League of Legends - How To Be The ADC Your Team Needs (Tips)

Hello friends! Today our LoL Elo Boost Team is talking about the marksm.. come on, the ADC role. The ADC is probably the most important player in the team: he deals the highest amount of sustained amount of DPS in late game team fights, has the strongest pushing potential during the game, and is the focus of both teams.

We all know the mantra “farm, don’t die, push”, but it’s not as easy.

During our LoL Duo Queue Boost sessions, we often see ADC mains play poorly because of bad positioning, wrong focus, bad map awareness or poor wave management. We know, playing ADC is hard - it’s the most micro intensive role after all, so we are helping you with this guide.

Early Laning Phase

During the early game, your goal is to farm up. ADCs are pretty weak before they get their items, so you need a decent amount of gold before the first team fight. Since during the 2016 pre-season games are incredibly short and snowbally, the last hitting efficiently is even more important.

According to our LoL Boost Team, you should have 100 cs in 12-13 minutes. It’s a lot, we know it, but it’s the most efficient way to climb the ladder, believe it or not. Like Doublelift said, “you can get out of Bronze just learning how to last hit”. So start practicing vs the AI until you won’t miss any cannon minion!

The trickiest part of the last hitting is probably farming under turret in the early game. Unless you are playing Kalista, you won’t be able to get every creep under tower with only a Doran unless you cooperate with your support. It’s easy and intuitive to last hit melee minions: just wait for the tower to hit them two times before autoing. Cannon minions are a little harder, but nothing impossible: caster minions are the big deal.

Our boosters who main support, during the LoL Duo Queue boost, let their ad carry secure every last hit with this easy trick: they wait for the turret to fire a single shot at the caster, then the support attacks it one time, and in the end, it’s really easy for the ADC to last hit. In Solo Q many players don’t know how to do it and miss cs under turret: don’t be like them and keep your farm up, always.

The next step to becoming the ultimate ADC is controlling the minion wave. There is a simple rule: if your wave has more minions, it will push toward the enemy turret. So if you want to push, be sure to hit minions faster than your enemy. However it’s often safer to let the wave freeze balancing the number of minions to zone the enemy: if you missed it, here’s a great guide on how to zone as support by our Elo Boost Team. Letting the enemy push is also a good idea since they will be more vulnerable to ganks and you will still be able to last hit under turret thanks to our tip.

However the most important factor to consider about wave management is that minions deal absurd damage early game. Their AI is pretty simple: if an enemy champion in their range hits an ally champion, they will switch their focus to the enemy. This means that if you start a fight early game in a big minion wave, you are likely to lose since 4 or 5 minions actually out damage your basic autos in the early game. On the other hand, according to our LoL Elo Boost Team the easiest way to get first blood in the bot lane is to bait a fight in a huge minion wave after pushing early.

Trading Efficiently

Now that you know how to farm and how to use the minion waves to your advantage, it’s time to learn how to trade. Top and mid are 1vs1 match ups, while in the bottom it’s a 2vs2. This means that you have to consider not only your positioning and cooldowns but also your support abilities and position in the lane! If the enemy ADC just used his spells to push the wave, before harassing him think about what his support can do.

On the other hand, if your support is in a good position for an engagement, spam pings, and try to make a play. Having a good synergy is hard, but not impossible. Try to adjust to your lane partner playstyle and cooperate with him to win every trade.

Our LoL Boost Team often sees that many ADC rely totally on their support for vision control. This is a huge mistake: it’s common knowledge that ad carries should focus on building damage early to be relevant, but vision control is probably more important!

Since the preseason changes, you have two free wards each from your trinkets: this means that at least two wards should be up every time the jungle is not visible. If you have 75 spare gold, buy a pink and deny vision: bush control is really crucial throughout the early game. As soon as your support gets a sightstone and you reach lv9, feel free to get the blue trinket to secure vision in a bigger area.

Teamfighting

Finally, let’s talk about teamfights. Your priority is to stay safe and to deal damage to the highest priority target WHILE STAYING SAFE. Let me repeat that a third time: stay safe, always! The enemy bruisers and assassins will try hardest to dive for you and burst you down, since you are really squishy: this means that you need perfect positioning in order to stay alive and be useful. Just hide behind your teammates until the enemy engages are wasted on your front line.

Our Elo Boost Team can’t stress it enough: as an ADC, it’s fine to attack the closest target if it’s the safest option. After all, it’s your job to kill the tank, and it’s even easier with the new item changes of the 2016 preseason (hello Lord Dominik's Regards).

This ends our guide on how to master the ad carry role. If you enjoyed it, visit our site in the next few days for more content!