CARRYING

CARRYING

or "How to win more consistently"

  Hey there everyone! Oskii here with a little bit of a guide to carrying. In my time with League of Legends I have found myself intrigued in two primary roles: AD and AP carries. There's just something enthralling about playing carries that's always appealed to me; either the big numbers are shiny and make me happy, or I'm a glory whore. It doesn't matter, the point is when it comes down to it, League of Legends is a team game and you are the Carry. What does that mean? When you go 14-0-5 you're not supposed to gloat and talk about how you "carried so hard" because that's your fucking job. If the end of the game comes and you complain about how you couldn't carry then you should maybe rethink playing a Carry. Of course, there will always be games that include feeders and the like that may end up being nigh impossible to win, but the majority of games will always be carry-able when you're in the position to do so.

  So how do we go about learning to properly carry games? Well, for one, you're going to need strong mechanics. What are those? Well, mechanics are the ability of your fingers to execute with a mouse and keyboard the things that your brain wants them to. If you're struggling to consistently click on a specific creep in a mass of creeps, then you need to practice your mechanics. If you find yourself failing to flash over walls or misjudging the ranges of spells, you need to practice your mechanics. If you find yourself consistently missing last hits because your timing is off, you need to practice your mechanics. Go into a custom game, and line up in bottom lane vs a Sivir bot. Take standard AD runes, and grab boots + 3 pots. If by 10 minutes, you aren't at 80+ CS consistently vs a bot, your mechanics need work. Practice. I myself typically score around 85-90 CS in a bot-game with about 4 kills at 10 minutes. I still need to work on my mechanics. This is the lowest level of practice you can accomplish, and luckily it can be done at any time, any where so long as you have a league client and an internet connection. This practice is not limited to AD Carries but for the example that's what I'm using.

  Next you need to fulfill your role. What is your role? We've been over this: to carry. You're supposed to output massive amounts of damage come endgame and shred through the entire enemy team while remaining alive. However, you need items to do so, so practice farming like I just went over. You want to be farming as best you can. You want 200 cs by 20 minutes in a reasonably regular game. Once towers start to drop and team-fighting begins you want to support your team by doing damage in team-fights, but don't forget to spend every idle second gaining gold. If you're spending too much time dawdling with your team around a tower, go farm the jungle and ping them back. Especially if their AD Carry is off somewhere farming, you are only hurting your team if you're not farming. When it comes to this midgame time, your jungler is going to dislike you greatly because you're going to be stealing a good deal of his jungle. This is why support-type junglers like Nunu and Maokai are so strong: they don't need the farm as desperately as you do, and they often build Gp/10 items to compensate. Farming mid to lategame is an exercise in map awareness, and requires good warding and good timing to safely farm lanes. If there's a big wave top, you need to know that you can farm that and keep an eye on the movements of the enemy team. Your role as a Ranged DPS is to farm until you have items, but remember that after 1-2 big items, you might be forced to stop farming heavily and start forcing objectives and fights.

  So how does one carry in solo queue? First: you have to do everything better than the mirror on the enemy team. If you're 1/0/1 and 198 CS at 20 minutes and the opposing AD is at 0/1/0 and 160 CS, that's only step one of the process. Good, you've got more gold than the enemy AD. Now you need to make things happen with that advantage: look to take objectives as often as possible. Making good dragon calls in the early game is the most surefire way to ensure even the dumber members of your team have enough gold to not screw it up for you. Bottom lane is the gateway for dragon plays. If your jungler comes to visit and dragon is up, go the extra mile to get those kills. If you can pick off one or both of the enemy bottom laners (or force them both to go back), you should be able to dragon immediately afterwards considering you didn't take excessive damage. Remember that if you kill the enemy AD, dragon and then come back and push the lane, it's a waste of time. Either push your wave first and then dragon, or just dragon and back. Most of the time you're not going to do anything by pushing the wave afterwards because it's enough time for the enemy AD to return and grab last hits safely at tower. Sometimes you will have enough time to push first, sometimes you won't. It's a matter of judgement. So now we've covered two major things, out-gold the enemy Carry, and secure team objectives whenever possible. What other way do we carry Solo-queue games as an AD? 

   Positioning in team-fights is a major aspect to being a good AD. In a team-fight you want to do as much damage as possible without dying. You do not need to get kills, you just want to do consistent damage. Getting kills isn't bad, but never compromise your positioning to get the last-hit on a champion. The biggest things to watch out for when it comes to AD positioning are the stuns on the other team. If you're in range to get Taric stunned and shattered and there's an enemy Riven nearby, you done screwed up real good. So stay back, kite the Riven (who is no doubt charging you with her acrobatic ridiculousness and massive ult-sword) as best you can, and stay alive and kill her. In Solo-queue, you might not have peels. In ranked fives, someone might actually give a shit about you and stun the bruiser before they kill you, but in reality, it's probably not going to happen. This is why Ezreal and Corki and Graves are the best AD carries out there right now, you have mobility as well as damage. If the bruiser charges you, you need to back up to a cliff so you can blink over when they get too close. This is especially important against bruisers like Olaf who can't be peeled off you and normally run Ghost instead of Flash. If Olaf does have flash and flashes after you, burn your summoner flash and flash back down. Staying alive is key. Every autoattack you get off lategame does as much or more damage than an AP Carry's spell. You don't need to constantly abuse your ASpd if your going to die by going closer, wait for specific cooldowns to be burnt before going in range of stuff that can kill you.

   So in the end, you need to farm more than the enemy AD, you need to try and make successful dragon plays, and you need to position in team-fights as to not be obliterated instantly while doing as much damage as possible. If you can do these things, you'll win more games than you'll lose and Elo will follow.

   What about AP Carry? How do you carry as these champions? Well, a lot of it is the same. When your opposing mid farms, you want to farm harder. When they roam, you want to push aggressively or roam harder. If the enemy AP Carry ganks and secures a kill at bottom or top lane, or even in your jungle, they need to pay for that time: as soon as the enemy AP Carry disappears, take a look at the map while you ping it. You have several options, push into tower to deny XP/Gold, follow immediately and counter-gank if you are able to do so, or gank another lane. It is not acceptable to just sit in mid and AFK farm without pushing. Obviously, certain situations might require one option over the other: LeBlanc is a mobile, high damage AP carry with excellent roaming. It might be better in this situation to ping your lanes to play safely, and push hyper-aggressively into tower. LeBlanc has no ability to farm under tower pressure and if your lanes play safely they might miss a couple CS, but ultimately LeBlanc loses a great deal more and she is a champion who needs that extra gold from kills to compensate for her lack of farming ability. If you're already 50 CS up on the opposing laner, you should focus less on farming and more on shutting down other lanes. Sure, farming is acceptable, but if the enemy mid laner is making plays and putting your top and bottom behind while gaining kill gold, you're staying equal or slightly ahead in gold to the enemy mid but both your other lanes are being disadvantaged. Great times to gank are when your jungler is already heading bottom to make a dragon play: if you have 4 people bottom and the enemy mid doesn't react fast enough and the jungler isn't already in position, you can dive turret easily and secure kills as long as you're all consciously aware of turret aggro and nobody takes too much damage. Your level advantage from being a solo lane gives you good kill potential on squishy AD carries. Make those plays! Mid-late game is a little more complex for AP Carries as each one may slightly differ in role, but generally speaking you want to accomplish what the character's kit is designed to accomplish. If you're playing Morgana, you want to look for the opportune moment to pop your ultimate to chain as many people as possible to force a reaction. If you're playing Ryze or Cassiopeia, maybe your goal is to just be another consistent DPS like an AD carry but with magic damage. If you're an assassin like Akali or LeBlanc, your goal is to quickly eliminate the AD Carry of the other team so they have no consistent damage. Remember that positioning is also important with AP Carries, as you can get stun-locked and murdered before being able to get off your damage, and that is bad news bears. So, in solo-queue, the general goal of playing a carry is to do more than the mirror on the other team. Obviously as a champion like Morgana, you may not be able to roam as strongly as a LeBlanc, but you should farm much stronger than LB and provide more in team-fights. Practicing mechanics with AP Carries is also important so don't hesitate to hop into customs and practice last-hitting and understanding how much damage each of your abilities does in a game and with what items.

  Good luck carrying games!