Possibly one of the most underutilized aspects that beginners to League of Legends may struggle with is your CS. This is a skill that takes many hours of practice, but today I will be focusing solely on tips and strategies to help you farm minions more effectively under tower.
Whether you have just started playing League of Legends or took a break and are now getting back into the swing of it, CSing can potentially be one thing that is holding you back. Along with understanding champions and abilities in-game, being able to CS well can be one of the key factors to improve your gameplay. Maybe you have just played a practice game against AI and you missed every minion but one within a wave. That’s totally fine! Here’s where I come in to help. It is best to focus on improving yourself in the early stages of learning to play rather than comparing yourself to others.
Pro players in the LCS, League of Legends Championship Series, can average about 10 CS/minute (or more), but a beginner player should focus on improving to at least 8 CS/minute. It takes a considerable amount of practice to achieve this goal but is completely within your reach if you put in the time and effort required. Today I will be focusing solely on tips and strategies to help you farm minions more effectively under tower.
Not to be confused with Counter-Strike, CS in League of Legends stands for Creep Score and is used to keep track of how many minions or small monsters you have slain in-game. This abbreviated term is used mainly in League of Legends but can also be used within other games that have a similar game mechanic.
In order to CS effectively you have to master last hitting. Last hitting means dealing the final auto-attack or killing blow and goes hand in hand when you practice CSing. As you play through a game, you gain gold with every CS and this allows you to buy items that will help you defeat your opponents.
There are four minions you will deal with while CSing under a tower or tower: melee, caster, siege, and super minions. All of these minions have a basic health, attack damage, and armor stat that increases as the game goes on. Super minions are the only exception to the armor stat increase; they remain at 100 armor all game.
A Melee minion will grant 21 gold and starts out with a base health of 477. Just as their name implies, this minion can only attack you once you are in melee range. Three melee minions will spawn with every wave
A Caster minion will grant 14 gold and starts out with base health of 296. This minion attacks from a ranged distance and three of these will spawn with every wave as well.
A Siege minion, or canon minion, will grant 60-90 gold depending on how many minutes have passed and starts out with base health of 912. This minion uses their canon to deal damage from a distance and one of these spawns every three waves for the first 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, one spawns every two minion waves, and after the 25-minute mark, one will spawn every wave. These minions will also not spawn in a lane in which a super minion is spawning.
A Super minion is a more powerful version of a melee minion. These minions only spawn in lanes in which an inhibitor is down and they spawn at the front of the wave. Two waves before an inhibitor will respawn, these super minions will stop spawning.
During the laning phase, you will mainly have to deal with only the first three types of minions. A tower will target enemies in a specific order as well:
That is unless your opponent attacks you while in range of the tower. This also includes if an enemy’s pet damages you while the enemy champion is in range, the champion will be targeted instead.
When it comes to last hitting under tower and CSing, there is a general rule you can follow. For melee minions, let the tower fire twice and then auto the minion for the kill. For caster minions, fire one auto-attack, wait and let the tower shoot once, and then use one more auto-attack to last hit the minion and gain the experience and gold. For siege minions, it takes about seven tower shots and one final auto-attack to kill. This information is for the beginning of the game before the minions’ base health increases and requires very specific scenarios to work. For example, most of the time you’re having to deal with avoiding abilities your enemy is sending out as well as worrying about trying to deal damage back. Minions may also come up to the tower with some health already lost, at which point you try to use your best judgment. But when you take out those external factors, this is the easiest way to understand how to last hit under the tower.
When it comes to some of those outlying factors, it can also be useful to use your champion’s abilities to help you deal damage before last hitting. Using Ashe as an example, let’s say that my minions are crashing into my tower with less than full health. As the tower shoots a melee minion I auto but it’s not enough to kill. Before the tower is able to kill the minion, I send out my W, Volley, killing the minions and giving me the gold and experience.
Situations will vary but you have to use your best judgment to see what abilities you can use to assist in last hitting the minions.
Consistently havinghigh CS in-game will allow you to have more of a presence in-game and give you the resources you need to be successful. It stands to reason that it’s worth your time to put in the practice to improve your CS and especially your ability to farm under tower. You can use the League of Legends Practice Tool, Co-op vs. AI game mode, as well as CS Practice Tool by LolDataScience. This website helps you practice farming under the tower in a simple and straightforward way. After all of the information I have shared, I hope you feel ready to head into the game and practice your skills. As always, good luck and have fun on the rift!
