How To Improve Csing In League of Legends

Winning matches in League of Legends, whether its blind pick or ranked solo/duo, isn’t merely about achieving “First Blood” or having a high K/D/A ratio.

There’s one element you’re missing: Improving your creep score (CS). Experienced players who have achieved a Platinum, Diamond, or Challenger rank in League of Legends have a CS of 100+ after 10 minutes!

Sounds tough? Not to worry! We’ve got you covered!

We’ll share our best practices, the right time to farm, and how to have an advantage over your opponents during the early laning phase!

Why Is CS Important?

Aside from your CS contributing to earning an S rank performance, CS holds a primary benefit and role for all League of Legends players: earning gold.

Being able to last hit minions [R] is your primary source of income and is essential early game from being able to control the minion wave in your favor, destroy the turret, and gain the upper hand.

After all, you can’t solely rely on kills to earn gold, especially in early game.

Most League of Legends beginners will resort to trying to get the first kill or as many kills to earn more gold; however, if you do the math, focusing on your CS will earn you more gold.

One kill should give you about 300 gold, while an average minion wave gives you an average of 125 gold per wave.

 

If you successfully last hit all minions for 3 minion waves, you have one kill worth of gold. A minion wave will also spawn every 30 seconds from the start of the game down to the end.

Imagine if you could achieve a near-perfect or even perfect creep score early game down to the game’s last minutes.

After 8 – 10 minutes of game time, a high creep score should give you about 3 to 4 worth of kills. With 70 minions killed, you could earn roughly 2,500 to 2,700.

Take note, this amount of gold earned doesn’t include the passive 19 gold you earn every 10 seconds and the 160 gold you earn for taking down one turret plate.

Overall, you’re looking at an amount close to about 3,200 to 3,400, which should be enough to get crucial early game items such as Infinity Edge, Essence Reaver, Luden’s Echo, or even a Thornmail!

Rather than focus on gaining kills, last hitting minions is a skill every League of Legends player must learn.

Now that you understand the importance of CS, let’s dive into the best practices to use when farming or csing minions.

When Is the Right Time to Farm?

The right time to farm CS is during the early laning phase or early game. At the start, champions are ill-equipped to handle fights, trades, and even gain a kill.

 

Focusing on your CS during the first 10 to 12 minutes should give you enough to buy essential items and gain abilities to start earning kills and complete other objectives such as slaying jungle monsters, drakes, Rift Herald, and Baron Nashor.

 

Once you’ve gained a decent CS (at least 70 – 100 by the 10-minute mark), farming becomes less essential throughout the game. Overall, aim for at least 7 – 9 CS/min.

The Best Practices on How to Farm and Improve Your CS Game

Improving your CS and timing to last hit minions isn’t a skill acquired after playing 2 or 3 League of Legends matches. Last hitting minions takes patience and a ton of practice.

Like any other success quote or mantra you’ve heard, hard work and perseverance outshine talent 10/10 times. Here are 4 best practices you can apply to improve your CS game.

Run a Custom Match Against One Bot (1 vs. 1)

You can easily create a custom match by selecting the practice tool option.

You’re also free to choose the bot you want to go against, so if you’re starting out, you might want to choose an easier bot to handle and set the bot to a beginner level.

This practice is all about getting a feel of how to last hit enemy minions with minimal pressure from your opponent and how much damage you can do or need to last hit enemy minions.

Advanced Laning (1 vs. 2)

Advanced laning is similar to the first practice; however, this time, you’ll be against two opponents instead of one.

Adding two bots will increase the pressure on your lane and allow you to control the wave, achieve good CS, and prevent the two opponents from either killing you or destroying your turret.

Going against two opponents will also help you learn how to improve your map control. In League of Legends, paying attention to your map is also a crucial element.

With poor map control, the enemy jungler can easily gank your lane, possibly resulting in your death and losing opportunities to earn income and buy essential items.

Practice With Osu!

Osu! is a rhythm game recognized by professional players and even in the esports community for its excellent warm-up and mouse control benefits.

More importantly, practicing with Osu! improves your reaction time a lot better, which is crucial in high elo plays.

Wave Management

Wave management and learning how to farm minions go hand-in-hand. Without proper wave control, a large minion wave could crash into your turret, making it harder for you to defend while farming at the same time.

Apart from that, wave management helps you complete objective easier throughout the game and when done right, this may even prevent your opponent from being able to farm minions.

Before we get into the types of wave management practices, let’s go over the 3 types of minions:

1. Melee minions – Melee minions are the frontline attackers and have high defense.
2. Caster minions – Caster minions stay behind the melee minions and deal ranged damage.
3. Siege minions – Siege minions have high defense, and deal ranged damage.

Minion management of wave control has 3 different types: freezing, slow pushing, and fast pushing.

Fast Pushing

Fast pushing is the simplest among all three: Kill minions fast as possible so you can gain the upper hand and destroy the enemy’s turret early.

 

When to Use:

Fast pushing is essential in every game. However, learning when to use it is a different story. Use fast pushing when:

• You need to recall so that you can buy items.
• Add pressure to your opponent and prevent them from being able to CS.
• Gain an early level advantage.
• To deny your opponent from being able to recall.
• To set up a dive on the enemy laner with your jungler.
• The turret’s health is low and you want to destroy it or claim the objective as quickly as possible.

Risks of Using Fast Pushing:

• Be careful of ganks. Since you’ll be using your abilities to fast push, this leaves you vulnerable to enemy ganks, making it harder for you to escape.
• Fast pushing requires commitment, meaning you have to push the wave to your enemy’s turret. Failure to do so gives your opponent the advantage to turn the tide.

Freezing

Freezing is a practice used to keep the wave in a safe spot for you and dangerous for your opponent. Freezing is not like slow or fast pushing, where it needs to be used every game since it’s more of a situational tactic.

In freezing, the lane should always push towards you. This means your enemy’s lane should have more minions than yours, and it’s crucial you prevent your enemy’s lane from reaching your turret.

 

Essentially, freezing shouldn’t last too long since it places you and your turret at risk.

When to Use:

Since freezing is a situational tactic, use it when:

• It’s dangerous for you to farm, so you freeze the wave where you’re closer to your turret.
• You’re stronger than your opponent and let them risk dying for them to farm.
• You want to set up a gank for you and your jungler.
• Your teammate just recalled and while waiting for your teammate to come back, you freeze the lane to hold it in place.

Risks of Using Freezing

• Freezing is risky since it gives your opponents opportunities to freely roam and enter other lanes which could be dangerous for your teammates.

Slow Pushing

Slow pushing is similar to freezing and has the same goal as fast pushing, which is to destroy your enemy’s turret. Slow pushing requires precision, control, and most of all, timing.

This is where your skill in last hitting creeps or any minion becomes crucial to slow pushing. You’ll also want the wave to push into your enemy’s lane and closer to the enemy’s turret naturally.

 

Unlike fast pushing, using your abilities to kill the wave faster is a vital factor; however, in slow pushing you can keep your abilities reserved or transition to a freeze or fast push when needed.

When to Use:

• You want to play aggressively and deny your opponent any CS by having a bigger number advantage.
• With a larger wave, crashing to the enemy’s turret gives you more time to roam, recall, or dive with your jungler.
• You want to take minimal damage from your opponent and keep your guard up.
• If you want to make it harder for your opponent to perform a trade, slow pushing works well.
• To create a bigger wave advantage, you’ll want to target caster minion types to push slightly and keep your wave healthy, while clearing melee minion types speeds up the wave significantly.

Risks of Using Slow Pushing:

• Slow pushing doesn’t incur as great of a risk as freezing or fast pushing, but it takes a lot of time and patience to master.

What to Watch Out for When Csing

 

After going through the best practices, improving your CS comes down to just a few more factors and questions you might have once you’re in game.

For this reason, we felt the need to address the most common factors or questions players have when trying to get the last shot or hit on a minion.

Tip #1: Watch Out for the Minion Being Attacked

In every minion wave, the attacks between one minion and your enemy’s are dynamic. Sometimes, 2 caster minion types will be attacking a melee minion type while the rest of the wave attacks a cannon/siege minion type.

That’s why it’s crucial to look at which minion is being attacked the most or near death. Keeping track of any minion/s that are being attacked and near death will give you better control and timing of when to last hit each one.

Tip #2: Attack Any Minion You See Even as You’re Roaming

Let’s say you successfully managed to destroy your enemy’s turret in your lane or devised a good wave control strategy.

Now, as you free roam, you might think it’s impossible to farm CS since you’re not on your lane and you’re constantly on the go. However, that isn’t the case.

Even when roaming around, you should still look for any minion waves you can clear, farm, and neutralize.

Whether it’s on your teammates’ lane, or whether your teammate just recalled and you need to hold their wave in position before he/she gets back.

Tip #3: Pay Attention to How Much Damage You Do

Ranged champions have different damage levels from melee champions, but essentially, every champion has a unique damage percentage based on their runes, items, and abilities.

This also includes paying attention to how much damage a tower shot can do to a minion:

• For caster minion types, 1 turret shot and 2 auto-attacks will kill the minion.
• For melee minion types, 2 turret shots and 1 auto-attack kills the minion.
• For siege/cannon minion types, due to their high defense, it’s a case to case basis. However, 8 turret shots alone should kill it.

Taking note of the damage from your turret and how much damage you do as an ADC or melee champion is vital to achieving the last shot or hit.

The best way to see how much damage you do is by hitting a full HP minion to see how much is taken from their HP bar. As a result, this should give you enough information about when to take the last shot or hit on an enemy minion.

Finally, make sure you also pay attention to your damage as your level increases along with the items you buy.

Conclusion

After enough practice and experimenting with the various practices and techniques listed here, we have no doubt you’ll become a pro League of Legends player!

Until then, keep practicing and improving your CS! And be sure to use our LoL Accounts to allow you to practice on something other than your Main account!