League of Legends – Know Your Role: Playing AD Carry [Guide]

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• Why Playing AD Carry is Hard
• The Importance of Positioning
• Laning
• Builds
• Team Fights

To start off this new series of guides to teach LoL players on the different roles in the game, here is a guide on what is perhaps the most popular of them. Almost everyone wants to be the hero of the day, and this role exemplifies it. Being the carry, you get to “carry” the team in this case with your high attack damage that bites opponents hard and makes them run. But in order to achieve that level of play, there are a few things you must know your role.

Why Playing AD Carry is Hard

A lot of people want to play the carry as this role due to being the one that usually racks up the kills and drives the momentum for the team, but it’s also one hell of a hard job. As an AD carry, you’re essentially building a glass cannon due to the focus on offense, which makes you vulnerable when up against 2 or more opponents and/or caught off-guard with low health. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then you just become a feeder and a target for ridicule.

You most likely won’t have items like Zhonya’s Hourglass, which means that you won’t have much defense to go by. You can get something like The Bloodthirster or Warmog’s Armor eventually to get some more survivability, but your options are limited other than those. Your only true defenses are your discretion and skill, and that’s not something that can be taught; they can only be acquired through lots of practice.

The Importance of Positioning

Positioning is the key in playing AD carry, and those who die and feed while playing as one suffer that fate due to not knowing the importance of this element.Since you are a glass cannon, being caught flatfooted in a bad spot will definitely get you killed, and you will be targeted.

The AD carry is the main source of DPS for the team, so shutting down the AD carry ensures that team fights will be much easier. You must be able to go in and do that damage while staying away from any sort of AoE damage and crowd control spells that can stop you in your tracks.

Laning

Farming is imperative for the AD carry as items are the lifeblood that will take him through the mid-game and let him shine in the late game. In order to farm, you must master the delicate art of last hitting, and no one should be able to stop you from doing so. A big part of the team’s success lies in the ability to lay down DPS, so it’s important for you to get the items for that.

Smart opponents will harass the AD carry and make sure that he does not get to farm, and you must not let them get away with it. There are some tactics that you can use to get them off your back, like farming at tower and having a teammate back you up. By the time you get back home for the first time, you should be able to get the items that will form the core of your build.

You need to have a support with you for backup since you’re not that durable. If you’re caught alone and at a bad position, then you could pay for that mistake dearly. This is usually where would-be carries turn into feeders due to a number of factors, including over-aggressiveness, lack of experience, and so on.

Builds

When playing AD carry, you have different options when it comes to builds. You can go either high attack speed to quickly take an enemy’s life down with lots of DPS or pure attack damage to make it really hurt with every hit you make. It’s not to say though that one must give way for the other as both routes can go hand in hand, but that also depends on the particular champion in question.

You can rush Bloodthirster, which can give you good damage and also lane sustain. There’s also either Statikk Shiv, Phantom Dancer, or Last Whisper, whichever fits the build and play style of your choice. Other core items include Infinity Edge, Zeal, and Bloodthirster. An item that brings in a big chunk of attack damage is always what is called for, especially when heading to the late game when team fights and hard pushes become the focus of the game.

There’s also Trinity Force and Blade of the Ruined King for certain champions that can make use of their special properties. The former suits champions like Corki, Ezrael, and Lucian, which are carries that also cast a lot of spells and could also use the bonuses from its passive. On the other hand, the latter is for champions like Vayne, Twitch, and perhaps Ezrael as well.

Team Fights

Being able to find the balance between auto-attacking and backing off to stay alive is something that can’t be fully taught, but practiced for countless games as well. The thing is that people tend to get into it like they would with laning, wherein they go up in front and try to poke enemies. This results in a hard engage that usually leads to disaster.

It’s not that you can’t go in and hit them hard at all, but you really need to time it just right. Another compounding problem is that players who are a bit more experienced would then become obsessed with targeting enemy carries, which isn’t a bad idea to begin with but does lead to some really bad situations as well.

While the main priority is to attack the opposing player with the most damage, you should get to attacking the closest target whenever possible, even if it’s a tank. There are a lot of factors involved, like how well you’re covered and whether you’ll get hit with a crowd control or something else that would get you into trouble.

This is where discretion and knowledge of the game’s various subtleties come in, and that can only be learned through lots of experience.