A Grandmaster Guide to ADC fundamentals (Part 1)
Hello fellow Wild Rifters! My name is Socky, and I am currently a Grandmaster ADC player in League of Legends: Wild Rift. Many of people asked me “Socky, How do you play ADC that good and get Grandmaster? What techniques did you use? How did you revolve around bad teammates so hard?” Well my friends, the issues of playing Wild Rift isn’t just blaming your good ol’ teammates all the time; but rather focus on yourself as an individual player.
This guide will be covering everything I have learned about playing ADC (mostly based on my experience in Grandmaster) , what to work on, improve on, and continue to learn. It will primarily be macro fundamentals and ideas until you have perfected these concepts. Once you reach the higher elos, then you should work on micro mechanics and fine tuning them. The main resources will be content from pro players/streamers, personal experience, top player streams and VODs, and high level competitive gameplay. This guide is usually for players with game knowledge; however, beginners can also take a look at this guide and apply the mechanics and fine tune their skills in their elo respectively. For the higher skilled players, this might just be a refresher for you, or a fine tune to your already established “wow you’re so good” skills.
Note that some concepts will be included with a video example from a very good ADC player from League of Legends xFSN Saber, and his videos are very educational and helpful. They are one of the reasons why I overcame my struggles as an ADC and have my own experience to why I was able to climb and escape my “elo”.
Macro Intro
We will start with Macro fundamentals. Macro is the decision making you do during a game, your knowledge of the game (game sense), how you use this knowledge, and how consistent it is to replicate. The core macro concepts we will begin with are map awareness, match up awareness, team fight awareness, and decision making in the various parts of the game.
Map Awareness Concepts
Main Advantage/Disadvantage:
This concept is about the people who are currently present or able to be present at a moment’s notice to the fight. How does this work? Whichever team has the most people wins the fight. An Exception to this concept is the one shot clause. If you are able to one shot someone to even the numbers then play the fight out.
Implementing this concept:
Look at the map. Count the people who can help. If not even or more numbers, just don’t fight. Fighting with less numbers against more numbers is self-explanatory. It is a doomed fight.
Tracking Champions/What’s happening at your disposal:
Video Examples:
xFSN Saber: 2 tips for climbing as ADC
Rule 1: Don’t Hit Tower
Why? When you hit a tower, you will die. Hitting a tower means the enemy team looks to engage you. You can hit the tower WHEN it is free to hit. Examples of this are: you can beat their engagement, you have man advantage, enemy team can’t stop you i.e. no engagement.
My rule of thumb for this is treat hitting the tower like starting dragon. Do you want to do the drag all by yourself and risk being contested? Or do you want to have a team as insurance to secure that drag without fear of being contested? Answering these questions will make you think: team means insurance. This is what the game is about. Teamwork.
Rule 2: Don’t commit to Doomed Fight
What is a doomed fight? Man disadvantage, bad engagement from your team, someone gets caught out and gets one shot or near one shot that way they provide no value to the incoming teamfight. You cannot save a doomed fight unless someone or you make a huge play that evens the disadvantage your team has i.e. one shot enemy carry or huge ability like 5 man Sera charm, 5 man knockup, 5 man stun, etc. Commit means you can’t get away or you can or will die. If the fight turns from doomed to good, then you can commit. How to make it look good? Kite it out, force the enemy to expend resources so you can dump all your resources onto them.
Rule 3: Do not DIE
Dying with your team is bad, getting caught out is bad. Why? Dying means you can’t play. As an ADC this is the most important concept you have to grasp. If you’re dead you can’t farm, you can’t pressure, you can’t help your team. No farm means no scale, no pressure means no control over the game, no help means your team flames you , but really if you’re not alive for the fight then the man disadvantage concept appears.
Wave Management
Wave comes, look at map see if you can push. Who from where. Can the enemy threaten you. What are the enemies doing with their timings. What are solo lanes doing. If waves are shoving into them, they need to fix waves. Then look at jungle and support as threats if solos can’t come. Prepare defense to who’s showing up. If you can’t defend then afk under tower, you can’t farm.
When in laning phase, if jungle is weaker than enemy jungler then perma shove. Can you leave the lane and come back to get wave under tower? When ask this question, take a step back and look at your laning state, and where your wave is. Always if possible, you want to shove in the wave before you roam. If you do not have shoving power or are too low to finish shoving the wave, leave the wave as is and leave. Since it is more important to leave the wave to come back to than risk getting caught out unable to crash it, risking enemy team freezing. As this will allow you to crash the wave under enemy tower before backing or roaming, so then when you get back to lane, the wave is hopefully crashing at your tower to collect. So, before you roam, look at the position of the wave and the size, if the positioning of the wave is under your tower, then look at the wave size, does it have 4 minions? If so, is it then freezable, is it worth freezing instead of letting it crash, etc. As, always if you can freeze, you don’t only help yourself but your jungle in the long run. Yet, if the wave just crashed onto your tower, the wave is spent and collected, you shove the next wave that comes in under tower and roam, unless you are able to freeze with the next upcoming wave. Remember, when in doubt, SLOW PUSH, because you want to build up a wave to win a 2 v 3 against enemy jungle, and give you time to crash the wave to allow you to back. The longer it takes for them to clear the wave, the more CS they can miss under turret and more time you have to get back to lane.
CS’ing
Goal: Reach 10 cs per minute, if possible. 1k gold per minute on Wild Rift, if possible.
Habit goal: Every time I last hit, look at map. Every time I go for minion, look at support.
Every time you push the wave, look at map. What can I get from my timing.
Fight breaks out, help or go catch wave. Can your champion do something in fight? If you can’t help auto go farm.
After using timing/fight, fix waves.
Timing uses: ward, roam, base, shift to a lane, hover a lane, invade jg, fight, skirmish, etc https://youtu.be/BAg0dkLYZhE
Laning Phase
2 vs 2
Look for your combo off sup combo and if you can’t find it then stop. Watch your support and if they are leaving then you leave too. When you do a flash play, they have to instantly die or you’re griefing. If they don’t insta die then u cannot flash. If jg is bot side, playing to kill is griefing. The difference is intent. Do not bait yourself to kill when kill is not guaranteed or kill means support dies with you. You play to pull the jg and not to kill. Play to bait until you see the person you’re baiting show up. Example is if your team is top side, you are playing to pull the enemy bot side so your top side can win. Vod review important concept is think about the decision making so you know how you are going to play in the future.
When you play aggressive, ping your support and play aggressive with them. That’s a good example of a synced 2v2 lane. You always want to play around the support as they are 8 out of 10 your win conditions in dragon lane.
Lane mechanics
Skill shots: run perpendicular to target, and make sure to aim at the feet (more details later). Make it look like you aren’t targeting them. Misdirection. Fire when they don’t expect it.
Everytime you cs, you must look at enemy support and adc, and every time your minion is in cs range, you must look at your support and identify punish without being punished. The goal isn’t to punish every minion, it’s to be looking every minion so you are aware. When there’s a huge wave crashing into them, you can punish easily. If they don’t want anything, it’s hard to hit them. Support dies it’s fine because you can get solo xp and gold. Look at map fast when trying to do something. Finish 2v2, check sums.
So first of all for bot lane, the most important thing you need to understand is that there are 3 different kind of bot lane set ups you can run:
Poke 2. Sustain 3. All-in, this somewhat works like rock paper scissors since
Sustain> Poke> All-in.
Now when you are picking your bot lane and you are looking to counter pick you can have this guideline in your mind and you should usually be able to win the match up.
Pokes: Caitlyn, Ezreal, Varus, Jhin, etc (Think of champs who skirmishes with their abilities more than often.)
All-ins: Draven, Graves, Corki, twitch, etc. (Pretty much your average aggressive bot laners.)
Sustain: this one is mostly decided by your support not really the ad but generally in a sustain lane you want something that can farm up and hypercarry late so: vayne/kog are the main ones.
Now whats your role in the laning phase as the adc? well it is true that the support is the person that wins botlane, 99% of the time the better support will win the lane. However by being a better ADC you can't win the lane by yourself but you CAN make it go even. If you know you have the losing match up in lane you can play fairly passive and in low elo people never get perfect cs, if you can get near perfect cs you will outfarm their adc or at least stay on the same farm even whilst having to deal with their better support zoning you. On the same note if your support gets caught it is your job to unload all you got on their adc to force them to get on your support or go on you, this coupled with your passive playstyle will turn the lane into a farm lane. This is why longer ranged adcs/ adc that can do alot of damage by themselves are better in soloq. Long range adc have it really easy to turn losing-lanes into a farm lane and adc with heavy burst (draven, corki) can easily out trade weaker laners without much help of the support.
Now as the adc it is also your job to control the minion wave. Although a good support will still have a impact on determining if the wave is being pushed or not, generally it is the adc's job. If you are trying to turn the lane into a farm lane, you have to mirror what their ADC is doing (again generally easier to do on a long range ad) if they are trying to trade with you either back up or trade the same number of Auto attacks, if they constantly pushing the wave you want to push it as hard as they are doing (so for every auto/ spell they do on your wave you want to match it on their wave) This will freeze the minion wave and the optimal place to do this is near your tower in a place that you can stand under your tower range whilst the minions aren't in range of being hit by the tower. This will force them to be more passive since they are at risk of being ganked. Also since you are close to your tower you can use your trinket on the bush closer to you without worrying of being ganked, this gives you a fair amount of lane control and your support still hasnt had to do much. This is pretty much what you'd so in a sustain lane as well, just that you can have your support heal you if you get damaged.
If you happen to be matched with the better support in your team and you are winning lane, you will want to do 2 things depending on your adc choice if you are a long range adc you will want to push the lane as hard as possible to get it under their tower. This makes them more likely to miss farm and get you ahead in cs. This means that your support should be able to get bush control (i'll talk about how important this is if i make a support laning guide, it affects the support more than the AD) and that since your support has bush control you should be putting your wards in the river/ tri bush to avoid ganks. Since you are a long range adc you should be able to auto attack the tower whilst their adc struggle with last hitting if they come to close auto attack them whilst dancing around the tower range (if you are not good at saying wether something is in tower range or not practice in custom games- the range indicator for towers is shown there) If you manage to poke them enough to force them out of lane you should be able to get bot tower and dragon fairly easily, this will sling shot your team around 2k gold ahead in the laning phase. More if you manage to get kills.
If you are playing an all- in adc however you have to change your playstyle. Generally you will want to freeze the lane in the way i described it above, and slow push it to the tower. Slow pushing means that you are killing minions slightly faster than their adc kills yours, this should build up a huge wave that you can push their tower with and even tower dive them. Also this means if they come close to counter push your wave you should be trying to all in them and get kills. This will completely zone them out and make the process of freezing right out of tower range a lot more difficult since they will have to deal with a big-big minion wave at this point and they will struggle to keep it frozen out of their tower range. You can also to do this on long range adcs although it is not as necessary. Longer range adcs like caitlyn have no trouble outpushing the enemy adc since they can just zone with range rather than with the threat of an all in. Also longer range adc generally want to get the tower fast vs trying to force an all in. To get a tower faster you should push push push and force them to miss the cs under tower, rather than slow pushing and giving the enemy lane a chance to trade with you, generally longer range adc lose trades if both ad's trade the same number of autos. You have to abuse your range to make sure you get more auto attacks on them than they do on you.
Mid Game Decision Making
Important Concept: Make money when you can make money. Maximizing income. Decision making is when you choose to help a team or make money.
Decision making to fight: Who can carry the fight if you show up. If the answer is no one, don’t go and shove waves or take camps. Going to help at the cost of a farm. If you go, you need to have an impact. When chasing a kill, if it looks clear you have no impact, then auto default makes money.
Shove waves before basing. When in doubt, farm. When you see someone split from the enemy team, force mid because man advantage. If you can’t force, match the split push. Man advantage doesn’t work when your team has no threats left and the enemy team has all theirs up. Basis of this concept is if you show up, does it alter the outcome to favor your team. You go to help, you hover. Hover the mid lane if a fight is starting mid. If no fight, trace back top to clear waves.
When something bad happens, run, don’t contribute to their int. Get as much as you can from every situation. Consistently making money means you can carry later. If you haven’t pushed it into the tower, you’re losing minions.
When taking fights, know what your limits are and what you can get and then get out.
Catch support always running on the inside path of the lane to cut off retreat to tower because shorter distance. Set up is wave in middle. If you aren’t safe on the inside path, you’re not safe on outside path unless you have escape or teammates coming.
Map awareness 3v4, 3v5. Know who’s coming and where. Winning numbers down is to kite the people chasing. Teamfight rules: track threats always. Who can kill you before hitting the closest guy.
3 Habits
Ganks habit: When you’re receiving a gank, check for enemy jungle. Bot numbers. It’s not man advantage until you’re sure of the positions of all members in the game.
Prediction Habit: I want to do something, check for enemy engages. Examples: clear wave, who’s forcing on me, hit tower, what’s the enemy response. Then decide whether you can do what you want based on this information.
Teamfight habit: Before fight, figure out what to do mechanically, what can kill you, and what your response to it is. Look for numbers. What’s the point of the fight. Pointless and losing? Kite
ADC improvement
Any time they want a minion, it's an opportunity to do something. A B C waves, 1st wave A, 2nd wave B, cannon wave C,3. 4th wave is lvl3. When very close hook from thresh, trap thresh since hook pulls once into thresh. 2v2 starts, hit closest guy till you can hit adc, or finish support. Don’t hit minions when disengaging. Hp advantage let’s you freeze wave. No flashes means ganks will happen bot side, so look at map every time you kill minions. When your support is throwing, can you cc the follow up. Glance at map and determine number before something happens. Base in a safe spot. New wave check map. Anytime enemy team has roam timer ping mid. I want to do something who’s missing. Once identified then do your something. Default to a lane to make money. Everytime you kill wave, think what’s happening next. Think to push wave into tower or get as much money as possible. At the point where adc can kill frontline, then you can win game.
When fight breaks out, go help and think if you can do anything and numbers, if not then go make money. Counter what the enemy is doing. For example they push mid, catch mid. You can’t win the game until you can kill frontline. Make money until you do damage. Teamfight habits: must be 5v5 or better. Anytime you want to hit someone, where is rest of team. 5v5 went wrong, try to stop baron. If not on baron go make money. Check map, teammates positioning and identify 5v?. Late game is don't die and prio mid. Teamfight awareness, who are the threats and what are the threats. Perma stare at threats until no threats. You can do objective based on numbers and carries alive. Can they catch the carries when they’re doing baron. If no then it’s winning. Recognize 4v5 carries numbers then decide winning or not. Identify the meta and counter the meta habitually. For example roam kingdom means establish roam map habits.
Identify the threats. Make sure you know or can guess where they are.
Stare at the threats. Then find solutions to threats. Read when they will use it.
Climbing
Watch your vods and blame on yourself. Mindset to vod review is I am extremely bad and I want to be better and not follow this path again. Identify a few main problems and focus on fixing those.
Goal is to improve autopilot through habits. Example is jg and mid are or coming bot and you are fighting for no reason. The game is very snowball oriented. One int leads to a rough time and incentivizes more inting.
Resources (xFSn saber’s guides for adc mains, a playlist with his resources are really good! You don’t have to watch every single one of his videos, but rather the videos that might improve your struggle currently as an ADC main.)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt8ejhkj5FNxCLQ3CR4W5XxoO44dCE6-6
