ADC Role Position Guide in League of Legends

ADC s perhaps the role that has the least agency and impact on the map early on. It then becomes one of, if not the most impactful role in the mid-to-late game.

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Aos Síth

Here we use ADC to mean Bottom laner i.e. the carry on bot lane.

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Key Takeaways from ADC Position Guide:

  • ADCs are a teams late game insurance and key to taking objectives
  • There are different types of ADCs, but they all follow a very similar concept
  • It is important to have good synergy champion-wise with your Support
  • ADCs are carries, but they are also dependent on their team
  • Playing ADCs require a bit of mouse precision, carry mindset and patience

Bot Lane

ADCs do the most damage to objectives, so the reason ADCs are played in bot lane is due to the proximity to the most important objective: the dragon. Due to this, it is perhaps the most important lane in and of itself — as control of the bot lane is the biggest influence on early dragon control. And dragons are — with the souls — incredibly important and unavoidable, so you have to pay some attention to them every game.

ADC Types 

If you control the bot lane and have push, you can control large parts of the dragon river and in part mid lane due to the pressure of roams and vision control. This makes champions that have push and lane control very strong, champions like Varus, Caitlyn, Ashe, Kalista. But as ADC is also the scaling role, you can also play to become really strong later on and contest dragons later like Zeri, Jinx.

There is also a class of ADCs as more utility-focused, like Jhin, Ashe, and Varus who all have long-range pick tools. These tend to want to take control early and use that control to make picks and get objective.

All ADCs involve long-range characters that scale decently well. While ADCs are very similar to each other and are probably the role with the least champion or gameplay variety, there are some differences in play style. You can go lethality, on-hit, crit or even some AP carries — varying from being focused on spells to auto-attacking. And within these distinctions are different styles of ADC like utility, poke, hypercarry, self-peeling, diving, and lane domination.

Overall, they are good at objective, mid-to-late game teamfights and tower sieging, meaning they need to be with their team when things happen.

Duo Synergy: Sum Greater than Parts

Though it is hard to judge ADCs in isolation, as they are so dependent on their support, you want to play with a support that can enable your character. For example, immobile strong carries like Aphelios and Kog’maw benefit heavily from characters that can keep them alive when getting jumped on like Lulu or Thresh. 

Preferably you want to have a strong synergy both in the lane and in the later game teamfights. Although, in teamfights some other teammates may also play this role. This means that the most important part is your synergy in lane, as characters with disjointed intentions/identities can be less than the sum of their parts. 

The ultimate example of a good synergy is Lucian + Nami which together are so much greater than any other combo involving one of the two separate parts. Other combos involve setting up each other’s spells like CC, empowering attacks for a character with an auto attack steroid, peel for hypercarries, strong engage for aggressive characters, etc.

But it also comes down to the core concepts of the champions, a champion that mainly wants to push in their opponents and poke does not pair well with a character that wants to skirmish or roam.

Late Game: Never Walk Alone

After the laning phase, an ADC should never be alone. Split pushing makes you very vulnerable, so it is usually best to control the mid lane and try to stay safe doing so — this makes you close to all potential objectives as well. And then you can rotate together with your team to take towers in sidelanes.

Your role is essentially to move around the map and take as many resources as possible, but also to join your team to take objectives as you are the fastest objective taker.

Positioning and Communication

As ADCs are glass cannon damage dealers, a key part of playing ADC is knowing what can kill you, and what cooldowns and movements you need to watch out for and play around them to maximize your damage without getting caught. Positioning is everything for ADCs in teamfights together with assessing threats. They need to watch out for flanks, flash engages, and important spell cooldowns.

Though the ADC is still very dependent on your team to frontline, to peel and so on, its dependence on the team means that it is good for ADCs to learn to communicate their intentions and needs to the team. For example, when you want to engage, clear a wave, pull back, or need vision with your support in the lane or when you need help from the Jungler.  

Qualities for the Role

ADC is for people who love to click and to perfect their mechanics. It is the most mouse precision-intensive role, as hitting correct targets quickly is really important at the same time as moving and kiting. It is also a good role for people who are greedy goblins trying to soak up as many resources as possible and want to carry and be played around.

Though you also have to be patient with the fact that ADCs are probably the most dependent role on the team, as in teamfights without some help it is hard for you to do damage and you tend to have to move with your team.