Introduction

Welcome to the final installment of the Breakdown series! Last time, I talked about kiting, the level 2 advantage, trading with item advantages, split pushing vs. grouping, taking advantage of cooldowns and analyzed some of the marksman 4.10 marksman items. This time, I'll primarily be discussing decision-making for lane and post-lane that requires a higher level of role mastery.

Table of Contents

1. Mastering the Orb Walk

2. Beyond the Lane

3. Losing Lane

4. Understanding Item & Damage Spikes

5. Target Selection in Team Fights

Mastering the Orb Walk

Orb walking, also known as stutter stepping, was a technique originally coined in Dota 2. Due to the similarity in the mechanic where you cancel the animation of your champion's auto attack, it has become a term used in League of Legends to simply refer to animation canceling. By orb walking, you are maximizing the potential and efficiency of your attacks and movements by minimizing the time it takes for your champion to attack and move.

Orb walking requires extensive amounts of practice with a single champion so that you can learn the auto-attack animation of your champion. The tricky part about orb walking is timing the cancellation of your auto attacks. If you cancel it too early, the attack projectile will not register and if you cancel it too late, then you're not actually orb walking. What’s more, as you gain more attack speed, it becomes much more difficult to cancel in between each animation.

So what's the difference between orb walking and regular attack moving (moving between your attacks either via the attack-move command or by clicking)? When you're attack moving, you're usually waiting for the animation of your auto attack to fully complete before you move again. With orb walking, you are canceling the animation of your attack (by moving) as soon as the projectile leaves the champion. This way, you're minimizing the amount of time (albeit a very small amount) you are spending stationary while your champion is attacking. In doing so, you are able to deal damage while you are moving, you are also able to minimize the damage you'd be taking if you're being chased, and your reaction time (and thus, evasiveness) is slightly higher because you will always be moving.

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As you can see from this video, Wildturtle uses the movement speed gained from his Ardent Blaze and Blade of the Ruined King's active to kite backwards and managing to stay alive.

Beyond the Lane

It is one thing to win the lane, but winning the lane will not always win you the game. Being able to translate your lane advantages to the rest of the map is extremely important. Destroying the tier 1 bot turret opens up the map for vision control around dragon.

After dragon, you should look to help struggling lanes. However, do remember to check on your own lane, to make sure you can soak up the minion waves before they hit your turret, or at least prepare to trade that minion wave and/or turret with objective on your own.

A common misconception regarding bot lane is that if you come out ahead in bot lane, you should not leave lane because that would mean that you’re giving up that advantage. This is technically true, but it assumes that you’re not actually doing anything yourself.

Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy bot laner. If you’re behind in lane, what you want is an extended laning phase so that you can quietly farm up to catch up to your opponent. So if your opponent decides to come back and push you to your tier 2 turret, you have the opportunity to bring your jungler and/or your mid laner to gank them when they’re pushed up so far into the lane. And even if they get away, that still guarantees you some free time in lane.

Therefore, to prevent this from happening, you make a trade by joining your team in mid lane. You are not giving up your advantage in bot lane by leaving, because you are forcing the enemy bot lane into a lose-lose situation:

If they choose to stay bot (Choice 1), you can push the first and second tier mid lane turrets with the rest of your team, perhaps even threatening to take even more. Mid lane turrets are more valuable than bot turrets. From there, you can close in on the split-pushing bot lane, take dragon (and jungle buffs) or go top lane.

If they choose to group mid as well (Choice 2), your team can force an engage to push forward if they win (then see Choice 1), or go to another lane and resume farming.

As you can see from the diagram, out of the two choices, the second choice minimizes your own map movements, due to the presence of the enemy bot lane, which makes it a more favorable choice to take for the enemy bot lane.

In conclusion, you do not have to worry about losing a lane advantage from going to another lane, because depending on your enemy’s decision, you will either gain a greater lead for you and your team by taking the mid lane turrets (choice 1) or maintain that same lead by taking no turrets (choice 2).

Losing Lane

Now let’s talk about something most tutorials and guides often forget about: lost lanes.
What do you do when you are the one having to react to the enemy marksman? When you’re in a losing position, you will more often than not have to refer to choice 2 of the diagram and group with your team to help defend.

Whenever you are put in a losing situation, the easiest way to catch up is to let your enemies make the mistakes. It’s much easier to make mistakes when you’re ahead and throw your lead away. Over-aggression is probably the most common mistake people can make when they’re ahead. While calculated aggression is justifiable, it’s easy to get overconfident and make poor plays, thus giving your enemies a chance to crawl back.

If you scale better than the enemy, you need to turtle with your team until you reach that late-game point. Play safer, especially if your summoner spells are on cooldown. More importantly, focus on making fewer mistakes. Making mistakes while behind will make the game much more difficult for you and your team to come back from. Minimize the risks of your actions and let your enemies increase the risks of their actions. There is no need to force plays that aren’t there, especially when you’re behind.

Lastly, it’s important to understand the different power spikes of different champions with and without items. Certain champions hit multiple peaks where they can deal more damage and/or out-duel another champion. Learning these matchups and being able to take advantage of them requires a lot of practice, as many matchups are situational with players with varying levels of skill.

Understanding Item & Damage Spikes

Having more gold may not always translate into having an advantage, so it's important to recognize when you can or cannot win a fight against an enemy. Understanding damage spikes from hitting a certain level and/or from having certain items are great ways to create opportunities on the map. Damage spikes usually come before the items, since having access to certain abilities or ultimates can be more threatening than having better items – at least in the early game.

For example, Vayne’s first power spike is when she hits level 6. If she can close the range gap between her and her enemy, she can easily kill off a weak support or a condemned marksman. Vayne’s damage also spikes when she buys her BOTRK. Another example would be Jinx, whose Super Mega Death Rocket gives her a powerful AoE execute.

For most champions, their first item spike comes when they complete the first item of their core build. Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster, Blade of the Ruined King and Trinity Force are examples of core build items that are rushed. Also, getting a BF Sword on the first back is another example of a power spike. 50 attack damage is the most you can get from a basic tier item (an item with no recipe), so returning to lane with it (while your opponent does not) certainly gives you a significant advantage.

With that said, it will certainly be easier for champions who rush cheaper items to get a quicker spike in power. It can be argued that Vayne – who has a cheaper core item (BOTRK) than Caitlyn (IE) will hit her spike faster. However, due to the superiority of Caitlyn’s laning phase, the cheaper spike is justified.
For champions who still want to rush Bloodthirster, their spike will be slightly different, due to the 4.12 patch changes to the item. The item now provides 20% lifesteal and 80 AD, which gives a nice balance of damage as well as survivability. However, the item will not scale as well compared to the Infinity Edge, due to the lack of critical chance.

Trinity Force is an item that offers a great mid-game spike for AD caster champions. Kog'Maw, Ezreal and Lucian are three examples of champions who work very well with TriForce. However, Ezreal and Lucian - due to their mobility, can rush IE, BOTRK or BT for similar spikes. Kog'Maw has limited mobility, which is why Trinity Force and BOTRK work well for him. Trinity Force offers a movement speed buff for better kiting and BOTRK gives him a mini escape/peel active for sticky situations.

An interesting first item rush for Tristana that some people have picked up is taking Statikk Shiv. This item certainly works for Tristana because of her innate ability to shove waves very quickly (her passive from Explosive Shot). As a result, it becomes impossible to control waves as Tristana. Taking Statikk Shiv just enhances her ability to push to farm up for her next core item.

Lastly, there is another build with some champions that rush BOTRK and Youmuu's Ghost Blade. Twitch and Lucian come to mind here. Those two items combined synergize very well with their ultimates and their dueling capabilities. This combination of items offer a decent power spike, but more importantly, the item's recipe are combinations of cheaper parts that are not awkward to purchase during the laning phase and do not muffle their power.

Target Selection in Team Fights

Team fights can be confusing and difficult to survive through as a marksman. This is especially true if the enemy team knows to focus you. And you won’t always have your teammates to protect you. As a result, it’s important to understand how to select the right targets during team fights.

The most standard rule of thumb for marksmen in team fights is to focus the closest and most threatening thing in front of you. As a squishy champion, everything is essentially a threat to you. Tanks are great for disrupting a team and sticking to an enemy to lock them down with crowd control and wear them down. That’s why there is nothing wrong with focusing down the tank, while your team focuses the higher priority targets - assuming that they are providing a big enough threat, of course.

Assassins and bruiser assassins are probably a marksman’s biggest threat. With their superior gap closing and burst potential, assassins can delete marksmen from the map if they are given the opportunity. The term ‘assassin’ is not limited to champions exclusive to the role. Assassins refer to anyone who can dive past the front line of a marksman’s team and eliminate the marksman before he/she can deal any damage or receive any help. If an assassin goes for you, your main priority is to get him/her off you by killing them or driving them out of the fight.

Mages will probably attempt to assassinate you from long range or provide crowd control to lock you down. Prioritizing mages is not a bad idea, especially if they are fed. However, they are limited by their resources (mana/energy) and their abilities’ cool downs, which is why you try to strike them when their abilities are on cooldown.

Supports are usually pretty easy targets because of how squishy they can be, but since they provide so much crowd control at low range and not much immediate damage, it’s best to prioritize other targets first, unless the support can be burst down before being able to use any of its crowd control.

The enemy marksman is certainly the most ideal, especially if you have the superior control. But it’s pretty difficult if he/she has a team in front. While enemy marksmen are the most ideal target, it’s quite difficult to get to them, especially when they’re in the back line. However, in the rare case that your enemy is too powerful for the rest of your team to handle, prioritizing might help your chances at winning the fight.

Conclusion

The mechanics of the marksman role are extremely complex and with an ever-changing meta, there will always be different ways to build and play the marksman champions. To become a better marksman requires lots and lots of practice, so that you can experience every matchup. Having a deep understanding of this role and its champions can help you identify your own mistakes, learn from them and improve as a result. However, practicing is the only way you will be able to apply that game knowledge to your own play.

I hope you enjoyed my Breakdown series on the marksman/ADC role! For my next few articles, I hope to go through some things I omitted in my Breakdown series, as well as analyze some popular bot lane matchups: Caitlyn, Lucian, Tristana, Jinx and Kog'Maw that people have requested for.

If you have any comments, questions or requests, feel free to comment below or send me an email at aBarofSoup@gmail.com.