League of Legends Last Hitting

The ability to last hit is a fundamental skill of an experienced and conscientious player. Landing the killing blow on an enemy minion or neutral monster not only awards you Experience and Gold, vital towards buying items and levelling up, but also allows you to Farm safely without Pushing your lane. Creep Score (commonly referred to as CS) is often used as a measure of how successful one is whilst laning. Focusing on last hitting can be referred to as Farming.

There are two primary ways to last hit minions; a single auto-attack or an ability (summoner spell like Smite or champion spell like Veigar's Baleful Strike). Generally one watches the minion interaction and takes into account how much damage is occuring, allowing one to predict which creep will lose health the fastest. The player should only use a spell or auto-attack once a minion is on low enough health for them to land the killing blow. This requires a working knowledge of your champion's attack animation and damage potential.

Early game ~17 CS is worth the equivalent amount of gold as a kill in mere basic gold values. This number gets smaller as the game goes on. In terms of collateral damage, however, a kill results in considerable loss at the opponent's expense: less experience gained and less gold received whilst they are dead. Killing your lane opponent invites the enemy Jungler to come and gank your lane, and securing one kill in return for your death is not a fair trade. Whilst there's also a psychological element in kills that is not present in last hits, being a successful last hitter is still a major factor towards being a better player.

Either through no fault of your own, or deemed necessary by yourself, sometimes enemy minion waves will progress past the half-way mark of your lane and start milling around your tower. Last hitting under a tower can be tricky. For melee minions, wait for the tower to attack them twice then hit them for the kill with a skill, or an auto attack if you're strong enough. For ranged minions, hit them once, let the tower attack them, and then land the killing blow. This course of action can differ among champions, and you must also calculate the amount of damage your own minions are doing, but the principle remains the same.
Note: Minion survivability scales with time, so you may have to adjust your last-hitting as the game progresses.

Masteries such as:

• + Butcher
• + Brute Force

Runes specializing in increased auto attack damage, such as:

• + Attack Damage
• + Armor Penetration greater quintessence of desolation greater mark of desolation
• + Attack Speed

Practice with standard champions for specific roles to get a feel for how much damage they can do.

• + For AP last hitting, try Annie with Disintegrate.
• + For a melee champion, try Nasus with Siphoning Strike.
• + For Ranged AD, try Graves.