Farming

Farming is the act of killing waves of minions and camps of monsters, gathering  experience and 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 toplaner, midlaner, and bottom carry) try to overpower the enemy through an arms-race of learning abilities and gaining resources, whereas the 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.

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 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, 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 refunds,  mana refunds, or otherwise simply by being basic attack replacements (e.g. Karthus' Lay Waste, Cassiopeia's Twin Fang, Irelia's Bladesurge, etc). Other factors that influence last-hitting are travel speed of basic attack or ability projectiles, windups, cast times, and animation times.

Note that all minions that aren't 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 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 and gold if they are not present in lane and last-hitting, due to enemy minions dying to ally minions or a turret.

• Takedowns and objectives such as epic 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

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  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 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 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 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 Turret attacks: Takes three turret attacks to die from full health. Damage loop: 2 turret attacks -> 1 champion attack

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 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 farming loop, as champions increase their basic attack's damage ( attack damage + any 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 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, and champion activity during laning or absence from the lane. 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 slowing and 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 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.

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 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, 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

• Shurelya's Battlesong and Hullbreaker are the only two items that can change minion stats and therefore influence wave states.
  • Shurelya's Battlesong grants  movement speed to all nearby allied minions, which reduces the time it takes for them to reach the wave line.
  • Hullbreaker grants  armor and magic resist to nearby siege and super minions, creating a minion advantage.

Gameplay Elements