC to do the damage for him. Also, no one expected a blitz by himself to dish out the damage you will deal when build that way.

Also Darius has no sustain, how is he viable top?

Nope, he sucks. Even moreso now that his success at support got him NERFED.

I mean, hes PLAYABLE like pretty much anyone and someone will likely tell you how much they pwned some noob with him. But when you look at it, his skill set sucks for toplane.

Grab - clearly useless when most tops are melee and want to get in melee. Only useful for when your jungler ganks.

Speedup/AS boostie - Not bad but not great either. AS boost is rather lousy for toplane play when its about 1-hit farming and occasional pokes. MS is nice but hardly worth the mana cost to keep it up.

Knockup - Now THIS is really nice. But doesn't scale at all. At level 1 you have 70AD maybe? So this lets you hit/Knockup for a 210 damage attack. solid since E counts for 140 of that. Ranking it up does nothing except for cooldowns though. Most bruiser abilities start doing way past 140 by the time they are level 5,7,9.
This is also the ONLY decent thing you have. Most bruisers have multiple things they combo.

Ult - pushes the lane by zapping random stuff. Active ult pushes lane too.


No sustain, no good retreat or gapcloser. Hes just not very good.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just because he doesn't fit the mold of the standard top lane bruiser doesn't mean he's terrible.

You describe the Grab as "clearly useless" and don't even consider the amount of damage he can do grabbing someone (at level 1) into the turret. Hit level 2, and combo it with your knock up for even more damage from the turret.

Most lanes are about 1-hit farming, but plenty of champs also have attack speed boosts. Does having an ability that's useless for farming make a champion terrible? If so, the list of champions you're playing is ridiculously short. Is Warwick a terrible top laner because his W is an attack speed boost (and only AS, no MS)?

Again, the knock up, isn't necessarily about how much burst damage you can deal them. Think about the damage from the extra auto-attacks you, your minions, the turret, and any teammates are going to get on the target while he's knocked up.


The ult is problematic in terms of pushing the lane, but there are other perfectly viable champs in all the lanes that push their lane. Darius's Q? Tristana. Alistar. Soraka. Plenty of other examples.


No gap closer and no retreat? He has a movement speed steroid... and his Rocket Grab is the single best gap closer in the game. Are you kidding me?

Moreover, as I said earlier, there are plenty of other perfectly viable top lane champions that have the same problems you guys are listing for Blitzcrank (no sustain, no good retreat or gapcloser, etc), and some of the problems you list for Blitz just purely are not even actually problems.

If Blitzcrank doesn't have a gap closer, who does?


Heck, just compare Blitz to Darius.

Darius has a pull and a slow. Blitz has a grab with much longer range, and a knock up. Blitz has AS/MS boost, where Darius has an AoE spin. Blitz also has a silence and AoE damage ult (that still does damage while it's passive).

Now, Darius may do more damage than Blitz, and Darius may even beat Blitz in lane, but get to a team fight. Who do you want on your team more? Blitz, who can drop a load of CC on someone (and can probably dish out some good damage if he has top lane farm rather than support) or Darius, who is going to dish out some damage, but mostly stand around stealing kills from your carries?

I don't know how perfectly viable Blitzcrank is, but I think it's definitely worth a shot. It gives you a second support type champion in your team comp for mid and late game. This is the reason I like playing Nunu solotop. I think Nunu is a much better solo-laner (and doesn't need to rely on the turret), but same principle applies, he brings a LOT of mid and late game utility to help your carries win the game.

Darius scales with AD. Blitz scales with AP, and poorly at that. This by itself makes it a mess to build him for top lane. If your grab doesn't scale with AD, and your E doesn't at all, grabbing an enemy and putting him in melee range is not a great idea. You lose when you trade, pretty much every time.

Nunu's a bad solotop for the same reason. He has great sustain, but aside from his ice ball he has no poke and he can't trade worth anything. Also, because all of his abilities scale from AP, his blood boil just sucks for him to lane with.

As mentioned already, you can make pretty much ANYTHING work in the right pub-stomp scenario (Crittlesticks anyone?), but that doesn't mean it's not a terrible idea or likely to work for your average game.

terrible ratios? go play a bot game grab 5 aa's and a rabadons and lol as your grab ulti combo does 4k dmg.