How to Peel For The ADC?

At the later stages of the game, ADCs have the highest damage per second (DPS) so they can make or break a winning teamfight. A team fighting without their ADC will almost always get shredded by the enemy ADC.

How often do you lose your teamfights in a League match just because your ADC died quickly while the enemy ADC did not? Very often, right? Lucky for you, the solution behind this problem lies in one word: peeling.

You can best ‘peel’ for your ADC in League of Legends through your CC or positioning, and win all late-game team fights by helping your ADC survive through it.

Peeling in League of Legends

If you do not already know about peeling in League of Legends, you might imagine a fruit like a banana or an orange when you hear the word ‘peel’. Well, the name comes from exactly there, and the concept of peeling in League of Legends is the same at its core.

Think of it this way: you take off the bitter, inedible layers on the outside in order to eat the sweet banana on the inside. Well, peeling in League of Legends is like separating the enemy champions (the outer layers here) from your ADC (the banana flesh).

Essentially, peeling means that you keep your ADC safe from the enemy champions so that your ADC can survive long enough to dish out damage to win you the teamfight. This can be done through different ways depending on the type of champion you are playing.

The Importance of Peeling

Imagine this: a teamfight breaks out and everyone on your team rushes on to the enemy carries in order to kill them. But their frontline stalls your attempt using stuns and slows, and you fail to kill anyone.

Meanwhile, an enemy assassin quietly takes your ADC out because no one else is there to protect them. Then your team does not have enough damage for the teamfight, and you end up getting aced.

It is therefore important to keep your ADC alive, and the best way to play a teamfight is almost always to stay back and protect your carries.

Why Do ADCs Need Peeling?

There are lots of reasons for you to peel for your ADC. If a guarantee that you will win more games is not convincing enough, here is a list of the major reasons you need to learn how to peel for your ADC:

High Damage Carries

ADCs are high-damage threats to the enemy team. That is why the enemy team will almost always try to take your ADC out before the rest of your team. Their extremely high and consistent damage output makes them a high-priority target for the enemies.

Gold Funnel For The Team

The ADCs spend the entire game farming and getting gold, and end up having the most gold on the team. So if you manage to kill the enemy ADC, their team is automatically at a gold disadvantage until the ADC respawns. Your team can then easily take uncontested objectives.

Squishy Champions

ADCs are also extremely squishy, and can usually be killed in one rotation of spells by any assassin, so ADCs need support and protection from their teammates as well, merely for their survival. This is also why you have 2 teammates playing in a single botlane.

Ways to Peel for the ADC

Usually, champions designed to be played in the support role like Thresh, Leona and Nami, are the best at peeling. However, you can peel for your ADC on any champ. All you have to do is utilise your kit for the protection of your carry. The best ways to do this are:

Utilise Crowd Control

The easiest and the most straightforward way of peeling for your ADC is to utilise your crowd control. Crowd control can be anything ranging from knockups, suppressions, stuns, blinds, fears, taunts, charms, roots, silences and sleep to simple slows.

Crowd control reduces the amount of control the enemy player has on their champion, often rendering them useless in fights by disabling their abilities or preventing them from moving around. Therefore, it is very impactful in all fights.

Imagine that an enemy assassin jumps on to your ADC. A single auto attack can be life threatening for your carry. But if you stun him just before the assassin gets to dish out damage, your ADC can whittle him/her down with ease.

This is why enemies will often bait out your larger stuns before they actually initiate a teamfight. It is always wise to hold onto your stuns for when the enemy tries to kill your ADC. One good CC can easily save your ADC’s life.

Positioning

You can always peel for your ADC through your positioning. This is usually done best on champions who are either very tanky, or have heals and shields to absorb enemy damage for their ADC.

Peeling through positioning is most commonly done by safeguarding your ally carries by frontlining for your team. By doing so, skillshots aimed at your ADC will hit you instead, and your ADC will stay safe.

If you stay close enough to your ADC, you can also support them immediately through your spells like Heal or Exhaust, as well as your abilities. This is also why support champions are the best for peeling. Their kit revolves around making your ADC’s life better (and longer!).

Also read: How To Position In League Of Legends

For example, consider that you are playing Braum and are directly standing between your ADC and the enemy team. Now they have to go through you to reach your ADC. But as Braum, you can literally facetank abilities by standing in front of your ADC with your shield up.

Itemisation

You can also peel for your ADC through proper support itemisation. There are a lot of items that passively or even actively boost your carries’ survivability. They offer heals, shields and can even remove CC from your allies.

Items like Locket Of The Iron Solari give shields to your allies, helping them survive for longer. Similarly, Redemption will heal all allies in a large area while also damaging enemies within that area, as shown in the image above.

Mikael’s Blessing will remove all crowd control debuffs from you or an ally, and also heal for a small amount. This can save your ADC’s life if they are caught out in a bad spot.

Also read: How to Get S Rank as an ADC in League of Legends?

Final Thoughts:

Peeling is extremely important for you to climb up the ranked ladder, and there are a number of ways through which you can do it. Let us know in the comments below how you do it in your games!