Basic Attacks or Auto Attacks, probably the easiest concept to understand in League of Legends, are also arguably the hardest to master. This guide will emphasize the value in using auto attacks regardless of the Champion you play and provide the fundamentals to know when to use them effectively.
What is Auto Attack?
A basic attack, also known as an auto attack, is the simplest form of dealing damage for any Champion as all Champions have them. The auto attack is universal to Champions and is performed by inputting a movement command on the enemy. When clicking on the enemy, if you are in close enough range, you will attack them. If not, you will move directly at the enemy and attack them once in range.
What is the Attack Range?
The attack range is what helps add individuality to each Champion’s design. Not every Champion can attack from the same range. The two classifications of attack range are melee and ranged. While this is quite self-explanatory, both of these classifications have ranges that are considered short range and long range. For example, Kled’s attack range without Skaarl is 250 which is twice the range of most melee Champions at 125!
Alternatively, the shortest ranged auto attack is Rakan at 300! Only 50 units longer than Kled! Of course, for ranged Champions the attack range has the potential to be infinite, with a Champion like Senna who can stack range infinitely with her passive!
Why is it Useful?
Having a longer attack range is useful because you can deal damage while staying far away from enemies! The benefit of having higher attack range is amplified when both Champions are auto attack-reliant like Marksmen! For example, when Jinx is using her Rocket Launcher, her range is 725 and against a Champion like Sivir (who has a range of 500), there’s almost no chance Sivir can touch her! Therefore, when aware of this range difference, Jinx can position far enough away from Sivir that she can attack her without being attacked by Sivir!
Setting up Attack Move
Before moving onto the fundamental skills, let’s review the different settings that players use and what situations make some more useful than others. First, right clicking the enemy is not the only way to hit them with a basic attack. Another option is to use ‘A’ and then left click on them when ‘Player Attack Move’ is set up. Despite this requiring you to click two buttons instead of one, there is still a benefit that the right click alone cannot provide. Because the right click is also programmed as a movement command, if the player right clicks to attack an enemy but misses the Champion they will instead walk in the direction of where they clicked. This can cause the player to make a grave mistake and misposition when it matters most!
By using the ‘Attack Move’ option, even if the player misses the enemy, because they are using the attacking command, the game knows the player is trying to attack something and will do that instead of moving towards the target.
An additional feature that helps with the ‘Player Attack Move’ is to turn on ‘Attack Move on Cursor’. This allows the player to decide which enemy they will be attacking if there are many. Without this setting on, the game is programmed to automatically select the closest enemy to the player’s Champion. With the feature on, instead, the Champion will attack the closest enemy to where the player clicked! As a result, slightly misclicking the enemy is not punished by moving!
Another option to increase the efficiency of ‘Player Attack Move’ is to instead use ‘Player Attack Move Click’. This removes the requirement to left click after clicking ‘A’ when trying to attack something. Instead, the player puts the cursor where they intend to attack and simply press ‘A’. This boils down to simply meaning the mouse must point to the target location and then the player must decide if they want to attack that location by clicking ‘A’ or move to that location by right clicking! That’s it!
So, what’s the best option? Well, technically, you could argue that all of them are useful in certain situations. If a player will never fail to click on the enemy they want to attack, then just right clicking will suffice. But, players often don’t realize how difficult it can be to do that when Champions can use abilities to quickly move around or simply use Flash! When these movement abilities are timed right before the player right clicks on the enemy’s location, they will instead move to where the enemy was and fail to attack them when intended.
When using the ‘A’ left click option, as long as they are within your attack range, your attack will not be interrupted! However, even this has the chance to be outplayed as well. When players use the attack move option the Champion will target the enemy closest to where the mouse was pointing. If the enemy is aware of this, they can put down a ward right before your auto attack and if the ward is closer to your click, it will instead target the ward! While this may not seem like a big deal, it can truly be the difference in getting the kill and getting killed!
Now, if only there were a setting to help players avoid all of these options altogether. Well, there is! It’s called ‘Target Champions Only’. When toggled on, any attack input the player makes will only target the closest enemy Champion to the mouse location which is incredibly useful when diving enemies or they are positioned in a big group of minions!
What Makes Pros Good At Auto Attacking?
Now that we understand what it means to use auto attacks and the different options for auto attacking, let’s identify what it means to be good at auto attacking! Since Marksmen are so reliant on auto attacks, Marksmen players tend to be better at using this type of attack. So, what do good Marksmen players do that other players don’t?
There are three main aspects to using auto attacks extremely efficiently.
- Minimizing downtime
- Canceling animations
- Inputting movements for the duration of the cooldown (yes, auto attacks have cooldowns)
Starting off with minimizing downtime. What does this actually mean? Marksmen specifically are so reliant on their auto attacks that the small window after auto attacking before they can do it again, they are very vulnerable. So, the best players will then use their abilities to either deal more damage or provide some sort of utility. For example, after an auto attack, Ashe might use her Enchanted Crystal Arrow to stun an enemy. This could be the enemy she is attacking, or a different enemy that might be trying to stop her from attacking the target! Nevertheless, doing anything during the downtime between auto attacks is required to be using your time efficiently.
The next, and most underrated is pairing it with any ability to cancel the animation, and with some, even reset the auto-attack timer! Of course, this is very specific to Champions that have this capability in their design. However, there are plenty of Champions that have this capability that players are unaware of. Champions like Lucian or Fiora are designed to make this mechanic a key feature of their kit. Lucian's identity as the gunslinger that fires two shots after each ability is critical to playing him well. For Fiora, hitting the vitals can be done by using auto attacks or her Q, Lunge. So, to melt down the enemy she ults, she will need to mix in Lunges between attacks. Doing so immediately after the damage is dealt will cancel the follow-through animation on auto attacks!
Unlike Lucian and Fiora, some Champions have very subtle animation cancels and auto attack timer resets with abilities like Katarina's Shunpo, Hecarim's Devastating Charge, and Master Yi's Meditate! Knowing these smaller mechanics exist is crucial to maximizing damage efficiency for those close fights where every split second counts!
The final habit good people use, and perhaps the most difficult to master, is inputting movement commands during the auto attack cooldown. This is commonly known as ‘kiting’ or ‘orb-walking’. This mechanic is the best way to deal damage with auto attacks while chasing enemies, or while running away from enemies. In League of Legends, it’s not good to stand still. Whether it’s because you’ll be easier to hit with abilities or because it’ll be harder to be in the right place at the right time, moving is just always going to be better! The tricky part is that if players want to deal damage with auto attacks, they need to at least, momentarily stand still! Although not ideal, the time spent standing still can be minimized by using this mechanic.
To ‘kite’ the player needs to simply click on the enemy to initiate the auto attack, and as soon as the damage goes through for melee fighters, or as soon as the projectile leaves the ranged fighter’s model, the player must input a movement command. This will cancel the follow-through animation of the auto attack and instead cause the Champion to move! Ideally, the movement will not be interrupted until the player is ready to attack again. When done efficiently, the player will be able to attack as many times as they would while standing still, but be able to move in between the attacks! Again, this can help in chasing down enemies or with running away when they are chasing you!
The Difference
The fundamentals of the auto attack are simple enough to understand, but how do below average players perform compared to professionals? Primarily, the below average, and often even average players will only attack and move with the right click option. For below average players specifically, they will simply right click the enemy and let the game do the rest. Meaning, they won’t bother moving between attacks or even clicking on the Champion again, they simply click the button and watch what happens. The slightly better than average players will understand the value of kiting and try to do it as best they can, but not take into account the Champion they are playing or the Champion’s attack speed! Each Champion has a unique attack animation on their windup that can take longer than others so it can certainly be tricky to account for!
Professional players on the other hand think of their attack speed to kiting like a musician considers the tempo to a song! When the song is played at the right tempo and consistently, it will sound pretty good! The same thing applies with kiting. In fact, using the same analogy, musicians have to get used to the time it takes for their action to create a sound in their instrument to play a note at the right time and pro players need to do the same thing with each Champion!
Consider a drummer for example. It’s one thing to hit the drum on the beat, but when you also consider that they have to start swinging their arm before the beat to hit the drum in sync with the tempo, it’s easy to see how simply swinging from a different position towards the drum will result in slight discrepancies from that tempo! In League of Legends, the art of kiting works the same way! It’s about rhythm and practice to master the skill!
The Benefit of Weaving
Finally, we will briefly discuss what it means to weave in attacks. Similarly to casting abilities after an auto attack, players can also ‘weave’ in auto attacks between abilities. While this is more common on Champions whose primary damage comes from abilities, the concept still applies to all Champions. Weaving is an important concept because it allows players to deal more damage than they otherwise would be able to with their abilities alone. The common example for this is with Lucian who can use two attacks after every ability because of his passive ability. While he doesn’t need to do that, the highest damage output is by using an ability, auto attacking, then using another ability, auto attacking, and so on.
Another Marksman example that is a little more subtle is with Samira. To gain ranks to use her ultimate ability, Samira can weave in auto attacks between abilities to stack the ranks incredibly quickly! These examples are easier to see the value than others, but the rule applies to all Champions. A perfect example is with Camille. When using Camille’s Precision Protocol (Q), there is a delay between when she can use the second cast after the first. Despite the ability empowering auto attacks, Camille can still use auto attacks during this window. So, instead of using Q, then waiting for the two seconds and then using Q again, Camille can use Q, auto attack twice, and then Q for the second half of the ability.
By weaving attacks between abilities, the amount of damage dealt will dramatically increase and will make even more of a difference in the early game when Champions have less health than they do later! Remember, an auto attack will deal somewhere around 45-100 damage at level one, and most Champions have health somewhere between 500-700 at level 1!
Conclusion
Overall, the auto attack is probably the most important method of attacking to master in League of Legends. After all, it applies to every Champion in the game and the fundamentals of the auto attack alone can drastically increase the player’s damage efficiency and help them improve quickly!