How to improve my adc

scc·Apr 10, 2019·2 votes·6,604 views

I am currently D4 and P4 last season. I'm starting to play normals and flex to improve my adc but I don't know how I can improve. I think my map awareness is good and I know lane priority and I help my jg when I do. I play my lanes very passive and I don't think I'm verying good at trading. Another problem that I think I have is that I don't know how to position myself in teamfights. I think I'm doing less damage than I should especially when I'm ahead(I don't know what to do either when I'm ahead unless my team is making calls). I play lucian kaisa vn and jinx. This is my first time posting here! Please help me outt!!;(

43 Comments

ChaosReynApr 10, 20193 votes

All jokes aside now...the two biggest things you need to keep in mind with ADC is CS and positioning.

I stopped playing adc for the most part tbh, but I main both halves of bot. As adc, your right click is pretty much binary, free damage on demand...but you have to stay safe to supply that damage, and you need a boatload of gold to supplement yourself with items to make it matter. You're only going to get the positioning part down with practice against other players...but you can improve your cs game by simply playing against a bot and focusing on nothing except cs.

The maximum cs you can get by 10 minutes is between 107-114. If you're looking to improve your cs with a (1v1 custom) bot game method, aim for having no less than 100 by 10m (without offing the bot...the bot is simply there to imitate poke pressure). Against a bot, it should be more than possible...right? :P

this will help your farm game become almost automatic once you do it enough times, you will know your last hit potential, and if you feel like adding to it, there are a couple other things you can throw in such as not buying items to make last hitting more difficult, or alternating between last hitting one wave while hard shoving the next.

This is probably one of the few things custom bot games are good for, and I can promise you it will translate to better cs in games, meaning faster power spikes and a good chance to push an advantage.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Okay thanks! I’m going to spam some bot games and practice csing. I have a big problem csing cannons under turret any suggestions?

GaliöApr 10, 20192 votes

You can improve your adc by playing taric and giving them heals and free armor

Or play Janna and give a shield and bonus AD

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

Janna shield no longer gives AD, they instead moved the extra damage to her W and had it scale with her Movespeed.

But you can play Lulu to give them a shield and a rapid-fire Pixie.

AHarmlessTacoApr 10, 20192 votes

ACTIVE: Janna shields the target allied champion or herself for 5 seconds, decaying over the duration after 0.75 seconds.

While the shield holds, her target gains bonus attack damage.

BONUS AD: 10 / 17.5 / 25 / 32.5 / 40 (+ 10% AP)

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Sorry for the confusion. I meant to say that I’m the noob adc that can’t position myself in team fights in diamond Elo. I do enjoy playing Janna tho she is fun imo

GaliöApr 10, 20191 votes

I'm sorry I was memeing.

I knew what u meant i just dont have an answer.

Luckily (most) marksmen have the same play patterns so if you just practice a couple you'd get a hang of the trading/farming patterns.

sccApr 10, 20192 votes

Keep practicing! Maybe one day I’ll become the faker of adc;)

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

Do you watch any pro games?

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Never before but recently I have watched some lck I think. I find them to be kind of boring.. but if that helps I will definitely spend more time watching pro games

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Never before but recently I have watched some lck I think. I find them to be kind of boring.. but if that helps I will definitely spend more time watching pro games

There are a few things you can do. I am not a fan of Uzi at all, but his positioning is absolutely immaculate. If you can watch some of his highlights for team fights or laning (I suggest the whole game but highlights can help some), you can see absurdly good positioning in both. He makes a lot of errors at big moments, which is why they lose all the time at big events, but overall, his positioning is soooo good. LPL region, RNG team, Uzi player

Ruler from GenG in the LCK. Guy is a 1v9 monster. His team is horrendous compared to its former glory, but Ruler is still incredible. You can see how to play a lot of hyper carries from him.

Deft is amazing all around. From laning to hyper-carry to utility style ADC to even mages, he can play well. He is on KZ in the LCK this year but was previously on KT last year.

Teddy on SKT T1 in the LCK. Probably the most ridiculous ADC of modern day. He carried JinAir (as bad as they were) to some victories in previous years that they did not otherwise deserve and now is on an amazing team.

Other videos to watch are by Skill-Capped Challenger on YouTube, or anything by JaySea. JaySea is a top laner but the overall premise of macro play can be seen in his videos and Skill-Capped Challenger is probably the single best way to improve your game if you need some good tips.

The key to watching the pro games is not trying to do what they do in the sense of playing Ezreal and landing 87% of your skillshots. What I would suggest is watch their back timings (such as on a canon wave or after a good trade). Track the enemy JG based on champions and pathing and when enemies are missing they seem to have a six-sense about when they are about to be ganked. Commonly, this is a top laner and is called top-laner sense but happens in bot lane a lot. The specific timings to ward or to rotate to dragon or setup control wards around enemy ward timers to clear their wards and make your lane more gankable.

The little things can make life easier on you. Your JG or teammates may not even be good enough to take advantage of them (though in platinum or diamond they should do fine) but it will still give them that opportunity to do so which will improve your overall ability and winrate.

For Trading, you can focus on when they trade. Which, everyone will tell you is based on when abilities are down right? But there is more to it than that. Specific abilities are easier to punish than others and safer as well. A good and quick example:

Enemy JG just attempted a gank on top lane. As that is happening, the enemy Thresh misses a Q and a Tristana leaps forward at the same time (unlikely, I know, but the point remains). You are almost certainly safe unless the mid laner was seen heading to bot lane. Great time to punish the mistakes. Even if it is just Thresh missing their Q, it is punishable.

Learning the specific timings and your ability to be punished by a roam or gank can help a lot, even if you believe you are actively considering it already, it is good to polish up on.

The team fight positioning, especially, is extremely important. That is how you maximize your damage and stay alive. That is why I suggest some pro games or even some streaming such as Doublelift or any of the ones named above. Their positioning is going to be excellent almost always.

The Skill-Capped Challenger series is really good at showing ADCs where to position based on their champion and range and abilities up and team comps. They should still have some videos up about those specific things.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Thank you for the post! I will try to look for gameplays of these players and improve myself! I always try to find streams of adcs but haven’t had luck with it. The only one I can find is t1. I watch a lot of skill capped videos and probably all of the recent ones and I do find a lot of helpful tips and I think it actually helped me improve a lot. I find myself to be bad at punishing for example when thresh q is down I dash in and trade and I end up losing because thresh turns around and smacks me with his auto with his adc and my support is still behind me. What should I do in this case? Something else that I learned from skill cap is autoing the adc when they go for last hits. I fail 70% of the time! I’m either too far and end up getting autoed and I’m too scared to go forward and trade or they grab their last hit Im out of range and their sup smacks me in the head with an auto.

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Thank you for the post! I will try to look for gameplays of these players and improve myself! I always try to find streams of adcs but haven’t had luck with it. The only one I can find is t1. I watch a lot of skill capped videos and probably all of the recent ones and I do find a lot of helpful tips and I think it actually helped me improve a lot. I find myself to be bad at punishing for example when thresh q is down I dash in and trade and I end up losing because thresh turns around and smacks me with his auto with his adc and my support is still behind me. What should I do in this case? Something else that I learned from skill cap is autoing the adc when they go for last hits. I fail 70% of the time! I’m either too far and end up getting autoed and I’m too scared to go forward and trade or they grab their last hit Im out of range and their sup smacks me in the head with an auto.

You are welcome. :) Any time. And yeah, SKT is super popular but there should be plenty of those players or teams around. Teddy is a beast though and much can be learned from his gameplay if you can take the time to analyze it. I improved insanely fast macro wise by watching professional games. Strategy and tactics come naturally to me so that was my first focus when I started the game. My mechanics are behind it by a lot.

As for your support not going in with you... This depends on the support, but generally those are trash supports. If you are literally 1v2'ing just try to farm up and not take any real risks as you will just feed. A good support will punish bad plays by the enemy (many times harder than you do) unless they are purely defensive supports (which rarely exist now).

As for punishing last hits, yes, that is good. The key to this (I think they made a couple of videos about how to do this properly actually), is your positioning. So, for example, say you are using Caitlin and they are using Lucian. You have such a massive range advantage you can easily punish his autos. He has to get closer to CS and you can stand in the minions and punish him so long as you leave a safe way to escape. Keep careful track of his abilities, of course and more importantly any CC from the support. But, say it is a Lucian/Thresh lane (basically just a kill lane), you can carefully place yourself outside of Q's line of sight and you can more heavily punish Lucian when Q is down as well. Lucian absolutely cannot fall behind so he has to keep up in CS. This makes him very easy to punish with range. Same idea for Thresh's auto-attacks as well. If he is coming to auto attack you, you can auto Lucian and back off (especially with Fleet Footwork or if you have your 6th shot) and as Thresh is coming in, you stay out of range and get a free shot on him as well. If your support is worth anything, they get in free damage too.

It is all about getting the right positioning. And say Thresh tries to stay in the minions to keep you out of range. You still have much more range than Thresh and can poke him all day. Your support probably can too. Without a map it is hard to show you exactly what I mean, but it is entirely based on the range and abilities of the champion and the match-up. Very few are totally one-sided to where you cannot punish them. Some are, but not too many.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Thanks again! I think I’m going to go back and watch the videos again. Say if I was the Lucian how can I punish Caitlyn for csing or should I not try? I have tried to e in and combo on her but sometimes she just backs off and I can’t event get in range to q and she just autos me

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Thanks again! I think I’m going to go back and watch the videos again. Say if I was the Lucian how can I punish Caitlyn for csing or should I not try? I have tried to e in and combo on her but sometimes she just backs off and I can’t event get in range to q and she just autos me

Lucian is very aggressive. You have to learn when to burst in and when to all-in. Against Caitlyn, you are going to have a hard lane. She can punish you really well and counters Lucian in lane pretty hard. You need a very good support that enables you to all-in to beat her. A Thresh, Braum, Leona, someone that can catch her and you can dash in and slaughter her. Your W can poke her some but with the new mana cost, it is harder to do. If you use it, try to do when you can get a CS or two at the same time. Let her make a misstep and you can punish her pretty hard as you burst harder than she does (assuming the nerfs did not change that? I am not an ADC main so I am not positive here). But, it is not an easy lane. Basically, you need to be able to close the gap and do a lot of damage quickly. Hopefully, you get a good support in these cases.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Okay, I see... I'm going to play more normals before playing ranked again. I really feel bad for some supports that has to suffer playing with me..

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Okay, I see... I'm going to play more normals before playing ranked again. I really feel bad for some supports that has to suffer playing with me..

Ehh. I doubt you are bad. Your match history looks good. The fact that some of your supports do not buy Oracle is kind of depressing for Diamond. -_- That has nothing to do with you. They are just bad.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Thank you!!:)) I get bad supports sometimes and it's just kinda unlucky I guess.. I definitely have things too that I need more improvements on tho. Thank you for the posts. They are helpful!

SyrileApr 11, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Thank you!!:)) I get bad supports sometimes and it's just kinda unlucky I guess.. I definitely have things too that I need more improvements on tho. Thank you for the posts. They are helpful!

Everyone can improve. :) But yeah.. having a support that will not help you or even provide you with proper vision is pretty harsh and should never happen in that elo. :/

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

Peeps? The OP is about playing an ADC. Specifically, they list several ADCs they main?????

sccApr 10, 20192 votes

They didn’t read my post!;(

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

we were trolling. :P

you have to deal with a bit of that whenever you ask something on a forum before you can get a real answer. xD

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

we were trolling. :P

you have to deal with a bit of that whenever you ask something on a forum before you can get a real answer. xD

[sona-playing]

ChaosReynApr 10, 20192 votes

[leblanc-funny]

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Another thing that I have noticed in my game is that when I play jinx my damage is always high and consistent and I’m useful in team fights When I play Kaia’s and vayne I don’t do damage even when the game is even

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

I hope this makes sense

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Another thing that I have noticed in my game is that when I play jinx my damage is always high and consistent and I’m useful in team fights When I play Kaia’s and vayne I don’t do damage even when the game is even

Those two are very aggressive hyper-carries. Jinx is easier to position but Kai'Sa and Vayne require a lot of constant mobility if you want to be very good with them.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Yeah.. maybe they aren’t for me and I should try out some other adcs. I honestly find myself catching skillshots sometimes and I feel bad for my supports ;/

SyrileApr 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Yeah.. maybe they aren’t for me and I should try out some other adcs. I honestly find myself catching skillshots sometimes and I feel bad for my supports ;/

Or just practice more. If they feel unnatural to you, you can switch off of them or practice them more and more. There are definitely certain types of champions that feel super natural to me and others that feel horrible, haha And many times it has nothing to do with difficulty. The previous LeBlanc felt insanely natural to me, as an example. While Lux and Annie (two of the easiest champions) feels horrible to me because they are soo boring to me. :/

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Practice practice practice! I get flamed when I play Annie. I miss all my ults;(

SyrileApr 10, 20192 votes

{quoted}

Practice practice practice! I get flamed when I play Annie. I miss all my ults;(

Haha I am garbage with Annie. Mostly because I played her like three times in ARAM and that is all other than when I very first started the game I played a handful of games on her. She is too dull.

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

Jinx is honestly a safe-ish pick, and a strong hypercarry. If you like her and her kit, you can look into playing people like KogMaw, Caitlyn, Varus, or Ashe. If nothing else, these will help to sort of narrow down exactly where in your jinx game your strength lies (in the AS, the range, the damage ratio, or the skillshots) and which you need help with.

The fact that you can't do as well on Vayne and Kaisa already screams "positioning flaw" but since you already know that, it helps you more easily spot those areas of "oops I just inted" and weed them out. Positioning takes practice.

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

I'll be home at like 10:30ish EST. If you'd like, I'll run a couple normal with you so that I can view the replays, and try to highlight some focal points for you. I'm not a coach...but then again, I also don't get paid for it. If tonight won't work, I have tomorrow off completely. Name a time.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

I would love to get some feedbacks on my gameplay and thanks! I’m really bad with time zones but I think est is my time zone.. 10:30 would work great for me! It’s 4:53pm right now where I live

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

then we're in the same time zone. Just add me and I'll accept when I get back home.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

I really like playing varus too but I haven’t played him this and last season because other champions seems better to play. I am absolute garbage with Ashe and cait tho.. I never really tried kogmaw. I love champions like vayne Kaisa and Lucian but I think it’s pretty obvious that I suck at these kind of adcs;( And I DO a lot of what you talked about “oops I just intend” or “I could’ve played better, why didn’t I use flash” I see my mistakes but I don’t seem to learn from it..

ChaosReynApr 10, 20191 votes

well, you already mentioned you like to play passively. Cait is a very strong poke champion...which means you have to play a bit more aggressively in the early game to bully the enemy team out of lane. That's probably why you don't like her as much.

Kog utilizes most of the same items as Jinx, and plays in a similar sort of way. You'll probably like him...but read the part below here about Ashe. It applies to Kog too.

Varus has some build diversity now: you can play the gunblade/AS version, which plays sort of like Jinx can, or you can play the Lethality version, which basically puts all of your damage into your Q and takes literally 65% of someone's hp in one shot if you get going. The lethality build is the safer build...but also the harder build to use, since you're all in on an ability you can easily miss. It's low risk/medium reward on a timer. The AS build relies more on positioning, but is by far the more destructive build. It's medium risk/high reward.

Ashe builds in a lot of the same ways Jinx does, but her early game has less tools for escape. The reason you're doing bad with her is likely because of your passive playstyle again: if you get caught, you want to escape and reset. With Ashe, if you get caught, it's often times better to try to just fight it out. Not just stand in one place - obviously you wanna stutterstep - but you're going to accomplish more just committing if they're on top of you than you will trying to get back to safety. This also applies to Kog, Vayne, and Kaisa.

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

I think I’ll definitely try playing some kog Ashe and varus and see if I like them or not. Thank you! I feel like I’m learning here already;)

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Wow.. I just realized that I have way more problems than I thought I did.. I feel boosted

Sir SaltarinApr 10, 20191 votes

If you are that high elo dont take advise from the Boards at all

Theres a high elo ADC main that it's really instructive called xSFN Saber, you may like to check his videos

sccApr 10, 20191 votes

Thanks! I’ll definitely check out his videos once I’m done with class

AnotherFeederApr 11, 20191 votes

I dont think playing scaling adcs is a good idea for solo q. Thats my 10 cents, unless youre duo q with a rly good support, you should play adcs with as much agency over lane as possible. What a champ can do with items is irrelevant if you cant reliably get into mid game with a lead. Also participate in all the team fights for objectives that you can see coming. Its really the only macro mistake adcs make is trying to solo shit, when adcs biggest strength is in teamfights.

Oh and check out sabers shit on youtube. He gives good tips on positioning in teamfights. Typically ur just gonna fight front to back, prioritizing avoiding danger while putting out what damage you can until the one shot cds are all down.

sccApr 11, 20191 votes

Alright! Thanks! Someone else I think recommended me to check out Saber as well so I will definitely watch his videos when I get the time!