The ADC role in League of Legends is one of the hardest to master in the game. The mechanics that go into playing ADC require a lot of practice and precision. Playing a role where you play very squishy champions is hard, as you need to balance being aggressive and passive as the same time. This guide will outline what an ADC does in game and what they should be doing throughout the game.

How to Play the Laning Phase

ADCs are the most important role on a team, they do almost all of the damage. In lane, the best advice I can give is do not die in the laning phase. If you die in lane, you will be giving the enemy ADC a gold and experience advantage and allow them to snowball off of that lead. Most importantly, if you die in lane you will possibly be giving up an important objective.

Bot lane is very important because of Dragon being in the bottom side river. Dying in lane gives the enemy team a free shot at Dragon, which can be very damaging to your team if it is a Mountain, Infernal or an early Ocean Drake. Early Ocean Drakes are important as they give health and mana regen in the laning phase if they are killed early enough. Ocean Drake's buff is able to mitigate the enemy laner's damage to you and force them to use more mana to do damage to you.

While laning, you want to trade as much as you can when the opportunities present themselves. Trade only when you know you’ll come out of the trade better off than your target. In most instances, you will let the support engage first. If they have a Pyke and Lucian lane, it isn’t going to be the best idea to go up to them and trade if you’re playing Kog’Maw due to his low early game damage compared to Lucian and Pyke’s.

The best way to trade is if they need to kill low health minions and they have a small wave as you won’t take much minion aggro. Some ADC champions have movement speed abilities that allow them to run away after trading. Champions like Miss Fortune, Draven, and Lucian are great for trading as they have disengage tools, such as Lucian’s E.

Look for your support to engage them when they have used their abilities and they are on cooldown. If you are in a losing matchup, the best idea is to freeze the wave so they can’t all in or trade as often. There is nothing wrong with tower hugging if you know you’re going to scale harder than the enemy bot lane, but when playing champions like Sivir, you need to abuse your waveclear ability to push them under their tower and make them CS instead of trading with you.

Mastering last hitting in the bot lane will help you a lot in laning phase. CSing is the most important thing to an ADC. If you miss out on CS, you will fall behind, hit your power spike later than usual, and have no gold, therefore doing no damage at all because you can’t buy items. Late game hypercarries are heavily dependent on CS. Play as safe as possible and get your CS up so you can carry the game in the end.

Wave Manipulation

Wave manipulation is very key in winning any lane and obtaining objectives. There are many wave manipulation strategies you can use in and out of the laning phase. I have a guide on wave management that goes into greater detail if you want more information on the topic.

Fast Pushing is shoving the wave into the enemy tower and trying to take plates off of it or destroy it outright. To set up a fast push, you need to kill the first three minions as fast as possible using your auto attack and your abilities. If the wave contains a cannon minion, then you must kill that as fast as possible as well. The larger your minion wave, the stronger and faster the fast push becomes. This wave manipulation technique is great when you want to accomplish something quickly after a kill or when your laners are gone.

Slow Pushing is a wave manipulation tactic where you manipulate the wave to slowly push, gain more minions and create a large minion wave capable of taking objectives. This type of push can be obtained when you only kill the caster minions (also if there is a cannon, you would need to kill it) in a wave.

With the melee minions being tankier than the caster minions, they will push your wave slowly. The slow push is most effective in games before a major objective is up. It will put the enemy at a disadvantage in fights as one of their teammates will have to clear the wave, while you fight for the objective. They will have to go clear the wave or sacrifice the tower in jeopardy.

Teamfighting

ADCs are the main damage dealers in teamfights, therefore they will try their hardest to kill you first. ADCs are very squishy, meaning that you are an easy target and an easy kill if you get caught out. Make sure you keep your distance and use your range. Let your team do all of the engaging with their CC and you dish out the damage from a safe distance. Stay behind the tanks on your team as they are your protectors from assassins and bruisers, who will kill you instantly allowing their team to win the team fight.

You will need to kite in teamfights so you aren’t as susceptible to CC and damage dealers. Using your range and moving after each auto will ensure that you do the most damage and stay alive.

Warding as an ADC

Since you have a support who should be warding the bot lane area, don’t think that you don’t have to ward also. You should be getting a control ward every recall if possible. When warding be careful or have your support come with you. If you get caught warding alone, you could die, which in result will cause you to lose out on CS and give over a free kill to the enemy team. As soon as you hit level 9, you will be able to pick up a Blue Trinket (Farsight Alteration) in the shop. This trinket is great for ADCs as it allows you to ward from far distances in exchange that your wards aren’t invisible and have 1 hp. This is great for ADCs as you will still always have to ward to help out the team and you can now do it more safely.

Kiting (Also known as Orb Walking)

Kiting is very important in teamfights and should be done anytime you auto attack as it helps you get charged up autos (Statik Shiv and/or Rapid Firecannon), and most importantly, it keeps you moving so you won’t get hit by skillshots or jumped on as easily. You must kite anytime you auto, it is very important to always be moving. Kiting is the most important thing to do as an ADC. If you don’t kite, you will die more often.

Since ADCs are squishy and have to deal a lot of the damage in fights, they become the main target for backline attackers. Kiting helps you be more prepared to dodge skillshots and keeps you ready to get into position to make plays.

Late Game

In the late game, keeping yourself alive is even more important as you do more damage and so does the enemy team. You will want to push waves in other lanes and stay with your team. Since you are now in the late game, death timers are long, and one death can give them multiple towers or even the win.

Kiting in teamfights is more important in these stages as you are now easier to kill due to all enemies having items and more damage. Ensure that the frontline is protecting you and play smart. You don’t want to use your getaway abilities until you really have to, once you have used a getaway ability the enemy team will know you are now vulnerable and will look to engage around that

Conclusion

ADC is the most important role in League of Legends, and one of the hardest to master. You must be able to play risky and also very safe, because one misclick or mistake can result in a death. Your damage is critical to your team’s success in fights and around objectives. Not being able to get off your damage before dying will lose your team fights and maybe even the game.

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