Last Hitting, Lane Control, Harassment and Zoning
Last Hitting
Last hitting in LoL is very important, last hitting is just doing the last hit and kill a minion. When a minion dies near you, you get experience, but you get gold only if you do the killing blow, as you can imagine, this is really important, because gold means more items, and the more items you have the more advantage you have over your enemy.
When you are on your lane and game starts, you can't just afk attack a minion and let the champion auto-attack forever, if you do so you will be pushing the lane, which is something we'll talk about later, what you want to do most of the time, is wait until the minion is low health and then last hit, this might be hard first, and some champions have it easier than others, but here are some tips for last hitting better
- See the minion that is beeing focused by most of your minions: See the speed his health drains, and calculate based on that
- Sometimes a minion with low HP that is not beeing focused can wait, try to steal your minions kills!
- Sometimes it's worth to use a spell to kill a minion when your attack speed isn't enough to hit two targets quick enough or you are too far
Sometimes, your enemy will push more than you, and your turret will attack your minions, this is bad most of the time, because it's somewhat harder to last hit under a turret, not because it's hard to do but because there are many situations when you WILL lose some minions, and that is bad for you.
When the minions are under your tower you have to know this
- Melee minions die with 3 tower hits
- Caster minions die with 2 tower hits
So ideally, you will wait for tower to hit a melee minion twice before last hitting it, or else, tower will get the kill, the same with casters, you wait one shot, then you last hit.
That's considering the minion is full health and you have enough damage from your auto attack, but sometimes, and most commonly early game, you do not have enough damage to kill them after the tower hits, in that case, you must hit after the tower's first shot, or even before, but predicting where the tower is going to attack is not always easy, and sometimes it looks like its random.
What you want to do is just let the tower do one hit, you hit, then the tower, then you again, that works with melee, but with casters is different, because you have to hit before the tower hits them the first time, this is possible but that's why it's a bit harder to last hit under the tower, it might take you some time to get used to, but you will be able to practice this a lot, remember, practice! And don't just hit random minions, if you try hard, you will improve!
Now, that was considering minions have full health, once you do this for a while, you will be able to calculate how many tower hits a minion without full health can take, and this is where it gets hard, most of the time, you just wont be able to last hit just with autoattacks from under your tower, sometimes the minion has low hp, enough for a tower shot to kill him, but not with your autoattack, you can use some skills to clear faster if you can, but normally there is always more margin of error last hitting from under your turret than in mid lane.
You will have a lot of time to practice this, at least the first 10-15 minutes of every game, focus on last hitting, if you get 20 more minions than your enemy, it's almost as if you killed him! Because it's like 250+ gold, which is a huge advantage.
Just to have an idea, high Elo players get normally 80~ cs by 10 minutes, so you have something to aim to :P.
Lane Control
You might think that pushing a lot is better for you, because minions go to your enemy's tower, and it's harder for him to last hit, also, you can hit the tower and get it, this is true, but you can't just always push, if your game has a jungler, you are never really safe, if you have a support with Clarivoyance you can see where he is, and be safe early game, and after that, you might get some wards, but it's never a good idea to push if you don't know where everyone is, that means basically, never push when there are any mias.
Here are some of the most common things you can do
- Push the lane, then b and dont overextend: This works pretty well, mostly if you are a champion that clear waves really fast, like Mordekaiser, Miss Fortune, Corki, Cho' Gath, etc, what you wan't to avoid though, is when your minions are stuck close to his tower, but not really under it, the lane then will be pushed and you will be forced to go close to his tower to last hit, this happens when you don't clear the wave fast enough mostly, so minions slowly get closer, what you can do in this situation is go back to buy, or try to clear the wave as fast as possible until it's back at somewhat the middle of the lane.
- Push the lane, and hit the tower: If you are feeling safe, say, if they don't have a jungler or you know where the jungler is, because of CV or wards, then you can do this, but only if you are sure you are safe! This will help you get the tower quicker, maybe then get a gank and get tower also, or just get tower by slowly poking it over and over again, this works nice with ranged champions, but also with champions that can push really fast. Don't be scared to take a few hits when you hit the tower, but make sure you know how much damage your opponent can do and how much you can receive! This is very important to LoL overall, a lot of dumb mistakes are done this way.
- Don't push, just last hit: This is the safest option, just last hit, if your enemy does the same then it will be easy, if he pushes, you might need to last hit at tower, if you see he overextends too much, ask for a gank, it should be an easy kill. If you are on a 2v1 lane, this is a must, you don't want to push and let the enemy get experience, you must zone him, I'll talk about that later though.
Remember to always ward before you push! Solo top is a nice lane to push as it's very safe, you can ward river and just push, if you have your summoners, you will be ok.
Solo mid is also good but you can get ganked from both sides, depending mostly on the jungler, the jungler normally ganks at lvl 4 after red, if you are blue, then he might come from top, if you are purple, he might come from bottom, but there is really no way of telling other than wards or cv.
Harassment
Harassment is basically repeatedly hit the enemy without him/her hitting you back, harassment is done while you last hit, so you have to be paying attention to both things, chances to harass and last hit minions.
The most common harassment is to wait for one of your minions to get low on hp, then as your enemy last hits, you hit him, that way he can't hit you back, this is good if you don't have any minion close to last hit, last hitting should be a priority in this case.
If you are ranged, or see good oportunities to hit your enemy without him hitting back, or receiving less damage, you should also do it, check his cooldowns and attack him when he can't hit you back.
Also, if he doesn't have any regeneration, and you have, like potions, you can trade some hits, for example, if he/she starts with a doran, and you have potions, you can trade some hits and heal back, you will have an advantage soon.
Zoning
Zoning is basically using your advantage to deny your enemy experience and gold, once you have an advantage you have to know how to use it, whatever advantage, either if you have way more hp, or are ranged, or he's underleveled, or simply scared of you, anything, in this case you try to freeze the lane middle so you can get close to the minions and push him back to his tower, this way he can't last hit and losses gold, and if he goes too far, even experience, you have to be careful of ganks though, but it's normally very safe, if he gets close, you can hit him and keep him away or kill him, if he Bs, then you can push and get his tower if there aren't many mias.
In a 2v1 situation, you can zone from the very start, just keep him/her away from the minions, this is very important, he should be at your level or lower, and starved in gold, if he gets the exp and levels like the solo mid then you will be at a disadvantage.
Conclution
Mixing all those together is basically what laning is, it's blurry idea but it will help getting started. I'll write about some more specific subjects soon! I'm open to feedback and suggestions! Feel free to comment.
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