Last Hitting Mechanics

Animation of Champions affect Last Hitting

 Every champion has a different animation speed when using their auto attack.  When you are using a new champion you have never used before, you’ll notice that you’ll have a hard time last hitting because of the new animation.

Here are a few champions that have really slow animation:

Annie, Morgana, Brand, Soraka

And here are a few champions that have really fast animation:

Miss Fortune, Caitlyn, Ashe, Nunu

Right Click versus Attack Click

Attack click makes it more accurate, so you won’t hit the wrong minion.  When you try it, you’ll notice that it feels more accurate.  Whenever I’m playing in tournament play or ‘tryhard’ I will use Attack.  The way you do this is by clicking A on your keyboard and then left clicking the minion.  You’ll notice it feels more accurate and you’re likely to get more CS by doing that opposed to just right clicking.

Massive clicking – Yes it looks crazy, but it works.

Clicking incessantly, looks crazy, but there are a few reasons to do it. One reason is to avoid skillshots by junglers (amumu or ashe arrows).  It is just keeps your movement more unpredictable.  It also keeps you ‘on your toes’.  It keeps you mentally agile incase something happens, there’s almost a rhythm to clicking around the minions and then actually killing it.  Try it and you’ll notice you’ll actually be more likely to last hit when you are constantly clicking around the map.

Hitting two or more minions at once

You want to avoid this happening. So sometimes you will have to hit a minion twice, not just one time, so that it does not die at the same time as another minion.   If you are stuck in a situation where you see that two or more minions are going to die at once, go ahead and use one of your abilities to pick up the minions and save one to be auto attacked. 

Push or Not to Push the Lane

When to Push

In most cases you will not want to push the lane since this makes you open to ganks, however there are some situations where it does make sense:

• You notice the enemy team has gone for an objective (they are all pushing another lane, doing dragon) and you will not be able to reach the fight in time.  You would be better off pushing your lane (so that the enemy champion that would have been in the lane loses experience, and if you push hard enough, you might even be able to get the tower).
• When you have your summoners up and perhaps a built-in escape.  If you push the lane on your enemy, they are more likely to miss minion kills at tower (it is harder to farm at tower effectively).  This makes you susceptible to ganks, however if you feel comfortable that even if you were ganked you would be able to evade, then it should be okay.
• When the enemy team is going to be very ‘late’ to lane.  This is common at level one.  Sometimes the enemy champions from top or bottom lane will stay to protect their jungler, by doing so they will also be late to the laning phase.  If you are able to push the lane, they could miss one or two waves of minions.  This would give you a significant advantage in lane and well worth the push (even if you are more open to ganks).

When not to Push

• You know that the enemy jungler has finished their jungle route (After 3:50/4:00 on the game clock) and is looking to gank the lane
• When you don’t know where the jungler is (you do not have map awareness)
• You don’t have your summoner spells available (they are on cooldown)
• When your enemy jungler wants to gank the lane and you want the lane to push to your tower.

When to Keep Lane Even

This means that you are trying to keep the creep line about even with your opponent, the minion line will not push to either tower, you will simply keep equidistant between the two towers.

• When you think that the enemy Jungler may be on your side of the jungle (the mid lane splits those sides (top and bottom)).
• When your allied Jungler has no plan to gank the lane anytime soon.
• When your opponent is hitting the creeps more than once (they are pushing the lane on you)  
• You will want to match the amount of damage they are doing to the creep line.  This might mean you would use abilities to clear minion waves if your opponent is doing the same.  Keep the same pace so that the minion lane stays in the middle.

Last Hitting Under Tower

Get ready to memorize this:

If your playing AD champion and trying to kill Melee creeps at full health:  Wait for the tower to hit it twice and then get the final hit.

If your playing AD champion and trying to kill Melee creeps a little more than half health:  Hit it once, let the tower hit once then you get the final hit

If your playing AD champion and trying to kill Caster minions at full health:  Let the tower hit it once, then you hit for the last hit.

Caster minions at full health (when you are non-ad carry):  Hit it once, let the tower hit once, then you hit for the last hit.

Caster or Melee creeps with very low health: Try and use a spell on it rather than your auto attack, but if you have to, use your auto (however this might make it more difficult to hit other creeps that are dying to the tower).

If you apply these rules while trying to farm at tower you will earn more CS. 

Tank the Minion Line

As a last resort there is this neat trick you can use to ensure you get all the CS, even when the creeps are at your tower.  You can only do this if you have some good health regen/lifesteal or your tanky enough to take the damage and the enemy champions are not in range to kill you.  What you’ll do is stand right outside of the tower range and have the minions aggro you.  Yes, you’ll be taking a lot of damage from those minions, but continue to auto attack them until they are all dead.  You won’t miss a single CS.  If you have enough lifesteal or regen, you might be at the same health you had before you decided to tank the minion line!

Using Abilities to Farm

You will find this the case more mid or late game, however farming with Spells does have its strategy.

In most cases as an AP Caster, you will want to use an ability on the back line of minions (caster minions) and then use one auto attack each.  If you have enough ability power you might even be able to clear the caster minions with one spell. If you are very low in ability power, you may have to use a ability combo to clear the back line, so just use one ability right after the other to pick up the gold.

You can do this by first auto attacking the back minions once and then using your ability or vice versa, it just depends on the champion.  Each champion has its own strategy when it comes to farming minions, so read those sections in the respective champion guides for more information.  However, generally speaking you will always want to start with the caster minions and then do the melee minions next.

 If you are having trouble getting to a 85-95% CS (compared to the maximum available on the chart above), then go ahead and try switching to a different champion that it’s easier to farm.  Master this and then switch to harder champions if you even want to play them.

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