Vapora Dark In-Depth ADC Tristana Guide Season 11
By Vapora Dark | Updated on January 22, 2021

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Runes:
Domination





Precision






+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor
Spells:

Flash

Heal
Items
Ability Order

Table of Contents
Introduction | Items | Understanding Matchups |
Why Play Tristana | Summoner Spells | How To ADC |
Runes | Abilities | Tristana Mechanics |
General Gameplay | Conclusion |

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Hi, I'm Vapora Dark, a veteran player that's been playing since season 1. During that time I've hit Master tier as a mid lane main in season 5, as an ADC main in season 7, again as a jungle main in season 8, and once more in season 9 playing a mix of all those roles including ADC. I can play every role to a very high level and have a very good understanding of the general aspects of the game on top of that. |
I've been writing guides on MOBAFire since 2011, among which my achievements include winning the MOBAFire guide contest multiple times, achieving the highest score on the site multiple times with multiple guides, achieving the most comments on a single guide of all time by a very large amount which hasn't come even close to being surpassed in the 3 years that it's been archived, and having the most collective guide views on the site by a very hefty amount. I've also written some champion guides for Riot Games on the Lolesports site.
In this guide I will go very in-depth into gameplay and teaching you exactly what you need to do, so that this guide is the only resource you will ever need to go to to learn about

They say in regards to ADC that once you learn to play one ADC, you can play them all. It's not too far off from the truth. Almost all marksmen share the same basic mechanics. Because of this, I've made this my most in-depth guide by far, as rather than just teaching you

VIDEOS
In this chapter I'm going to be gathering a compilation of Tristana footage ranging from full gameplays, VOD reviews of myself and more famous players, as well as short plays, to help you learn the champion even better if you're willing to put in the time to watch some extra content on top of the actual guide itself, as well as give you an idea of what the champion can achieve in the hands of a good player. Click here to sub for more educational content.

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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However, ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I think these factors more than make up for her early-game weakness, which is in itself not too weak. She has some good matchups, especially at level 6 which is a huge power spike for her while not always such a big power spike for other ADC's. And above all, the biggest reason to play ![]() |


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The reason you want a defensive summoner on ADC is that you have a lot of DPS, so the longer you can survive, the more damage you'll put out, usually out-damaging what you'd get from




Ability Description
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![]() | Draw a Bead |
The range of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
My thoughts, tips and tricks
This passive is possibly my favourite passive in the entire game. It's been nerfed since I first started playing











Ability Description
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![]() | Rapid Fire |
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My thoughts, tips and tricks
With this spell activated,


Ability Description
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![]() | Rocket Jump |
![]() Whenever ![]() ![]() ![]() |
My thoughts, tips and tricks
Along with




This is both a good thing and a bad thing, since while it means it can easily override a lot of CC's, it also makes it very easy for champions with displacements to simply hold their CC for your jump and immediately cancel it.
However, all in all I think it's one of the best mobility spells in the game, due its long range and the amazing things you can do by overriding CC with it.
Also, just a quick note, you can't auto-attack during






Ability Description
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![]() | Explosive Charge |
PASSIVE: Enemies explode when slain by ![]() ACTIVE: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
My thoughts, tips and tricks
This is


Unfortunately it scales really badly on low stacks, which is mostly what you'll be doing in lane. The cast time and time it takes you to stack it is what makes





Its other use, besides damage on champions, is damage on towers. It makes


Ability Description
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![]() | Buster Shot |
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My thoughts, tips and tricks
A very useful ultimate with many uses. The basic ways to use it are either for burst, or using the knockback as self-peel. More offensively you could use it to shoot an enemy closer to your team or away from where they're trying to run.

Having given you a short rundown on how

Using
Rocket Jump to cancel CC

The most obvious and useful mechanic for this spell is the ability to "cancel" displacements and outplay CC. As mentioned earlier,





Now to use other examples where this is useful, imagine you're playing against a team composed of






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This one actually takes pretty good reflexes, it's one of the hardest to pull off because of how fast ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It's sometimes less than ideal since ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() If you're confident in your ability to cancel the knockup and the damage taken won't be an issue for you, it can be very beneficial to frequently "misposition" near ![]() ![]() ![]() Though be warned, ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Now this guy's pretty easy. He has 2 different displacents you can cancel, ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() You can also outplay ![]() ![]() ![]() There is again room for Gragas to outplay you though. For example, if he's ganking you and you need to use ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Aside from that, if he manages to get in R range of you without having to use ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It's also possible for him to bait your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The two latter methods for a ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But the reason I said the effectiveness of outplaying it isn't as great as some of the other examples is this: during the 1.5 second delay you're going to be slowed and this will allow ![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes it's best to not even cancel the knockup, but rather use ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() IMO, this is the rule you should follow when determining whether to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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![]() ![]() Let's say you're laning against ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Well as this entire segment gives away, yes, you use ![]() ![]() Because ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Fairly easy champion for you to outplay her CC again. If you get hit by ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Outplaying ![]() ![]() The only way ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Something to note is that this mechanic isn't effective against







But







That's one really specific, and very annoying interaction with

The following are the only other annoying interactions I know of.




















All you have to do is auto-attack as soon as your cast time ends (which can be seen through the bar that pops up for a split second when you cast it), as you'll have entered the wind-down phase. Auto-attack commands entered before the wind-down phase will be queued to go through after it ends, which is what you saw earlier when

Here's a clip of it in action:
Comparing it to the




And here's a fun fact: Shortly after her rework in season 5,




The best way to do this animation cancel IMO is to just spam right click during

Also, if you enter a movement command at any point after clicking



This one's pretty niche. Basically you just cast






Its main use though, at least for me, is to catch out an enemy in a 1v1 situation where they're trying to keep their distance from you. Using




Bear in mind though that it has to be used during


Using
Flash to cancel
Rocket Jump


Another niche one!
Okay there actually is a reason why you might want to cancel your jump with

Very rarely, you may find yourself in the complicated situation where both you and a ranged enemy are both 1 auto-attack away from death, but out of each other's range, even if you were to use



So both of you figure, it's a stalemate. If neither of you are going to greed for the kill and die, then there's nothing more to do there except walk away.
If you chose to walk away, then props to you for not being greedy, but there's actually a way to take the kill relatively safely. You use



That's actually a situation I've found myself in a few times and managed to get a kill out of thanks to this mechanic. Aside from that it's also just useful in general whenever you want to use




You really do look like an idiot every time you


When an enemy walks up to one of your minions to last-hit it, you usually want to take this opportunity to poke them with an auto-attack. However occasionally you'll find yourself in a situation where both you and your enemy want to last-hit a minion at the same time, and he'll walk right next to the minion you want to last-hit.
In this situation it's best not to auto-attack him since your

However you can take this "indirect harass" technique to the next level, and even cast your actual

Whenever you notice an opportunity to harass an enemy this way rather than harassing them with an auto-attack, you should take it. It usually deals more damage (varies depending on items and level), but most importantly, you don't draw minion aggro from doing it, so if they try to poke you with an auto-attack and you poke them with this, they will take some minion retaliation while you will take 0 and can just back off to end the trade before drawing any minion aggro to yourself.
However you do need to be very careful that when you do this, you're sure the explosion is actually going to hit your enemy, because


Using
Buster Shot as CC




Using



This "stun" duration goes up with each level in

Assassination burst combo
I may not be a


The main combo for assassinating enemies on








Even enemies that don't try to fight back will still have an incredibly hard time trying to get away from you if you land



Champions like






Just make sure you don't get too bloodthirsty and try to 1v1 everyone you find only to die when their team shows up to save them. That's when you're not playing passive enough. Go for the 1v1 assassinations when your enemy is making a mistake by being able to be killed by you, but don't try and force it so hard that you're the one making the mistake by going in.
Double
Rocket Jump

Finally the last trick I'm going to talk about, another fairly niche one. If you place





As you can imagine it's not very often that you would want to use this since it can seem quite overkill to need to use 2 dashes on top of ulting an enemy away, but sometimes when you're being chased by multiple enemies, it can be useful to dash as far away as you can, and therefore 2 dashes are better than one. You would want to use



This chapter is currently under reconstruction following the Season 11 items rework, apologies for the inconvenience.

Bot Lane Matchups
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Bot lane matchups are a very complex subject. On solo lanes or jungle matchups it's easy to say that one champion beats or counters another, or that a matchup is even and can be considered a skill matchup. Bot lane is unique in being a 2v2 lane and to top it off the supports are often even more impactful than the ADCs, so you have to factor the support into the matchup just as much if not more than the ADC, and also the strengths and weaknesses of each support relative to the strength and weaknesses of their partner as well as their two opponents. There's such a ridiculous amount of possible combinations you can run into (minimum 560 counting only common picks) that it's simply impossible to explain the dynamics of how every single matchup should play out, nor can I rate the difficulty of each ADC or support matchup individually because depending on the supports, your pick can either win lane against every ADC/support or lose lane against every ADC/support. So I'm going to dedicate this chapter to giving a small rundown of what you need to know about laning against each champion, both the ADCs and the supports, and a rating of what their general strength in lane is, which is not necessarily a rating of how difficult your lane will be if you're playing against them in solo queue as it varies depending on who their lane partner is and also who their opponents are, for example champions like ![]() ![]() ![]() Deep understanding of each champion on an individual level coupled with first-hand experience in witnessing how many different duos perform with each other will lead to a greater understanding of how any given bot lane matchup is likely to go, and with the following brief analyses of each bot lane champion I hope to give you as much of a head start in this area as I reasonably can. |
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For a long time regarded as the queen of laning phase, Caitlyn's had a lot of power taken out of her laning phase and given to her mid-late game, and playerbase perception hasn't yet to catch up with the times. She's still a massive lane bully and will win almost any lane that comes down to trading and waveclear, but she's very weak in all-ins and will get crushed in fights by any bot lane that can engage on her. Because of how extreme her strengths and weaknesses are her threat level really varies between high to low, so I chose medium as a compromise, but beware of how utterly dominant she can be in lane if you don't have a good matchup against her. |
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Draven is the absolute king of laning phase in today's League, far beyond what Caitlyn ever was at her peak. He is simultaneously the strongest ADC in short trades, long trades, and second best in all-ins. Never has a champion quote ever been more true than "Draven does it all". However, even Draven is not quite without weakness. He's short-ranged and has no escapes so he's very vulnerable to being engaged on. Unfortunately he's so strong in all-ins that if you engage on him there's a good chance he'll just turn it into a double kill, but as with all bot laners, a duo with strong enough all-ins while ![]() Additionally, because of his short range and poor waveclear he can be easily handled by champions who can pressure him from outside his range like Caitlyn on the ADCs' side or Zyra on the supports' side, on the condition that he's not paired with a support that has the ability to easily engage on and lock down these long range champions for Draven to reach and kill, such as what ![]() ![]() |
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Ezreal is a champion that is primarily picked for safety, he is very hard to kill in lane and his long range low cooldown ![]() In exchange for being so hard to snowball against, he's also made to lack the tools to snowball himself. He has weak waveclear, unnoteworthy all-in power, and would be decent at trading if not for the fact that he can't poke through minions. He will never create a winning matchup solely on his own merits. However, bot lane being as complicated as it is, if his duo as a whole is one that is either stronger in all-ins or stronger at trading and he is able to pressure the lane rather than play defensively, ![]() |
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Jhin's fourth shot hits like a truck, giving him very strong zoning potential and damage when trading with it, which combined with his decent waveclear makes him a strong lane bully in most matchups. He's okay in all-ins when following up his support's engage to finish someone off, but his damage is not great in extended fights and he is himself highly vulnerable to being engaged on and burst down. |
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Jinx comes online for teamfights very early into the game but has a miserable laning phase. She's weak at trading, weak in all-ins, has inefficient waveclear, suffers from Ezreal's problem of having decent poke that's impossible to actually use unless you're already winning lane, and is also highly vulnerable to being engaged on. On the bright side, when the matchup actually does allow her to have pressure in lane ![]() |
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Kai'Sa has a lot of winning matchups while only having a few losing ones, but she doesn't excell at any particular area. She's decent in trades, has decent waveclear and decent all-ins which makes her a versatile champion fitting well into most matchups and supports, but she generally won't crush you in any individual aspect and can be beaten by duos that strongly outshine her any areas, and is especially vulnerable to ADCs that can best all-in her. Her mobility is decent enough though that she's not overly vulnerable to engages compared to the more immobile ADCs. |
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A Challenger level Kalista wins almost all lanes, but the average Kalistas you'll encounter in your games won't be quite so impressive, generally winning against low threat ADCs, going even against medium threat ADCs and losing to high threat ADCs. She's a lane bully that can pressure opponents quite well with her high mobility, low CD trading and strong poke to develop healthy CS leads, but she lacks upfront damage in fights, loses DPS when slowed and is generally quite easy to kill once locked down. However, when in a winning matchup she can be very oppressive due to her high mobility and ability to help her support engage. |
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Kog'Maw is best known for being a mid-late game hypercarry and respectively his laning phase is appropriately weak to compensate. He can't push very well early on, has very weak trading in lane, very weak poke until level 6 when it becomes okay, very poor followup to engages, and is himself highly vulnerable to them. When actually in a winning matchup he won't have a hard time exerting pressure between his massive auto-attack range during ![]() ![]() |
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A traditional lane bully, Lucian sacrifices mid-lategame power in exchange for putting it all into his laning phase. Lucian has great waveclear, decent poke, great trades, is great in all-ins, has great followup to engages, and has great mobility to keep him safe from engages. He's a little worse than draven at most aspects besides waveclear but his extra mobility makes him safer and also better at abusing his leads when he has them, especially as he typically rushes ![]() Lucian will typically lose lane into matchups that outrange him when his lane can't easily force engages, or can lose to duos with stronger all-ins. |
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Miss Fortune is a champion who can be a massive lane bully into many matchups given the huge range and damage of her ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Sivir is probably the most underrated laning phase ADC there is. She has the best waveclear of any ADC at later levels and still really good waveclear earlier on, great poke, decent trades, is okay in all-ins, is relatively safe from being engaged upon by basically any support that isn't ![]() ![]() |
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Tristana has bad early waveclear, really bad poke and really bad trades, but her strength in all-ins in matchups where she can fully stack her ![]() ![]() She has a hard time into matchups where she can't win all-ins, usually either as a result of CC leaving her unable to stack her ![]() ![]() |
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Twitch may be marked as a low threat, but that doesn't mean you can let your guard down against him. Twitch has bad waveclear, bad poke, is bad at short trades and is highly vulnerable to engage, making him an extremely weak champion in lane overall. However he's okay in extended trades where he has time to stack up ![]() ![]() Despite being extremely weak in all-ins and trades and on average being down in CS into every single matchup as a result of it, he still averages being up on kills into every ADC except Tristana. It isn't enough to make his laning phase good given that on average he still falls behind in gold to every ADC except ![]() ![]() |
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Varus has decent waveclear, poke and trading, and his ult is an amazing engage tool which coupled with his bursty kit makes him decent in all-ins too. However as a jack of all trades that makes him easy to beat in a matchup that's much better than him at any given aspect. |
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Being a late-game hypercarry, Vayne has bad waveclear, bad poke, bad trades and poor all-ins. On the other hand she's relatively safe, and she's great at following up engages or engaging herself when she's in a winning matchup. But she pretty much loses any lane so long as the support difference isn't enough to compensate for it. |
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Xayah has great waveclear, decent poke, good trades and great all-ins especially when paired with a CC support while also being safe from engages and having great followup to engages by bringing CC of her own. All around a very solid laner, but is quite short ranged and can be easily handled by matchups that can keep her at a distance or beat her in all-ins. |
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Alistar is a rather weak laning support overall given his vulnerability to being poked, the ease with which his WQ combo can be interrupted by many supports with displacements, and the fact that any CC or mobility spell can prevent him from stunning his target with ![]() However, after level 6 with ![]() It also makes him great at setting up plays, so if he is in a winning matchup it makes it very easy for him to dive 2v2 or with the jungler's help, given that he can tank up the tower for long periods of time while CCing the targets to allow his team mates to safely finish them off. |
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With ![]() ![]() He's very good at low-range trading and has a reasonable amount of healing to sustain his ADC and himself despite not quite falling into the healer category of supports, and can set up good engages with ![]() ![]() He himself though is quite vulnerable to engages especially when not near a wall he can ![]() |
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Blitzcrank is probably the most hit or miss champion in League of legends, both literally and figuratively. If he hits his ![]() So obviously it goes without saying that his all-ins have the potential to be great if he's the one forcing them by landing a good hook, but when missed or if used on a melee range target he's rather weak since he doesn't bring much to the table other than forcing a target to become horribly mispositioned and briefly CC'ing them in that spot. He's generally weak into strong laning supports that can control the lane and make him scared to walk up to hook for fear of taking too much damage or getting caught himself, but can be quite successful into some of the weaker laning supports, especially into enchanters. Though the opponent's general strength in lane is still the overall biggest factor, Blitzcrank is more so happy to face enchanters than other supports, and likewise shines into immobile ADCs who have no easy way of dodging the hook and have to play defensively and far back to avoid putting themselves into a position where they can get hooked. |
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Brand's combination of strong long range poke, one hard CC and immense burst make him one of the strongest laning supports in the game, alongside most mage supports. Given the range of his poke along with its strength it's very hard to beat Brand through trades and therefore makes strong all-in lanes with good engage the best chance at beating him in lane, but pre-6 he has the proper tools to keep his opponents too low to be able to risk engaging and after 6 with ![]() |
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Braum has great peeling and defensive properties for keeping his ADC safe in teamfights, but this translates very poorly into laning phase strength where he's just a low-CC melee support with no damage, no way to fight back against poke, and not particularly safe from getting engaged on, so rather abusable in pretty much any matchup. Fortunately he's very tanky to make up for it so not particularly easy to kill, and ![]() |
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Fiddlesticks has two equally viable spells he can max based on his needs or desires, either ![]() ![]() Engage is the best way to deal with him but he has the option of taking ![]() ![]() Additionally at level 6 he becomes very strong in all-ins where he has the opportunity to jump in with ![]() |
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Janna can either max ![]() ![]() ![]() She's weak in all-ins but is also great at protecting herself and her ADC from all-ins in many matchups, making her an overall decent support while still being slightly on the weaker side, though vulnerable to supports with longer range poke and supports who can engage without being affected by her ![]() |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Being a sort of enchanter/mage hybrid she doesn't really shine at either aspect, but her magelike qualities make her a rather good laning champion despite not being quite on the same level as other pure mage supports, and her enchanter qualities make her decent at protecting and buffing her allies, despite not being quite as good at it as pure enchanters. |
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The greatest thing that Leona offers is easy engage onto vulnerable short range targets, since her ![]() However it's also quite short ranged which is a big disadvantage over them and her all-ins are not as strong as other engage champions, so while she has an easy time forcing fights to extend her lead in good matchups, she doesn't necessarily have a great deal of good matchups, so is best paired with a strong laning ADC and works best when picked against weak laners. |
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Lulu has the ability to massively buff her ADC's damage mid-late game as well as offering great anti-burst protection and works best paired with hypercarries, so given her scaling it's not surprising that her laning phase isn't that great. She does pack a lot of damage however, so she can definitely act as a bit of a lane bully in winning matchups, but she needs to get in close range to use it and can easily get blown up in many matchups. |
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Whether maxing ![]() ![]() However to get the most damage out of her kit she has to get in auto-attack range to proc ![]() ![]() |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The only supports that can reliably beat her are lane dominant mage supports, but she isn't an awful pick into these either since her ![]() |
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Nami brings a perfect balance of poke and healing as she improves both when ranking up her ![]() Her all-ins however are generally not all that great, hinging massively on her ability to land her slow moving ![]() Additionally the fact that she does have options to force and win all-ins through her CC is something that gives her an edge in many matchups that other enchanters don't have. |
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Nautilus has gone through long periods of weakness in the support role, but currently at the time of writing this he is probably the strongest all-in support, bringing a heavy mix of high tankiness, decent damage and long range, very easy to land engage. However he has no poke and can't engage through minions, so in matchups where he has no prio and can be punished for walking up to fish for hooks he won't be able to contribute much and is vulnerable to poke. When in winning matchups though his ease at engaging makes him very scary to face and can generate very large gold leads. |
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Pyke is currently the strongest support in lane, bringing the same playmaking utility you'd get from other engage/hook supports while also being highly mobile, rather tanky overall in extended scenarios where he can make ample use of ![]() He doesn't quite have the damage to one-shot a carry unless extremely fed, but coupled with his ADC's damage it makes it rather easy to bring a target below the execution threshold for ![]() ![]() His high mobility and sustain also make it extremely hard to punish him except if he can be CC locked and burst down, making it hard to generate leads from him when he fails at making a play, while not being as forgiving for the enemy bot lane when he succeeds. |
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Being a scaling support, Rakan's laning phase is rather weak. His engage is hard to land, doesn't do much damage and he isn't particularly tanky to actually win the fights he engages. He has some poke but it doesn't do much damage, and some sustain but it's not on demand and isn't that strong. Sort of a jack of all trades that's weak enough in all aspects that he'll be outshined by most supports in lane. At level 6 his engages become a little stronger as he can more consistently land ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Sona eventually ramps up to being one of the strongest lategame champions in the game even compared to non-supports, so naturally her laning phase suffers to compensate. First and foremost she's the second squishiest champion in the game besides ![]() However she does bring decent poke and some healing and shielding for both herself and her ADC, causing her to have an easy time into enchanters and other weak laners who can't punish her in all-ins and allow her to scale and keep herself and her ADC topped up with sustain. However her aforementioned squishiness makes her very weak into stronger laners with either high damage or good engage who can punish her lack of defensive stats. |
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Soraka is the queen of healing in League of Legends, providing unparalleled levels of healing through ![]() ![]() ![]() When in winnable matchups she has the option of maxing or putting some early points into ![]() |
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Kench doesn't have a great time into the majority of the support roster, but he actually does quite well into most melee supports. As these supports are mostly engage focused ![]() ![]() Against melees on the other hand, this isn't a problem and he's much more capable of utilizing the full extent of his kit, and ![]() |
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Taric is the only melee pure enchanter in the game, every one of his spells except ![]() He doesn't fair as badly into melee matchups since, similarly to Tahm Kench, he gets a lot of damage from his passive which he can't easily apply to ranged champions but can easily use on melees. However while this makes many melee matchups more bearable than ranged matchups, he still tends to not do very well into most of them. |
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Thresh combines the engage and pick potential of a melee champion with the trading pressure of a ranged champion. With ![]() ![]() ![]() Additionally, the aptly named ![]() ![]() |
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Vel'Koz provides some of the longer range poke of all the mage supports, with experienced Vel'Koz players also being able to easily land poke on targets hiding behind minions due to the way ![]() He also brings long range massive AoE damage in ![]() ![]() |
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Xerath is the most oppressive mage support in lane despite not being too popular in the role. Neither of his two poke spells are hindered by minions meaning there's no way to avoid his poke except by dodging it, and since in the support role he doesn't have to move into a vulnerable position to last-hit there's not much room to fight back unless he's comfortable enough to step up because he thinks he'd win the fight. As far as mage supports go though he's probably the most vulnerable. He does have CC in ![]() ![]() ![]() This makes long range engage supports a lot more effective at dealing with him than they are against other mages. Which is not to say that they beat him, since in a vacuum Xerath should basically win lane against any support except for maybe ![]() |
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Yuumi is extremely squishy and as such has to spend the vast majority of her time attached to her ADC in order to not get constantly caught out. She provides a lot of healing and poke while attached but while it gives her an amazing late-game, for laning phase it doesn't quite make up for the lane being a 1v2 most of the time as she lacks lane presence, both literally and figuratively. She fares worst against engage supports who can both force her to detach less for fear of getting CC'd and blown up in an instant and also abuse the fact that her lane partner is sort of 1v2 and easy to engage on most of the time, but tends to perform quite well into other enchanters or weak laning supports who can't abuse her lack of lane presence, and also can't abuse her as hard when she's detached which allows her to detach more often and have more lane presence than she would in tougher matchups. |
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Zilean is similar to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He can make it much easier for himself to land a double ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Following and finishing the mildly amusing trend of most mage supports being located towards the very end of the alphabet, ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Her poke is also significantly on the shorter range which leaves her slightly more vulnerable to low range engage supports, while in winning matchups not being as much of a problem against long range hook-based engage champions who need to path around minions to find her and leave themselves open to eating up one of her combos, but limiting her ability to poke in losing matchups where she has to stay far away from the minion wave and can't poke without also being at risk of getting engaged on. However she's very strong in all-ins where she can get her full combo out thanks to the DPS she gets out of her plants, especially when buffed by ![]() |
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Understanding How Two Bot Lanes Match Into Each Other
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It's a complicated subject since there are some champion synergies that need to be accounted for, but generally a duo's strength will be the sum of their parts. So a high threat ADC with a high threat support would be a high threat bot lane, but a high threat ADC with a low threat support would be a medium threat bot lane, and a medium threat ADC with a high threat support would be a medium-high threat bot lane, somewhere in between; but of course it's all relative so sometimes a medium-high or even just a medium threat duo can be incredibly oppressive towards low-threat bot lanes, depending on the particular matchup. |
Drafting Your Bot Lane
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Drafting a low threat bot lane is one of the worst things you can do into a medium-high+ threat bot lane. If you have the time feel free to look over this VOD review, otherwise I'll summarise it for you: the matchup is Caitlyn-Bard vs Kai'Sa-Janna. Janna on her own is pretty middle of the pack/low threat on her own when it comes to trades, while Kai'Sa has the potential to deal a lot of damage in all-ins but is very low threat outside of all-ins. Meanwhile Caitlyn and Bard are both long range, trade heavy bot laners who suck at all-ins but are hard to engage on without engage spells like ![]() ![]() While Janna-Kai'Sa isn't a particularly bad bot lane into low-medium range trade-focused champions and there are worse bot lanes for dealing with all-ins too, they're awful into a trade-focused medium-high threat bot lane like Caitlyn-Bard as they lack the tools to deal with them, they can't win trades since they get outranged so hard so their only way to fight back is through all-ins, but while they would win an all-in if they could actually force one, neither of them actually has the tools to force said all-in against this matchup. Give Kai'Sa a ![]() The result is Kai'Sa-Janna get their waves shoved in under tower repeatedly, and while they do get a few ![]() But the onslaught doesn't end there. Caitlyn-Bard rotates to top lane and Kai'Sa-Janna have to follow them since they stand a better chance of defending the 4 platings tower than top lane Kennen does 1v2. But 2 minutes later the top lane tower also falls, Caitlyn-Bard having now claimed two separate towers single handedly by the 12 minute mark. They proceed to rotate mid lane and repeat the process there, and it all snowballs into Caitlyn-Bard's team claiming every non-inhibitor tower on the map by 16 minutes while their team hasn't even lost half the HP of a single tower. All because Kai'Sa-Janna drafted a bot lane that had no answers for a long range trade-heavy bot lane like Caitlyn-Bard. How could this have been avoided? Either a change in the ADC or the support could have drastically altered the outcome of the lane: |
Looking at Supports
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Looking at ADCs
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What Does This Mean?
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As you can see, neither Janna nor Kai'Sa in particular was the problem, nor are they necessarily a bad bot lane duo in general. But the world of bot lane matchups is a complicated one and, either because of having had to blind pick or intentionally drafting their duo into Caitlyn-Bard out of ignorance, their bot lane duo resulted in disaster that particular game. Replace Janna with most low threat supports and the same thing would've happened, replace Kai'Sa with most low-threat ADCs and the same thing would have happened. I would hate to write a traditional matchups chapter for bot lane because it's never as simple as "Caitlyn beats Kai'Sa" or vice versa, it's highly dependent on the bot lanes as a whole. Reverse the supports and Caitlyn still would've won but probably not as one-sidedly, replace Janna with Nautilus or Thresh and Kai'Sa probably would've been favoured as suddenly they have the tools to capitalize on Caitlyn-Bard's weakness to all-ins. |
SYNERGIES EXAMPLE: Lucian + Braum
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Of course you also have to account for synergies between champions, but you also need to remember that synergies between champions also tend to be heavily overrated. The
A bot lane doesn't necessarily have to shine at the same points, you can pair a strong laning support with a weak laning support, and despite sounding like they have counter-synergy it actually results in a medium-threat bot lane while also having medium-scaling, which you generally don't get from high threat ADCs/supports who tend to fall off. Despite having opposite focuses, the result is a happy compromise between those two focuses, and not necessarily a bad thing unless your team comp really needs a winning bot lane and the enemy bot has drafted an even stronger lane. So Braum being a weak laning support while Lucian is a lane bully doesn't innately mean that they're a bad duo, each individual's strengths in theory are meant to cover up their weakness
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SYNERGIES EXAMPLE: Twitch + Lulu
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Another example is Twitch-Lulu, which especially with the rise in prominence of funneling has enlightened the world as to what a terrifying duo Twitch-Lulu can be. But when
Whereas Nami is also an excellent scaling support, and while she doesn't scale as well with Twitch as Lulu does, she makes up for it by being far better in lane, especially in those scenarios where you're facing Caitlyn-Bard or similar bot lanes, where ![]() ![]() Whereas Taric is probably just as weak in lane as Lulu if not more, but again has a much better engage tool especially paired with ![]() All these factors are mainly what lead to Nami and Taric on average performing better with Twitch than Lulu despite Lulu having far more synergy with him. There are definitely scenarios where Lulu is a better pick, for example if you're facing a low/low-medium threat bot lane like
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Bot Lane Matchups & Duos Conclusion
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It's impossible to discuss every single possible duo against every possible duo, so a lot of it is going to ride on your game knowledge and experience. The purpose of this chapter was to provide you with as much relevant game knowledge to understanding bot lane matchups/pairings as possible, and I hope it has done so. You will still require a lot of experience to perfectly understand how different duos will interact with each other while also accounting for how the different players perform, but unfortunately that's beyond what a guide can teach you. At the very least though I hope I've at least set you on the right path. |

This is probably the most important thing I'm going to talk about in this guide. Any good guide will show you what to build, but few of them actually properly explain how to play. This chapter will be a mix between teaching mechanics and game sense.
ORB WALKING
This is the most basic, yet also by far the most important mechanic to learn for playing AD carry. Orb walking is a term that comes from DotA, but in League it means something different. Orb walking is the act of moving to cancel your auto-attack animation, once your auto-attack has already been fired. The reason you'd want to do this is that it allows you to move around while you auto-attack an enemy, rather than standing still while you auto-attack them. It means you can more easily dodge skillshots during fights, you can constantly reposition yourself to wherever you need to be, you can move away from minion range during a fight, etc.
Proper use of orb-walking will maximize your DPS as you're auto-attacking as much as your attack speed permits you while also allowing you to move around, say, to stay in range of a fleeing enemy. Here's an example of someone orb walking while attacking a


Notice how the










Rather than using orb walking to chase an enemy, you can also use it to run away while still attacking them. This is commonly referred to as kiting. There really isn't much to explain if you already know the basic orb walking. It's just orb walking... but while running. Here's an example of a

After killing










The reason "kiting" (orb walking backwards) is given a specific name, but orb walking in any other direction isn't called anything other than orb walking, is because orb walking backwards is the most important use of orb walking that an AD Carry should apply. It allows you to keep doing damage, while at the same time running from champions like


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Masterful orb walking is when you can do it without cancelling your auto-attack a single time (a very common mistake every player makes from time to time is to begin your movement command before your auto-attack animation has finished, therefore cancelling it and causing you to have wasted your time beginning the auto-attack), while also entering every auto-attack command RIGHT as your attack speed permits you to attack again. If you do it faster than your attack speed permits, you'll move backwards, stand still briefly, then begin your auto-attack, then move backwards, then stand still briefly, then begin your auto-attack... Which is better than no orb walking at all, but isn't as good as it could be. Whereas if you do it perfectly, you'll move backwards, stop and IMMEDIATELY begin your auto-attack, move backwards, stop and IMMEDIATELY begin your auto-attack... This way you spend less time standing still, making you more mobile, and either keeping you safer while you kite or maximizing your damage output as you stick to targets better. |
You'll never be perfect at orb walking. I don't think anyone is, I see pros cancelling their auto-attacks pretty often (though not as often as the common player obviously). But you should strive to be as perfect as you can be at orb walking. Never stop practicing it. Orb walk while you farm in lane (moving constantly makes it harder for enemies to land skillshots on you too), orb walk while you farm jungle camps, orb walk while your team does dragon, orb walk while your team does baron... Never ever stop practicing orb walking, it's really hard to get used to perfectly orb walking at all attack speed values, and the more practice you get, the better you'll be, even if sometimes there's not actually any real need to orb walk (if you have

ATTACK MOVE
Now, there's one aspect of orb walking which, while it's not the hardest part (that would be ensuring you don't ever cancel your auto-attacks), it is the most lethal when you mess it up; misclicks. It sounds easy to kite, in theory; right click enemy, right click backwards, right click enemy, right click backwards, right click enemy, right click backwards... easy peasy, and just like that, you're unkillable, right? But what happens if your mouse cursor is just a millimeter off of the enemy champion model, and rather than right clicking them, you actually right click the ground and end up walking TOWARDS them, which is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve?
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Often this can get you killed, and especially when you're trying to kite with high attack speed (very common with ![]() ![]() |
People misclick all the time, and honestly, my mouse accuracy was horrible when I first started playing AD carry. I've improved a lot in that aspect since then, but I'm still no Doublelift. You wouldn't believe how many times I misclick every single game. But it actually doesn't really affect me that much, if at all. Most good players aren't affected too badly by misclicks, and the reason for this, is just two words: "Attack move". What is attack move? Attack move is a command which is usually set to A, X or Shift+right click. What it does is, is it acts very similarly to right click; if you attack move an enemy, you'll attack that enemy, and if you attack move the ground, it'll move towards that spot. The difference between attack move and right click though, is that if you attack move the ground, your champion will move there, but stop to auto-attack an enemy if they run into one before they reach the spot they attack moved. In the past, your champion would auto-attack whichever enemy was nearest to them if you right click the ground, but in a recent patch, they changed attack move to attack whichever enemy is nearest to the exact spot you attack moved to, which has made it even better than it used to be.
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Now this may sound pretty useless, but it actually has a variety of uses, the most prominent being kiting; because when you right click backwards, then attack move your enemy, then right click backwards, then attack move your enemy, etc... If all goes well and no misclicks are made, then great! You just successfully kited. But if you DO misclick (and trust me, you will misclick so so so so often...), then you right click backwards, then attack move the ground instead of your enemy... but because attack move makes you attack the nearest enemy to the spot you clicked if there are enemies around, rather than accidentally running headfirst into that charging enemy, you'll just simply auto-attack them as if nothing happened. Attack move is the cheat code to removing 99% of the negative consequences you'd usually have for misclicking on the ground. Except it's not a cheat, or a hack, or anything like that; it's a command just like right click is, except bound to a different key. Sometimes misclicking with attack move will make you attack the wrong target, which can be annoying and very occasionally fatal (who hasn't accidentally auto-attacked a minion mid-fight before? =D), but using attack move rarely actually hurts you. So the idea is basically this: if you use attack move on enemies instead of right click, and you make no misclicks then there's no difference. But if you use attack move on enemies instead of right click and you DO make a misclick, what could in some situations be a fatal mispositioning error, may as well not be an error at all, because attack move will make you auto-attack your enemy anyway, making it as if there was no misclick. Attack move won't give you the mechanics of a God, but it will significantly reduce the consequences of all the mechanical errors that you do (and everyone does them). |
Now, kiting is the most obvious time to apply attack move, as it'll save your life so many times, maybe even various times in a single game, depending on how many misclicks you tend to make while kiting. But when else should you use it? Some people would advise using it basically any time you orb walk, as it'll ensure you're auto-attacking as frequently as you can. But you know when I would recommend you to use attack move? Literally for every single auto-attack. If you misclick, even just while farming, rather than accidentally running forwards and possibly opening yourself up to poke or an engage, you'll just auto-attack the minion anyway. The worst possible case scenario you could get from attack moving in that situation, is that you attack the wrong minion and miss a last hit. Which is bad, but you'll probably never lose a lane or a game just because you missed that one single minion in laning phase; if you accidentally get too close to your enemies because you right clicked and misclicked, then that could certainly lead to you losing your lane. Maybe not often, but it can definitely happen, especially against more competent enemies.
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There is basically no downside to attack moving for all your auto-attacks, other than the awkwardness of having to switch from right click to attack move as you move and auto-attack, rather than just right clicking everything. But for me, it isn't awkward at all. For 2 years I've had attack move set onto the "T" key so I can easily click it just as easily as I can click any spell. Clicking A, or X, or, oh my god, shift?!?! Now that is definitely an awkward thing for me to have to be doing with my pinky that's comfortably resting on my Q key. But having it set on T? So I have to slightly move my index finger to the right whenever I auto-attack. That's no problem for me at all, other than maybe once every 100 games where I accidentally click R instead of T and fire my ult into minions... I mean that's embarassing when it does happen, but pretty rare! Attack moving for auto-attacks has become so natural for me that I just can't go back to right clicking enemies anymore; and there's no point. It accomplishes the same thing, but does it better if you happen to misclick. |
You don't need to literally copy my own hotkey for attack move, but if A, X or shift are too awkward for you to get used to, then you should just try and find a key you're comfortable pressing on a regular basis whenever you want to use attack move. For me, T works like a charm, maybe you'd rather just find a different key. You can change your attack move hotkey by opening up the Option screen with the Esc key, going into Hotkeys and scrolling down to "Player movement", left clicking it, and finding "Player Attack Move". If you can find a key that you can get comfortable with, there's really no reason for you to ever need to right click an enemy again.

Another thing that might put you off attack move, especially if you're used to smart casting (a lot of people, me included, smart cast literally every spell in the game), is that you need to click the attack move key then left click on your desired destination/enemy, which feels clunky if all your other keys use smart cast. But Riot actually has you covered there! There's basically a smart cast version of Attack Move called Attack Move Click, which is what I use, and have set to T on the above screenshot. If you're the type to smart cast all your spells, then you can make using your attack move hotkey feel as quick and smooth as any of your spell hotkeys.
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The last use for attack move (besides just being a superior right click in terms of auto-attacking ememies), is using it for facechecking brushes. Say you're chasing a low HP enemy into a brush (and there are no minions nearby for your attack move to automatically make you attack), rather than running into the brush, having to check where your enemy is when you gain vision of them, and then having to move your mouse towards them to auto-attack them, you can just attack move into the brush. So long as they're in your auto-attack range when you enter the brush, you will immediately auto-attack them as soon as you have vision. This is useful if a 10 HP LeBlanc is running into a brush and you just need to auto-attack her before she suddenly bursts you down to nothing because you couldn't click her fast enough after you gained vision. Or if you're in an area where you could easily be juked, you will immediately auto-attack the enemy as soon as they exit the brush, rather than running into the brush right as your enemy runs out of it in the opposite direction; this applies more to melee champions, but it can help you on AD Carries and ranged champions in general too. |
Anyway this has been a pretty long explanation, but that, my friends, is attack move. Seriously, start using it, it really does make a huge difference. Not so much if you don't play auto-attack reliant champions, but definitely on AD Carry.
LANING MECHANICS
Laning mechanics are basically every action you do in lane to build up an advantage. Some of it is very obvious and I'm not going to bother explaining them, such as last-hitting, and other things are more subtle and are just things you learn with experience. Well I'm going to make you skip the "experience" part and just teach you everything I've learnt about laning bot lane as an AD Carry. All you'll have to do is remember it and practice applying it.
The theory of getting ahead on bot lane isn't rocket science. If you do more damage to your enemy than they do to you in trades, you'll have higher HP than them. And thus you're more likely to win any fights you get into. But what if your champion does the same amount of damage as your opponent's champion? Or worse, what if they just straight up do more damage? Well that doesn't mean you're going to lose regardless of player skill. It just means you need to play better than them. The more subtle aspect of laning mechanics, besides just right clicking champions and not accidentally clicking a minion during a fight (which totally never happens to me haha...), is all about trading with (damaging) your opponent in ways or situations where they can't easily damage you back, and also the reverse; counter-trading in situations where you're meant to be vulnerable and your opponent tries to poke you for free damage.
I realize this is sounding really ambiguous, so here's a situation with more context: You're laning on bot lane, 2v2, farming. You see that one of your team's minions are getting low, and you know know that your enemy is about to walk up to it to last-hit it. If they're busy auto-attacking a minion, then they can't auto-attack you at the same time; which is why as soon as you see one of your minions getting low enough for your enemy to last-hit, you wanna pre-emptively move forwards, practically next to that minion, so that when your enemy goes in to last-hit it, you're in range to auto-attack them while they're busy auto-attacking your minion. In most cases, they're forced to choose between cancelling the auto-attack on the minion to trade back with you, or more commonly, they'll keep going for the last-hit and won't trade back with you, so you just get an auto-attack on them for free.
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And when I say that you need to learn to counter-trade when you're meant to be vulnerable, I'm referring to when you find yourself in the opposite of the previous situation; you're the one going in for a last-hit and your opponent positions themselves to get a free auto-attack on you. As mentioned, you can either a) tank it like a man and hope you'll overall win trades anyway, or b) ignore the last-hit and just auto-attack them back so it's a 50/50 trade. If you go for option B every time and your enemy goes for option A every time, you'll miss a few more last-hits than them, but you'll end up higher up on HP and that means you can transition that into either killing your opponent, or zoning them to gain a higher CS lead than the few minions you missed due to auto-attacking your opponent instead. Every time you go for a single auto-attack on an enemy, you should then back off, preferably into a brush, to shake off minion aggro. If a brush isn't an option, or it's warded so it won't make chasing minions lose vision of you, then you should just run backwards until it re-aggros onto your minions. Sometimes a lone minion might chase you way further than it really should (rito plz fix) and if you go too far then it won't be in aggro range of other minions, so at a certain point rather than running backwards you should run in circles around your caster minions until it decides to attack your minions again. It sounds ridiculous, but yeah, sometimes that's just what you have to do to lose minion aggro. |
Positioning is also an important aspect of winning your lane. You want to position yourself in a way that if you're going to trade with the enemy ADC, you're safe from the enemy support too. So for example, say the enemy ADC is positioned to your left, and the enemy support is to your right. If you also position yourself to the right, you're vulnerable to being attacked by both the support and the ADC. If you position yourself more to the left, you can trade with the ADC but you're also out of the enemy support's range, so it'll be a 1v1 trade.
Here's an example of bad positioning:

By standing there, I'm vulnerable to getting attacked by both



Here's an example of good positioning:

If I try to trade with




Note that it's technically bad positioning in both screenshots as I can't be positioned so aggressively in a 1v2 lane, but this is just meant to give you an idea of what good and bad positioning is in a 2v2 lane. You'll constantly want to reposition yourself depending on the enemy ADC and support's movements so you can be as safe as possible and have minions between you and enemy skillshots.
LANE FREEZING
Lane freezing is a more advanced-ish technique that you won't usually see applied at low Elo, but becomes more common in Platinum and Diamond. It's actually really easy to do, the reason it isn't common at low Elo is simply that people don't know about it.
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Lane freezing is keeping the minions on your side of the lane/in front of your turret, far enough away that the turret can't kill the enemy minions so that you don't accidentally end up pushing. You might want to do this for 3 different reasons: 1) You want to set up an easy gank for your jungler, as the enemy bot lane will have to overextend to farm. 2) You want to keep yourself safe from ganks. 3) You're zoning the enemy bot lane so you don't want the lane to end up pushing into their tower where they'll be able to farm more easily. The way you lane freeze is by not pushing, and only last-hitting minions at the last possible second. This keeps the enemy minions alive for as long as possible, causing them to deal more damage to your minions and kill them faster than the enemy minions die. Once all your minions die the enemy minions will advance forwards, and you/your support need to tank them near your tower until your minion wave arrives and begins tanking them for you. When the rest of the enemy minions arrive, their minions will have the numbers advantage, and will continue to naturally push so long as you don't kill their minions too fast, or their minions don't run into tower range (which is why you need to freeze it far enough away that a melee minion starting to attack a caster minion won't place it in tower range). |
To undo a lane freeze, you need to push the minions as fast as possible, and harass the enemy bot lane away from the minions if they try to tank them to create another freeze, to force your minions under their tower. The minions should hopefully die before the next wave arrives and reset the lane.
So this is what the enemy bot lane should be trying to do too if you're the one creating a freeze. However, if you're ahead enough, you'll be strong enough to win trades/fights even while tanking the minions you want to freeze, meaning the enemy bot lane has no way of preventing you from freezing other than getting their jungler to come help shove the wave into your tower. This kind of teamwork doesn't happen even at my level of solo queue though. So if you're ahead enough, you can indefinitely freeze the wave for as long as you want, keeping it very near your tower so you're unlikely to die to ganks, and also forcing the enemy bot lane to over-extend if they want to get last-hits, which would leave them vulnerable to getting ganked.
The only disadvantage to lane freezing is that seeing as the enemy bot lane can't get close enough to farm if you're ahead, you leave them no choice but to leave bot lane and either gank mid or simply group there to take the tower, assuming they're smart enough to leave bot lane. At this point you should just clear the wave that you've been freezing and push hard to take the enemy tower. If your jungler helps mid lane your mid tower might hold 2v3, while the enemy bot tower has no chance of surviving 0v2. At worst you'll trade 1 for 1 if it comes to this, or you might just take their tower then also group mid and make sure that tower doesn't go down.
This is the biggest CS lead I've personally managed to create through freezing a lane.

NOTE:






LANING UNDER TOWERS
If you shove your minion wave under the enemy tower you'll be forcing them to try to last-hit while the tower tries to kill their minions, which is a little more complicated than last-hitting in normal circumstances. There's a few things to consider in this situation:
1) The enemy tower will slowly be taking damage as your minions attack it, and you might get some auto-attacks off on it while your minions tank it. This can eventually end up costing the enemy their tower.
2) Last-hitting for the enemy ADC will be harder, it might cost them a few CS, how much usually depending on whether their support helps them prep last hits or not.
3) You will be vulnerable to engages, should you not play carefully enough, and it's extremely dangerous to get engaged on near their tower, especially by anyone with any kind of "pull" displacements that can take you right under their tower, e.g.











When shoving to the enemy tower, you need to play very carefully if the enemy has any of that dangerous engage. It's mostly only safe for you to auto-attack the enemies/tower if you still have melee minions tanking the tower, and it depends on how far back the support is standing. You can't do much while the support has a clear engage opportunity, but if they're being blocked by minions you can auto-attack them as long as it's safe in an attempt to force them to stand further back, where it's harder for them to engage on you.
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When you're not under threat of being dangerously engaged upon, you're a lot less restricted in what you can do, and you can auto-attack the enemy ADC every time they try to auto-attack a minion, whether as prep to last-hit it or to actually last-hit it. Naturally this mainly only applies to ranged minions as you'd have to be really close to the tower to do this while they're last-hitting melee minions. Instead you can auto-attack either the support (if it's someone that's safe to attack), or the tower. As ![]() ![]() |
When poking the enemies under their tower, the most optimal way to do it is to take into account the turret's auto-attacks, and its auto-attack "cooldowns". E.g. if the turret just started its auto-attack on a minion, then it has another 0.83 seconds before it can begin another auto-attack. This gives you plenty of time to poke someone, then move out of the tower range. It's not hugely important to take into account the tower auto-attack CDs, but the further back the enemy you're poking is standing, the more time it'll take you to move out of tower range, so the more you're able to abuse it, the more aggressively you can play under tower.
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When you're the one last-hitting under tower, which should happen more often given your weak laning and therefore inability to contest pushes, what you need to know about last-hitting under tower is that melee minions take 2 tower shots and 1 auto-attack to last-hit if they start off at full HP, and caster minions take 1 tower shot and 2 auto-attacks to last-hit. Requiring 2 auto-attacks is what makes them the trickiest, as you'll either need to prep the first auto-attack in advance (hard to do while being pressured by the enemy bot lane, especially when you don't have a "dangerous engage" support), or you'll need your support to help you last-hit by auto-attacking it once for you. As you can't control your support's actions, and I often have trouble even getting my premades to do this, that 2nd option isn't terribly reliable. Often the sad truth is, you're just going to have to miss a lot of CS if you're forced to last-hit under tower. Especially true on ![]() ![]() |
When minions don't start off at full HP when they're about to receive tower focus, you (and your support if they're smart) need to try and prepare it so after the tower shot, it'll be at enough HP for you to last-hit. Often though, you can just see that it's impossible for you to last-hit a certain minion no matter what you or your support do, again especially true on



FARMING OUT OF LANE
Ever wondered how pros can get 300 CS at 30 minutes before? No, it's not completely down to "insanely good last-hitting mechanics". You can do it too, just by using a simple wave control technique. Watch this video to understand how minion waves work (it'll also go through lane freezing again).
So when 2 minion waves collide on bot lane, in the middle of the lane, you should be there to push those 6 minions. And then you leave bot lane. No, you don't stay to push the 2nd minion wave too and force your wave to hit the tower. Aside from being at risk if you do that, it's also just not smart to do it. Because once you clear the first wave and your minions advance to crash into the next minion wave, your minions will be on the enemy's side of the map, and as you just learnt from the video, that means that the wave will slowly but inevitably start to push towards your side of the map.
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After clearing that first wave you just go pressure mid or teamfight or whatever, then you just return bot lane in 2-3 minutes when the enemy minion wave has finished pushing to your tower (and make sure to get there before the minions start dying to the tower). At that point it'll be a 15-20 minion wave. Assuming it's 20 minions, and you've been off of bot lane for 2 minutes, you'll be getting 20 minions for the 2 minutes you've spent off lane, keeping with the 10 cs per minute rule you always want to aim for (though won't always be able to achieve). But even if it isn't quite 20 minions, the time that you've spent off of bot lane, you'll have spent farming mid lane, and maybe even jungle monsters. You'll essentially be farming 2 lanes at once, keeping you easily above the 10 CS per minute rule so long as you can consistently get to the bottom lane wave in time before the minions start dying to the tower. This won't always be possible, as CS isn't the most important thing in the game. Sometimes you'll be busy teamfighting, or making sure you're around in case a teamfight starts. But in general you'll want to go farm the wave as much as possible, then push the wave onto the enemey's side of the map to restart the push, both to get ahead in farm and to avoid having a huge minion wave destroy your tower. |
When the wave that you're pushing is a cannon wave, that messes with this technique a little bit. Because you'll be killing the enemy cannon minion and letting your own cannon minion push uninterrupted, the enemy minion wave won't slowly push up to your tower. Instead your minions will continue to push forwards, very slowly. When it's a cannon wave, you should either push the 2nd wave too (if it's safe to do so, not at all safe to do when the enemy team is ahead in towers and enemy threats are unaccounted for on the minimap), or just recognize that you won't be able to get the wave to push back to you in this specific situation and settle for creating a slow push instead, rather than trying to create a farming opportunity for yourself later on.
The video also explains how to create a slow push, but this technique is very rarely useful in solo queue with how uncoordinated everyone is outside of very high Elo. Keep it in mind in case you ever think it could be useful, but most of the time it just ends up creating a huge minion wave for the enemy AD carry to farm, getting him ahead in farm instead of you. It's better suited for ranked 5s assuming your team understands the strength of a slow push, or if you're a high Challenger player and for some reason reading a MOBAFire guide.
In some situations, notably when you expect to be sieging for a while and especially sieging towers that are really close to the enemy base, such as inner towers and inhibitor towers, it's really not ideal to have to force yourself to go back bot lane to farm every 2 minutes. If you do the technique and you can't go bot you'll essentially have just created a slow push against yourself, causing the enemy minions to die to tower, wasting gold, damaging your tower, and possibly even destroying it. Rather than putting yourself in that situation, this is when you want to create a slow push against the enemy team, as they'll hopefully be too busy defending against the siege to send someone to clear bot. This way they'll be the ones losing minions to the tower, taking tower damage, and possibly losing a tower if it's already low. And if they do send someone to clear it, you'll either have an easier time sieging or your team will be able to dive the enemy team 5v4 under tower.
TEAM FIGHTS
When it comes to team-fighting as an ADC, there is one golden rule which is the most basic team-fighting rule of all, and yet makes you an infinitely better team-fighter if you start following it; attack whoever's closest to you. If you stand at the back, behind your frontline, and just auto-attack whichever enemy is absolutely closest to you, you have the best possible positioning, as you'll only be in focus range of whoever's diving you, or whoever you're attacking. It's recommended in general to take down the enemy carries before the tanks, but as the ADC if you try to attack a carry then you're in range of every single member of the enemy team, and if they all focus you then you'll go down in under a second. By keeping your distance and attacking just whatever's closest, you'll be hardest to kill, and can therefore output maximum DPS by just staying alive and being able to auto-attack all fight long. The only time you should attack the enemy team's carries is when there's no other enemies standing between you and them.
The best players of all know not only when to follow that one basic rule, but also when to take even further measures to stay safe. Before you ever even get into a team-fight, you should have already analyzed what all the threats to you on the enemy team are, and play more safely or aggressively accordingly. For example, if a

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But sometimes you need to turn the safety notch up another level and straight up walk away from someone that could be a threat to you. For example, if you're playing vs ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
No, when you're playing against

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Champions that present such a large threat to you aren't just limited to assassins (![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Against champions like these, it's really necessary for you to watch out and keep your distance. You can try poking them with the occasional auto-attack if possible, but you can't fully commit to DPS'ing them down until again, they either fall so low at your team's hands that they're no longer a threat, or realizing that they can't get to you, they commit their most important cooldowns (mobility and/or CC) onto someone else. In ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
When following the rule of "attack whoever's closest", often you'll have to choose between two champions that are at a more or less equal distance from you, and it'll be optimal for you to attack one or the other, but it's hard to be completely certain about who the right target is. That being said, here are some things for you to consider which will hopefully lead to you making the right choice:
1) Which is the bigger threat?
You'll want to take out whoever's the biggest threat not just to yourself, but to your team as a whole, and disregard the weaker enemy. Sometimes it's not very clear cut, others you have to choose between a fed


2) Who would die faster?
When the targets are equally threatening, you'll want to focus whichever one is squishiest/lower HP, as the sooner they're out of the fight, the sooner your team gains a numbers advantage. Sometimes even if they're the lower threat, it's still worth focusing them down first if they're going to die significantly faster, but only sometimes, and it depends on how big a threat the other possible target is.
3) Who's least likely to get away from you?
Nothing frustrates me more than placing






Generally, from top to bottom those would be the most important factors to take into account respectively, but sometimes one factor, if it's big enough, can over-ride a generally more important factor. For example, choosing to DPS down a negative KDA, full AD

Another important aspect about team-fighting again starts before you ever get into the team-fight; it starts when you're buying items at the shop. You should be looking towards the enemy team's composition and their items and adapting your purchases accordingly.


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Before you buy, open tab and analyze the enemy team. If they have CC that can be a real threat to you, especially when combined with magic damage, then you should aim to build a ![]() ![]() ![]() If the enemy team has so much armor that it makes ![]() |
Next I'm going to analyze a

00:20 - Only 2 people are more or less in my range,






00:25 -








00:31 - I make the mistake of walking face-first into





00:32 - Upon seeing the










00:35 - Once

00:36 -





00:39 - Here I decide it's safe to turn again since






00:40 - I auto-attack him once more while still kiting backwards to make sure he can't get to me, at which point he turns around knowing he'd die before reaching me.
00:41 -


00:42 - After





00:44 -



00:45 - After my


00:46 - He realizes running away isn't enough to get away from my auto-attacks thanks to red buff (spectator mode bugged and doesn't show I have one, but that's where all the slows are coming from), so he







00:47 - I



00:49 - 2 auto-attacks in I'm still in auto-attack range but I




00:51 - Getting another reset off




And thus the team-fight ends with me having barely received a scratch, but having 100-0'd








LANING PHASE
Before you even get into lane, you should know that


The key to getting through lane phase on

During laning phase, your objectives are to out-CS your opponent, kill them if possible, and take down their tower ASAP. Most of the damage you do to the tower will be while your enemy is off the lane, either shoved out or dead, so you don't have to worry too much about wearing the tower down when the lane is pushed towards them. In those situations I mainly focus on harassing the enemy, and attacking the tower when that's not an option.
Before getting into lane, you should help your jungler do red buff by auto-attacking it until it drops to about ~200 HP. If your jungler isn't starting on bot side, you and your support should instead go into the bot lane brush on the enemy's side of the lane and wait until minions spawn so you can immediately start pushing and get a shove going.
As soon as you get into lane, you should immediately start spamming auto-attacks on the minions, starting with the melee minions, to push faster than the enemy bot lane and therefore be able to hit level 2 faster. You should be aiming to last-hit all the minions too even though you're also meant to be spamming auto-attacks. This means that when an auto-attack would leave a minion on very low HP and cause it to be finished off by minions, you need to wait until it gets low enough for you to last-hit. That doesn't mean you have to waste time while you wait; instead you auto-attack a different minion, then when you're able to auto-attack again you turn back to the original minion to last-hit it.
FYI: It takes 6 minions of the first wave and then another 3 melee minions to hit level 2 on bot lane.
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If the enemy bot lane hits level 2 before you you have no option but to back off and let them zone you. Don't try to trade, don't try to last-hit, don't try to fight them when they engage on you; the level advantage is a huge one, and they can win any fight they force on you from there. You'll only miss a few minions since if they've hit level 2 before you, then they're pushing the lane, so the minions should end up near you tower soon enough, allowing you to hit level 2 as well. If, on the other hand, you and your support are the first to hit level 2, this means you can zone the enemy bot lane. Even once they hit level 2, they'll still have to stay zoned until the wave hits their tower and the lane equalizes, as you'll have the minion and positioning advantage to dissuade them from trying to contest your zoning. If when you move in to zone them they just try to fight you, it should be an easy fight for you and your support to win. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
All in all, if they don't respect your level 2 advantage, they will either die, take a lot of damage, burn some summoners, or all 3. And the same will happen to you if you're slow to hit level 2 and you don't respect their level 2 power.
You'll notice while playing


Your playstyle should revolve around what kind of a support you have. If you have someone like









If you manage to force your enemies (or at least the ADC) out of lane, by killing them or otherwise, you should shove your minion wave into their tower as fast as you can to make them lose out on CS and XP, then recall for items, which should usually give you some form of item advantage, as well as XP advantage.
Sometimes the enemy has a large enough minion wave, or has another minion wave incoming, that you won't be able to shove your wave into their tower in time to make the enemy ADC lose all their CS. But instead, often you can just recall, get your items, then get back into lane just in time to catch the minions as they reach your tower. In that scenario this is the most beneficial option, as rather than losing your minions to their tower, the enemy is losing your minions to their own minions, because of their minion advantage, explained in the video linked in Farming Out of Lane.
But sometimes you can't do this because either a) the enemy minion wave is too big, and would push to your tower before you have time to get back into lane (you can try to remedy this by thinning out the minion wave in some cases, leaving it big enough to still push but not too fast), or b) you need the gold from pushing the minion wave for your next item, in which case it's worth shoving the wave even if it doesn't cost the enemy ADC any CS.
Here's a video by SoloRenektonOnly, that recently hit the front page of reddit, which does a good job showing you exactly how this works.
It could also be helpful for you to go through the comments of the thread at some point and read SoloRenektonOnly's responses to questions, it can teach you a lot about wave management and answer any questions you might still have after reading this and watching the video.
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The exceptions to going back after forcing your enemies out of lane are when you can't afford any important items and you're already full HP and stocked up on ![]() |
If you want the lane to deny some CS from your enemy while you're taking the tower and you know you're safe from ganks and guaranteed to take the tower, you can bounce your minion wave off the enemy tower. Bouncing means that when you've pushed your minion wave to the enemy tower and have the tower on low HP, rather than auto-attack it and destroy it right away, you leave it on 5-10% HP for a bit while it kills your minion wave, denying CS from the enemy ADC as they're not on the lane. You time it in such a way that once it kills the last minion, you need only attack the tower a single time to destroy it. You can then either go into the brush and recall or shove the wave before recalling, depending on how much you can get away with in the situation, and whether you need the gold or not.
If your jungler successfully ganks you should ping him to help you take down your tower. Most junglers would rather either take dragon or just leave the lane to go keep farming, but the gold you get from taking down a tower is worth more than either of those options. Don't flame them if it doesn't go your way, just ping the tower and try to communicate with them to say that it's important for the team for you to take down the tower. Once it's down, it'll be easier for your team to transition that into dragons anyway.
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Once you've taken down the enemy tower, you should recall for items. It's extremely risky to start laning at their inner tower, due to the risk of jungle ganks, so once you've pushed the wave past their turret, you should either take dragon with your jungler if he's around and willing to do it, or just rotate mid and try to gank and kill the enemy mid laner if possible, or otherwise try to take the tower down 3v1. It may take a while to do so, and you may find that you'll have to go back bot lane a few times to defend the tower, farm the minions and push it onto the enemy's side of the map again, then rotate mid for a little more tower damage, then move back bot to defend the tower. Every time you return mid lane you can try to go for another gank if the enemy mid laner is overextended, if you manage to kill him then you can definitely take the tower. If the enemy mid laner is someone with amazing waveclear, such as ![]() |
The enemy team obviously has the potential to do the same thing as you, but you're the one setting the stage. You're prepared in advance for what's to happen and know what to do, and the enemy team is being taken by surprise and most likely won't immediately know how to react properly. Not to mention, having lost one of their towers already, they won't be preparing to shove into your tower, rather they'll be trying to freeze on their side of the wave for as long as they can, to stay safe. This is bad for your top laner in the sense that he won't be able to CS properly until the wave does reach his tower, if at all, but good in the sense that they won't be able to dive him straight away even if they do think to do it. He should also have the sense to place defensive wards so he can see the enemy jungler coming in case he does come for a dive, which the enemy top laner won't know to do in advance as he isn't prepared for the 1v2 situation he's about to be placed in.
Once you've taken the top lane turret there's not much else left for you to do other than group and make plays as a team. Having taken two towers your team should hopefully be at a large gold advantage. If the enemy bot lane is trying to take your bot tower you can recall, go bot and try to kill them 4v2 with your jungler, or 3v2 with your top laner, or 5v2 if your mid lane and jungler are willing to help. From there on it's mid-game, and you should be going for whatever objectives you can get with your team.
OUT OF LANE
Outside of laning phase, your objective is to destroy the nexus. No I'm not kidding, that's literally the best way to describe it. Every action you take in laning phase is to set you up for mid-late game, every action you take outside of laning phase is to bring you one step closer to destroying the enemy nexus. The way you do this is by performing actions that will make killing the enemy team easier (aquiring gold, dragons, barons) so that you have less resistance, and destroying towers as a way to acquire gold, have better control of the map, and open up routes to the nexus.
At this point you should be grouping with your team as much as possible to teamfight and siege down towers.




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Sieging towers is pretty simple, but you need to be careful about it. When both teams are alive and your team is trying to take a tower, it's your job to do as much damage as you can to the tower without dying. You need to do as much damage as you can while remaining safe. This means you can't just walk up to the tower, press Q and stand there auto-attacking until it dies; this leaves you open to get engaged upon, unless there's no resistance from the enemy team. Instead you have to repeatedly poke the tower. Walk up to it, attack it a bit, back off if someone dangerous is walking up to you. Now you might think "but what if they never stop protecting their tower? Doesn't that mean it's never safe for me to auto-attack it?". If they're constantly standing in a defensive position in relation to their tower, then they're in range for your team to attack them and force them back. They need to be in a place where it's safe for them to sit and look for a good engage, where your team has no way to attack them besides tower diving them, which only works when you're super ahead. And if they advance, that takes them further out of safety, so if you match their movements to stay safe from an engage, they'll be forced to move back for their own safety again, as they don't want to get engaged on either, nor poked down to a point where they need to back to recover their HP. So you should think of sieging as, slowly whittling down a tower. It almost never takes a single minion wave to destroy a tower (unless you have baron buff), it can take many, many waves, but slowly but surely, the tower will go down if you can siege it properly. |
When you're attacking a tower with enemies nearby you always want to be positioned at max range from the tower while you auto-attack, and in between auto-attacks you should move backwards then forwards, so that while your auto-attack is "on cooldown", you're not spending any more time closer to the danger than necessary. It's also good habit in case they start to try an engage and you're already automatically moving backwards the moment you finish your auto-attack, meaning you'll often protect yourself from an engage faster than you can actually react to it, so long as you notice in time to not move back towards the tower for your next auto-attack.
Against teams with very high wave clear (f**k you



I hope this guide helped you learn to play

Special thanks to Janitsu as well for coding my guide when I asked him on such short notice, I think it turned out pretty great so kudos to him!
If you still have any further questions after reading the guide, feel free to ask in the comments, I'll try to answer them as soon as possible and consider addressing them in the guide so future readers may not have the same questions.
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