Hey, everyone!
Today, we'll be doing a drafting guide for ADC in Solo Q.
In our time, we've seen a lot of average players picking champs that really hamstring them
right from the start of the game--making the game way harder before it even starts.
Beyond that, we've had a lot of questions about whether you should pick for lane, mid
game, scaling for late game, teamfights, synergizing with your teammates, countering the enemy
comp, and MORE.
There are so many distractions and holes you can go down during draft.
So, today, we want to simplify that all and give you simple, easy to follow guidelines
that will help you succeed during champ select--let's jump into it.
Ok, so, after consulting with Top 10 Challenger ADC main on EUW, Cookie, we feel confident
that we've nailed down the three key things you should be considering during draft.
First up, we have synergizing with your support.
This is the main thing that our Challenger consultant wanted to emphasize--having an
ADC and Support who have the same goals, succeed in the same way, etc.
We'll let you know which ADCs and supports work together best later in the video so you
can pull this off.
Obviously you will have to pick before your support basically half the time, so you won't
always be able to do this, but when you can, it's a big deal.
Second, we have not picking into an enemy bot lane that will really make your life difficult.
Once again, we'll dig into how to do this later, obviously understanding that depending
on where you're picking in draft, this may or may not be possible.
Alright, for our third main consideration during draft phase, we have balancing your
team's damage between AP and AD.
Cookie considers it essential to have AP bot laners in your champ pool as having too much
AD is just a nightmare and a very easy way to lose a game.
So, one of the issues that is already probably pretty obvious is that, for those three tips,
a lot of it relies on being able to see your support and the enemy bot lane, which is obviously
not always going to be the case.
You will often have to blind pick or close to it.
So, it's very important that you know which champions you CAN blindpick without trolling,
and you can see those here.
Ezreal is currently the absolute god tier blind pick as he does it all.
He can function well with almost any support, play against pretty much any lane, deal with
any enemy team comp--he does it all.
But, if you don't play Ezreal or are bored of playing him every game, these other champions
are all viable blind picks that will work decently with most supports and generally
hold their own in lane.
And, as a quick side note, one of the things that makes Varus such a solid blind pick is
that he can run lethality against squishy comps or build to shred tanks if he needs
as well.
Again, ideally you won't have to blind pick, but when you do, we strongly encourage you
to stick with these options.
Alright, now that we've talked about blind picking, let's jump back into our three primary
considerations for drafting, starting with synergizing with your support.
Let's start this off by looking at which support champions are played most often in Silver
and above so that we can focus on telling you how to pick and synergize with champions
you'll actually see.
Starting with the most popular support in the game-thresh.
With Thresh, Syndra, Kalista, Aphelios, Varus, MF, Draven, and Tristana all work well.
Obviously Thresh is a classic support who can set up kills, so picking an ADC with CC
or lots of early game damage to pair with that is very strong.
Next, we have everyone favorite champion, Yuumi.
For this one, we'll keep it simple.
If you know you have a Yuumi, your #1 pick is going to be Ezreal hands down.
These two champions just go together like baby carrots and ranch, working seamlessly
with each other's kits, able to completely take over a game once Ezreal gets two items.
Next up, we have Senna With Senna, you want to double down on her range and poke with
Ezreal, Varus, and Ashe.
Caitlyn also fits with this playstyle, but Cookie really only recommends picking Caitlyn
with one support which we'll see later as other champions are just stronger at the moment.
Moving on, we have the classic engage support--Leona.
Leona is similar to Thresh with her kill set up but is far more one dimensional, so she
synergizes with fewer ADCs, mainly Draven, MF, Aphelios, and Tristana for massive kill
potential in lane.
And, next up we have Nautilus, who is exactly the same--he's a pretty one dimensional engage/kill
lane support during lane phase, so once again we have Draven, MF, Aphelios, and Tristana.
Shifting gears, we have Morgana.
The two main picks you'll want to look at to synergize with Morgana are Caitlyn and
Varus.
Both champions have CC and kill potential to follow up on a bind and create a devastating,
long range lane duo as well.
Jump back to the engage supports, we have Blitzcrank.
Now, pretty much any champion can work with blitz, but once again, champions with damage
or followup in lane like Draven, MF, Aphelios, and Tristana are great.
Finally, the last popular support we'll be covering is Lulu.
As most of you probably know, Lulu excels alongside scaling, hyper carry ADCs like Kogmaw,
Twitch, and Vayne who can fully take over a game with her support.
So, here you can see the strong bot lane duos that we most recommend.
Once again, any of those blind pick champions we looked at earlier are pretty much always
strong, but if you have the luxury of picking what to pair with your support, these are
some super strong options.
If these feels like a lot of info, be sure to just screenshot this or have it open when
you're in champ select so you can always pick the best lane.
Also, I know this doesn't cover every support out there--there are just too many.
If you have any you really want to know, be sure to drop a comment below and we'll be
sure to let you know.
Alright, next up, we have avoiding picking into matchups or team comps that just don't
allow you to play the game.
This is a pretty simple idea and will at times supersede lane synergy if the game is going
to be truly unplayable for you.
Examples of this are playing low range ADCs like Kaisa, Twitch, or Vayne against something
like a Varus/Karma lane that will just destroy you with range.
So, if you see your support pick Lulu, even though Vayne is a good pick with Lulu, she's
not the best pick that game and you could play another champion that works with Lulu,
like Ashe to match the range of the Varus and Karma or something like Ezreal that always
works.
Another example is Jhin.
Even if you have a support that synergizes well with him, if the enemy team is full of
tanks, the champion is essentially useless.
And, if the enemy team has a bunch of assassins and your support is Karma, it might seem like
Ashe is a good fit with to double down on range and poke, but it doesn't matter if you're
dead all game.
Picking something more mobile, like Ezreal, or longer ranged, like Ziggs who can sit out
of reach and build Zhonya's if he really needs, would be a better plan.
Also, as a quick aside, if you do find yourself playing into Assassins, Cookie recommends
keeping in mind that, if you have a spare 650g, you can pick up a stopwatch and just
sell it after you use it.
This can really be a game changing item that will allow you to win a crucial fight.
Finally, we have the super simple idea of not overloading your team on either AD or
AP.
As we mentioned earlier, Cookie really does think it's essential to have some AP in your
champion pool, so if you don't, it really is something worth spending the time on learning.
I know you've all had games with Talon mid, Graves Jungle, Fiora top, and Senna support,
where you quickly find yourself facing down 5 pairs of Ninja tabi and full armor builds.
This is a really easy way to just lose a game at draft, so we recommend adding Syndra or
Ziggs to your champion pool.
Neither champion is particularly difficult to play and both can be blind picked safely.
Alright, to wrap up this video, I want to quickly look at a few real champ select situations
that Cookie ran into while playing Solo Q, so we can quiz you on what you would pick,
then see what he actually ended up picking.
First up, we have this champ select here.
Take a good chunk of time to look and think about what you would pick here.
Great, so in this situation, Cookie went ahead and locked in Ashe to double down on range
and poke with Karma, which has the potential to just demolish Vayne.
And, just to be clear, we're not saying that Ashe is the only good pick here.
Once again, we have lots of blind pickable champs that can work in pretty much any situation.
Ashe just works really, really well in this situation if you're comfortable playing her.
Ok, here's the situation for our second champ select.
Once again, take some time to think about what you would pick.
In this game Cookie quickly locked in Ezreal.
He has no information about who his support is or the enemy bot lane, so it's time for
the god blind pick.
And here's our third champ select for you to look at.
Who would you pick here?
Ok.
So, in this position Cookie was very happy to lock in Vayne.
We mentioned earlier that Vayne and Lulu are a great combination.
Vayne is also very, very good against Ornn, and Soraka is not a terribly punishing support
to lane against, which is great for Vayne who is weak early and short ranged.
Obviously Vayne a somewhat difficult ADC to pull off, so if you're not confident or comfortable,
then picking something safer or inside your comfort zone is pretty much always going to
be better, which is an important point for this video.
If you're bad at a pick, don't lock it in just because we say it's good in a situation.
You'll always have to combine your champ pool with the situation.
Anyway, moving on, here we have our next champ select.
What would you pick here?
Ok, so the most important thing here is that you recognized that your team needs AP with
an AD mid, top, and Jungle.
In this game, Cookie opted to play Cassiopeia.
Now, once again, like with Vayne, Cass is not the easiest champion to pilot, so other
AP champions like Ziggs or Syndra are also viable choices.
He went with the snake because she's less countered by wind wall than Ziggs and Syndra
are, and with a lot of melee champs that will be running at him, he has good odds of landing
a big ult.
Alright, and that wraps it up for our guide to drafting as ADC.
Hopefully this was helpful for anyone wondering what they should be playing, as ADC can be
even more punishing than it already is if you pick the wrong champ at the wrong time
Once again, we encourage you to think about your champion pool and make sure that you
have strong AP and blind pick options available to you, which will just completely stop you
from losing games in champ select.