The Beginner's Guide to Bottom Laning Phase as ADC

If you are new to the bot lane and are looking for a how-to in getting fed or feeding your ADC, look no further! This guide will give a holistic view on bottom laning phase from ADC/Support combinations to lane flow. To get started, here’s a brief view on each role in the bottom lane:

AD Carry (Marksman) – The player in this role is on a heavily auto-attack reliant champion who will deal constant damage per second (DPS) on their targets. Due to their build paths, they often do not have much health, and thus are extremely vulnerable to being killed quickly. As a result, their job is to safely deal as much damage as possible to the enemy team.

Support – While in lane, the job of this player is to do as much as possible to protect their ADC; while at the same time helping them secure kills should the opportunity arise. Good support champions usually possess a lot of crowd control (CC) effects that allow their ADC to both run away from and jump into fights depending on the situation.

Now that the roles are defined, it is appropriate to divide this guide into three sections, with one focusing on the ADC role, another on the Support role, and a final section combining the two and discussing different laning techniques and mechanics one can use. In this section, we will focus on the ADC.

AD CARRY:

Money Generation:
Like stated previously, your job in lane is to get as much gold as you possibly can so that you can deal more DPS. The primary ways that you can gain money while in the laning phase are as follows:

1. Farming Minions – You need to register last hits on the minions in the wave in order to get the money, so time your auto attacks properly! A method I like to use to judge when I should last hit minions is testing the strength of an auto attack on a full HP minion. That way, I know how much of the minion’s health bar dissipated and can then properly time future autos to get the last hit.

Some people have a notion that you need to conserve as much mana as possible in lane in order to use in fights. Athough having mana in lane is always a positive, you should not refrain from using abilities to CS if that is the only way you will get the gold. Again, you’re trying to get as much money as you can, and if burning some mana helps you reach that goal, go for it! Just be sure to save enough in case you need it to disengage or follow up your support in an engage.

2. Kill/Assist on Enemy Champions – If you and your support believe that fighting your lane partners will yield you a kill or force your opponents out of lane, then by all means go for it. Make sure that you and your support establish a clear focus when you’re fighting so that your damage is focused. Not focusing targets is one of the easiest ways to lose a perfectly winnable engage, and happens all the time. Communication is absolutely key in bot lane in order to do well, whether it be through pings or the chat.

3. Taking Tower – If you are able to oppress your opponents enough to be able to take the tower safely, then you should do it. This grants a sizable increase in gold for yourself as well as the rest of the team. This also denies the other team vision, which is paramount in Season 4. However, if you and your support feel that extending the laning phase will help you increase your gold margin over your lane partners, then that path can be taken as well. Just be sure that when you want to take the tower that you are able to safely do so.

Lane Control:
As the ADC, you will be the one dealing damage to minions in most cases, meaning that you will also control the flow of the lane. What this means is depending on how you deal your damage to the minion waves, you will either cause the line where minions clash to move towards you or your enemies’ tower. Being able to decide when to push a lane and when to freeze it is a key skill of strong ADC players.

Freezing Lane:
Typically when you want to freeze a lane is when you’re looking for the minions to push towards your own tower. This could be due to a couple of reasons:

1. Jungle Ganks – If the minion wave pushes up towards your tower, then the enemy lane will have to move towards your tower in order to gain experience and CS. If they are not properly warded, this leaves them open to a gank from your jungler. If you are looking to set up a gank with your jungler, then setting the minion wave to push towards you is the best way to make your enemy overextend.

2. Need to Farm Safely – If you find yourself behind in lane, then there is no reason for you to be pushing the wave to the enemy tower. If you let the lane push to your tower, then you are safe from being engaged on and can focus on getting as much money as possible through CS. Note that the enemy may still attempt to harass you.

3. Deny CS to your Enemy – When ahead, an effective method to increase your gold margin is to do what is called “zoning”. Essentially you place yourself in a position such that if the enemy ADC moves to farm minions, you can easily harass him and force him back. The reason you freeze your lane in this case is to create distance between the enemy ADC and their creep wave to deny them both experience and money, similar to what is shown here:

In this example, I am clearly ahead of Taric in lane, and as a result feel pretty confident that I can fight him in 1v1 scenario. Because of this, I can deny him farm by positioning myself the way I am here. If he were to attempt to CS any of these minions, I would have a very easy time harassing him and setting him even further behind by possibly forcing a recall.

How to Freeze:
Now that a few reasons for freezing lane have been laid out, it is also important to discuss how you go about doing it. Essentially you want to wait until right before a minion dies to register an auto attack on it. This is so you gain the money from killing the minion wave while dealing less damage to the wave than your opponent deals to yours . If your enemy is hitting each minion multiple times, the wave will naturally move towards you since there is simply less health on your minion wave than there is for his. When the lane is shoved into your tower, it should look something like this:

Notice how the minion wave will soon enter my tower range. By timing my AA’s correctly, I can get the money and XP from these minions without having to fear a gank from the enemy jungler or a tower dive from my lane opponents.

Pushing Lane:

You will also find that there are situations where pushing the lane towards the enemy tower is an appropriate course of action. There are a couple of reasons for doing this as well:

1. Want to Damage Tower – In order for you to safely damage their tower, you need to have your minion wave within the tower range. Therefore, shoving the wave into their tower is the only way to do it.

2. Denying CS – Another way to deny CS to your enemy is to indeed shove your minions into their tower. For example, if you know that the enemy ADC has recalled, shoving the lane into tower will leave nobody there to last hit them. As a result of the ADC recalling, they lost out on gold and experience that you gained by staying in the lane longer than they did.

3. You Want to Recall – When you feel like it is time to recall, you should always attempt to push your lane as far as possible. You should do this is so that the enemy ADC can’t shove the wave into your tower and make you lose out on money.

How to Push Lane:
Pushing lane is pretty easy; all you have to do is constantly be dealing damage to the wave whether it is through auto attacks, abilities, or in most cases both. Just make sure while you’re doing it that you’re registering as many last hits as possible to maximize your gold intake.

Harassing and Trading with Your Lane Opponent:
Another vital part of the laning phase is registering damage onto your enemies. You do this in order to increase your odds of success when you engage, or to effectively zone them out of their minion waves to deny experience and money. While harassing, it is of utmost importance that you attempt to not take as much damage as you deal. Losing trades is an easy way to need an early recall, which is not always a good thing. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind before you decide to harass:

1. Your AA Range vs. Their AA Range – If you know your auto-attack range, then you should know where you need to be to hit your enemies at the edge of that range. If the enemy ADC has a lower range than you do, this is an easy way to get harass. If you always position yourself such that they have to make a conscious engage onto you to deal damage, then you can easily poke them out of lane while staying safe. If you don’t know how to check your AA range, simply hit a and a circle will surround your champion like this:

If this does not come up for you when you attempt this, hit Esc → Interface → Ability/Attack Display → Check "Show Attack Range".

2. Your Stats vs. Their Stats – You need to constantly compare the damage and items that you have versus what your opponent has. If you’re behind a full item, then it is most likely not the best idea to try and outtrade them simply because they have higher stats than you. However, if you are even in stats or ahead of them, then you should try to poke them with abilities and AAs while taking as little damage as possible to force them out of the lane or set them up for a future engage.
3. What Your Support Can Do – Although this section is focused on the ADC, always remember there’s a support in bot lane to help you. If your support can land a CC ability that renders them unable to deal damage, this is your time to strike. You deal as much damage as you possibly can before that CC effect is gone, and you win a trade without taking any damage.

What to Do When You are Behind:
A common weakness of some League of Legends players is that they do not know how to approach the laning phase if they are behind gold wise. Should you find that your lane opponent has a substantial gold lead on you, these are a few of things for you to keep in mind:

1. DO NOT GO ON TILT – Breathe. It’s only a game! People have bad games all the time, there’s no need to get angry about it. Although it is natural to be frustrated when you feel powerless against your opponent, reel it in as much as possible. It will make the rest of the game a far more rewarding experience for everybody on your team, including yourself.

2. Do Not Shove Lane while your Opponent is there – Overextending yourself against a lane that has a gold lead on you is the easiest way to get yourself killed and extend said gold difference. When you are in this position you should let the wave push towards your tower as much as possible to prevent your enemy from engaging you. There are some exceptions to this rule such as when you know your opponents have recalled, but in general shoving your lane only makes it easier for your opponent to bully you if they are ahead. Remember the lane freezing technique, it is key in this situation!

3. Wait for your Opponent to Make a Mistake – A lot of times, you’ll find an opportunity when your opponent has messed up. This can be poor positioning, a poor engage, etc. When they do this, you must do as much as possible to punish them for it. However, this does not always mean you will kill them. You could deal a substantial amount of damage to them, forcing them to recall in order to regain health, all the while you are shoving lane into their tower, denying them additional money while closing the gold gap for yourself.

4. Buy Wards – I cannot stress this enough. Strong vision control easily wines games at all levels of play. Make sure you and your support place wards along common jungler paths in order to protect yourselves, and also alert your teammates of enemy champion positions.

Vision Control:
A huge pitfall of some League of Legends players is their aversion to contributing to vision on the map. Season 4 placed a huge emphasis on all players contributing to vision by buying wards, and some people have yet to adapt. Let me make this disclaimer now: Just because you are the ADC of your team DOES NOT MEAN that you are “exempt” from buying wards. Although your support will spend the most money on wards, you should still be buying them in order to help control the game.

If you go back and find that you have nothing to spend with 200g, pick up a Vision Ward and a Sight Ward if you have the item slots for them. Contrary to popular belief, wards are not a waste of money on ADCs. They help you just as much as they help the rest of the team. Some places where you may want to place wards to avoid jungle ganks are shown in the map of the Rift below. Note that some brushes have both blue and purple circles, meaning they will most likely be heavily contested brushes for vision.

Item Builds:
What items you build on an ADC depends on which one you are playing. A comprehensive infographic was recently posted to the League of Legends Subreddit which is an excellent start for those who are unsure of what to build:

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2d73u2/ad_carry_infographic_guides_images_within/

The general idea is that most ADCs share similar items; however the build path is altered based on their abilities. For example, there are some ADCs who deal substantial magic damage in addition to physical damage (i.e. Corki, Kog’Maw, Ezreal). For these champions, an item such as Trinity Force is better than say Youmuu’s Ghostblade simply because they deal more damage through their abilities than they do through sheer AAs. Champions that rely more on AAs (i.e. Vayne, Twitch) will make better use of Ghostblade rather than Trinity Force because their biggest source of damage comes from using as many auto-attacks as possible.

Runes:
What runes you use as an ADC are usually pretty standard; however there is some wiggle room. Take for example my own personal ADC rune page:

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/37998951#runes

Attack Damage Marks, Magic Resist Glyphs, and Health Seals are all pretty standard. One can switch out Health seals for Armor if they feel it is more useful, this is honestly just up to your own personal preferences. My Quintessences are also pretty standard, being 2 Attack Speed and 1 Attack Damage. Some people choose to run Life Steal quints if they feel that they need the extra sustain in lane, which is perfectly fine. Again, what you run in your runes is up to you, but it is recommended that you follow something somewhat similar to this when constructing ADC rune pages. You can always look to what the professional players run to help you construct your rune page as well!

Masteries:
The ADC mastery set is pretty standard, being 21/9/0 for the most part. To take a look at some different ADC mastery sets, you can view my personal masteries on my lolking page:

http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/37998951#masteries

The mastery set may change slightly based on how the ADC does most of their damage. For example, I use my ADC (Caster) page on champions like Corki, Lucian, Ezreal, etc. These champions tend to rely a bit more on their abilities to do damage as opposed to a champion like Tristana or Vayne who rely more on auto attacks; for them I use my ADC (AutoAttack) page.

Again, these pages can be customized in any way that you really feel comfortable with, however one should stick to something similar to these in order to be the most effective. You can again consult with what the pro League players run as masteries on certain champions if you aren’t sure what is best!

 

Wrap-Up:

This guide is meant to show newer ADC players some of the important aspects of being able to win the laning phase. It covers concepts such as last hitting, lane flow, item builds, and runes/masteries. For a more in depth look at these concepts, consult the text above. In the next section of this bottom lane guide, I will focus on Supports and what they need to do in order to help win the laning phase.