The core of success in League of Legends lies in the economy. If you can boom, you can be the strongest person in the game and take control, while if you bust, you can fall to the wayside and become entirely useless. The foundation of an individual’s economy will be heavily defined by the gold that you will acquire by optimizing the among of CS you get. Since 17 CS can on average equal a kill in gold, don’t let these advantages get away from you and maximize your last hits with proper habits and practice.

Last Hitting

Of course, to get this gold you must be able to actually execute the last hit upon minions. This will seem straightforward, yet it can seem frustrating when those last hits that should be accessible to you slip through your fingers. To ensure you land those last hits available to you, you will need to have an understanding of what your limits are with auto attacks and abilities, a focus on the correct times, and the timing to step into the position and take the last hit.

Focus on exactly how much damage you can do to minions. Over the early laning phase, you should get a feeling for how much individual auto attacks do to each type of minion and use this knowledge to guide your following decisions. Watch the wave and keep track of which minions are taking focus. Once you can determine which minion will reach the execution threshold first you should step forward and take your last hit. Cannon minions are always the priority in a wave and you should treat them as such. Prioritize their last hit over any other and even make sure to ensure the last hit with an ability cast if you are concerned with a mistake losing you the large chunk of gold that the cannon minion is worth. After cannons, you will want to prioritize melee minions then casters as the gold value goes in that order from largest to smallest.

There are more than just minion waves that will interact amongst each other while you look to execute last hits. One important skill to learn is how to last hit under towers. When minions are under tower then there a few thresholds you should keep in mind for when they are full health. Melee minions will take two tower hits from full hp and then you can last hit them. Casters will take one tower shot and, for mages or early game for AD champions, one set up auto-attack before the last hit. Cannon minions will take around 6 or 7 turret shots depending on the time of the game before they will be in the last hit range. However, with other minions interacting, cannon minions will often not need that many turret shots. Make sure you’re paying attention to how much it is taking from each turret shot and are ready to last hit it with either an auto-attack or an ability when necessary.

In order to properly execute on last hits, you will need to also keep in mind how using abilities or just last hitting minions will affect the rest of the wave and which minions are taking focus after the minion in question dies. For example, if you want to use Jhin’s Bouncing Grenade (Q) on a minion to last hit it, keep in mind that it will look to bounce to three other minions and instead try to set up a chain that allows for it to finish multiple minions by putting multiple minions into execute range. Another example could be if you were to last hit a minion under tower then you should have an understanding of what minion the tower will focus next. The tower first focuses based on the type of minion. First in line is the cannon minion, then melee, then caster. Then it focuses the closest minion of the highest priority. It will not switch to a higher priority target until its current target either dies or leaves its attack range.

How can you ensure that this execution is consistent and reliable? Like many things in League, practice makes perfect. The most important tool that is available to practice last hitting with is the practice tool. There are three phases of practice that I consider to be important to ensure that you can understand and execute these concepts. The first phase is to practice last hitting with zero assistance. This requires a rune page that doesn’t affect last hitting at all and no items at all bought in-game. You will simply go to lane and use only auto attacks to last hit for 10 minutes at a time. At 10 minutes the maximum CS you can have is 105 so see how close you can get with practice. The second phase introduces abilities to the conversation.

Whether it be under tower or out in the lane when multiple minions reach the execution threshold at the exact same time abilities can be helpful. Using them without understanding how they affect the wave around them can quickly get in the way of efficient last hitting and practicing this can help you to go into a lot of situations understanding how you and your abilities will interact with the wave. The final phase involves introducing a bot. This will not be in order to master trading but instead to master dodging while farming. Simply focus on the wave and make sure you dodge as many abilities as you can while hitting as many last hits as you can for 10 minutes. This can also show you just how much CS you can miss with simply being forced to back at an inconvenient time.

Accessing the Wave

If you can land every last hit available to you, you are only on the first step of effective CSing. It is crucial to understand how to give yourself access to these last hits by being able to safely approach the wave with smart manipulation and effective vision. You must also understand when you can’t approach the wave and must concede some last hits in order to keep yourself from being denied an even larger amount of CS in the near future.

First of all, you must understand what it means to be able to safely approach the wave. This means you can approach the wave without being at threat of losing trades to your opponent. While this takes wave manipulation the first thing you must keep in mind are defensive cooldowns. If you are Twisted Fate without Pick a Card (W) or Katarina without Shunpo (E) or any immobile champion without flash and your opponent has cooldowns that they can attack with then it may be in your best interest to simply concede a few last hits in order to avoid them reaching you with a trade. The more cooldowns you have the more liberty you have to move around the lane. However, you don’t want to overextend without some extra protection. The best protection to have is your own minions.

This means creating a slow push. A slow push involves creating a small advantage in your own minion wave so that it will automatically beat your opponents. Then you only need to last hit and watch your minions build up. If executed patiently then you should have a large army built up by the time you have to extend in the lane. Another way to create safety by simply not having to extend and still being able to last hit is to create a freeze. This involves you sustaining a certain advantage for your opponent’s wave so that it is consistently beating your wave without ever reaching your tower. This keeps the minions on your side of the lane so you don’t have to leave safety. If minion waves are relatively even, they will automatically begin to push away from the side of the map they are closest to over the next few waves.

This is an example of what a frozen minion wave looks like. Caster minion advantage is the general goal when looking to freeze a wave.

It is also important to understand what your opponent is capable of and keep yourself from being forced out of lane or even killed. If they are able to beat you in a one versus one then you will have to concede the space that they push for even if it cost you a few last hits in the long run it will allow you to survive and reach much more long term CS. The best example of this is early levels on a champion like Katarina. With Katarina, you are weak in the early levels especially against characters with range. However, you can begin to exert pressure if you make it to higher levels with high health.

To do this you may have to sacrifice CS by using your Bouncing Blade (Q) to CS and otherwise just do your best to concede space while your opponent pushes and then you can most likely catch the large majority of the CS once the wave reaches your tower. Once the power balance of the lane changes and you have the strength to outrage them you can then get your CS and zone them off of CS to get your revenge. This also refers to if you have people roaming to and ganking your lane. Simply give them respect and back off the wave completely. If you disrespect in an effort to get that last CS, it is highly likely that you can get caught and killed and miss a much more substantial amount of CS.

After Laning

CSing is not something that just stops being necessary after the laning phase. Once you lose your established area to grab CS in though, it can be hard to completely understand where to be and what can be yours. In these situations, keep in mind what your team is doing and which of your opponents are visible.

You need your actions to line up with what your team’s map movements are trying to accomplish. If your team is pressuring the enemies base with minion waves, you want to either be pushing with them or be matching them in a side lane. If your team is resetting, you need to pick up the farm that you can without extending by catching waves that are pushing for you or picking up your jungle camps. If your team has large advantages and are going for objectives then you need to be in sync and extended with them for the objective. This might lose you farm but it is necessary for the sake of the win conditions you need to follow.

You also need your actions to be within a certain area of safety created by vision and knowledge of what your opponents are doing. The less you know about your opponent’s movements the less you can extend for gold. If you need to pull back out of the opponent’s territory then you can simply fall back to camps in the same decision as if your team is lacking pressure. By keeping track of your team’s and the opposing team’s actions you can maximize your gold income later in the game while safely traversing the map and maximizing your win conditions.

Keep your CS numbers rising higher and good luck in Solo Queue!