Essential Skills to Master for ADCs in LoL

Essential Skills to Master for AD Carries in LoL

AD Carries are not able to solo carry like they once could back in the day. Instead, they have to rely heavily on their teammates to do their job and offer them protection so they can dish out damage. However, it is important that for an ADC player, you give yourself the best chances of surviving and getting kills.

In this article by Mobalytics, we are going to break down multiple skills you need to master in League of Legends to make carrying easier and increase your chances of getting that beloved victory screen.

Make sure you work on everything we talk about in this article to make the ADC role more enjoyable and to quickly improve your climb.

This article is brought to you in partnership with our friends from ONE Esports, check them out for more awesome LoL content!

5 Essential Skills to Master for ADC Mains

1. Trading patterns
2. Wave management
3. CSing
4. Map awareness
5. Hitting Power Spikes First

Trading Patterns

Optimising trades and playing around key spells is an extremely important thing to do in LoL. If you do not optimise your battles with the enemy, you’re going to come of worse in the long run.

As an example, playing around the enemies cooldowns is highly beneficial because the enemy will be lacking a spell to fire back at you with. Jinx, without her W or E is quite vulnerable which you can take advantage of.

Whenever you see the enemy ADC (or Support) use one of their key spells that can dictate the pace of the lane, you should try to act on it. If the enemy Thresh misses his Q, you should try to play more aggressively as it is on cooldown.

The enemy may throw out these abilities randomly, and they may use them to last-hit minions. Whenever they do this, be on the aggression and abuse their cooldowns.

Wave Management

Wave management is crucial for all roles, but it is essential for ADC mains. Learning how to manage waves takes time and effort, and we, unfortunately, cannot go over everything in this article. I highly recommend you check out our in-depth Mobalytics Wave Management article for everything you need to know about wave management to make it easier.

A lot of players constantly push in League of Legends. This isn’t a good idea to do as it will usually leave you open to ganks from the enemy Jungler. It will also hinder your chances of receiving allied ganks as not every Jungler can dive early on.

Our advice is to try and manage waves and avoid constantly pushing.

• A good rule to follow is that in an even game, you should try to keep the minion wave closer to your side of the map or in the middle.
• If you’re losing, you want to avoid pushing as the enemy can deny you farm and XP, and you’ll fall behind. If the enemy has strong all-in like Twitch or long-range like Caitlyn– you’ll never be able to farm.
• When paired with an all-in Support, avoid constantly pushing as your Support will be unable to all-in or engage as the enemy’s tower will be protecting them.

CSing

So the ADC role is one of the most item-reliant roles in the game. Without items, you’re not going to deal damage to anyone at all. This is why it is key that you get as much farm and gold as quickly as possible.

There are a few ways you can get yourself ahead of the curve of your opponents and get a high creep score. Firstly, don’t rely on your Support to set the minion waves up for you under your tower: do it yourself. You can do this by auto-attacking the back minions once, letting the tower hit the minion and then finishing them off with an auto. You can do this with your starter items, but depending on what item you buy on your first back, you might be able to kill it without auto-attacking it.

Another thing you can do is go into a custom game and do some training. Buy your starter items, and then head to lane. Try last hitting as many minions as you can before the 10-minute mark. This extra practice will help you in actual games to know when to last hit minions and when not. You can also practice wave management during the custom game too!

Map Awareness

Map awareness is crucial for ADC’s who want to climb and improve. If you have poor map awareness or poor awareness in general, you’re going to find it hard to lane and survive as you’ll die to every gank and not realise what is happening around you.

Having good map awareness is something that takes time and practice. You’re not going to be amazing and stop dying to ganks straight away, but there are a few things you can do to empower your map awareness.

Firstly, make sure the pings are turned on and are quite loud so you can see where your team pings, as this information can be highly valuable. Secondly, turn your map size up to the highest setting so you get as much map information as possible. And thirdly, make sure you check the mini map every time you last hit a minion. Auto the minion, kill it and then check the minimap.

Oh, and of course, make sure you buy plenty of wards and place them as the game develops, as they will help you spot the enemy Jungler before they pay you a visit.

If you have a dash ability like Zeri or Tristana, avoid jumping in unless you check the map first and know that the enemy is not nearby.

Hitting Power Spikes First

The final tip on our things to master is a pretty basic one, but something we see people failing to do often, which is hitting your power spikes first and playing around key power spikes.

The main power spikes in the laning phase are levels 2, 3 and 6. However, each champion has specific power spikes that they should play around. For instance, a Lucian level 2 power spike is stronger compared to a Kai’Sa’s level 2.

Hitting level 2 in the bottom lane is pretty simple. Because you share XP, you need to kill the first 9 minions in the minion wave, which is the first wave followed by 3 melee minions on the second minion wave. Once you get the level up, you could look to fight the enemy with the minion and level advantage.

Outside of this, hitting level 2 first gives you extra lane pressure and a chance to kill the enemy. Make sure you hit it before the enemy, and then position more forward up and harass the enemy with your level advantage.

Final Remarks

ADC’s rely a lot on their Support to help them throughout the laning phase: providing vision, helping with trading, assisting with last hitting and much much more. However, that doesn’t mean you can grip the bull by the horns and use everything we have suggested in this guide to help you on the road to victory and improve your LoL gameplay.

If you use everything we have talked about in this guide, then you’ll start to climb in no time at all. Remember to check out our friends at ONE Esports for more awesome League content.