How to Peel in League of Legends?

During your LoL matches, you may have heard someone say, “peel for me,” or something along those lines. If you’re fairly new to the game, you may have wondered what peel in LoL meant. Basically, when someone asks you to peel for them, they’re asking for protection from the enemy. 

When it comes to keeping your carries alive, peeling is essential. If you want to be a successful person on your team, you need to learn how to peel. 

What is Peeling?

Peeling involves doing everything you can during the match to protect all of your allied carries that are vulnerable. Instead of trying to kill one person, when you peel, you go out of your way to extend the lives of the main damage dealers on your team. This will involve taking the hits for them, keeping them out of harm’s way, and yes, even being a threat yourself. 

This is how you want most team compositions in a traditional LoL match: a form of damage, a form of engage, and a form of the peel. 

Still don’t understand? Here’s an example:

Think of it as a form of capture the flag, with the flag being the ADC – While some are defending and protecting theirs, you have the ones that are going for the glad, and some that are out there doing a little bit of both.

You can also think of peeling as if you’re protecting your gold investment. 

Think of it this way:

Your ADC is out there farming the gold, so you will want to protect that investment. 

Regardless of the role you choose to play in the match, it’s always good to know how to peel in LoL. 

In this post, we will teach you everything you need to know about peeling in LoL – how to peel, how you can improve, and the true meaning of LoL peeling.

Also read: Best Supports For Kai’Sa

The Different Types of Peel

Starting out, we’re going to go over the different types of peel in League of Legends. The fundamental methods of peeling involve positioning properly and using crowd control.

Positioning

First, we’re going to take a look at positioning. This involves how you place yourself in relation to the teammate you’re wanting to protect and the threats they have going towards them. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to try to be as close as possible to your teammates, so it’s easier for you to defend them.

However, the positioning will depend on the types of compositions you’re facing and the threats.

Poke and Siege Comps

In LoL, when you’re going up against champions that are reliant on skill shots to poke and siege, many times, they’re not going to have a whole lot of crowd control options. When dealing with this type of situation, the best route would be to remain in front of them, making it hard for the enemies to shoot their target.

Area of Effect

When you find yourself going against an AoE comp, you need to work hard to prevent yourself from getting caught by the same crowd control that your VIP is getting caught. Often times, AoE engages have long cooldowns, so if they’re only hitting one target, they don’t have as much value as they should.

Here’s an example for you – Let’s say Malphite places his ult on Ashe but doesn’t get Braum. Braum’s next movement would be to lock down on Malphine with CC long enough for Ashe to escape. 

Messy Fights: Skirmishes and Assassins

Team comps filled with assassins can equal to some scary plays for a squishy carry because there are threats coming from different angles. As a peeler, as we mentioned earlier, you will want to make sure you stay as close to possible to the carry so that you can immediately respond.

Crowd Control

Many are able to understand this form of peel, because it’s not hard at all, and it’s the most impactful and immediate. Whether you’re stunning, slowing, or knowing those enemies away, using Crowd Control to peel will prevent your enemies from touching your team’s carries. Think about it, how can an assassin manage to chase down their target when they aren’t able to use abilities or move?

Two tanky Supports are Thresh and Leona; they both have abilities you can use to either peel or engage. However, if you put them under a microscope, Thresh’s kit makes for a better peeler, while Leona’s kit makes her a better engager.

Thresh – He has options to lay or engage with his hook to keep his target within striking range. However, Thresh just so happens to have some of the best defensive abilities in League of Legends – his ultimate (The Box) and his Dark Passage lantern. If the player knows what they’re doing, it’s almost impossible to kill an enemy under Thresh’s protection.

Leona – With her Solar Flare and Zenith Blade, she can disrupt and get to a team’s backline, even if she’s far away. This means that she can stay next to her carry while saving her CC abilities to peel. 

When it comes to Crowd Control, you need to understand your options and know when and where you should use them. 

Other Methods

Besides positioning and crowd control, there are some other methods and tools that you can use. 

If you need more tools than what is in your champion’s kit, you can build yourself for peel by choosing the right items, runes, and Summoner Spells.  

Runes

Let’s take a look at the runes …

Resolve 

• Font of Life – When you CC an enemy and your ally attacks that enemy, Font of Life will heal the ally. 
• Guardian – This will shield a guarded ally.
• Revitalize – This rune will enhance your shields and heals. 

Inspiration

• Approach Velocity – This rune helps you stay on top of enemies that are chasing your allies or helps you reach them.
• Unsealed Spellbook – This will allow you to switch to Heal, Cleanse, Heal, or Exhaust so that you can body-block CC. 

Sorcery

• Summon Aery – This improves your buffs, shields, and heals.

Items

• Knights Vow – This item will give you speed when you’re moving towards your enemy and lessens damage on a targeted ally. 
• Shureylya’s Reverie – This grants movement speed for both you and the allies around you – it comes in handy for escaping.
• Locket of the Iron Solari – This offers an instant shield so that you can protect your nearby allies from burst damage. 
• Redemption – This is a combination of AoE heal and a zoning tool.
• Twin Shadows – This helps track down those flankers.
• Mikael’s Crucible – This allows you to cleanse most of the CC effects from your target ally.

Also read: How to Improve at League of Legends

How to Peel?

Now that you have a good understanding of the various ways to peel and know which runes/items to grab, it’s now time for you to learn how to peel – we’re going to break it down into steps for you so that it will be easier to follow.

1. Take a Deep Breath and Relax

First of all, you need to get an idea of what you’re dealing with and avoid panicking because this could cause you to make the wrong decisions. Before you go into the League match, you already know you’re going to have to fight to win, so mentally prepare yourself for this. Understand that the enemy team will do everything they possibly can in order to win. 

As the match moves forward, make sure you continuously look at your map and absorb what’s going on. The more you see, the more prepared you’re going to be when it’s time to get dirty. 

2. Figure Out Which Team Members Mean the Most 

By the end of your bans and pick, you should have a good understanding of who your carries are. These are usually your ADCs and Mid-laners, but on the same note, they can also be your Jungler and Top laners, like Kindred or Fiora. There are times where Mids will play assassins, and they don’t have a problem working alone, so you don’t have to worry too much about them.

3. Anticipate and Execute

In this step, you will anticipate the enemy’s plan of attack. Based on your enemy’s strategies, you may want to change your approach. Kind of like before the match started, you needed to figure out who your most important team members were – well, during the match, you will need to figure out who the big bully is on the opposing team. 

When possible, you should save your best cc for your main threat. If the biggest threat is an assassin, then anticipate them coming from the shadows. If they’re an ADC or long-range mage, get read to block those skill shots. 

Conclusion

By now, you should have a good understanding of what peeling is and how to do it. If you have any questions or comments regarding peeling, go ahead and drop it in the comments below.