A Guide To Master AD Carry or Marksman with DIG Spawn
We sit with DIG’s ADC, Spawn, to discuss the ins and outs of AD Carry. Everything you should know to better yourself is right here from laning tips to micro practices!
Today we’re jumping into the mindset of DIG’s starting Bot Laner, Trevor “Spawn” Kerr-Taylor, and discussing the ins and outs of his role as it comes in Solo Queue. We’ll be covering some AD Carry or Marksman concepts and skills to master to up your own Solo Queue game, while also examining some general ‘don’ts’ or misconceptions of the role that players might have with playing Bot Lane in Solo Queue.
Starting us right off though, let’s talk about what defines the Bot Lane role in Solo-Queue:
When it comes to the ADC role in Solo-Queue, once it gets to the late game, you do most of the damage across your team. ADCs are valuable because someone needs to kill the tanks, someone needs to kill the turrets, and someone needs to DPS Baron or Dragon, and your DPS and range are great in all those situations. And just generally, the longer the game goes, the more agency you have thanks to your damage being based nearly entirely off items, so you can always rely on yourself to close games out.
Marksmen aren’t the only class that can run effectively in Bot Lane though. The past few seasons, we’ve seen a rise in Mages adapting to the role in the context of Solo-Queue. Champions like Swain, Ziggs, and Seraphine have all brought some aspects of what Marksmen bring, while also having that same scaling, turret taking, and teamfight presence respectively. Marksmen, of course, are a bit more popular and consistent in the role, since they’re the more traditional Bot Laners, but the Mage Class can also bring high value to the lane when paired with the right Support and within the right team composition.
Core Skills of the Bot Lane Role
Getting gold, not dying, and being able to do damage are the key goals of Bot Laners in each game. You can boil those into the terms: Farming, Positioning, and Threat Assessment. Since you need to reach your item spikes as an ADC, Farming and having that become second nature to you is genuinely the first skill you should master. Positioning comes right after that because before you can even begin to think about what is capable of killing you on the enemy team, you need to understand where you need to be to deal damage in the middle of a fight or duel. I say this is a bit more important to learn early than Threat Assessment since you can rely on your Support to peel off some of the threats for you as long as you’re positioning well. Last is Threat Assessment. So, basically just scanning the team and considering who has what items or abilities that are most threatening to you and your goal to deal damage. Sometimes this might be a fed Assassin or a big burst spell or Champion wombo that you need to look out for, so reviewing those as the game goes on is important to adjust the way you position yourself in fights.
So, again, that’s Farming, Positioning, and Threat Assessment. These are the core skills of the Bot Lane role. But, you might ask yourself, ‘How do I improve these skills?’ Well, thankfully there are some routines you can go through to up your game.
When it concerns Farming, you can always hit up the Practice Tool, head down to Bot, and start farming when minions crash. Your goal during this exercise is to last hit Minions and reach the 100cs mark at 10 minutes, the general golden standard of good farming. After you can do this or around 9 or 8CS per minute consistently, up the challenge by going into a Custom Game and adding a Beginner Bot to the routine. In this phase of the training, your goal is to both farm to that 10cs per minute mark, but also poke the opposing Bot out of lane, or kill them entirely. This challenge trains you to balance your CS and trading skills simultaneously, thus improving both. The next step up from here is to up the difficulty of the Bot from Beginner to Intermediate while doing the same thing, before eventually carrying your practice to Normals and Ranked.
Positioning comes down to a lot of trial and error and ties in well with threat assessment. But, as Spawn mentioned, your Support can cover for some of your responsibilities in threat assessment since it’s literally their job to make sure you’re dealing as much damage as possible. So, either coordinating with a great duo partner, or simply putting your faith in your Support as you strive to DPS your way through every fight, is going to naturally teach you what you can and can’t do when it comes to your chosen Champions. In time, you’ll eventually learn the limits of your Champ and where they like to be, and then you can execute your positioning to elite levels with that ingrained knowledge in hand.
Threat Assessment is a duo responsibility, as mentioned, with you and the Support. But, it’s important for you to decide what is most threatening to you since the Support might be on a different page than you. So, as you load into the Rift, scan the enemy team composition and identify common ADC killing factors like Assassin Champs, big burst abilities or wombo combos, what levels your opponents have the most threat against you and come online, and then think about how you need to play around those. Sometimes this might mean paying the Quicksilver tax to avoid Malzahar or Mordekaiser ults entirely. Or, it might mean giving over the lane early against a Leona-Samira lane combo when you’re Twitch-Yuumi. Analyze and consider your opponents’ strengths, and then adapt towards what you can do to counter those.
Misconceptions about the ADC/Bot Lane Role
I get a lot of ‘My Support is not doing ‘this’ or how can I play with ___ Support, usually meaning a passive Support like an enchanter. And I think when this happens, you, as the ADC, have to change your playstyle. Every game is going to be different from you regardless of what Champions get locked in because every player is different. So, you really have to adapt to what your lane partner wants to do because it’s important for you both to be trying for the same things.
And this is one of the biggest gripes that often gets dumped by Solo Queue players. They get the constantly diving Leona player, or the Soraka that plays hugging the turret, or the Bard that goes out for Chimes and never comes back, and they proceed to flame their lane partner instead of finding a solution for their playstyle in themselves. And this is a difficult thing to come to learn as a lower ranked player, especially since ‘Team Game’ gets thrown around a lot in regards to Solo Queue success, and since through the early phases of the game, Bot Laners really rely on their team to help them come online.
As Spawn said, it’s important to adjust your expectations around what needs to be done in game. Sure, you’re playing Samira and you want to fight and have a go-hard Support, but if your lane partner locks in Soraka, you need to think about how your Champion fits into Soraka’s playstyle and then watch for those moments that Soraka provides for you to go in. The inverse can be said about more scaling focused carries like Vayne when paired with an aggro Support like Leona.
Adaptation is the key misconception of the Bot Lane role, and since the role does have such a ‘Me Carry’ mindset and play pattern, it’s often hard for players to let go of this mentality and adapt their style to their team since the common idea is the team should be adapting to you. But, until you reach an ELO where players all really recognize the ADC role as their genuine wincon, you really have to mold your expectations to each game and take them in stride.
Choosing Great Lane Partners, or the Champion You Main?
Bot Lane, Support especially, is dictated by matchups. Sure, you might lock-in Samira-Leona, but if your lane opponents lock in Caitlyn-Morgana, you might find yourself hard pressed to find success through traditional means. And this counter-pick and combo mindset can sometimes cause conflict with the ol’ adage of, “Pick three Champions and play them to death to improve quickly” because there are just some Champions that are strictly worse with other Champions.
So, where do you draw the line between playing your main and picking a great laning combo?
It depends! If you’re a one-trick and you’re really good at your Champ, you should almost always lock-in that Champion. But if you’re less of a one-trick and more of a role main, then you can pick combos up to really play off your partner effectively, especially if they’re good on the patch. Combos generally make the game easier, and I personally usually try to go with what my Support picks. But, again, play what you know because that muscle memory and knowledge is going to be more valuable to you when you hit late-game and have your own agency.
Playing With a Lead and Coming back from Defeat
Solo Queue can get crazy sometimes. Especially at level one. Invades from team comps that don’t have reliable CC, your Jungler solo-invading a buff, the enemy all flashing over Blue Buff wall while you’re zoomed in admiring your newly purchased skin… All of these things can happen to you or a teammate. And these situations can end in you getting a lead for yourself, or your opponents having a lead over you. We’re about to cover what you do in both situations, so don’t worry about racking your brain about the steps.
Starting first with playing with a lead, think about what we’ve mentioned the Bot Lane role is great at, and then think about your Champion. If you’re on a traditional Marksmen, you’re great at applying consistent DPS through fights and to objectives, you have near unavoidable damage thanks to your auto-attack design, and your damage is 9/10 higher than anyone else’s if you’re fed. Now, think about how to apply those thoughts to the map.
This means, with a lead as a fed ADC, you’re looking to knock out turrets and apply consistent lane pressure. Rotate to Dragon early and help poke or take the objective quickly. You’re rotating around the map to secure big neutral objectives like Herald or Baron when it’s time. You’re factoring your role’s weakness and playing towards your team and in vision so that you don’t throw your lead and can be assisted if the enemy dives towards you while you’re farming a wave or camp, also playing towards your teammates if they make a pick or start a fight. The consistent look of applying your strength is what you do when you have a lead as an ADC, just be aware of your role’s defining weaknesses of fragility and mobility.
When you’re behind, you’re obviously playing for farm. It’s the most important thing to you since Farming is going to more consistently help you reach your items rather than trying for bad fights or picks. Your number one goal should be to reach your two or three item spike, and at that point you can start really contributing towards any plays your team might want to go for. But, besides farming, you’re really trying not to die. It seems basic, but when your situation is bad in Solo Queue, you don’t want to make it worse by making mistakes in map awareness, or positioning. You wanna make sure to minimize your losses. You’re losing and now you want to neutralize as many losses as you can.
Itemization as a Bot Laner
We’ve mentioned time and time again that ADCs/Marksmen are a really item-defined class. They want those two or three item spikes to really come online and take over games. But, there’s more to push for and be aware of besides those big items like your Mythic and Infinity Edge. So, let’s unpack some commonly overlooked items that Bot Laners should be aware of.
As an ADC, your Mythic choice comes down to what your opponents have on their team. If they have a lot of burst, you want to go for Shieldbow to increase your chance to survive. If they’ve got big skillshots that you need to dodge, Galeforce is great to give you the dash to avoid those. Otherwise, if you need to shred tanks or just output damage, Kraken Slayer is going to be the best fit. When it comes to something like Executioner’s, I don’t really think the item is efficient on ADCs. Like, you can take it if no one else is. But your Support or Mid Laner, people with AOE, should be finding a way to get Grievous Wounds more than you should since the stats Executioner’s provides are really kind of awful.
For Mages opting down Bot, the big items you should consider are Oblivion Orb and Zhonya’s.
Mages and Supports are often the Grievous Wounds providers since the component is not as much of a damage loss and they can almost always apply it more easily with their AOE or CC. Though, Morellonomicon shouldn’t be completed until your last item slot since the full completed item doesn’t offer you as much as a Rabadon’s or other finished item would.
Zhonya’s and Stopwatch are your next big pieces since they emulate a bit of what GA provides for Marksmen, survivability. Whether you’re baiting out big abilities with your Zhonya’s, or utilizing it to prolong an effect, or survive for cooldowns, Stopwatch and Zhonya’s are invaluable tools for the Mage belt and can often be considered as a second or third item option for Mage Laners.
Lastly for Marksmen, the big situational items to consider are Quicksilver, Lord Dom’s, and Guardian’s Angel. Quicksilver should be taken when you have big threat abilities on the enemy team like Malzahar Ultimate while also being great against softer CC like slows.. Lord Dom’s is a great second buy if the enemy team you’re facing has a double tank setup, so rushing that before Infinity Edge or your attack speed item is fine in some situations. And GA is often overlooked in my opinion as an early buy. I think GA is great in those instances where you are ahead and you’re -really- the only damage on your team, because if the enemy wastes their effort focusing you down, the GA gives your team time to come back from their focus of you while you lose nothing but the effect or the Stopwatch.
Champion Combinations
You can’t escape a Bot or Support list without having some Champion recommendations, so let’s unpack a few of Spawn’s recommended Champions for ADC players and talk about some spicy lane combos to go with them!
For sure, Miss Fortune is really strong right now in Solo Queue. And she’s very easy to play. She doesn’t have a lot of bad matchups, so I think she’s absolutely number one to play in Solo Queue. If you want to win your lane, I think Caitlyn or Draven are really good at both snowballing. If you want to be REALLY explosive, I think Samira, Tristana, or Kai’sa are also really good while having some great tools to play with.
When it comes to Supports, we’ve got some great options to pair those with:
For Miss Fortune, we recommend Leona. Miss Fortune’s Make-It-Rain (E), slows and sets up both Leona’s Zenith Blade and Ultimate, allowing the combo to 100-0 most anyone that steps towards them at level 6, and both are just great pieces to build a strong teamfight comp around.
For Caitlyn, we suggest Morgana. A classic lane that’s all about pick potential and poke. If an opponent steps on a Caitlyn trap or eats a Morgana Q while within range of the opposing partner, they can be followed up on and instantly killed or bulleid from lane. Thrown in Morg’s Black Shield and Cait’s range behind their damage, and you’ve got a consistently safe lane to boot!
For Draven, we’re suggesting Amumu. Amumu has been a star at Support since his Double-Bandage Toss buff and when paired with Draven, he’s instantly guaranteeing a cash out on Draven’s stacks. It doesn’t hurt that Amumu’s abilities also do an absurd amount of base damage too.
For Samira, Amumu is a great option as well, but we really recommend Rell. Samira and Rell can provide great lane mix-up with either piece being the engage source depending on who has the best angle thanks to Rell’s E. After the E lands, the chain CC into Samira ult begins and the snowball gets going.
For Tristana, we’re actually going to recommend an Enchanter, Janna. Trist has all the power in the world to go in and 100-0 someone when she gets a full satchel charge off, but she lacks the ability to mitigate damage once she’s in, a weakness in comparison to Kai’sa or Samira. So, slapping a Janna with her gives her CC to jump in off of, but also shields and healing in case things get a bit sticky.
For Kai’sa, we’re suggesting Maokai. Maokai’s a great option for Kai’sa and really mirrors what Rell could do with her, who is another fine option. Both Champions provide Kai’sa the CC she needs to stack her passive quickly which allows her to get in on aggressive plays or dodge big abilities effectively in the late-game. When it comes to Maokai specifically though, he can be an annoyance for lane opponents thanks to the brush control his saplings bring, so in coordination with Kai’sa, the two can lay down some decently obnoxious lane poke.
Closing Out
There you have it folks! Thanks again to Spawn for sitting down with me for this piece! If you’re wanting to follow Spawn across social media, you can find him at the following links.
