In League of Legends, there are a few different reasons you would select a solo lane AD Carry.. The biggest benefit is that you can run double ADC comps with your bot lane, which allows for incredible scaling in the late game and really fast objective takes in the mid-to-late game phase. A lot of teams with double ADC comps will often try to force Barons and, if they go uncontested for even a few short seconds, they will be able to sneak it away from the enemy. Another benefit is that, due to being a ranged AD champion, you have the safety of ranged attacks while maintaining the early game strength AD champions possess over AP champions. It also means you generally control the wave and have early priority, which is incredibly valuable in the current jungle meta with a lot of fast paced junglers such as Lee Sin and Xin Zhao who want to fight their opponents as much as possible.

However, solo lane ADCs are still difficult to play despite these advantages, and I’ll be covering several more advantages down below and the issues you may run into playing a solo lane ADC and how to fix them. With this, you should be able to more successfully pilot these powerful champions in your solo queue games!

Understanding Level and Item Spikes in the Laning Phase

For ADC champions who get picked into the solo lane, understanding both when their champion spikes and when the enemy champion spikes is especially important. Most Solo Lane ADCs like Tristana, Lucian, and Akshan have very powerful level two and/or level three spikes due to unlocking all of their abilities, and can heavily trade on their opponent in a favorable manner. Low mobility/range mages are especially favorable match-ups for you in the early stages of the game, so you want to maximize the pressure you have and spread it to the other lanes as well. The downside to a lot of ADCs in mid is that if you are against a high range mage or assassin and they are able to either get the levels for their important damage abilities or hit their item powerspikes, it will become a lot tougher for you to deal with them since they can either kill you in a heartbeat or they will never get close enough for you to fight them.

So how do you abuse this strong early game power? For mid lane, you want to look to roam and fight people a lot with your jungler, or look for early dive opportunities if a certain lane is trading very well and crashing their wave into a tower. The nice thing about a lot of the ADCs who get played in mid lane is that you generally have a mobility spell. This will help you out a lot in invading and moving quickly around the map to execute quick, deadly plays with your team in order to succeed.

In top lane’s case, you have a different option, which is to abuse your range to poke the enemy laner down when they try to go to farm and stack the first three waves into one big crash on the tower. What you can do from there is let the enemy build up a wave on waves four and five, and then thin it out so you can freeze the wave by about waves five to six. This is, of course, much easier to do against a melee champion, but it is doable against ranged top laners if you are able to trade well early, forcing them to play safe to avoid being dove -- which is the other option that becomes available to you if you trade enough during the first three waves.

The wave holding strategy however is more reliable against players who are smart enough to not lose a majority of their health in an early unfavorable wave state. Doing this properly enables your jungler and/or mid laner to then make a roam up top, and can likely net you a kill, and at worst it forces the enemy top laner to take a bad recall and waste their Teleport early, which is also great for you because it then gives you about a five-to-six minute window where you can make a play with your team on the other side of the map and net a potential game-winning advantage off a good fight.

Setup, Setup, Setup.

One of the biggest failings I see ADC solo laners make is that they play the lane with reckless abandon, thinking that because they are so powerful in the early game compared to most other champions, they can just run at someone without punishment. Despite the fact that you are pretty difficult to trade with, it does not mean you are ungankable or undiveable, and you cannot be sloppy with your trading due to your squishier nature. Thankfully, there are measures you can take to protect yourself to allow you to play more aggressively in lane - namely, our good friend known as warding. You should ask your team when playing these types of champions, especially in mid lane, to help you ward parts of the enemy jungle you want to roam towards.

This is beneficial for two reasons - one, it allows both you and your team to adjust how to play if you catch out a potential gank or roam from the enemy team, and can even allow your team to move to countergank or counterroam, potentially netting you a huge lead in the process. It can also enable you to play more aggressively or hover over to one side of the map. For example, if your team drops a bunch of wards on an enemy’s red side and you see none of their camps are up, there’s a good chance the jungler is probably on the blue side, and so you can hover towards that enemy blue side to decrease the chance of a gank working against you.

The other benefit towards warding on the side that you want to roam to is that if you go for roams, you will know which path you can take safely. The prevalent Junglers are especially scary since there’s quite a few assassin junglers like Talon and Qiyana, along with a few strong duelist junglers like Lee Sin and Xin Zhao. If you get caught mid-roam by any of these champions, there’s a good chance you’re going to be in some trouble unless you’re very far ahead or they’re very far behind. By having wards that light the way for a path you know is unoccupied, it makes the roam much safer and have a higher chance of working, since you likely control the areas that are warded and thus the enemy team may not see you coming until it is too late.

Understand Your Role in Teamfights and the Sidelanes

This is another big issue I see when I see solo laners pick up ADCs is they think they should play team fights more like an assassin than an AD Carry. At the end of the day, most ADCs are really good at hitting whatever is in front of them, especially once they get a few items under their pocket. The only one who is a bit unique is Akshan, due to the fact that Heroic Swing allows him for some incredibly high burst damage output. However, he is still quite good at front-to-back teamfighting until the fight breaks up a bit! Of course, that isn’t to say you should never look for angles in fights to catch people off-guard, as a lot of ADC solo laners can quickly take out squishy targets, but if the enemy team has a tank, there’s a good chance you will need to help your team deal with them before you move onto the higher priority carry targets in a fight.

Another nice part about ADCs in solo lane is that they’re all pretty good at sidelaning too. This is for two reasons: they can often either successfully 1v1 their opponent and they can farm and clear incredibly safely. However, similar to when you want to look for roams, you want to ward for yourself and ask your team to ward for you if you think you can win the 1v1 sidelane against whoever you will be facing. You will be a bit tougher to deal with compared to when you were roaming, however, since when you enter the sidelane, you generally have one to two items, which is when a lot of the solo lane AD Carries really start spiking in power. However, if someone jumps on you from the fog, you will still likely be done for, even if you are strong.

Conclusion

Overall, ADCs are champions that are incredibly reliable if you can pull through the laning phase and use your early game strength to carry you over into your mid to late game scaling. Make sure to ensure that you understand your role in teamfights, how to set yourself up so you can safely play lane, and you will be able to take the knowledge from this guide to successfully carry games on these potent champions!

Best of luck on the Rift and stay safe out there!