Picking the best champions in the meta will increase your chances of winning a League of Legends match. Following the meta closely is crucial to ensuring you aren’t playing with a natural disadvantage, but mastering core in-game mechanics is also vital when it comes to climbing up the ranks.
Kiting, also known as attack moving or orb walking, is an auto-attack mechanic. It allows you to chase down enemies while still damaging them by cancelling attack animations after the damage has already been triggered. Waiting for your champion’s attack animation to finish before moving forward, on the other hand, causes you to do less damage before the enemy you’re targeting runs away, and it also turns you into sitting ducks for any spell-casting enemies.
Here’s everything you need to know about the art of kiting, which can allow you to finally break into the ranks you’ve been dreaming about in League.
Get to know your champion’s attack animation and basic kiting behaviors
Kiting is almost an instinctual skill for most players. The whole concept can be explained in a single sentence: “keep moving after you attack.”
The real trick is knowing when you can actually move. When looked at closely, you’ll notice almost all champions have attack animations that continue even after they land the blow or send a projectile. When you see you dealt your auto-attack damage with melee champions or see your projectile in the air with ranged ones, you can start moving and cancel the rest of your auto-attack animation.
While this may only save you a couple of milliseconds, it can make the difference between securing a kill or letting your opponent escape. Knowing the attack animation of a champion will allow you to be 100-percent accurate with your attack and move timings.
Note that you don’t always have to move while kiting. You can kite left and right, making it tougher for enemy casters to hit their spells. You can even kite toward the back to deal the maximum amount of damage while you’re retreating from the action. The latter has a chance of getting you killed, however, so watch out for your health while doing it.
Test different attack move behaviors
You can easily kite an enemy by using your mouse’s right-click. This’ll be less than ideal in most cases, however, since you’ll need to continually move your mouse to click on the ground and then on your enemy constantly, which will be tiring. Alongside the extra effort, you’ll also have a higher chance of misclicking, disrupting your kiting flow in the process.
Most professional players prefer using the attack-move command compared to the method above. The standard version of this command is key-bound to “A” by default, and you can experiment with different versions of it to see the one that fits your playstyle.
Before moving onto testing these settings, turn on the attack-range indicators through the Interface subsection of the Options menu. Enabling this will show you the auto-attack range of your champion every time you press A or your designated attack-move key. A range indicator will allow you to tell if you can make that final auto attack instead of guessing.
Player attack move
This is the default attack-move setting and potentially the most common one due to how little room it leaves for errors. The “player attack move” setting makes it so you’ll also need to perform a left mouse click after pressing A to perform an attack. This’ll give you enough time to judge whether you’re in range, which you can also use to switch targets when needed.
Player attack move click
The extra click when you have “player attack move” turned on is crucial to staying accurate while kiting, but it’s also possible to kite much faster.
You can turn on “player attack move click” by assigning a hotkey to it through the Hotkeys section of the Options. Most players usually enable it by assigning the default “A” to the option, and the only difference is this version automatically performs the click. This means you won’t be able to see that range indicator around your champion, however.
Despite being faster, this version will require you to keep your cursor on or close to your target at all times. You’ll have little to no time to consider your actions while using the kiting style, but the quicker nature of it can also help you dominate a chaotic teamfight you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Player attack only click
The first two variations also issue a move command. You can move around with player-attack commands when no one is around. While it’s a useful feature, it may also cause some pathing misplays during the laning stage.
This mostly applies to support champions since they tend to move more around the lane while harassing the enemy duo. Using “player attack only click” will guarantee your champion won’t move anywhere you didn’t intend to. This kiting variation will only trigger if you’re also hovering over an enemy unit while you’re pressing A.
If you don’t hover anything, your champion will stay where they are, not attacking anything. Despite being a less popular setting, it can help you improve your positioning through the laning stage.
Increase your kiting accuracy by targeting champions only
While kiting around enemy minions is useful during the early game, it may prevent you from securing a kill during a tower dive. Turning on the target champions toggle is especially useful for support players who keep attacking the minions by mistake, and it can greatly improve your performance with auto attack-reliant champions toward the late game.
You can find this setting in the Hotkeys portion of the Options menu.
- Click on “Abilities and Summoner Spells” and scroll down.
- Target Champions Only will be toward the bottom of the list and you’ll need to assign a hotkey to use it.
- You can also navigate to Game settings and turn on “Treat Target Champions Only” as a toggle.” This’ll allow you to toggle this setting on and off, meaning you won’t have to use your hotkey to only target champions.
Configure the targeting behavior
If you haven’t adjusted your in-game settings before, your champion should prioritize the closest target with the above methods. You can change this behavior through the Game section in the Options menu, though.
Turning on “attack move on cursor” will allow your champion to attack the closest target to your cursor while kiting. By enabling this setting, you’ll be able to pay less attention to other targets around you, like minions, since your cursor will most likely be closer to enemy champions.
Combining this setting with the “Target Champions Only” option can also prove itself to be useful. A new minion wave strolling under a turret as you dive an enemy champion may push you to miss that final attack, causing you to miss out on a vital opportunity.
Experiment with all the attack move options and try combining them with different targeting behaviors. Finding that one configuration that fits your play style can help you take your gameplay to the next level. If you’d like to see more kiting examples, we recommend checking out professional players that play the same role as you or even the same champion. Tune into their streams or check out their YouTube channels to analyze their movement during the laning stage and teamfights.
Doing so will also help you improve since mimicking high-tier players is an essential step toward increasing your skill level. Starting with a single champion to master kiting is often recommended and you can move over to other champions once you master the technique.
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