ActionGuidesMOBA

Arena of Valor: 5 Tips & Tricks to master playing with ADCs

Learn the essential basics

Marksmen or ADCs in Arena of Valor excel at dealing reliable sustained damage at range, usually through basic attacks. Marksmen are called ‘ADC’s which stands for ‘Attack Damage Carry’, meaning they can deal sustained damage at range. Although ADC or Marksman is a favoured role, many beginners play marksmen incorrectly, causing them to int and feed. And with every new Arena of Valor player, more of these players appear. In order to reduce the possibilities of that happening, here are our tips & tricks for beginners who want to master how to play marksmen or ADCs in Arena of Valor.

Why do many beginners favour ADCs in Arena of Valor?

Valhein being the very first hero a player obtains in the game, many players gain a sort of affiliation with the marksman role. In addition to that, due to Valhein’s easy to play and mechanically simple skillset, many players jump to the conclusion that the marksman role is easy to play. Another reason why marksman is a favoured role amongst beginners is that they believe marksmen are the breadwinners of the game, the carry role. In fact, they are not wrong, when played correctly the marksman role is the most dominant role in Arena of Valor as of July 2020 due to the addition of overpowered marksman characters such as Elandorr, Laville, Capheny and Thorne.


Tips & Tricks to master ADCs in Arena of Valor

5. Farm in the early game

Arena of Valor ADCs tips and tricks
Take out as many minions as you can in the early game

As an ADC, you have to acknowledge that your early game is weak and underwhelming, there is little you can do to change that, therefore you should bide your time and begin farming. Understand that -in most cases- you cannot carry the early game and are the main target of the entire enemy team. The enemy team is trying to exploit your weak early game to shut down your economic and experience growth, thus postponing your entry to the late game- a period of the game where you truly shine.

In order to reach your overpowered late game, marksman players should focus on clearing their minion wave and maybe even clearing a few small jungle camps (with permission from your jungler of course). Do not rush into teamfights during the early game, do not plot and scheme on how to beat your opponent in lane, think about how to stay alive and how to farm efficiently.

These are your main responsibilities during the early game if you want to have a rewarding late-game that allows you to oneshot everything from tanks to mages. Set your life and your minion as your highest priorities during the early game, do everything to safeguard those two items, even if it means letting the enemy take your tower. Farm as many minions as possible during the early game so you can farm the enemies like minions in the late game.


4. Play Safe during the early game

As we have established in the point above, a marksman’s early game damage and impact are weak during the early game. This causes a divergence in logic, the first type of marksman player will choose to acknowledge this and don’t go for risky plays as they understand that they do not have enough damage to pull it off; the second type of players will try risky plays to gain more kills during the early game to allow them to snowball and carry the game. Both logics apply, but to be the second type of player, one must be extremely skilled at the game and have a good understanding of their character limit and personal ability. Therefore, it is not recommended that new players choose to be the second type of player due to their often lower skill level.

Beginner marksmen should opt for safer plays and only engage in teamfights in the early game if it is a sure win situation or if there are no foreseeable downsides to the play. Many beginner marksman players are desperate to prove themselves and thus often fall for the trap of trying to go for high-risk plays, however, due to their lack of experience they often fail and end up feeding the enemy team. In order to not fall for this beginner mistake, when in doubt, play safe.


3. Position your marksman well

As you will become one of the main sources of damage for your team, the enemy team fears the impact you will bring upon a teamfight as you output large amounts of ranged damage. Thus, enemies will try and eliminate you first in a teamfight so that they can prevent you from dealing damage in a teamfight. You will become their main target and focus. In order to prevent the enemies from killing you, you have to learn how to position yourself.

Make use and take advantage of the range you have. As you are a marksman, your essential concept is to be able to deal play-making amounts of damage while staying at a safe range.

During the early game

Marksmen should position themselves under their tower for the most part as the enemy jungler is roaming the map and looking for ganks onto you. In order to deny the enemy jungler ganks onto you, try to stay under tower and only advance when your team jungler and or mid laner come to your aid and they engage an advance.

However, if the enemy team is hellbent on ganking you, 3 or more of them may try to tower dive you. If you see 3 or more enemies advancing towards your tower and none of your teammates are coming, choose to give up your tower and retreat.

During teamfights

To stay at a safe range marksmen should always stay behind your tanks or supports, using them as a meat shield to protect yourself. Also, when they are in front of you, they are obliged to protect you, however once you charge ahead of them, they are in no position to help you whatsoever and your death will be your fault as you left their range of protection.

Other than staying by your support, you should stick close to your support if they are a backline support ( Peura, Alice, Annette ) as they may have abilities that can heal you, give shields or even buff you. In order to maximize your benefit, stick to your support and stay in a range where they can and will protect you. If you leave the range where they can support you to attempt to make risky plays, your death will be due to your lack of skill to pull it off.

Don’t stand too close to other backlines on your team, if you stand too near them, enemy assassins may have a chance to take you both out simultaneously as their abilities could hit both of you at the same time. Have some distance from one another so if one of you gets taken down, the other has some distance from the attacker and can effectively retaliate.


2. Learn to kite properly

When dishing out damage in the backlines as a marksman, many beginner players stand still while auto attacking. This is an inappropriate practice as you root yourself to a fixed location, making yourself extremely susceptible to enemy jungler ganks as you are easy to land skills on due to your position that holds constant.

Marksman players should learn to kite. Kiting is the action of keeping a constant distance between yourself and danger whilst auto-attacking between your movements. If the enemies are threatened by your damage, do advance forward to exert pressure and dominance onto them. However if they are gaining onto you and you see that your team is losing the teamfight, slowly back off while firing retaliating shots to provide cover for your team in hopes of them escaping too.

Other than forwards and backwards, one can kite for many reasons. For example, if you see the enemy assassin approaching you from on the mini map, you kite towards the opposite direction so you increase the distance between you and the enemy assassin, thus making it harder for them to kill you. Another direction that can be opted is towards your support, this allows you to be noticed by them and allows you to be easier to be supported by them. All the while you continue to shoot the enemy between each movement towards your desired direction so that you don’t cancel your damage output and contribution to the teamfight.

There are no fixed rules on where you should kite towards and where you should not, marksman players could base their kite directions off the scenarios mentioned above but it is best that marksman players learn where to kite to best through experience on the battlefield. However to get an edge on learning kiting, there are certain marksmen who are better at it, such as:

  • Capheny: Passive allows her to Run and Gun
  • Hayate: Can reposition while using his S1.
  • Laville: Can kite easily with the increased movement speed and cc immunity from his S2
Arena of Valor ADCs

1. Use perfect items for marksman builds

Beginner players in general stick to the same build no matter the enemy team’s roster, thus making them constantly less effective in dealing with certain characters. An example of this is when people who always stick to one build go against Lubu or Kil Groth and don’t take heal reduction items, this causes them to be unable to deal with said characters with the highest efficiency. And for marksmen, the situation is similar. So under our tips and tricks for mastering playing with ADCs in Arena of Valor, we find picking proper builds the most important one.

In most cases, marksmen builds often circulate around crit chance, attack speed and damage. Therefore items that provide those are favoured, those items include Slikk’s Sting, Claves Sancti, Bow of Slaughter etc. When going up against a team with someone who is good at regenerating health such Taara and Lubu, it is often recommended that attack damage champions take anti heal items such as Curse of Death to counter them. However, as a marksman, this is not your job. The anti heal items should be used by your team’s warrior and support, don’t itemize towards the anti heal direction. This is because Curse of Death’s base stats only provide 100 Attack damage and 10% Lifesteal- thus only having 1 of the three things you are looking for.

Arena of Valor ADCs tips and tricks
Slikk’s Sting, Claves Sancti, Bow of Slaughter (Left to Right)

A viable way to itemize as a marksman is to build tank items such as Hyoga’s Edge, Shield of the Lost and in some rare cases- Medallion of Troy as well. Beginner to intermediate players may find these itemizations rather odd but there is an explanation to it.

With the game having many burst assassins to the game who can oneshot marksmen with ease such as Paine, Keera and Quillen, marksmen suffer the great threat that is these assassins. In order to maintain their sustainability or just not to get oneshot, some high elo marksman mains on the Taiwanese server choose to input a tank item into their build to increase their sustainability.

Now some of you may be thinking that these tank items don’t even fit the three requirements for marksmen items that have been mentioned above. You are indeed correct, but they allow you to sustain your damage output by helping you not die so easily and thus can deal damage for a longer period of time. However, to maintain the requirement of having damage in the first place, one should at most put one tank item in your build as if you put too many you will obviously have no damage. Also do remember that these items only come to play when there is a risk of you being oneshotted.

Recommended options for the tank items a marksman could use include Frost Cape, Shield of the Lost and Hyoga’s Edge as they not only provide health and defence but a passive that can slow enemies and thus allowing you to shoot them a few more times. And in case the enemy team has Paine or Keera, do go for a Medallion of Troy even though it has no other redeeming features for marksmen other than its magic defence and health.

Arena of Valor ADCs tips and tricks
Frost Cape, Medallion of Troy, Shield of the Lost, Hyoga’s Edge (Left to Right)

Final thoughts about mastering ADCs in Arena of Valor

After reading this guide, hopefully, aspiring marksman/ADC players in Arena of Valor will learn how to play the role properly and gain better insight on the role. To recap, remember to focus on farming in the early game, don’t take risks during the early game, position yourself at a safe spot throughout the game, learn how to kite and itemize a tank build if necessary. We hope that you will be able to implement these tips and tricks into your gameplay to rise up the ranks after mastering playing with ADCs/ Marksmen in Arena of Valor. Good luck!


Did you find our tips and tricks to master playing with ADCs in Arena of Valor helpful? Let us know in the comment section below! If you want to read our other Arena of Valor articles, click here.

For more Mobile Gaming news and updates, join our Telegram GroupWhatsApp group & Discord server. Also, follow us on Instagram and Twitter for quick updates.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Back to top button