Know Your Role: Bot Lane ADC
The Roaming Phase
Alright, your first towers went down and now the opposition is moving around the map. You've gone through the laning phase as best you can, and now you don't know what to do. In a lot of lower elo games this is where people get confused with what you're supposed to do. Here in this guide, I plan to clarify a couple things about the roaming phase that will allow you to not only correctly transition into the roaming phase, but also the steps you take so that when then the teamfighting phase starts you're not completely irrelevant.
In some games with specific team comps, the roaming phase is where you want to close out games. In the rest of the games, the roaming phase is where you snowball your lead higher or play catch up so you can deal damage when teamfights start. Let's get started!
The First Tower
Whether it's your tower or their tower that dropped, general rule of thumb is to allow your minions to build up and continue to push to tower, then rotate somewhere else. From here on out in the game, you're going to do what I call "lane maintenance" then rotate somewhere else to push another tower (which will almost always be mid).
That means if your tower went down and you're still alive, you're going to push the lane a bit so that your creeps have momentum towards the enemy tower, then roam somewhere. You don't need to take down their tower right away; the lane is already much longer because your tower is gone. It's better to find more important objectives to take. Here is a checklist of objectives that you should be thinking about after the first tower is killed.
- Bot Lane Maintenance
- Mid Lane Outer Tower
- Dragon
- Bot Lane Outer Tower
- Enemy Buffs
- Allied Buffs
This list is in order of importance for what you should be looking for during the roaming phase. Of course maintaining your lane will always be important, as you don't want to lose a tower. I favor mid lane outer tower over dragon because taking an outer tower (bot or mid) makes it much safer for you to take dragon. Enemy buffs are important, but not more important than you staying alive. Wards are, and will always be your friend.
Lane Maintenance
Continuing to maintain your lane is important so you don't lose any turrets. The best way to let your minions slow push is to auto-attack caster minions, only last hit melee minions. Some people even only take out the caster minions then go somewhere else. The reasoning behind this is because the melee minions don't deal too much damage but can tank quite a bit, allowing your minions to build up while trying to kill the melee minions. The caster minions, on the other hand, deal a lot of the damage. Taking them out allows your minions to not be as damaged when reaching tower.
This is how large minion waves build. Ensuring you have a large minion wave building before roaming allows a lot of good things:
- You could ultimately take out a tower with just minion waves.
- If there's a teamfight happening in another lane, they'll have to send someone to maintain their lane. This turns the 5v5 teamfight into a 5v4, giving you a clear advantage.
- Your towers will be protected, though not guaranteed, from being taken out by champs with low health and armor. Towers deal more damage the longer they attack a single target. The best option for the other team is usually to wait for a minion wave, which if you maintain your lane well, shouldn't be at your tower for a while. This allows for very good picks in the jungle, once again turning a 5v5 to a 5v4.
A lot of players overlook this very important skill. You can see the benefits of proper lane maintenance, and should set yourself to do it in every game from now on.
Enemy Lane Maintenance
Every strategy has a good counter-strategy. When the enemy bot lane is doing proper lane maintenance, you have a couple of counter strategies that will allow you to come out ahead.
- Wards, wards, wards! Setting up wards allows you to pick them off while they're in transit from...say mid to bot.
- You now have a 5v4 teamfight somewhere else on the map while the enemy ADC is busy clearing another lane. Take advantage of the fact that their damage dealer is not there. You should be able to win this more often than not.
- Dragon/Baron free! Set up enough wards and/or win the 5v4 teamfight, and you can take inner towers, dragon, baron, buffs, and maybe even an inhibitor while the enemy damage dealer is busy in another lane.
The key to countering good lane maintenance from the opposing team is vision and timing. This becomes a stamina battle during the roaming phase. In the best case scenarios, you'll only be engaging when minion waves aren't pushing close to your towers. Also, the best time to engage is when the enemy team sends someone to do lane maintenance. This is the mantra that allows you to either make a comeback or snowball much more. If you and your team did decent during the laning phase, this is the phase where you pull a lead in the biggest way, all due to lane maintenance, timing, and vision.
Ward Importance
During the roaming phase there are a lot of moving pieces on the map. Wards are one of your most valuable assets, especially as an ADC. Check out our trinket guide if you haven't already. Bottom line is, even if you're pulling in a 6 item build, you should have a trinket slot for a free ward. These wards prevent you from getting picked off, even in the most dire situations, just because you have an early warning on when to get out.
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| Offensive and defensive warding for bot lane pushing past the laning phase. |
This is a map specifically for bot lane and where you should drop your ward depending on if you want to be offensive or defensive in maintaining your lane. If you're on blue side, you'll most likely pick one of the blue dots as your defensive ward, or a purple (I know, it looks pink) dot for a more offensive ward and push. If you're on purple side, you'll drop a defensive ward on one of the purple dots, or an offensive ward on one of the blue ones. These wards reduce the chances of you getting picked off in rotation or while performing lane maintenance.
Farming/CS
I've noticed in a lot of lower elo games this is the phase where farming goes out the window and people just want to kill other champs. While killing other champs is good, you shouldn't ever let off on your csing. As an ADC, it's important for you to use this time to get the items so you can deal a ton of damage in teamfights.
You'll get a lot of CS from lane maintenance by itself, but taking jungle creeps and minions from other lanes you're pushing (like mid) will allow you to keep your CS up throughout the game. Just remember the general benchmark for CS: 100cs/10min. I know it's hard to get 200CS by 20 minutes, but reaching for it gives you a set goal to achieve in each game.
In a farming vs fighting scenario, it's usually better to give your team an advantage in any skirmish or teamfight that's about to happen. This is why it's important to rotate well and maintain your lane as best you can; when teamfights happen you want to be there from the roaming phase on.
Skirmish/Teamfight Positioning
Positioning is something that a lot of pros talk about, though it's seldom really explained on where you should be during any fight. This is probably the single most important thing for you to actively do: dynamic positioning.
Dynamic positioning simply means that you're moving during teamfights. Like in real life firefights, if you stay in one spot for too long, you're going to have a bad time. The simple rule for ADCs is this: stay behind your tanks, attack the priority target within your zone. This means if their ADC is way behind their tank line and you can't hit them, don't hit them. You will always stay behind your bruiser/tank and attack whoever is closest/fastest bursted down.
A lot of times your primary target will be an assassin or bruiser diving you. Especially in solo queue, you'll be required to peel for yourself. Since killing them is the best peel, they will be your target until you can safely move up into the teamfight for cleanup/more damage dealing.
The long in-depth answer to how you position take a little bit more thinking on the variables of your specific game. Before I get into telling you what you should do, let's go over a checklist.
- Which team's damage dealer deals more damage? Are you fed or is the enemy ADC fed?
- Which team has more CC and dive potential?
- In the last few skirmishes, have I been getting dived?
- Are my tanks surviving the onslaught from the enemy team?
After we've thought about some of these things (and over time it'll be second nature to you), we can devise a strategy for dealing with the enemies in a teamfight.
There's a lot of information on the teamfighting phase, and we plan to get into that in the next segment: Know Your Role: Bot Lane ADC Teamfighting Phase Guide. Be sure to check back soon!
