Welcome to Marksman (Attack Damage Carry): Beginners Guide to ADC

About Me: Skip this Section if you don't care and just wanna get to the tips and basics.

I am Mezzie, a gold ADC main with 2 accounts in gold, this account and another about to do placements. The ADCs I main are Draven, Lucian, Jinx, Kalista, I am also trying to work Ashe and Vayne into my main champs. I have been playing League of Legends for over a year, starting in February last year (2014), I have mained a few different roles in that time, when I started playing I played Jungle, primarily Wukong, then I mained assassins for about half of season 4, then for the last 2ish months of the season I mained ADC, and aside from making this account a Riven only account for season 5 (up until about 2 weeks ago) have mained ADC since that time. Do I know everything? No, there are many people who know more than me, that is part of why it is a beginners guide, I will post a more advanced guide later.

Matchups:

The biggest thing I see in low elo, is people not understanding how bot lane works, people are insanely worried about being "counter-picked". This is only a thing for a few rare Marksman matchups, in general how the duo works together is what matters. This is called Bot Lane Synergy, keep that in mind, it is the primary thing that determines how the lane works. There are 3 types of lanes, Burst/Kill, Sustain, and Poke. The triangle of how the lanes work is like this Burst>Sustain>Poke>Burst. This means Burst beats sustain, but loses to poke, they should be too low to fight the all in and win. Sustain beats pokes but loses to burst, they will heal the damage poke tries to put on them, but generally lose the all in fight to burst because burst has more sudden damage. And Poke loses to sustain but beats burst (reasons stated previously).

Now that we know the 3 kinds of lanes you may be asking what determines if you have a certain lane, and I am going to tell you. Neither the support nor the ADC determine this alone, though I do believe the support has more of an influence. I will list the types of lane EACH support can be effective in, as well as the marksman.

   SUPPORTS:

ANNIE: Burst/Poke ALISTAR: Burst BARD: Poke/Sustain BLITZCRANK: Burst

BRAUM: Burst: JANNA: Poke KARMA: Poke LULU: Poke

MORGANA: Poke/Burst NAMI: Poke/Sustain NAUTIULUS: Burst SONA: Poke/Sustain

SORAKA: Sustain THRESH: Burst/Poke VEIGARr: Burst/Poke ZYRA: Poke/Burst

  MARKSMAN:

ASHE: Any CAITLYN: Poke/sustain CORKI: Poke/Sustain DRAVEN: Burst/Sustain

EZREAL: Poke/Sustain GRAVES: Burst/Sustain JINX: Any KALISTA: Poke/Sustain

KOG'MAW: Poke/Sustain LUCIAN: Any MISS FORTUNE: Any SIVIR: Poke/Sustain

TRISTANA: Poke/Burst TWITCH: Sustain/Burst URGOT: Sustain/Poke VAYNE: Sustain/Burst

NOTE: I skipped champs I personally do not see as good in bot lane, Quinn/Teemo/and Varus. They are passable solo lanes but struggle a lot in duo lanes, Varus is a passable duo lane depending on persons comfort with him, personally I do not play him so I cannot list him, I would GUESS Poke/Sustain, as his burst is unimpressive at best and has alot of good poke.

Okay now what does all of this mean? Without understanding how different styles of lanes want to work, it means nothing.

Poke:

Poke lanes are very straightforward, they want to whittle you down, make the enemy leave lane and win through being up tons of CS. Caitlyn is the ideal poke ADC, very long range, hard to get to to burst and pairs well with any support with sustain or poke.

Burst:

These lanes are kill focused, high damage, happy to win with CS more happy to kill their opponent over and over. THE king of burst lanes for marksman is Draven, high damage, passive dedicated to kills, amazing burst damage at 6, good burst damage pre 6, simply cannot be matched in AA trades.

Sustain:

These lanes are primarily for marksman who want or need to scale to a few items, the marksman that tend to prefer these types of lanes are: Vayne/Kog'Maw/Ezreal/Corki/Urgot. Basically if the champ wants to scale, for example gets tear or triforce, they are generally not looking to all in fight before the item is complete, so they want to be able to have any damage taken healed and stay in lane to farm.

So now you see how these lanes want to WIN, hopefully you can see how these lanes are countered by their win conditions, just keep in mind, winning lane is not the only objective, if you are against a sustain lane and pick Graves/Annie for the burst but the enemy team has 2 mega tanks (current meta) you are putting yourself in a bad spot, consider what your TEAM needs, not just the lane.

Creep Score:

Now this is probably the most important section of the entire guide. I see this alot on this account, ADCs with 4 or 5 kills and very low creep score, near perfect CS at 10 minutes is 100, so you should be aiming for 80 @ 10. That is 10 of 12/13 (cannon wave makes it 13) CS per minute. Considering you have someone in your lane dedicated to keeping you alive and allowing you to safely farm, this should NOT be too much to ask for, obviously there are exceptions, Vaynes for example rarely will reach this mark, while a Caitlyn should almost always be slightly ahead of this mark.

If you want to improve your CSing, get a friend with Caitlyn and do what is called the Cait Challenge, have them lay 3 traps in mid lane (so they start W) and they are free to auto attack you if you allow them above 1/2 HP, you lose if you do not reach 80 CS at 10, if you step on a trap you immediately lose, also if she kills you because you failed to keep her HP below 1/2. This is something that is meant to be a challenge, do not get frustrated if you struggle, it is meant to be a learning tool, and it is very effective.

Wave Control:

Controlling the wave is very important in all lanes, bot lane I feel is less important than top lane. Wave Control in bot lane comes down primarily to recall windows, as freezing lane against 2 ranged champs is alot riskier than it is usually worth from the amount of poke you CAN take, note if the enemy does not poke the ADC heavily, freeze away and continue to deny CS. Another key part of bot lane wave control is denying the BF sword. At 55 CS you can afford BF and a few potions, so ideally if you can force a recall at around 40 CS you put the enemy in a very awkward buy, they have to decide if they want to come back with no items and shove a few waves for BF and potions, or do they go pickaxe, or an old but very good trick is vampiric scepter dorans bladex2 to match a BF sword buy.

Rotating:

Rotating can almost always be done as the duo lane, randomly appearing in top lane bush to going mid to push towers off a recall or kill, this section is very thin as it comes down to each person. Personally I rotate mid whenever I can, enemy mid recalled and I had my lane shoved? Cool lets go get AAs on mid tower and free mid to roam. If your team does Dragon always rotate there for the safety of it, especially at lower elos, please do not risk losing dragon for 10 CS, the dragon helps out the team, League of Legends is a team game.

Builds:

Now this is not a section for complete item builds, but a section about the first buy and theories behind them, if you want full builds look at probuilds.net.

    BF Sword+pots: 

This is the ideal buy for MOST marksman, Trinity Force ADCs, Blade of the Ruined King champs, Tear of the Goddess champs are all excluded from this.

  Sheen/Phage: 

Buy that Trinity Force ADCs want to go for, generally Sheen is great if you can afford it in one buy, if not Ruby Crystal/Longsword is better overall as it provides better combat stats.

  Doran's Blade x2+ Vampiric Scepter:

This was popularized by Imp i believe, a few seasons ago, the thought behind it is you are down AD (7+7+10=27 vs 50+7=57) but up a large amount of Life Steal (3+3+8=14% Life Steal vs 3% Life Steal) as well as being up 70 health. Now you will lose trades outright, you are 30 AD down but you have access to more HP as well as more sustain, this works amazing if you are denied a BF recall, as it costs 800+440+pots, and is great at combating the BF Sword over time.

 Pickaxe: 

A rather poor buy first item, avoid if possible, will allow you to rush IE if forced back around 900g.

 Tear of the Goddess:

Item used on Ezreal or Urgot, allows them to scale very well as a first back but makes them very weak early. Note you will want to recall around 750 gold to buy this as early as possible. Another note, if you upgrade it to Manamune it will stack with basic attacks as well as spells, transforming faster as well as providing some AD with the pickaxe.

Runes:

These are common rune pages and their uses.

Page 1: 3x Attack Speed Quints 8x Attack Damage Marks and 1x Critical Chance mark 9x Armor Seals 4x Mana Regen 5x Magic Resist Glyphs

Fairly standard page, provides MR as well as extra mana to trade more effectively, as feast alone is not enough for the mana used in lane.

Page 2: 3x AS Quints 8x AD Marks and 1x Crit Chance mark 9x Armor Seals 9x Magic Resist Glyphs

Page I see used against teams with more AP (AP top or AP poke support) makes you tankier to magic damage, if unsure of your ability to survive lane, use this page as it does provide alot more safety.

Page 3: 3x AS Quints 8x AD Marks and 1x Crit Chance mark 9x Armor Seals 9x Attack Speed Glyphs

Not a page I see used on many champs, I am seeing this a fair amount on Korean servers, primarily Draven. Provides 19% Attack Speed, allowing more AA in lane, letting Draven snowball harder, very risky page, have NOT seen it used on any ADC besides Draven, may change over time. I will edit if it does.

Conclusion:

If there is anything you have questions on or wish I would address put it in the comments and I will do my best. Thank you for reading.