How to Kite in League of Legends: 🎯 Complete Attack Move & Orb Walking Guide ⚡

How to kite in League of Legends is one of the most important mechanical skills you can learn, and mastering it immediately separates you from players who deal significantly less damage in the same time window. Kiting means attacking while moving, allowing you to deal continuous damage to enemies without standing still and becoming an easy target.

League of Legends attack move is the core mechanic behind kiting. Every auto-attack has a visible animation that plays out when you click an enemy. The key insight is that the actual damage registers the moment the projectile or strike begins, not when the animation finishes. The animation’s conclusion is wasted time that you can instead use to reposition.

Understanding how to kite in LoL requires knowing three things: when exactly to move, which direction to move, and how the attack move command (the A key by default) works differently from right-clicking your target directly.

What Is Kiting and Orb Walking in League of Legends?

Kiting and orb walking are two names for the same core idea, with a subtle technical distinction:

• Kiting is the broader concept of attacking while maintaining distance. Any champion can kite in the general sense by attacking and then moving before the enemy reaches them.
• Orb walking specifically refers to canceling the finish of the auto-attack animation by moving before it completes. Named after Orb Effect attacks in DotA, orb walking is more technically precise than general kiting.

In practice, the League of Legends community uses both terms interchangeably to describe the mechanic of attack-move-attack-move chaining.

Why Kiting Matters for Every Role

While kiting is most critical for ADC (marksmen) champions, it benefits players in every position:

• ADC: Maximum damage output while staying out of melee range. A kiting ADC deals the same damage as a stationary one while taking significantly less damage in return.
• Top lane bruisers: Kiting backward during extended trades deals more damage before the enemy closes the gap.
• Mid lane assassins: Kiting in chase scenarios secures kills that would otherwise escape.
• Jungle: Kiting monsters in the jungle increases clear speed by reducing damage taken from neutral camps.
• Support: Some support champions deal meaningful auto-attack damage and can kite enemies out of favorable positions during skirmishes.

How to Attack Move in League of Legends: The Mechanics

The attack move command works differently from right-clicking an enemy directly. Understanding this difference is essential for using it correctly.

Right-Click Method (Basic Kiting)

The simplest way to begin learning kiting uses only right-click commands:

1. Right-click on the enemy to initiate an auto-attack
2. Watch for the projectile or strike to leave your champion
3. Immediately right-click on the ground behind you to move
4. Wait until your attack cooldown (the brief bar beneath your champion) is ready
5. Right-click the enemy again to fire the next attack
6. Repeat the cycle

This method works and is valid for learning. Its limitation is that right-clicking an enemy while moving may accidentally move toward them instead of attacking, requiring careful timing.

Attack Move Command (A Key, Recommended)

The attack move command, bound to A by default, is the standard method used by competitive players:

1. Press A (attack move)
2. Left-click anywhere near the enemy you want to attack
3. Your champion automatically attacks the nearest enemy to your cursor
4. The moment the projectile leaves your champion, right-click to move away
5. When your attack cooldown is ready, press A again and left-click near the target
6. Repeat the cycle

The key advantage: pressing A + left-click near a target attacks the closest enemy to where you click, rather than wherever your cursor happens to be. This avoids accidentally clicking on the wrong target in chaotic team fight situations.

Player Attack Move Click (Most Advanced)

A third option called Player Attack Move Click can be assigned to any key through the Options menu under Hotkeys. Unlike the standard A command, which requires two inputs (A then click), Player Attack Move Click executes the attack command with a single key press.

This is faster but shows no range circle, requiring you to keep your cursor positioned near your target at all times. Most high-level players who kite extremely fast use this option.

Step-by-Step: How to Kite in LoL Practice

The most effective way to learn kiting follows a specific progression:

Step 1: Set Up Your Keybinds

Before practicing any kiting technique, configure your settings correctly:

1. Open game settings (Escape key)
2. Navigate to Hotkeys
3. Find “Player Attack Move” and confirm it is bound to A
4. Enable “Player Attack Move Click” and assign it to X as an alternative
5. Enable “Player Attack on Cursor” to ensure A + click attacks the closest target to your cursor, not your champion

Step 2: Practice in a Custom Game Against Bots

Load into a practice game with no enemies or with bots set to Easy difficulty. Practice the following sequence:

1. Attack a bot champion with A + left click
2. The moment the projectile appears, right-click the ground behind you
3. When the cooldown bar refills, press A + left click again
4. Repeat until the movement between attacks feels natural

The timing window varies by champion. Ashe has slow animations that give more time to move. Caitlyn has very fast animations. Each champion you practice kiting on requires calibrating to their specific timing.

Step 3: Practice Against Moving Targets

Once the basic timing feels comfortable, practice kiting while the enemy is also moving:

• Kiting forward: Move in the same direction as a fleeing enemy to stay in range
• Kiting backward: Move away from a pursuing enemy to maintain safe distance
• Lateral kiting: Move left and right to make yourself harder to skill shot while still attacking

Kiting Applications in Different Game Scenarios

Kiting in Lane During the Laning Phase

Kiting during the laning phase means poking the enemy champion with auto attacks while backing up to avoid retaliation. This works best when:

• You are a ranged champion against a melee opponent
• The enemy has no gap-closer ability ready
• Minions are not blocking your path backward

The enemy will try to use minions as shields by standing behind them. Move to angles that expose them while keeping your escape path clear.

Kiting in Team Fights

Team fight kiting is significantly harder than lane kiting because multiple threats exist simultaneously. Priorities during team fights:

1. Attack the nearest high-value target (carries, not tanks)
2. Keep moving perpendicular or backward relative to the frontline
3. Monitor which enemies have abilities available that can close the gap
4. Stop kiting and move directly away if a diving champion reaches melee range

The most dangerous moment for an ADC in a team fight is when they stop to auto-attack without repositioning because they are focused on dealing damage. Always move between attacks even when it feels like you are wasting time.

Kiting When Escaping

Kiting while escaping is the defensive application of the mechanic:

1. Run away from the pursuing enemy
2. Just before they reach your attack range, stop and fire one auto-attack
3. Immediately continue running
4. Fire another auto-attack as soon as the cooldown resets

Each auto-attack fired during an escape either kills the enemy faster or slows them if your champion has an on-hit slow (Ashe’s Frost Shot is the classic example). Champions like Ashe, Caitlyn, and Jinx are specifically designed around kiting as a defensive tool.

Best Champions to Learn Kiting On

The best champions to practice kiting on have clear, visible attack animations that make the timing window obvious:

Champion	Role	Why They’re Good for Learning Kiting
Ashe	ADC	Large, visible arrow animation. Built-in slow on every attack.
Caitlyn	ADC	Long attack range means more time to move between attacks.
Kog’Maw	ADC	Top-tier kiter with items. Low base range but high attack speed.
Jinx	ADC	Clear animation on Minigun form. Built to kite reset with Zap.
Teemo	Top	Slow auto animation is highly visible. Good for learning timing.

Pro Tips: How to Kite in League of Legends More Effectively

• Learn the specific animation of each champion before playing them in ranked: Every champion has a unique attack animation. The window between the projectile firing and the animation ending is different for each one. Practice kiting in a custom game to calibrate timing before using it in a competitive match.
• Enable Player Attack Move Click for maximum kiting speed: The two-step A + left-click method is sufficient for most players, but Player Attack Move Click assigned to a key enables faster sequences for players who want to optimize their kiting ceiling.
• Prioritize kiting direction based on the specific threat: Against a melee champion with a dash, kite backward. Against a slow melee champion, kite sideways to make their movement prediction harder. The direction matters as much as the timing.
• Do not kite so aggressively that you ignore incoming abilities: Some players become so focused on the attack-move timing that they stop dodging skill shots. Kiting is a background habit that should not occupy your entire attention while other threats exist.

Common Kiting Mistakes

1. Moving too early and canceling the auto-attack itself: Moving before the projectile fires cancels the attack, dealing no damage and wasting the attack cooldown timer. Fix: Watch for the specific moment the projectile leaves your champion, which varies by champion. Practice in custom games until the timing is automatic.
   
2. Kiting in a straight predictable line: Moving in a straight line backward makes it trivially easy for enemies to predict your position and hit skill shots. Fix: Vary your movement direction between each attack. Left, right, backward, and diagonally unpredictable paths make you significantly harder to hit.
   
3. Not adjusting attack move settings before practicing: Default settings may have attack move behaving differently from the competitive standard. Fix: Configure Player Attack on Cursor in settings to ensure A + click attacks the target closest to your cursor, not your champion’s current position.
   

Play League of Legends with Lower Latency Using ExitLag

Kiting in League of Legends requires precise timing between attack commands and movement commands. Even small amounts of input lag create situations where your move command registers after the animation window has already closed, causing missed movement or mistimed attacks.

ExitLag is a connection optimizer used by over 30 million players across 4,000+ game titles including League of Legends. It analyzes multiple network routes in real time and selects the fastest, most stable path between your device and Riot’s servers, minimizing the latency that affects precise input timing.

Features that directly benefit kiting in LoL:

• Real-Time Optimization: Continuously selects the lowest-latency route to Riot’s servers, reducing the delay between your attack and move inputs and what happens on screen.
• Multipath Technology: Routes game data through multiple simultaneous paths, ensuring connection stability during the precise input sequences that kiting requires.
• Traffic Shaper: Prioritizes League of Legends traffic over background applications so no external process creates input lag spikes during your attack-move sequences.
• PC Boost: Clears background processes and RAM pressure, improving local input processing speed alongside the network improvements.

Download ExitLag and bring your kiting mechanics to their full potential.

All game images and champion names used in this blog post belong to Riot Games. They are used for informational and educational purposes only and do not imply endorsement or affiliation with the rights holders.

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