CSing is the fastest and most efficient way in the game to advance your build in the entire game, and learning how to properly last-hit and farm is the single biggest, and arguably, easiest step you can make in your path to become one of the best players out there. However, that’s easier said than done
How to CS Better in League of Legends - The 90 Second Rule
To rip the bandaid off, the only real way to improve how to CS is to practice.
Queuing up and playing normal and ranked games is a way to practice, but it's become far too easy to just spend time in the game rather than actually play. In the heat of an actual match, there are so many new variables that you'll only spend a minority of time actually practising your CSing.
Even though it may feel boring, you'll notice immediate improvements if you spend 10 minutes each day in practice tool, farming with your main.
Something that can be helpful is to split the larger goal of higher CS into smaller goals, and we call this the 90 second rule or 3 wave interval rule.
Split off farm in sets of three waves, each set ending with the cannon minion wave dying, and counting up to 19 last-hits in each set.
This mentally divides the early game in intervals of 90 seconds where perfectly hitting one interval equals one kill worth of gold.
This helps you in your decision-making. Staying for a kill feels way more dangerous than staying for three extra waves, but they are basically the same in terms of gold.
The following table follows the benchmark for midlane, which is a few seconds ahead of every other lane’s. Each of the times coincide with the average time a cannon minion takes to die. 06:30 is around the time you should be buying your first component in, and where the second half of the exercise starts. Along with the 950 gold from passive income, the total gold you should have by around 10 minutes is 2900.
| Match Time | Perfect CS | Gold |
| 03:30 | 19 | 375 |
| 05:00 | 38 | 750 |
| 06:30 | 57 | 1125 |
| 08:00 | 76 | 1500 |
| 09:30 | 95 | 1875 |
- Start with 10 minute practice sessions with normal starting items and very little movement. Try to last-hit every single minion in each wave, get your first item component, then head back to lane to start once again. Try your absolute best not to use your abilities.
When you start effortlessly hitting 90-95% of the CS, you can move on to the next difficulty.
- Farm with normal starting items while moving as much as possible. Moving between auto-attacks is simply something that’s going to happen in a real game. Do this until you readjust back up to 95% CS.
- Bring in a beginner bot and trade with it during dead time. You can play against 3 bots to guarantee at least one will come to your lane. Beginner bots aren’t really very good at anything resembling a duel, but they are a target for your harass that moves around. Try to sneak in a combo or trading pattern when no minions are around for you to last-hit.
- Over time, swap the beginner bot with an intermediate bot. They tend to stay more in the range you’d expect each champion to stay in, but it still won’t really mirror real matches super well.
- Finally, get on normal matches and try the 90 second rule against your friends or opponents. You can double up and partner up with your duo to see who gets more CS while successfully harassing with each other. Even if it is simply just practice, you are still improving your CS while fighting a real opponent.
- If you want to take it up a notch, you can also practice on lower ranked smurfs with some real human interaction, with our ranked smurfs or fresh MMR accounts.
This doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to use practice tool after this point. However, applying the 90 second rule in games stops you from auto-piloting and has you actively practising while you play.
Why You Should Learn How to CS
Minion waves spawn every 30 seconds. Each wave has 6 minions worth an average of 20 gold, and every third wave includes a cannon minion worth 75 gold on average. This means three waves contain 19 minions worth 435 gold.
Excluding the first three waves that do not spawn, that means there's 36 waves that arrive to a lane by 20 minutes, and a total of 228 minions. With 130 CS, you only get 53% of them, getting a total of 2400 from a possible 4560. That's almost an entire item missed from just sloppy last-hitting.
It really is a big deal, rather than just perfectionism.
Average CS per Rank
There’s no specific amount of CS you need to be suddenly “good”. However, you should aim to at least be higher than the average in your rank. The following are averages compiled from thousands of matches for each rank:
| Rank | Top Lane CS/min | Mid Lane CS/min | Bot Lane CS/min | Total Games Considered |
| Iron | 5.17 | 5.00 | 5.23 | 3,496,656 |
| Bronze | 5.76 | 5.56 | 5.9 | 6,999,180 |
| Silver | 6.15 | 5.95 | 6.36 | 9,754,755 |
| Gold | 6.39 | 6.27 | 6.72 | 9,680,657 |
| Platinum | 6.64 | 6.50 | 6.99 | 7,197,640 |
| Emerald | 6.84 | 6.71 | 7.27 | 4,516,260 |
| Diamond | 6.97 | 7.01 | 7.56 | 1,934,304 |
| Master | 7.16 | 7.27 | 7.84 | 955,895 |
| Grandmaster | 7.36 | 7.50 | 8.02 | 116,109 |
| Challenger | 7.56 | 7.75 | 8.26 | 37,248 |
Ranked Solo/Duo, Patch 25.16
Source: op.gg
Basic Last-Hitting Techniques and Tips
Champions who have some last-hit mechanics that add some sort of benefit to farming will always help you out. Examples include Irelia's Q, Nasus' Q, Sion's W passive, etcetera.
Aside from that, you should always remember how many turret shots minions take to die in the early game. This can make farming under tower extremely simple and easy, as long as you're not being harassed under tower.
- Melee minions die after two turret shots and one auto
- Ranged minions die after one turret shot and two autos
- Cannon minions die after eight turret shots
Wave Control and Positioning
Wave control is something that takes an entire course to learn. However, some basic keywords to understand and always try to apply are slow pushing, shoving, and freezing.
Slow Push
Slow pushing sets yourself up for leaving lane to skirmish, do an objective, or recall.
You slow push by trying to keep at least one two minions from your side alive and healthy when waves hit each other, often by simply killing a few enemy minions quickly or auto'ing more than you need to.
Slow pushing is a staple of top lane. If more minions are dying on the opponent's side than yours, you're getting more EXP than them, on top of a minion advantage. People will be afraid to trade into you in the early game if you have a minion advantage due to aggro, but this is even more pronounced in top lane, where you're likely to also have a level advantage.
It's a basic tactic employed by bruisers and tanks that want to play early game safe, such as Cho'Gath and Ornn. It is generally better for them to seek safer lane states like slow pushes in the first few levels to set up for good early recalls into their core components, and to discourage duelists and bullies like Fiora, Darius and Riven from chasing them down the lane.
Slow pushes end in huge waves crashing into the enemy tower. This means you get to recall, do objectives, ward the enemy jungle, etc. while your opponent is still last-hitting the wave.
If they choose to not last-hit the wave, this slowly siphons hundreds of gold each time. If you were to stack 14 minions and shove them into their tower, even if they were to ignore the minions and kill you instead, you'd end up with more gold than them when you respawn.
Shoving
Shoving is defined as using your entire kit of abilities to push the wave as quickly as possible. Champions like Lux, Anivia and Ezreal uniquely live within the niche of being uniquely equipped for this, being able to shove waves in seconds at a moment's notice if they see a good moment to do so.
While slow-pushing is about setting up for proactive options, hard-pushing (or shoving) is a reactive response to something that's happening right now.
After killing your opponent, it is often desirable to shove the wave into their tower, if possible. It is also something to do if your enemy laner recalls while the wave is close to their tower.
Shoving is also done when there's something going on elsewhere in the map, and you need to show up as fast as possible. Thus, you can give your lane opponent the choice of farming the wave you pushed into them and ignore the fight, or to give up the wave and skirmish.
You'll see this most often when junglers are being really aggressive. For example, if they solo invade without vision because they feel that they can outduel, it is common for their top laner to immediately shove and be ready to help them out if it turns into a skirmish.
Freezing
Freezing is defined as "freezing" the wave in place, as close as possible to your tower but still outside of its range.
This can be made in different ways. If your opponent is not hitting the wave, then the way to do this is to last-hit minions at the last possible moment. You should aim to have your minions at the exact same number and health as your opponent's.
How to freeze, when to freeze, and why to freeze are pretty big questions answered in our article for How to Freeze. It is most useful when used to extend a lead, and it's only done when you're absolutely sure your opponent will lose a duel against you. If you actually die while attempting to freeze, it's incredibly easy for your opponent to shove the wave into your tower and recall with a great timer.
However, assuming you can win any trade because you're level 6 and they're 5, or because you have a finished item, then you simply have to trade and duel with them any time they choose to go for CS. If they're low enough, you can even run them down for a kill, recall, and by the time you're back in lane, your wave should still be frozen.
If they know they'll lose the duel, the safest option for them is really to just give up all the farm and wait for the wave to naturally move over to their tower. There are ways to break a freeze, but they all carry their own risks.
However, freezing every time you're ahead is not always the answer. This is obviously really good in a 1v1, but it also keeps you from leaving lane, since the opponent could just shove in response.
You should most likely not be freezing in a game where you're the only one winning, since there's more of a pressure to spread your lead elsewhere, rather than to keep dogging on the Malphite that's 100 CS behind.
CSing with Each Role
Top Lane
The best way to get good at farming as a top laner is to know what you're farming for. Setting up a favorable wave state will be the biggest hurdle you have to face in order to get perfect CS, and that will depend on what kind of top laner you're playing.
Top lane players are often very in tune with wave management mechanics. More than other lanes, who wins top lane is most strongly tied to whoever gets the most CS, and who leverages their CS advantage better.
Great top laners are extremely used to concepts such as minion advantage when trading, freezing and slow pushing. Knowing your wincon and what you're playing for in the long-term is incredibly important, but is not necessarily as complex or as dynamic as in other lanes.
Big, scaling tanks such as Ornn, K'Sante and Sion want to establish a consistent status quo to the lane. Either being able to hold the wave in a neutral position, or cycling between slow pushing and recalling. Duelists, bruisers and skirmishers such as Darius, Renekton and Fiora want to establish dominance of the lane through good trades and freezing to kick their opponent out of the game before they're able to scale.
Some champions have weirder wincons. Teemo, for example, is uniquely average to leverage all wave states. His passive allows for some scary freezes, his ultimate lets him shove quickly, and he uses slow pushes to ward deep into the enemy jungle and plant shrooms on objectives. Some others overlap between bruisers and tanks.
Mid Lane
Midlane is notable for being too short to freeze in. It is very hard to freeze against most mid lane champions, and even if you do, they don't tend to last as long as in botlane or toplane.
Moreover, since the lane is shorter, the waves will hit each other earlier than in other lanes, which gives midlane champions more time to influence the map after shoving—something they can uniquely do absolutely anywhere, since they're at the middle of the map.
For assassins that want to constantly roam to influence the game, keeping your CS high is often what sets apart low elo and high elo assassin players.
A basic and simple habit you can build is to shove the wave and walk into the river. 10 seconds before the waves hit each other, ask yourself if there's anything you can show up to. Is the enemy bot lane shoving into yours? Do you have vision on the enemy jungler? If you don't, you can choose to go back, farm the wave and repeat. If you wish to commit, you're already halfway there.
For mages, a good habit to pick up, albeit a painful one to, is to try and use only your basic attacks, unless you're shoving.
Yes, most mages have absolutely horrible basic attacks, with slow animations and projectiles, but it becomes incredibly easy for assassins or other mages to get good trades with you if you depend on your abilities to clear the wave. They will always have more mana than you to trade with.
Ideally, you should only be using your abilities to shove as a reaction to your opponent leaving the lane, or to trade with them.
It is fine if they shove and the wave hits your tower—it is even the ideal spot for you to be in.
Midlane is smack in the middle of the map, and is the lane that junglers gank the most. If your opponent constantly keeps pushing into you, follow the basic steps to farm under tower (two shots and one auto for melees, one shot and two autos for ranged) and ping your jungler for ganks.
Since mages tend to have pretty long autoattack range, it's kind of hard for a mage to try and harass another mage farming under tower.
Bot Lane
Farm is incredibly important for ADCs, and it should always be your top priority unless you're full build, or unless there's a neutral objective being contested.
ADCs are the most gold-reliant champions in the entire game. They need more items than anybody else to scale, and their items are the most expensive in the shop. You will almost always be the person most worth giving gold to in your team, even if you're behind.
As such, being in the safest place to farm is to your best interest. Try to rush getting your opponent's tower so that you can move to midlane. Every 30 seconds, you can last-hit the wave then go back to hovering objectives, or even just staying under tower and doing nothing. Pushing side lanes, getting jungle camps and participating in fights are all optional as an ADC.
Getting kills on the side is always good, but they should not be your go-to source of gold. Even a super aggressive bully ADC like Draven tends to get most of his gold from his passive and CS.
Prioritizing farming and getting to a safe wave state or place to do so should always be your main concern, no matter what's happening in the map. Be selfish, prioritize your own gold income over others, and try to stay focused on it rather than straying away for kills.
Support
Supports don't farm, since they get all the gold they need from their support item (World Atlas).
Although you don't have to farm as a support, you should still aim to try and get your ADC as much farm as possible. This means helping them shove when you see the opponent recall, not accidentally pushing the wave while harassing, and catching waves before they hit your tower so that your ADC can last-hit them.
Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Auto-Piloting
Auto-piloting is what people call when you're low on energy and end up being mostly disengaged with the game. You're not really acutely tracking much, and you're spending time in the game rather than actually playing the match.
Being in a flow state requires some amount of stress, and you can induce that amount of stress by adding a CS benchmark to your games. A record for how much CS you've had at each 5 minute interval in the game that you're trying to break or keep up with. Aiming for a state of flow rather than high-stress or complete disengagement will help you with auto-piloting the most.
Depending Too Much on Abilities
Some people may depend too heavily on abilities to CS, which leads to you having low mana throughout the laning phase and long cooldown windows where they tend to miss CS.
If you watch high-elo mage gameplay, you'll notice that they only use their abilities to harass or shove. Try to get to a similar level by ripping off the bandaid and spending an hour or two in Practice Tool once a week with your main, farming by yourself.
Forgetting to Farm After Laning, Giving Up Waves for Fights
If your CS takes a nose dive after 20 minutes, it is most often because you spend an important amount of time hovering fights and objectives while the enemy team is farming.
In an ideal scenario, mid and toplane should peel away during hovers to catch and bounce sidelanes, giving the ADC breathing room to farm in midlane. The opposite of deathballing in midlane and allowing the enemy team to scale.
If nobody is ever giving you breathing room in midlane to farm, and nobody is claiming those sidelane waves, then it is more efficient for you to grab those waves than to participate in fights.
Tools and Settings That Help With CS
Generally, an unlocked camera is better for the laning phase, but there are many high elo players that play with a locked camera. It really boils down to your personal preference, and there are no settings you can turn on to get an immediate boost to your CS.
