This guide is primarily intended for the marskmen players who want to improve their mechanical skills, but it will help others as well. It starts with the concept of orb-walking and continues with an explanation of the attack-move command. Benefits and applications of the two are also included. When the guide was first created, information of this nature was scattered and hard to come by. Although things have improved on this front, hopefully this comprehensive all-in-one piece in written form will still find its use.

I am in fact no longer an active player and haven't been one in a while. Back in my day I did manage to pull myself up to a decent rank largely due to the following knowledge. I still do my best to keep the contents of this guide up to date. Fortunately they aren't prone to major nor frequent changes.

Autoattacks (AA) work through repetition of a specific champion animation and after one is finalised, the new one begins. The actual damage or the attack however is applied in the middle of that animation, not the end, and finishing the animation has no impact on dealing damage. This means you can command a movement as soon as you see the missile flying, which enables you to move while attacking. Move like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Either way, the following AA animation will be able to be performed exactly the same time the previous one would have ended. This speed cannot be affected unless you increase attack speed or use an ability that resets it. The act of using the window between shooting a missile and starting the subsequent attack in order to move is called orb-walking and it has many benefits.

Orb-walking helps with catching up when chasing or gaining ground when retreating. It also improves laning through reducing your predictabilty and improving your evasiness and wave clearing. Additionally, marksmen builds often include effects which charge by both attacking and moving. This means orb-walking results in more frequent effect procs of Fleet Footwork, Kircheis Shard and of course both of its upgrades Stormrazor and Rapid Firecannon. Depending on which of those you've picked, the reward comes in a form of additional damage, sustain, mobility, or objective control. Orb-walking has no real drawbacks as ideally the marksman deals equal damage they would have dealt standing still, but this depends on the execution.

Considering the probable level of the reader's mechanical skill at this point, the simplest way you can command a champion to orb-walk is by using right-clicks. Command the first attack by right-clicking your target to order an attack and then as soon as the missile has been shot, right-clicking the ground in the direction you want to move to. After an estimated time, based on your current attack speed, rightclick your target again to order the next attack. There are more advanced methods to command the same actions which will be covered later on in the guide. They require some getting used to, but are then much more efficient and convenient.


Efficiency of your champion's orb-walking can be improved passively by increasing their attach and movement speed. Attack speed accelerates AA animation, which increases attack frequency and reduces the time your champion stands still. Movement speed increases the distance they can travel between their consecutive attacks. Some of the items have more specific bonus effects that improve your champions orb-walking even more drastically.

Although the right-clicking method works well compared to no orb-walking, it does have a couple of flaws. Players aren't perfect at estimating attack speed and actually deal less damage than they would have deal when stationary. The difference depends on skill and execution. It is important to emphasise that dealing close to ideal damage while staying alive still ends up being more than dealing ideal damage right until getting killed or dealing no damage while fleeing. Priority of a marskman should always be to survive while dealing decent damage over maximizing their damage by risking their life. Not to mention marksmen are their teams' essential tool for taking objectives after the fights.

Orb-walking with right-clicks requires rapid mouse movements and precise targeting to differentiate the move and the attack commands. Missing the target and clicking on the ground will command the champion to move towards the target they were supposed to attack. Alternativelly, missing the ground and clicking a foe will command the champion to stop and attack instead of moving. Both scenarios might have devastating consequences on many occasions. Fortunatelly all of the latter flaws can be solved by the use of more advanced alternatives.

There are multiple additional buttons for more advanced commands such as hold position (H) and attack-move (A). The most useful one is the attack move click which can replace all others, depending on the way it's used. Due to its convenience, it is the recommended choice and also the one described in the following sections.

Buying a mouse with an additional thumb button is strongly recommended in order to bind this command to that button. There's no need for the fancy gear with colourful LEDs and expensive brand logos, many of the appropriate pieces are rather cheap. But if you like to splurge, don't let this guide stop you. Alternatively, you can still use the regular two button mouse and the attack move key, which acts the same but requires both a key press and a mouse click every single time, or press hold position whenever you want your champion to stop and attack the nearest foe. Hopefully the inconvenience of both alternatives makes the superiority of attack move click even more obvious.

When using the attack-move click method, rightclick is never used to command attacks at all. It is, in fact, exclusively used to click on the ground in order to command your champion to move to the location without attacking anything. Any command that involves attacking under various conditions will be executed by using the attack move button. Here are the ways this method can be used to manipulate your champion with higher complexity.

Directly target the opponent: It acts identical to a rightclick on the target opponent, prioritising attacking the chosen target above all other actions. If the target is not yet in range, your champion will first prioritise moving toward the target until it enters the attack range.

Opponent in range: It acts as the attack move button, champion will start attacking the closest opponent in range. If there are multiple targets and you click the ground near them, it will somewhat prioritise the target nearest to the click and not necessarily closest to your champion.

Nearby with noone in range: If the champion reaches the ground you clicked on without attacking anyone it acts as the hold position button, standing still and attacking as soon as any opponent enters or spawns in the attack range.

Far away while noone in range: Champion will start moving toward the targeted ground but will stop to attack any opponent that enters attack range. If the location is reached without any interruptions, the champion will again hold position at the destination.

As previously mentioned, when there are multiple targets nearby, your champion will attack the target closest to the attack move click. This enables you to choose your own preferred targets as opposed to hitting whatever is closest to your champion at that very moment. Although that is clearly the recommended setting, you can either make sure it is set this way, or change it to the other option in your game settings.

For a typical unexperienced player that is used to rightclicking it takes some time to adapt to using a new button for all the attacking. Once it becomes automatic however, it eases many manouvers and solves the problems of other techniques.

The most obvious improvement comes when the desired target is isolated or clearly the nearest. In that case a player no longer has to swipe the mouse all over the screen. Instead they can simply have the mouse in the spot of a desired direction and keep switching between attack-move and right-clicks in a correct rythm.

In cases of botched execution, when you happen to miss your target and instead right-click the ground, your champion moves rights into danger. By using attack move, champion will simply attack any target as soon as it is in range on the way to the clicked location, possibly even the desired opponent since the click was nearby. This prevents walking into harass in lane or towards a CC and damage from the opponents you were kiting or poking from a safe range.

Since a champion can also be ordered to hold position or attack as soon as possible, the command is useful to prevent jukes when chasing into a bush. Compare attacking the opponent as soon as they are visible to trying to manually right-click the juker as quickly as possible. Similar applies when preparing to execute an untargetable foe after Stopwatch, Zhonya's Hourglass, Guardian Angel, and some abilities.

When an opponent places a Stealth Ward inside your champion's attack range with the last command being attack-move, the first AA will have landed before you would have right-clicked it otherwise. This lets you to clear the ward before it enters stealth, considering you have sufficient attack speed or an AA from a helpful teammate.

Moving around using attack-move, your champion will never walk past a creep wave or a Control Ward while roaming the map. Furthermore, when getting caught off-guard along a long path to the the desired destination while focusing your view elsewhere, you can simply press space bar to focus the camera back on your champion, while they have already reacted at least somewhat proactivelly.

This is the most famous and probably the most spectacular example of orb-walking, hence it's own segment in the guide. The concept of kiting is basically orb-walking in the direction away from a chasing opponent to keep the distance of your champion's attack range. This lets you damage your pursuiter but prevents them from retaliating. The ideal goal is to receive no damage or crowd-control while dealing the maximum amount of damage. If there are things to be juked or dodged, they obviously require an appropriate response at a cost of some damage.

Kiting can be executed by the right-click swiping which of course has the previously described flaws. In the attack-move method, the mouse is placed in an intended location and then interchangible attack-move and right-clicks are used to command kiting.

In case of a pursuer closing the distance, the kiting marksman has to adjust by attacking less frequently and moving longer distances. Fortunately, marksmen have tools to ease their kiting such as their items, mobility, crowd-control and a rightful claim to the crest of cinders , not to mention help from their teammates.

The rift scuttler is a special exception since it never fights back and is consequently not recognised as a foe. In comparison, other neutral monsters become foes the moment they're provoked and turn hostile. As the scuttler only tries to flee, using attack-move on the ground will result in moving, not attacking it. In order to orb-walk while hitting the crab, you are required to specifically click on the crab to order an attack.

Kalista is very unique due to her passive Martial Poise which makes her AAs locked and unable to be cancelled almost right after the animation begins. Only after a javelin is thrown, she dashes in the direction of a well-timed movement order.

Using attack-move makes it extremely easy to use her passive properly. You basically don't need rigthclick at all, except when you specifically want to order movement and exclude any attacking whatsoever under any circumstances. It does take some practise in timing but you only have to attack-move click the location you want Kalista to jump to around the time she is casting the AA.

Draven players also benefit greatly from using attack-move as long as there are hostiles in range, which eases the Spinning Axe mechanic. Being able to catch the axes rewards you with more damage, reduced mana consumption and higher gold rewards for the kills.

Rightclick is used to reach the axe mark and then attack-move is used upon reaching it. As soon as you catch the axe and throw a new one, you move in your desired direction using rightclick. A well-timed orb-walk will force the axe to be bounced in the direction of the initiated movement, meaning your movement directs the axe landing spots instead of the other way around.

That is all the information on the subject, all that is left to do now is apply it in praxis. It won't take long to do at all and you'll see the results soon enough. Hopefully you're reasonable enough to spare your team-mates by not doing it in ranked matches initially. You now have the knowledge, but it's on you to practise, not only the mechanics, but last-hits, wave-clear, positioning, and numerous other marksman skills as well.

I hope you find the guide as helpful as it is intended to be. Feel free and encouraged to use the comment section in order to continue the discussion or ask further questions. In case of a negative opinion, a piece of constructive critisism is preferred over a permanent negative rating. Move fast and hit hard, my friends!