Back to Basics: Peeling

Carries are like oranges, except they're far more likely to scream at you and call you one thing or another if you don't peel. Now that the mandatory bad joke is out of the way, let's continue. 

In League of Legends you normally have your carry type champions, they're highly vulnerable and rely on kiting, positioning, and/or help from their team mates to survive so that they can put out as much damage as possible during a teamfight of any kind. These are normally your ADCs and AP casters and when it comes to team fighting they may look to you to protect them. However, to first know how to peel and what it takes to do so it helps to know what peeling is. 

Peeling 101

What is peeling? Probably an excellent question to ask if you don't know (there are no dumb questions after all, so I'm told.) 
Peeling is when players act to keep an enemy player away from an allied player. Simply put, you keep the big scary guy off of your damage dealers. Usually this means breaking thick tanks, bursty assassins, or fighter types off of your vulnerable back line with CC, dislocation, or damage. This is done to ensure the survival of the carry and thus the highest damage dealer(s) on the team, normally leading to more favorable team fights and skirmishes. 

How can one go about peeling? What tools can be used to keep pressure off of glass cannon targets? Well, numerous champions have different ways to go about peeling. Whether it be through tried and true CC , dealing absurd amounts of damage, giving the carry extra layers of protection, or displacing the enemy, you can normally find one way or another to try and peel for your carry. 

Creating Distance

Distance is the best friend a carry can have. It doesn't matter how many stacks a Nasus has, how many items Udyr finished, or how thick a Mundo's health bar is if they can't close the needed gap to cause damage in the first place.  Creating distance between the carry and the enemy is the basis of peeling. It's most common for distance to be created through CC (hard or soft) and displacement. While some carries and casters such as Ezreal, Caitlyn, Lissandra, Graves, and others have ways to dash about and move through walls to create a barrier between them and their pursuers, some carries rely on their team mates to create this same distance. Champions such as Janna, Alistar, or Thresh are excellent choices for helping displace the enemy or peel a carry away from danger. Here are some rather basic yet highly effective forms of displacement in use as peel. 

So here we have displacement being used to displace the enemy and push them beyond reach of the carry. Nasus, an extremely effective pick when Jinx is on the enemy team, is in pursuit. Jinx comes down towards the baron river entrance towards Janna. What Janna does is she positions herself directly next to Nasus, using her ultimate to push him over the Baron Nashor pit wall and thus putting a barrier between Nasus and Jinx. Easy peel for the carry, a very basic play that can be done with other champions that have similar displacement, such as Alistar. 

 

Here we have a similar example with Thresh and his lantern. Jinx, being once again on the run from Nasus, has the opportunity to make a quick escape thanks to Thresh placing the lantern nearby. Once she reaches and CLICKS  said lantern, she's taken over the wall into the dragon pit, where Thresh and herself have the chance to go up towards middle or down towards bot to safety. If Nasus has no vision in the river, he's left with at best a guess to which way they went, and even if he's able to choose the correct path, it's unlikely he'll catch them in time thanks to Jinx's own traps, slow, and the CC provided by Thresh. 

Distance doesn't have to be created through displacement however. Slows, snares, stuns etc (Hard/Soft CC) are a great way to help keep a problematic champion away from their targets. Janna has the ability to knockup and slow others, the hook from Thresh can be used to pull away and momentarily stun enemy champions, Nami's bubble and tidal wave can create some much needed hard CC and her E can help to slow pursuit. The list goes on, many supports and champions in general have forms of CC that can be used to help keep an encroaching enemy at bay. 

Building to Handle Problem Champions

If you've been playing League or any MOBA for a while, you take notice of who the problems on the enemy team will turn out to be. You have an Ashe for ADC and the enemy has an Akali? Problem. Master Yi is 10/0/10 at 30 minutes with numerous feral flare stacks? Problem. Nasus sitting at 400 stacks already at 20 minutes? You see where I'm going with this. When you have someone that is starting to get big on the enemy team, be prepared to handle them first, especially if it's someone that can chase your carry without much concern for their health pool or for how long it will take them to decimate your backline.

If you have a more fragile champion, such as an Akali or Syndra, presenting the largest threat then be prepared to deal with them through hard CC and high burst. Maokai has four thousand health and won't leave your carry alone? Popping a Syndra or Viegar ultimate on top of him won't do you much good, save those abilities for softer targets and simply help to keep the thick meat shield tank away from their target with hard and soft CC. But what if you find you may not have the tools needed in your champion's kit to handle an issue? There are some items you can build to help peel even harder for others. Let's take a quick look at a few and their uses. 

Mikael's Crucible

This is a wonderful item when facing hard CC on the enemy team, especially against champions that rely on said CC to close the gap and decimate carries. Or maybe against champions who look to lock down a single target pretty hard, such as Leona or Lissandra. A quick click and the active will clear any hard or soft CC from the target and give them a heal to boost. Use it wisely and you could ruin the fight for the enemy team and give their high value target a chance to escape. 

 

Frost Queen's Claim

With a skillshot active that gives out an AoE slow that's pretty hard hitting, Frost Queen's Claim can be a great way to keep targets at bay from a distance. While it won't prove useful for stopping high damage enemies once they'are already on top of their targets, it can help to keep them and possibly numerous threats away from the enemy. 

Twin Shadows

Similar to Frost Queen's Claim in that it does provide a slowing effect, Twin Shadows can actually be difficult to use in the way one intends, but it has the potential to make an impact from a much greater distance. Using the activate to help slow down an enemy champion from a shorter distance can be the safest way to play with it. However, you may not always be within arm's reach to use it safely, so should you decide to use it from a distance be sure the enemy is not too far away (they only search for 6 seconds before returning to the user) and that other enemy champions are not already closer, as they'll just absorb the slow themselves and waste the active. 

Conclusion

So we have a pretty basic game mechanic that is infinitely important, keeping your carries safe through chaotic teamfights can be the difference between an ace for you or the enemy team, a baron or an inhibitor. While you can't always keep them safe 100% (some do like to be within spitting range of the enemy team after all) I hope this guide proves helpful when trying to keep your squishy friends alive through fights and carrying games by being their protector. They won't always thank you, but the victory and the LP gains are sometimes thanks enough. Thanks for taking the time to read over this guide, here's wishing you the best of luck on the fields of justice.