How to Attack Move (Orb Walking & Kiting) in LoL [2024]

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League of Legends is a difficult game to learn, and that’s partly because there’s a plethora of things players have to learn and keep in mind while playing. One of these things is kiting, also known as orb walking or attack move.

While the mechanic is relatively easy to execute, it’s easy to forget about in the heat of a fight. However, knowing how to attack move in LoL can help you climb the ranked ladder quickly and stand against the top players in the game.

Here’s how you can become a pro at kiting in League of Legends. 

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What is Orb Walking/Kiting and Why It’s Important in LoL

On the surface, kiting in LoL means to “kite” your enemy with basic attacks. To do this, you have to auto-attack an enemy that is chasing you while staying at your Champion’s maximum range. This isn’t a beginner-level mechanic – you’ll need to be pretty comfortable in Summoner’s Rift before trying to kite or orb walk.

The objective of kiting is to damage your enemy while staying out of their range as they pursue you. This tactic has the potential to turn the tide in your favor if you are trying to escape or run away from a powerful enemy, and it’s a core part of some Champions’ kits.

Example of Kiting

If you’re playing Caitlyn and a Garen starts charging at you, your first instinct might be to run away. However, while retreating, you can continue to basic attack Garen since Caitlyn has a much longer range than him. By doing this, Garen will lose a lot of health just trying to catch up to Caitlyn.

At that point, Garen may either back off or continue chasing Caitlyn, who can easily turn the situation around if she’s been kiting him for long enough.

The ability to kite is an incredibly important skill, especially for players who are stuck in Bronze or Silver. Learning how to orb walk and how to attack move in LoL can make you a much better player.

Difference Between Orb Walking and Kiting

There are a few different names for kiting, and while they’re all generally used to mean the same thing, they have slightly different meanings. Kiting is the general term used for everything.

However, orb walking specifically means kiting while canceling auto-attack animations (we’ll go into the details of how to do so down below). The name came from the early days of League, so it’s not used as often anymore. This advanced form of kiting is generally done the same way, but players that know how to cancel animations can use it to make kiting even more effective.

Essentially, orb walking makes auto-attacking slightly faster compared to regular kiting. By attacking quicker, you can weave in more auto-attacks and be more likely to kill an enemy chasing you instead of just escaping. 

Different Methods of Kiting in LoL

There are a few different ways that you can kite in LoL. Some of them are easier than others, especially if you’re beginning to learn how to kite enemies. 

How to Attack Move in LoL

The first, and most common, method of kiting is attack move, or attack move click. This just outlines the specific actions you’re doing while kiting, so it’s as simple as auto-attacking and then moving.

When you’re first learning, you can click A and see your Champion’s auto-attack range. This is a useful way to get used to attacking enemies at max range while running in the opposite direction.

While some players may want to do this manually, there are actually settings that can be used to do this automatically with a hotkey.

Here are the settings for attack move in League:

• Under Hotkeys, make sure Quick Cast is turned on for everything.
• Under Hotkeys, go to Player Movement and create a hotkey for Player Attack Move
• Under Game, turn on “Attack move on cursor.”

Using a hotkey for attack move will make your Champion’s range visible, and you’ll auto-attack the nearest enemy to your cursor. If you hotkey attack move click, then you won’t have to click toward an enemy, but you won’t see your Champion’s range either.

How to Use Shift to Kite in LoL

By holding down Shift while clicking, your Champion will attack an enemy near your cursor. This can be used while running away to make sure that you don’t accidentally miss-click and walk toward the enemy or attack a nearby minion or jungle camp. 

This is also a good tip for any time you’re attacking an enemy in LoL – always use shift so you don’t miss out on an attack.

How to Orb Walk in LoL

To orb walk in LoL, you have to animation cancel your Champion’s auto-attacks. When you launch a basic attack against the enemy, you don’t have to wait for the animation to fully finish for the attack to go through. Instead, the second the attack is effectively “queued up”, you can start moving to reposition yourself.

While seemingly minuscule, this grants you a large boost to your control over the positioning between you and your target. It can easily be the difference between you getting caught or safely poking for free.

This takes a lot of time and practice with a Champion to get the timing perfect. Especially since every champion has a slightly different auto attack speed and animation. However, once you’ve figured out how to animation cancel, you’ll be able to trade much more effectively and safely.

Best Situations for Kiting and Orb Walking

While kiting is an essential skill for players to have, it doesn’t fit every situation. There will be times when it doesn’t make sense to kite an enemy, and there are some scenarios that you may not think about unless they’re pointed out. 

• Team Fights: When you’re team is fighting, focus on kiting enemies out of a fight if possible. If you’re auto-attacking at your max range, enemies will have to spend more time and resources to reach you. Kite away from them and then re-engage throughout the fight.
• Escaping: Kiting is primarily a way to protect yourself while you’re escaping, so don’t forget to do it because you’re panicked. 
• Laning: If you’re laning, kiting enemies when they try to go in on you can help you take control of a lane. It works especially well if you’re poking an enemy down too – lower ELOs will have a hard time dealing with this combination, which will only help you rise through the ranks.

Best Champions for Orb Walking in League

Orb walking isn’t something that every Champion in the game can do. In fact, it’s pretty limited, and only certain characters excel at doing it.

ADCs

Most of the time, attack-damage-carries (ADCs) have to kite. As the name implies, these Champions carry the damage in the game through their auto-attacks. While this isn’t always the case, it’s what the role is set up to do, and mastering that will give you more wiggle room to try new things.

The best ADCs to play are those with incredibly long ranges, since you need to outrange whoever you’re running from. Champions that build attack speed also excel with kiting because they can quickly attack move. Here are some of the best ones:

• Caitlyn
• Ashe
• Jhin
• Tristana (especially at higher levels because her range increases)
• Jinx
• Corki
• Aphelios
• Twitch
• Kog’Maw
• Kalista
• Zeri

Ranged Characters

It’s not just ADCs that do well with kiting. Any ranged Champion has a chance to kite well, especially if their abilities have low cooldowns. Generally though, using auto attacks isn’t going to be helpful unless you’re playing someone that’s kit is meant to dish out damage with their auto attacks. While this can vary, it’s important to start with the basics while you learn before trying to play around with it.

Oftentimes, ranged characters that aren’t ADCs and are capable of kiting have some sort of crowd control that they’re waiting to use while running from an enemy. This is almost more of a bait, but it’s very similar to kiting – it incorporates some of the same mechanics, like attack move, so learning to orb walk helps many mid Champions too.

Keep in mind that you have to outrange the enemy while also dealing significant damage anytime you turn around. Here are some that can kite relatively well:

• Lux
• Cassiopeia
• Syndra
• Azir
• Ryze

Tips for Orb Walking & Kiting 

Learning how to attack move in LoL isn’t something you can haphazardly think about. It takes a lot of focus, and it’s easy to lose sight of the other things going on in the game. Here are a few tips and tricks for kiting.

Be Aware of Positioning

Kiting is all about positioning yourself in the best possible way against an enemy, but you should also be thinking about the positions of the rest of the players. For example, if you’re kiting an enemy, you want to make sure you’re moving away from any other enemies. This may mean going in an unconventional direction, but knowing the enemy team’s position can secure you a kill (or an escape).

It’s also important to know your own team’s positions. Any time you’re kiting, you’ll want to be running toward your team, not away from them. In the case that kiting doesn’t succeed (and it won’t always), then your team can save you and/or trade a kill.

Watch Your Auto-Attack Range

The only way to kite an enemy is to outrange them, but this means that you can kite enemies at a variety of ranges (especially if they’re a melee Champion). Of course, the closer you are to them, the closer they are to catching you. Thus, it’s important to try to attack at your max auto-attack range.

This can be tricky to do depending on how you’ve got things set up to orb walk, but you can always press A to see your auto-attack range. This also gets easier the more you play a specific Champion, so it may be worth learning how to kite on one Champion at a time. Once you’ve got the fundamentals of attack move down, then you’ll be able to transfer those skills to another Champion. 

Practice, Practice, Practice 

As always, practice kiting enemies. While you can do this in real games, don’t be afraid to try it out against AI. In fact, the AI in League of Legends will generally chase you down, so it’s easy to practice.

Plus, it’s too situational to try in an actual game. Not every enemy will chase you down, and some players may only do so when they know they can win. If you’re only practicing in games where kiting isn’t successful, then it’s easy to lose morale and give up on the concept. Kiting is too important for climbing the ranks to give up on, but it doesn’t come easily.

There are certain things that you just won’t pay attention to while focusing on learning how to attack move in LoL. Things like playing around your team, remembering what’s going on with objectives, and using abilities are easy to lose sight of while you’re getting the hang of kiting an enemy. If you haven’t practiced enough, then you’ll more than likely be falling behind in other things.

While it’s not like you can’t practice in a real game, you just won’t benefit from the practice as quickly as you would if you hit the practice tool or AI games for a few hours. 

Join the High Ground!

Hopefully, this guide helped you learn everything you need to know about how to attack move in LoL. If there’s anything you’re still confused about or think we missed, feel free to leave a comment below. You can also subscribe for more weekly news, guides, and other articles in the gaming industry.

Happy gaming!