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The current fad buzzword these days is "improving your macro" is the panacea to everyone's climbing issues. However, as a result I'm noticing the micro up to high gold low plat is falling off of a cliff. I'm also seeing an increase in threads like "I'm outcsing and out macroing my opponent but still losing," and the answer a lot of the time is just really poor teamfighting, 1v1, and dueling prowess. Here's some of the basics that people seem to just not learn anymore.
If a melee champion is just running at you, you cannot just run away. I really don't get this one. I'll use kai'sa as an example. A garen starts running at a kai'sa, and kai sa uses E to get away, now E is on cooldown, and Kai'sa, for some reason, walks back up to the wave now, with no E, against a full health garen with all his cooldowns. Garen Q+stridebreaker, and Kai'sa again just tries to run away. You Have to hit a melee champion with autos before they reach you, otherwise why are you playing a ranged champion if you are not going to attack your opponent until they are in melee range. And as the enemy melee champion is running away, you have to hit them for the return damage. Otherwise, why wouldn't they just keep running at you until you mess up or blow flash. Furthermore, if you allow a melee champion to get into melee range of you with full health, of course they are going to beat you. That's what they do. Unless you have built in disengage with your kit (like Tristana W), if a melee champion decides to all in you and assuming you cannot disengage for whatever reason, you must immediately start autoing them when they get into your auto attack range NOT after they have reached you. You need to know BEFORE* the enemy attacks you if you can run away or not. If you cannot run away, start autoing immediately and do not stop. Even if you don't kill them, dying and taking 50% of the enemy's health is better than just dying and not autoing at all because you didn't know if you could run away or not.
You do not have to keep autoing at full speed the entire fight. This sounds counter intuitive, but think about it in the terms of the flow of a teamfight. A kallista, to use an extreme example to illustrate the point standing completely still with LT can throw a lot of autos into a target. However, the strength in ADC is being able to kite around abilities, the ability to wait out key cooldowns. Sometimes, even if you were only walking to stay within max auto range of an enemy, that could get you killed. If you have to walk into a chokepoint to keep autoing the frontliner, and you know the enemy Diana has a flank, back off and wait for your opportunity. Dead marksman do far less damage than cautious ones. Of course with everything there is such thing as TOO much caution, you can't just get off one or two autos a fight because you were never in range.
Kiting means more than just moving while you walk. I don't mean to sound condescending, but you actually have to dodge things. I see tons of ADCs just either walking back and forth between autos or walking in a straight line between autos, and autoing as soon as their timer lets them. This is almost as predictable as standing still. You cannot just auto-pilot meander throughout the map in teamfights and hope nothing hits you, you need to vary your timing up some, vary your directions, and actually react to the situation as it unfolds. I don't understand why I see people kiting directly into like, a Zac E that they've seen him charge up for the full duration and had the indicator on the ground the entire time. Kiting properly requires immense focus and cognitive ability, Ruler is notorious for his unreal kiting videos, watch some of his VODs to see what optimal kiting is. If you're looking for more VODs to watch after that, FORG1VEN, Uzi, and Gala were/are all very good at this.
Never give up on kiting. This one is the most frustrating. I see this all the time on champions like Ashe and it makes me so mad. If you are playing someone with either a slow or massive amounts of damage, just because the enemy is on top of you or is a few autos away from killing you does not mean you just stand still and accept it. If a darius has used all his abilities and left you with just 200 health, but he's not in auto range, you can likely kill him even from like half health. If you are good with kiting on Ashe, or any ADC, and the enemy has used all their abilties on you and you're still alive, you SHOULD kill them. Too often I see someone get stridebreakered by Garen and they just go "oh I'm dead" and just stand still and auto. ADC damage is not always frontloaded, especially if you are building items like BORK or have on hit effects like Kog or a slow like Ashe, you can kite out and win more fights than you think.
Kiting backwards is not always the best choice. A lot of the times, yes this is the best decision, most of the time? I wouldn't go that far. If you're just autoing from your max attack range in every fight, sometimes your entire team is going to be dead and you'll have done next to no meaningful damage. It's hard to give hard rules or boundaries on this one, a lot of it is just knowing what abilities are up, who's strong, who you can kite out, etc.
Have confidence, or fail until you do. It's not called inting, it's called limit testing. A lot of this role is just knowing how strong you are against champions at certain parts of your build, so go test it out. If you die, don't do it again. The difference between inting and improving is if you learned from it. The difference between chess grandmasters and people at 800 is when the grandmaster makes a mistake they just don't make it again. Eventually it becomes very rare you lose a game over some insane blunder or, in the case of League, a 1v1 you completely miscalculated.
Don't waste your defensive abilities on the wave if you aren't farming safe I know it's tempting to use twitch W to just perma clear waves, or spam ashe W on cd, or use kog W for poke, but if you're just farming by yourself on a side wave with no support, you use twitch W on the wave and there's a fiora just sitting in the bush, yeah you're just going to die.
Utilize your champ-specific auto resets and tricks, if you have them, and STOP CANCELLING AUTOS This is a general tip, but one extra auto can literally make or break a fight, in the late game that could be up to 600 damage that you're just missing by not taking advantage of it. This one is just knowing your champ, read guides written by your established one tricks. Ashe Q immediately comes to mind, along with utilizing cait traps to maximize Q and headshot damage, Jhin auto+Qing, Sivir W auto cancel, draven Q auto cancel, just to name a few. And for the love of god, this one is just complete practice and comfortability with a champion. Just go into the practice tool and don't input a move command until your attack animation has finished, unless you can ani cani.
I don't know enough about it to write specific guides, but work with your settings regarding if you use A click, how you have your attack moves target players, all that jazz. There's lots of guides, just look up ADC settings or attack move settings.
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