User blog comment:Ozuar/The Importance of Skill Order in League of Legends/@comment-84.234.173.243-20130329150659

This. In toplane which is my main lane. I feel certain matchups is dependent on skill order ALONE. Let's take Gangplank as an example. If you want to play Gp nowadays you really need to skill carefully to what your going up against. Gp vs. a common top champion like Elise would skill heavily into his W to max his sustain, since Gp has no chance in hell to trade even with Elise if he maxes Q or E. Though some champions just excel with cookie-cutter builds like Zed.

But if we need to look at the champion as a whole, what you're looking to do in a certain matchup. Like if we take Jarvan IV. If you went up to a heavy AD lane who will outtrade you. You would skill E to maximize the survivability to retain the lane opponent to snowball. I see so many people who go against their skillorder are build aggressive items while maxing their defensive skills. It doesn't work out 90% of the time.

TLDR: Skillorder, itemization and matchup / what you want to do in lane, goes hand in hand.