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Farming is the act of killing waves of Minion icon minions and camps of Monster icon monsters, gathering Experience icon experience and gold Gold gold in the process. Within a drafted team, champions designated to gain the majority of those resources through farming may or may not assume the role of a carry — however, all carries are meant to farm.

Farming is an essential component of laning, when laners (the Top icon toplaner, Middle icon midlaner, and Bottom icon bottom carry) try to overpower the enemy through an arms-race of learning abilities and gaining resources, whereas the Jungle icon jungler is given monsters in order to match laners. Lane rotations often involve the most efficient distribution of resources from minion kills at a certain point of the game.

The game tracks killed creeps as a score, the Creep Score (CS): killing any single minion gives 1 point, killing a full camp of monsters gives 4 points. CS per minute (CSPM) is a metric that can be used to gauge the relative performance of farming and carry roles within a game or across the ranks.

Last Hitting


Fundamentals[]

In order to achieve the best gold distribution and defensive power, one champion is assigned to farm minions within a lane (a laner) and one is assigned to farm the jungle (a jungler), with only minimal crossing during the game and practically none in the earlier stages. The general objective for all farming roles is balancing the time and effort spent on farming, with other aspects of the game.

Laners are supposed to kill minions as they come in order to defend their structures, on top of gaining resources to become stronger. While killing a Monster icon monster guarantees that the killer is awarded its full experience and gold bounty, dying enemy minions passively split their experience bounty to all nearby allies. When dealing the killing blow on a Minion icon minion, the killer is guaranteed to gain the minion's gold bounty, as well as their experience share regardless of range. This is known as a last hit and is considered one of the most fundamental mechanics of the game.

  • As a rule, champions can earn significantly more income by last-hitting than simply from passive gold generation or using gold income (Quest) items. Because of this, items that farming roles tend to buy are more expensive than items that non-farming roles tend to buy.

Players must use damaging spells (attacks and abilities) in order to last-hit. They may choose to use the lowest cost, lowest downtime spell, meaning their basic attack; or an ability, the vast majority of which have longer downtimes than a basic attack and often include a resource cost.

Successful last-hitting requires precise timing and attentiveness to ally minions, turrets, and/or other champions. A higher damage spell evidently makes last-hitting easier. Higher attack speed may render last-hitting with basic attacks easier. Certain abilities incentivize using them for farming due to mechanics such as Cooldown icon cooldown refunds, Mana regeneration icon mana refunds, or otherwise simply by being basic attack replacements (e.g. Karthus' Karthus' Lay Waste Lay Waste, Cassiopeia's Cassiopeia's Twin Fang Twin Fang, Irelia's Irelia's Bladesurge Bladesurge, etc). Other factors that influence last-hitting are travel speed of basic attack or ability Projectile projectiles, windups, cast times, and animation times.

Note that all minions that aren't Super minions Super minions have zero resistances, meaning champion damage will deal the exact amount listed.

Early game[]

The laning phase specifically forces laners to interact with each other while occupied with the common objective of farming. Using any Leap Strike unit-targeted spell — including basic attacks — on a champion who is near their ally minions, or standing in front of moving minions, will cause minions to automatically target and potentially deal damage to the intercepting enemy champion instead, until that champion is sufficiently far away.

When two laner counterparts farm equally, there is no resource advantage on either side. It is therefore important for a farming role to both be present in lane when minions are dying and to secure last-hits, as much as possible, in order to at least stay equal in resources with their counterpart when no other rewards affect resources gained. A farming role may fall behind in Experience icon experience and gold Gold gold if they are not present in lane and last-hitting, due to enemy minions dying to ally minions or a Turret icon turret.

  • Damage rating Takedowns and objectives such as epic Monster icon monsters, turrets and turret plating, and others, allow a laner or a team as a whole to break the equilibrium or even potentially overcome a farming deficit (depending on the game state). If a significant advantage exists, snowballing can happen. On the other hand, champions that have better scaling than everyone else may get most or all of their power by exclusively farming throughout the early game and mid game.

The Farming Loop[]

Minion icon Minions have a destined course within the game. Two opposing champions can influence the course of each minion.

One wave of minions marches down each lane every 30 seconds; the strength of this wave determines the pace of the game. Upon meeting with the enemy wave, minions will stop and attack each other at their Range icon attack range until the targeted minion dies. After that, the surviving minion will change their position until they acquire the next one and attack them until one of them dies, repeating the cycle. Excluding Super Super minions, all other minions take a significant amount of time to slay each other.

  • A melee minion is stronger than a caster minion.
  • A siege minion is stronger than both melee and caster minions.

Depending on how minions meet, many different combinations of minion fights are possible at any given time, dictating which minions die and how quickly or slowly they die. By default, when only two even waves meet uninterrupted, all minions will first acquire and attack the opposing melee melee minions, since they are the first/closest in line.

Champions from each side interact with these fights between minions by inputting external damage or control. The actions that two laners take in order to influence minion fights while trying to last-hit and defend the upcoming structure, creates a dynamic farming loop. This loop restarts whenever two equal and opposing minion waves reach the exact middle of a lane anew. Each champion presents a different farming loop, and this is intentional design.

When minions reach enemy Turret icon turret attack range, this loop changes. Turret attacks deal a lot more damage to minions than minion attacks, and they also deal a specific percentage of each minion type's maximum health. This behavior results in a much simpler and static farming loop, which is identical for the majority of champions during the earliest stages of the game.

For every minion type below, the amount of turret attacks needed to kill one is listed first, and the course of damage a minion can withstand in order to secure a last-hit is listed below that. Because champions differ, these are only general rules and not precise calculations that work for all.
Melee minion Melee minion
  • Turret attacks: Takes three turret attacks to die from full health.
  • Damage loop: 2 turret attacks -> 1 champion attack
Caster minion Caster minion
  • Turret attacks: Takes two turret attacks to die from full health.
  • Damage loop: 1 champion attack -> 1 turret attack -> 1 champion attack
Siege minion Siege minion
  • Turret attacks: Takes eight turret attacks (from Outer Turrets) to die from full health.
  • Damage loop: 7 turret attacks -> 1 champion attack
  • Siege minions have very volatile damage loops; the one noted above is the basic one. A different example loop would be, 2 champion attacks -> 6 turret attacks -> 1 champion attack for champions with lower basic attack damage. Because siege minions can survive for longer than melee and caster minions, it is more likely that they take damage from ally minions.


Minions upgrade based on game time, whereas champions' damage from different sources increases at a larger or slower pace relative to each other and relative to minion upgrades, so different champions need different sources and timing of damage in order to farm enemy minions and deny enemies from threatening ally structures effectively as the game progresses. Regarding the Turret icon turret farming loop, as champions increase their basic attack's damage (Attack damage icon attack damage + any On-hit icon on-hit effects) the loop may start to vary greatly, and players may have to incorporate a different amount of attacks and abilities during farming to successfully last-hit minions targeted by a turret. Critical strike icon Critical strikes may also randomly influence farming loops, especially under turret.

Wave Management[]

  • A wave line is the virtual line across a lane, where any (even or uneven) number of minions have met and are clashing upon.
  • A wave state describes the position in the lane where wave lines are or will be when taking into account various circumstances in the game, such as the current difference in minion number and health, or champion activity during laning and outside of it. Wave states determine champions' farming loop at a certain point of the game.
  • A player deliberately influencing and controlling a lane's wave state by any means is called wave management or wave manipulation. Players may execute wave management as part of various proactive or reactive strategies, depending on the game.

The default behavior as minions come, fight each other, and die, is for the wave line to remain at exactly the midpoint of the lane, called a "neutral" wave state, since neither side advances or retreats.

Champions can directly influence a neutral wave state by:

  • Dealing more total damage to enemy minions than the opposing side deals to ally minions.
  • Changing enemy minions' course of movement (in practice, only temporarily). For example, by intentionally causing them to aggro the player and leashing them for any amount of time; by blocking their path and forcing them to take a slightly longer one in order to advance; by Slow icon slowing and Stun icon immobilizing them; etc.

All wave states have a destined progression if champions choose to not interact with it. Under normal circumstances, any wave state returns to neutral sooner or later when not interacted with. This happens due to Turret icon turrets being more durable and dealing more damage than minions. Waves can become uneven when at least one minion has been buffed by specific effects, or when only one side is spawning super minions super minions.

Considering the above, there exist two different types of wave states:

  • Pushing happens when one side has a minion health and number advantage at the wave line.
  • Freezing happens when neither side has a minion health and number advantage at the wave line.

More precisely, how much the resulting wave line pushes or not, is a linear function of the minion health and number advantage at the wave line (more minions or minion health means more pushing power) over the time advantage at the wave line (ally minions will arrive at the wave line and reinforce it faster when it is closer to one side's Nexus than the other). 'Linear' because minion movement speed and health in each lane is linear and even for both sides per regular wave spawned.

Wave management techniques are based on two facts:

  1. Turrets are more efficient at killing minions than minions themselves.
  2. The timing of incoming minion waves and their influence on the current wave line.

Fast Push[]

A fast push, also called a shove, means to kill enemy minions fast enough while maintaining an advantage until all (or most) ally minions alive can advance into the upcoming turret.

  • The wave line is advancing a large distance per incoming wave during fast pushing.

Note that ally minions that have acquired a Turret icon turret cannot change that target so they cannot attack the incoming enemy minions either unless that turret falls. If the push is executed perfectly, no ally minions are stopped by enemy minions and it is possible for the ally side to not miss any enemy minions when all ally minions eventually die.

What matters for shoving is a champion's Wave-clearing power. This is the efficiency of killing minion waves with all damaging basic abilities and basic attacks, measured in seconds.

Slow Push[]

A slow push means to damage enemy minions slow enough while maintaining an advantage until a sufficiently large number of minions accumulate and can advance into the upcoming turret.

  • The wave line is advancing a small distance per incoming wave during slow pushing.

The resultant wave can overpower a Turret icon turret, and cause enemy players to avoid the large minion wave as it can do a lot of damage.

Freezing[]

Manually freezing the wave line means to allow it to stay closer toward the upcoming allied turret for at least one minion wave and the succeeding one while only last-hitting. A freeze is "broken" when one of the two sides' minions are allowed to advance toward either side eventually.

  • The wave line is not advancing nor retreating a significant amount per incoming wave during freezing.

In order to freeze, the minion health/number advantage at the wave line has to remain close to zero. In practice, the closer that the wave line is toward one side's Nexus, the more enemy minions are needed in order to freeze, since ally reinforcements will arrive sooner at the wave line. In order to account for last-hitting, this advantage also has to be slightly negative.

CS Chart[]

Last updated: V13.22

The chart below shows the maximum/perfect CS from minions possible in a single lane at given minutes, up until the 60-minute mark. For example, the first wave starts spawning at 1:05, and the second wave starts spawning at 1:35 — this means that until 1:35, only 6 CS are possible from minions in a single lane. The chart does not take super minions into consideration, which may increase the number of minions spawned per wave, or any other units that grant additional CS (jungle monsters, champion-summoned units, and wards).

Black cells denote a minion wave that includes a siege minion.

CS Chart
Wave # Game time Minions
1 1:35 6
2 2:05 12
3 2:35 19
4 3:05 25
5 3:35 31
6 4:05 38
7 4:35 44
8 5:05 50
9 5:35 57
10 6:05 63
11 6:35 69
12 7:05 76
13 7:35 82
14 8:05 88
15 8:35 95
16 9:05 101
17 9:35 107
18 10:05 114
19 10:35 120
20 11:05 126
21 11:35 133
22 12:05 139
23 12:35 145
24 13:05 152
25 13:35 158
26 14:05 164
27 14:35 171
28 15:05 177
29 15:35 184
30 16:05 190
31 16:35 197
32 17:05 203
33 17:35 210
34 18:05 216
35 18:35 223
36 19:05 229
37 19:35 236
38 20:05 242
39 20:35 249
40 21:05 255
41 21:35 262
42 22:05 268
43 22:35 275
44 23:05 281
45 23:35 288
46 24:05 294
47 24:35 301
48 25:05 307
49 25:35 314
50 26:05 321
51 26:35 328
52 27:05 335
53 27:35 342
54 28:05 349
55 28:35 356
56 29:05 363
57 29:35 370
58 30:05 377
59 30:35 384
60 31:05 391
61 31:35 398
62 32:05 405
63 32:35 412
64 33:05 419
65 33:35 426
66 34:05 433
67 34:35 440
68 35:05 447
69 35:35 454
70 36:05 461
71 36:35 468
72 37:05 475
73 37:35 482
74 38:05 489
75 38:35 496
76 39:05 503
77 39:35 510
78 40:05 517
79 40:35 524
80 41:05 531
81 41:35 538
82 42:05 545
83 42:35 552
84 43:05 559
85 43:35 566
86 44:05 573
87 44:35 580
88 45:05 587
89 45:35 594
90 46:05 601
91 46:35 608
92 47:05 615
93 47:35 622
94 48:05 629
95 48:35 636
96 49:05 643
97 49:35 650
98 50:05 657
99 50:35 664
100 51:05 671
101 51:35 678
102 52:05 685
103 52:35 692
104 53:05 699
105 53:35 706
106 54:05 713
107 54:35 720
108 55:05 727
109 55:35 734
110 56:05 741
111 56:35 748
112 57:05 755
113 57:35 762
114 58:05 769
115 58:35 776
116 59:05 783
117 59:35 790

Notes[]

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