Hey everyone. When it comes to ADC, one of the biggest problems EVERY player faces is
that they're WAY weaker than they should be at all stages of the game due not knowing
where to be and when. The result of this is the constant complaint
that you'll see all over the internet from ADC players: Not getting strong enough in
time to carry the game because once they leave lane, the enemy is too fed to deal with. ADC's
are almost entirely item reliant to actually do anything, if you fall behind in gold, you're
essentially useless until you get gold. So, what do ADC players diamond and below
do to deal with this? Well, they gravitate towards any team-fight possible in the hope
of getting some random kills. As we know by now for those of you who follow
skill-capped, seeking team fights is a fast track way to coinflip the out-come of the
game. Teamfights often have way too many variables to predict their outcome, thus staying at
50% winrate and never climbing. Today's guide is designed to isolate exactly
where ADC's in Diamond and below go wrong, with clear takeaways you can walk away with
so you can guarantee you get fed when making the correct decisions, and start carrying
your games.
This guide is broken down with gameplay from Diamond, Gold and Silver. Starting with Vayne
in Gold elo. As we jump into it, let's kick things off by testing your macro knowledge.
Vayne's just respawned and she's 5-2 to Caitlyn's 1-4. If you were Vayne, where would you go?
5 second pause This was a purposefully difficult question
to answer and is designed to get you thinking about the main takeaway we want you to walk
away with from this guide. What value do I get from the path I'm taking?
If Vayne goes from here to mid to catch the next wave, Veigar could easily just take the
wave before she even gets there. As an ADC, you never want to share farm. You want to
get your items and start carrying as soon as possible.
If Vayne were to go bot, it'd take a really long time and her wave is pushing up far into
enemy territory. And top isn't really an option with her Vladimir
up there still laning. It's starting to feel like Vayne has no options,
she needs to buy time to see what Veigar does. So, where should she go?
If you answered this correctly the first time we asked, then you're smurfing. Vayne should
path towards Krugs and Red, to keep up in farm while she waits for a better option.
It's efficient moves like these which keep great players fed and strong WAY faster than
the average player. Let's see what actually happens.
Vayne paths mid towards a Veigar who's taking the wave. She then stands around, practically
AFK while Veigar recalls, then gets to farm the next wave.
If she'd pathed to the krugs and red buff during this time, she could've gained around
250 gold, almost a kill's worth, plus experience and then path mid once she sees Veigar recalling,
to collect a solo wave. That's a HUGE difference. Thinking back to the key question: "what value
do I get from this path?" When looking at mid lane, it was uncertain if Vayne could
get value from going straight there. And Veigar did end up farming another wave. That's why
farming jungle camps as a stalling move was the best thing to do, so she's being paid
while waiting to collect information. But what if Veigar stayed in lane after that
wave he killed and didn't recall? That'd leave us with three sub-optimal options: Vlad top,
Veigar mid and the wave fully pushing bot. With no camps around to farm while stalling
for more time, the correct play would be to path bot and look for a play. If Vayne moved
up and camped this brush for example, she could look for an opportunity to 1v1 a side-laner
and break this game wide open. If she grouped mid with Veigar had he not
recalled, at best, they could maybe get mid-tower and get shared gold, which doesn't compare
to the potential of 1v1'ing a side lane. With Vayne now farming mid lane with Caitlyn,
Veigar is returning mid, Vayne's now at risk of sharing farm, which will weaken Vayne's
path to snowballing. Where do you think she should go?
We hope you all said to go bot here. With Renekton side laning and pushing, Vayne
could pressure him and keep up in solo farm. Let's see what happens.
I think we're starting to get the picture, Vayne spent 55 seconds from when she should've
went bot to stay grouped with her team to share a wave between 4 people, and then sticks
around to use their rift herald on mid tower, netting 100 gold each.
When we put it like this, it's blatantly obvious how inefficient this is from the Vayne and
pointless for her to be here. However, we know for a fact that if you look at your own
replays, you'll see similar inefficiencies due to your own poor macro choices. With active
thinking about the potential value from the paths you're taking, we're sure that optimal
choices will start to become obvious in your own games in any situation.
Let's hop on
over to another example. During this game, the Sivir is doing quite well. She's farming
up a storm on the top side of the map until she eventually recalls to spend her gold.
Afterwards, she correctly paths mid. She has a Mordekaiser and a Zed on her team, both
champions who like to sit in a side lane a lot of the time.
We want you to remember this moment. We'll come back to it, but for now, let's watch
what happens. Okay, despite her complete int, her team still
comes out ahead 3 for 4 kills. It stands to reason that if she hadn't run right into the
enemy team that her team would've won the fight even harder.
Knowing that, going back to this moment, do you still think it was correct of Sivir to
rotate bottom? Okay...that's actually not even a question. The fact that we're asking
you that means we disagree with her, but the why is the important bit.
We believe Sivir should just keep pushing mid. The enemy team seeing this is likely
all rotating bot lane. Ask yourself why you're going bot in these situations. Is it to team
fight? Rotating over to team fight is the equivalent
of those Civil War re-enactments. Just a bunch of musketmen single file lining up to shoot
each other. You're basically just handshaking with your opponents and hoping you shoot better
than them in that fight. We really want you to stop thinking about
playing the game fairly. The game shouldn't look fair. When we watch our smurfs play in
low elo, does it look fair? Does it look like the enemy can fight back? No. They're just
constantly creating stressful situations for the enemy team. You don't want handshaken
fights. You want chaos. Let's go back to the Sivir game.
Let's imagine what happens if she pushes mid here. The enemy team are all bot lane. Just
think about it. Think about those times you're team fighting
at Baron and the enemy Fiora is at your Inhibitor towers. You panic. Your team panics. No one
commits to the call. You all realize you've messed up. Then everyone has their own ideas
as to how to salvage the terrible situation you're in. Then you all get aced, lose Baron
AND your Inhibitor. You need to abuse the fact that there is no
voice coms in League. The second the enemy team is fighting your teammates in bot lane
and see you, that's when the panic will set in. You're at their inhibitor towers. You
can actually influence the fight way more by not being there by literally just abusing
the fact that your opponents are human beings and are bound to make mistakes under pressure.
Not only is there immediate value by Sivir staying mid, but she has an incredible pivot
option from mid as well. If she sniffs out that the enemy is rotating back towards her,
she can just dip back to the enemy blue side jungle, check for camps to steal and make
her way top lane to continue pressuring and hard farming.
The mid lane call is *guaranteed* value with plenty of control over the outcome. By going
bot lane, she's just playing Candyland, a completely RNG game.
As we move towards the end of today's guide, we'll see how all of the issues we've discussed
work their way up to Diamond Elo as we take a look at Kai'Sa.
Let's run through what actually happens in this scenario and all agree it's her teammates
fault, until we take a closer look. Kai'Sa is about to farm bot, but Syndra follows
her and takes her wave. Kaisa pulls back and paths towards mid lane,
where Ekko then clears her wave. Great. Then, she goes into the jungle, where a fight
breaks out. She loses her life, and mid tower. She does get a big shut down, but again, that
was totally left to chance. So - what should she do? Wherever she went
to get solo farm, her teammates inted her intentions.
So Syndra taking the first wave was totally out of her control. It's with Kai'Sa next
choice where she can now take the blame. By pathing towards mid lane with the Syndra,
the only possible outcome is to again share gold in the mid lane.
If she stayed bot side, she could wait to farm the next wave by herself, guaranteeing
real value. Nothing would be left to chance. With her instead going mid lane, it prompted
Mundo to path directly bot off his recall. This is super unlikely to happen had Kaisa
been there. So, often if you claim a space and commit
to it, your team will move around you, leading to far easier solo farm situations for yourself.
Alright! That's going to bring us to the end of this video. Are you guilty of making horrifically
inefficient macro choices? Let us know in the comments below! We hope this helped and
we'll catch you in the next video.