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Learning to ADC in low Elo.

Pengod··1 votes·858 views

Hey there guys! So I'm looking to increase my strength for ADC. I'm in lower elo right now so I've plenty of room to learn. I really enjoy playing Ashe, Kog'Maw, and Kalista. I do not like to play Cait. Does anyone have any tips that can help me learn, or a champion that is better to learn or just to learn with?

12 Comments

Only Play Darius2 votes

ADC is all about farming. Consistent CS is more important than getting early kills or even harassing your opponent. Practice last hitting and and always get the cannon minion.

Check scoreboard every so often to keep track of your CS compared to the enemy ADC. If they are CS'ing more than you or pretty close, then turn up the heat on them and ask your support to get more aggressive with zoning, you want to have a significant CS advantage over them.

Don't try to force first blood, if you do there is a 60% chance you will end up giving the ADC a double kill, and by doing that you just made the rest of early game much harder on you. Wait for your enemy to make a stupid dive, let the first blood come to you.

As much as I love kog'maw, he has been nerfed hard and struggles today. Ashe is in a similar predicament, in that her kit is outdated compared to today's high damage ADC's, but her CC can be used to great effect for her team.

Jinx Tristana Kalista Graves are all in a pretty good spot right now.

Draven is rather difficult to play with his axe mechanic, and his normal damage is somewhat mediocre, but if he gets early kills he snowballs like an absolute motherf*cker, god help you if he ever gets fed.

Vayne Twitch are assassin ADC's that don't play quite like regular ADC's in that you have to use their stealth and burst mechanics to really take advantage of their power.

Pengod1 votes

The last Kog nerf, wasn't that to his Q? I've played him a few times already and he seems pretty decent. Also, yeah poor Ashe. My baby, my fav ADC since I first played her.

Also, what is your opinion on Varus Corki Ezreal ? Ik they are pretty decent caster types. Varus' kit feels kind of odd though.

Only Play Darius1 votes

KogMaw is difficult to play because he relies on slowly chipping away the enemy health from great distance. He has no escapes and is incapable of melting the enemy before they get too close to him unlike some other ADC's and with the amount of mobility and gapclosers today that weakness is amplified.

Think of him as artillery. He does high amounts of mixed damage that shreds both tanks and squishies, and by spamming his R he can force an enemy team to initiate a fight even when they are at a disadvantage, as a team can only take so many R shots from him before they either have to recall or go in to kill him. He is far and away the best siege ADC in the game, as his W allows him to outrange turrets, and his R makes turret hugging impossible. But he usually needs a tank support to offset his insane squishiness, and he needs a team that knows how to protect him, and also wait for him to land enough R's before initiating a teamfight. Both of these are not reliably found in solo queue, especially in low elo, and unlike most ADC's Kog'Maw will still have trouble carrying even when fed if he doesn't have a good team. Like a support, he really relies on the team to make use of his abilities, if his team is no good then carrying as Koggie is going to be very difficult.

Ezreal Corki Lucian are item 3078 -based ADC's, they rely much more on casting abilities than basic attack ADC's which are based on item 3031. They are usually better against squishy targets, as they have burst which allows them to kill squishies before they can react, they usually cannot be defeated with thornmail, and have dash mobility which buys them time in-between cooldowns. However, their lack of sustained damage means they struggle against tanky opponents, whereas theiritem 3031 based peers have the sustained damage necessary when dealing with something like a fully stacked Chogath .

Graves is somewhat of a hybrid of these two types of ADC's. He has fair burst, and also decent sustained damage, while still possessing dash mobility so it is viable to build him with either item 3078 or item 3031 as his core item, or even a mix of both if you are experienced with him. He is also the most durable of the ADC's, so he tends to stick around in teamfights for quite a while.

I don't know much about Varus, his kit is weird in that he scales well with both attack speed and ability power, yet also works well with attack damage. His kit feels all-over the place, he seems to be a champion that is versatile in that his kit can be built in many different ways, but isn't outstanding in any one build (kind of like Skarner). Most I can say try him out, I have seen people build straight AP Varus and do quite well, I would imagine Nashor's tooth would work well with him.

Quinn is a very underplayed ADC, but at the same time the people who do play her know exactly what they are doing, and I see too many pentakills from these people so she is worth trying out if you get the chance. Also, people often don't know how to deal with low pickrate champs like Quinn because they rarely see her in play, therefore often don't know what she is capable of. She is somewhat like Graves in that she has both burst and sustained damage, and is slightly more durable than most ADC's, but trades instant dash mobility for infrequent yet very high speed, sustained mobility in her bird form. Both her sustained and burst damage is somewhat lackluster, but she has the highest utility of all ADC's (somewhat like Ashe). Her blind can save her team from the wrath of a fed enemy ADC (assuming they are item 3031 based) and allows her to go toe-to-toe with most ADC's if she can land her blind, making her somewhat of an anti-adc. Her knockback is excellent for interruptions, saving her knockback for the right moment can mean the difference between victory and defeat when facing a team with devastating channeled ults like Katarina MissFortune Malzahar Fiddlesticks Lux Pantheon. Other minor channels, like MasterYi's meditate, can also be interrupted, and as a Yi player I can tell you that interrupting my meditate can turn a potential quadrakill into a dead YI in the matter of a second. Sending valor to scout an area gives amazing vision to your entire team, and when timed right, gives your teammates the vision needed to make their best plays and pulloff a flawless ace.

I know you said you don't like Caitlyn, but I recommend you try her out, as she is perfect for learning how to farm. She has a very short autoattack animation and very high projectile speed, so there are fewer delays you have to account for when last hitting with her, as opposed to some other ADC's (Ashe's attack animation is problematic in this regard). Her long early game range allows you to take less harass while farming, that way you can learn how to properly last hit without concerning yourself about the harass from the enemy. Once you have increased your last-hitting skill, you can then start learning how to maintain maximum farm while dodging harass. Right now you are probably playing with a short-range adc and are taking a lot of harass while you farm during your laning phase, and you are not learning effectively how to last hit OR dodge harass. When it comes to League mechanics, it's best to learn one step at a time ( I didn't do this, which is why I am not very skilled considering how many games I have played. Take it slow and take one step at a time or you will end up wasting your time and not learning from games).

Pengod1 votes

First off, thanks for the amazing reply! So Koggles is like Ashe in the sense it's hard to just do a straight up carry, you kinda need a team who knows what to do and you're super effective? So, yes, ik that Cait is probably the most recommended starter ADC. I just... don't enjoy playing her. Played her multiple times. Just nothing clicks. My friend's favorite ADC is Cait, so he did try to teach her to me... I'm all set playing Cait haha. Maybe further down the road I'll pick her up, for now I'm just gonna sit back and leave her.

I find it much easier to learn and practice when playing someone I like. I can learn how to farm and avoid harass with that champ, so Ik the strengths and all of that champ and how they work.

So overall, besides Cait. What one or two ADCs would you recommend to really start mastering the mechanics?

Also, what build path would you recommend for Ashe? I've seen some IE rushes. Some BF into Shiv. Some straight Shiv. I used to rush an Essence Reaver some time ago too.

Sirin Gioro1 votes

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KogMaw is difficult to play because he relies on slowly chipping away the enemy health from great distance. He has no escapes and is incapable of melting the enemy before they get too close to him unlike some other ADC's and with the amount of mobility and gapclosers today that weakness is amplified.

Think of him as artillery. He does high amounts of mixed damage that shreds both tanks and squishies, and by spamming his R he can force an enemy team to initiate a fight even when they are at a disadvantage, as a team can only take so many R shots from him before they either have to recall or go in to kill him. He is far and away the best siege ADC in the game, as his W allows him to outrange turrets, and his R makes turret hugging impossible. But he usually needs a tank support to offset his insane squishiness, and he needs a team that knows how to protect him, and also wait for him to land enough R's before initiating a teamfight. Both of these are not reliably found in solo queue, especially in low elo, and unlike most ADC's Kog'Maw will still have trouble carrying even when fed if he doesn't have a good team. Like a support, he really relies on the team to make use of his abilities, if his team is no good then carrying as Koggie is going to be very difficult.

Ezreal Corki Lucian are item 3078 -based ADC's, they rely much more on casting abilities than basic attack ADC's which are based on item 3031. They are usually better against squishy targets, as they have burst which allows them to kill squishies before they can react, they usually cannot be defeated with thornmail, and have dash mobility which buys them time in-between cooldowns. However, their lack of sustained damage means they struggle against tanky opponents, whereas theiritem 3031 based peers have the sustained damage necessary when dealing with something like a fully stacked Chogath .

Graves is somewhat of a hybrid of these two types of ADC's. He has fair burst, and also decent sustained damage, while still possessing dash mobility so it is viable to build him with either item 3078 or item 3031 as his core item, or even a mix of both if you are experienced with him. He is also the most durable of the ADC's, so he tends to stick around in teamfights for quite a while.

Uhhh Lucian isn't viable with Triforce now with some changes that I have forgotten. Only get this item if you're really ahead in lane and you want to lose. Graves too. In fact, he is horrible with Triforce. Build flat AD & Atk spd on him is better.

The Chin2 votes

L2 freeze and zone your opponent off of CS when you have a lead. Very common mistake I see noob adc's make is constantly pushing the wave, you should really only be pushing if you want to take tower, recall, or to rush level power spikes (level 2/6) - other than that generally you want them as close to your tower as you can. They're much easier to kill if you draw them out from under tower.

But even if you learn to do that perfectly and you're a godlike laner, it doesn't mean shit if you don't know how to teamfight! I'm not going to try and explain it to you, but look on youtube for an adc teamfight positioning guide, they'll be able to explain it much better than me. Once you get good at teamfight positioning as ADC you'll instantly get to gold.

Good positioning is OP, basically freelo. I can't tell you how many times I've gone 0/4 in lane and ended up godlike 7/4 just because I'm a decent teamfighter. It's actually farily common.

wwwdots1 votes

that depends on type of adc, some adc like cait, sivir, corki harras mad hard when enemy is forced udner tower. if u cant pressure people under tower then it would be a bad idea to push. however if u are able to poke those under tower that makes them miss cd, and having to dodge pokes from adc and harassive support. gl safe farming. I may not get a kill but I can interrupt u and force you to go b.

The Chin1 votes

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that depends on type of adc, some adc like cait, sivir, corki harras mad hard when enemy is forced udner tower. if u cant pressure people under tower then it would be a bad idea to push. however if u are able to poke those under tower that makes them miss cd, and having to dodge pokes from adc and harassive support. gl safe farming. I may not get a kill but I can interrupt u and force you to go b.

true, hard to get kills like that unless they fuck up but yeah that's another way to get a cs lead. Just make sure you have good ward coverage cause you will get ganked playing like that.

The Ruin Sage1 votes

Varus he is my main and to be honest the only champ im actually good enough to play with in ranked (maybe vlad but anyways) He is super easy to use just get good at last hitting minions with him and use your Q to poke and that will pretty much carry you through laning phase. He does monster damage late game with IE and Runaans plus even if you build AP you still play him as an adc just maxing W first and his ult is SUPER useful in team fights especially if you go AP mid

MrBuffington1 votes

I'd say stick to Ashe if you like her, avoid Kog and Kalista; they're pretty complicated; better to learn the basics with Ashe than struggle with everything that Kog or Kalista have in their kits (stuff like Kog's W timings, Kalista's positioning, etc.). I agree with what others have said as well.

Pengod1 votes

I really like Kog and Kali though. I've played Kog many times in the past. Kali is just a recent person. I have quite a bit of the basics down just need to really master them. Thanks!

Sirin Gioro1 votes

Play and experiment with all ADCs if you can. It's fine if you don't like Caitlyn. In fact, as an ADC main, I'm absolutely trash with Caitlyn "oh my god how the hell are you an ADC main if you don't main Cait is like asking oh my god you main jungle and you don't play Lee Sin." From what ADC you like, I would recommend Vayne Twitch. Ashe, Kalista, and especially Kog'Maw are late game hypercarries, who requires good positioning and farm to excel. Unfortunately, all of them takes a tons of time to ramp up their power spike. Playing these champions, it's really important to learn to orbwalk/kite because they're auto-attack based champions instead of AD Caster-ish.

You can add me in client if you want to know more, I main Graves and Corki by the way. But I'm Bronze so maybe I'm trash. :^)

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