How To Last Hit Like a Pro: A Guide To improve Your Creep Score

11 Jul 20

Guides

Kuriboh

How To Last Hit Like a Pro: A Guide To improve Your Creep Score

One of if not the most important things you can do in the early game is get close to that near-perfect cs.

One of if not the most important things you can do in the early game is get close to that near-perfect CS. First and foremost, to get around 120 CS at 10 minutes (which is considered 'perfect') is not something most players if any hope to achieve in a real game. Even the pro players don't look at this as perfect because it simply isn't attainable, so don't beat yourself up over perfection. What you should look to achieve is just getting the feel of when your basic attack should be able to kill a minion. Don't worry about how many minions you have compared to the enemy, just look for improvement.

Practice, Practice, Practice

The best way to practice last hitting is take a champion from the lane you like to play in that has no basic attack modifiers (I.E. Caitlin crit passive or Nasus Q stacks) and go into practice tool alone and just try to kill minions. Don't worry too much about missing minions or managing the wave. Just try to get a feel for what the minion health will look like when you should basic attack them to gain that gold. A good way to start is to left-click a caster minion and watch their health and when the health is equal to or less than your basic attack damage go ahead and smack away.

This gives you a good idea of when you should basic attack solely on what the health bar will look like as you can begin to see that if the minion is at X health I can kill it but it will also look like this amount left. Casters will be the easiest to last hit as they have no armor (your attacks will do full damage) and they have the smallest amount of health for all minions. The melee minions have armor and more health than casters meaning they will be a little harder to last hit as you have to wait longer. Siege/Cannon minions are the hardest to last hit for the same reason as melee minions, but they also reward the player with the most gold so if you have to choose between two minions of which you only get one, go in order of how much gold they give (Siege/Cannon -> Melee -> Caster).

Once you start getting a feel for last hitting without having to look at the health bar numbers too often, start challenging yourself to get more and more CS by a certain time limit. I personally look to get around 70 or 80 CS in 10 minutes in a normal game just to make sure my XP and Gold are on track to be able to fight or get items. If you are just learning to CS or are just trying to improve, use the practice tool and CS for 5 minutes with only a Doran's Blade or Ring (whatever starting item you would normally take) and just keep pushing to get more CS until you feel it isn't possible to get more.

Once you get to the point where you feel confident last hitting in a minions only game, try playing some normal games with your focus being last hitting. I hate to say this, but the truth is you probably won't have as good CS as you did in the practice tool but that's because you now have an enemy player in your lane that draws attention away from minions. If you make your goal to just see improvement, things will go great. There is still going to be off games and that's fine; most data has outliers and so too will your CS consistency. Just keep at it and focus on last hitting safely.

Imperfection is Perfection

Now that you know how to CS, let's go back to why it shouldn't be your goal to get 'perfect' CS. As much as 120 minion kills at about 10 minutes sounds great, to achieve this you can't really leave lane - meaning you aren't able to buy items, giving your opponent the advantage in lane because they will have more stats than you from buying items. The more important reason is that you will never be able to help your team until you get that 'perfect' CS. To never leave lane means you also can't Teleport from top to help fight in another lane, roam from mid to kill someone, nor fight in Dragon pit to secure the objective.

You may gain an extra 600 gold or so, but the amount your team loses from your presence and pressure means you lose more than you gain. There will be some games however that you will just sit in lane most of the time because nothing is happening and you can't start a winning fight, so you just CS. That is fine if that happens! The main thing is to always look to help your team if possible so everyone can push ahead, not just you.

JUST LET ME CS

One thing that my friends and myself struggled with in the past was the idea of "this champion won't let me get close enough to CS without dying." There will be games like this especially if you are playing against someone that can easily harass with abilities or basic attacks without much punishment (I.e. Quinn top, Ziggs mid, any aggressive support like Thresh, Teemo anywhere) and you shouldn't get mad at this. You will be behind in gold in games like this and that is expected, what you don't want to do is try and CS only to die because they just do too much damage to you in laning phase.

When something like this happens there are two things you can do, the first of which is just chill as far away as possible from the enemy laner so you can still get the XP from minions dying which is the most important part to be able to come back later to win. You will miss a lot of CS but this will keep your enemy lanner from getting the gold and XP of killing you which keeps them from getting fed off the face of the earth. The second thing that needs to happen if possible (and if willing) is to get a gank from the jungle to relieve some pressure. If you get a gank (even if it fails) you will be able to get some CS off it or even a kill.

There are a few things that can happen: The river is warded so the enemy laner backs off allowing you to get CS finally, the enemy laner has to flash away to avoid death giving you time to CS as well as back and get items, you get a kill which lets you get CS as well as turret plating gold giving you enough to almost catch up in gold difference. There is only one issue with this and that's if the jungler doesn't want to gank you or if they are unable to even try; at this point, you just go back to playing super safe trying to soak XP as to not fall behind in levels at a minimum.

The most important tip I can give you about this whole experience is just try to keep a level head, you know? It is hard to get into a groove at first, especially playing in a lane where you aren't allowed to really touch minions what-so-ever. If you just try to stay calm and collected through it, I guarantee you will make a comeback even if you weren't able to CS for half of laning phase and you are going into 10 minutes with 40 CS. Just focus on what you can do, even if that means basically going AFK under tower just so you don't die. This will give your team time to get ahead as well and, in turn, pull you back up from despair. This trip won't be an overnight change; it will take time, but once you improve your last hitting, the advantage you get over the enemy will be felt and it will feel so good.

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