A group of minions.
Minions are expendable allied units that are generated automatically to charge into battle with the purpose of attacking enemy units in the lanes they are assigned.
The blue and purple team minions spawn every 30 seconds from the Nexus in order to support the champions. Minions begin spawning 1 minute 30 seconds after the game has begun. Every 3 minutes the minion waves will grow stronger, with every type of minion gaining different stats. Minions deal 50% increased damage to turrets and deal about 15% reduced damage to enemy champions.
Minions should not be confused with monsters, which are neutral unless attacked and reside in the jungle.
Melee minions as they appear in the Snowdown Showdown each year except 2012.
Lore
Minions are constructs of the League, used specifically for battle arenas. They aren't sentient. In the earliest days of the League – during their extensive testing phase – there was a rumor that they were using sentient beings as minions. They even supposedly used necromancy to summon skeletal minions to fight as the minions of today do. Such rumors are generally thought to be unsubstantiated.
Types
These are the minions that are currently in the game:
- Melee Minion: Melee Minions charge directly against the enemy. Three spawn each wave with a new wave spawning every 30 seconds. Melee Minions have more health and attack faster than caster minions.
- Caster Minion: Caster Minions attack enemies from a range by firing bolts of energy that are the same color as their team's. Three spawn each wave with a new wave spawning every 30 seconds. Caster Minions deal more damage than melee minions.
- Siege Minion: Siege minions attack enemies from a range as well. They receive only 70% damage from towers, which make them perfect for tanking towers with. One spawns every three waves until 35 minutes in game, at which point one spawns every two waves. Siege minions have more health than melee minions.
- Super Minion: One Super Minion is spawned each wave in place of the Siege Minion once the enemy lane's inhibitor is down. Super Minions, just like Siege Minions, take 30% less damage from turrets. Two spawn per wave in each lane when all enemy inhibitors are destroyed. They are much stronger than any available type of minion.
- Siege Rider Minion: Siege Rider Minions are a removed minion class. Siege Rider Minions were summoned by using the
Promote summoner spell in Summoner's Rift. - Anti-turret Cannon: Anti-turret Cannons are minions that were added initally for Dominion and then for Summoner's Rift. They have the same in-game appearance as Siege Minions. They can be obtained by Using the item effect Promote from
Banner of Command, granting them health, attack speed, and attack damage.
Behavior
Minions and turrets will only deviate from their standard behavior to come to the aid of an ally under duress. Whenever any unit is under attack, it generates a ‘call for help’. Minions and turrets have slightly different reactions to a call for help.
Under normal circumstances, a minion’s behavior is simple. Minions follow their attack route until they reach an enemy to engage. Every few seconds, they will scan the area around them for the highest priority target. When a minion receives a call for help from an ally, it will evaluate its current target in relation to the target designated by the call. It will switch its attack to the new target if and only if the new target is of a higher priority than their current target. Minions prioritize targets in the following order:
- An enemy champion designated by a call for help from an allied champion. (Enemy champion attacking an Allied champion)
- An enemy minion designated by a call for help from an allied champion. (Enemy minion attacking an Allied champion)
- An enemy minion designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy minion attacking an Allied minion)
- An enemy turret designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy turret attacking an Allied minion)
- An enemy champion designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy champion attacking an Allied minion)
- The closest enemy minion.
- The closest enemy champion.
Because they are continuously reevaluating their target, minions will lose interest in an enemy champion if that champion breaks off an engagement with them, provided that there is any other target left for them to choose within range.
Minions will only reevaluate their target every few seconds. This means that if a champion initiates an attack against an enemy champion, the attacking champion will continue to be viewed as the most threatening target for a short time after they have broken off the attack. This is true even if one of their allied champions has joined the fight, since minions always prioritize their current target over a new target of equal priority. If a targeted champion leaves the minions' sight, the minions will automatically reevaluate their target and will carry on walking or attacking something else.
Lane Management and Last Hitting Tips
Although experience is given any time a champion is in a certain range of a minion that dies, a champion may only receive the gold if that champion delivered the killing blow. Landing the final autoattack on minions is referred to as last hitting in the League of Legends community. It is the best way to pick up the minion's bounty without pushing the lane much. Constantly autoattacking minions always pushes the lane, which leaves the champion more vulnerable to attacks from junglers. Champions can also use their abilities to last hit, however, having an ability on cooldown or even having to spend a resource (e.g. Mana) always puts you into a disadvantage. When choosing to use an ability to last hit, this should always be taken into account. As killing minions (creep score or CS) is generally the only way to gain gold in lane beyond gold over time (because kills and assists are not guaranteed), it is considered very important.
Freezing a lane is essentially stopping the enemy minions from pushing the lane any further than it already is. It is generally used in combination with zoning to keep enemy champions from experience and minions and allow a jungler to gank. Keep in mind that freezing a lane will leave a greater amount of enemy minions than allied minions and can mean a significant amount of extra damage in any all-ins or sustained trades. The first condition for this tactic to work, the enemy minions must already be pushing. Generally, one can leave a few extra enemy minions (about half a minion wave or three is good, preferably ranged minions). You may have to tank a few minion hits to keep the lane from pushing in between minion waves.
Notes
Minions as they appeared during Beta.
- If the champions do not interfere in the battle, one team of minions will eventually win the game. Which team will win is completely random, depending on which team focuses the enemy minions better.
- When minions scan for a target, it is possible for a champion to pick up aggro multiple times from a minion. Minions can constantly pick up aggro from you and can follow you through the jungle.
Patch history
- Damage from lane minions to champions reduced by about 15%.
- Personal score on Dominion: minion kill reward increased to 2 points from 1.
- Fixed a bug where minions were not properly displaying stat growth over time.
- Cannon minions now spawn every 2 waves after 35 minutes instead of 20.
- Cannon minions and super minions now reduce turret damage by 50%, down from 65%.
- Minions now deal 50% more damage to turrets, down from 60%.
- Minions now deal 60% more damage to turrets, up from 40%.
- Melee minion magic resist now increases by 1.25 per 3 minutes, up from 0.5.
- Ranged minion armor now increases by 1.25 per 3 minutes, up from 0.5.
- Cannon minions:
- Armor and magic resist now increase by 3 per 3 minutes, up from 0.5.
- After 20 minutes, cannon minions now spawn every 2 waves, up from every 3 waves.
- Cannon minions and super minions now reduce turret damage by 65%, up from 50%.
- Fixed a tooltip bug with cannon minions and super minions.
- Removed mana from all inhibitor minions.
- Twisted Treeline super minions:
- Health increased to 1200 from 1000.
- Base damage increased by 30.
- Gold from minion kills increased by 3 for all minions.
- Melee minions:
- Gain 2 additional armor every 3 minutes.
- Gain 0.5 additional magic resist every 3 minutes.
- Gold bounty increased to 22 from 20 on Summoner's Rift and to 26 from 24 on Twisted Treeline.
- Caster minions:
- Gain 0.5 additional armor every 3 minutes.
- Gain 2 additional magic resist every 3 minutes.
- Gold bounty increased to 16 from 14 on Summoner's Rift and to 19 from 17 on Twisted Treeline.
- Cannon minions:
- Gain 2 additional armor every 3 minutes.
- Gain 2 additional magic resist every 3 minutes.
- Gold bounty increased to 27 from 25 on Summoner's Rift and to 19 from 17 on Twisted Treeline.
- Super minion gold bounty increased to 27 from 25 on Summoner's Rift and to 32 from 30 on Twisted Treeline.
- Improved minion turning when they appear from fog of war.
- Twisted Treeline:
- Melee minion gold per kill increased to 24 from 22.
- Super minions:
- Health increased by 200.
- Damage increased by 20.
- Fixed minion pathfinding.
- Minion kills now display the correct values.
- Super minion movement speed aura removed.
- Minions no longer clear the player's bounty.
- Super minions and cannon minions now have new portraits.
- Cannon minion health boost per 3 minutes increased to 27 from 25.
- Super minion magic resist reduced to -30 from 0.
- Minion corpses now fade out when they disappear instead of popping.
- Super minions:
- Base health reduced to 1500 from 2000.
- Health scaling increased to reach the current values at 30 minutes (exceeding it past that mark).
- Base damage reduced to 180 from 250.
- Damage scaling increased to reach the current values at 30 minutes (exceeding it past that mark).
- Super minions:
- Health scaling increased to 150 from 100 every 180 game seconds.
- Added a 30% multiplicative movement speed boost aura with a 800 radius that affects both minions and champions.
- Minions no longer have health or mana regeneration. This will help the game run faster.
- Cannon minions:
- Health increased to 700 from 600.
- Spawn rate increased to every 3 waves from ever 4 waves.
- Fixed a bug with ghost minions. They will no longer be present when you reconnect.
- Siege minions:
- Red and blue cannons now have Turret Shield (receives 50% reduced damage from turrets).
- Red and blue cannons now deal 100% bonus damage to turrets.
- Fixed an issue where minions were not giving players full credit for kills in the announcements.
- Damage minions deal to champions increased to 70% from 60%.
- Inhibitor bonuses:
- Melee minion bonus damage increased to 10 from 8.
- Ranged minion bonus damage increased to 18 from 15.
- Cannon minion bonus damage increased to 25 from 20.
- Added a new passive to mech minions
- Turret Shield: damage taken from turrets is reduced by 50%.
- Brightened the new mech minions and cannon minions.
- Corrected the collision sizes of the new mech minions and cannon minions.
- Removed aura from rider minions.
- Basic minion gold yield growth reduced by 50%.
- Added new rider minion and super minion models.
- Destroying an inhibitor no longer causes the enemy team to gain less experience and gold from minion kills.
- Duration between minion upgrades increased to 200 from 180.
- Damage minions deal to champions increased to 60% from 50%.
- Minion gold bounty now caps after 30 minutes (10 upgrades).
- New melee and ranged minions for both blue and red teams.
- Super Minions:
- Armor reduced to 40 from 50.
- Critical strike chance reduced to 0 from 10.
- Health reduced to 2500 from 4000.
- Damage increased to 250 from 150.
- Minions should no longer be able to get killing streaks.
- Archer minion health increased to 280 from 260.
- Melee minion health increased to 445 from 425.
- Minions no longer give half gold and experience when you have lost an inhibitor.
- Minion health bars are now brighter.
- Melee minion gold bounty increased to 26 from 22.
- Ranged minion gold bounty reduced to 18 from 22.
- Minions now spawn after 1 minute instead of 1 minute and 40 seconds.
- Minions now spawn from the Nexus instead of inhibitors.
- Minions can no longer be denied.
- Reduced the selection radius of archers and riders (ranged and siege minions).
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