Let's learn farming

Why Should I Learn to CS?

Let's say by the end of a 30 minute game, I have 150 CS. This may sound like a good score to you. Unfortunately, it isn't. Let's look at some minion math to see why.

Minion waves spawn every 30 seconds. Each wave consists of 3 melee minions and 3 caster minions. Every 3rd wave contains 1 additional cannon minion. This means every 3 waves contains 19 minions (9 melee, 9 caster, and 1 cannon). Minions spawn at 1:30, and reach lane at 2:00. Subtract 4 waves for the first 2 minutes before minions arrive to lane. This means that at 30:00, 56 minion waves will have reached your lane. 56 waves(19 minions/3 waves)=~355 minions. 150 CS / 355 CS x 100% = *42%**.

How much gold does this add up to in game? If we assume the average minion is worth roughly 20 gold, the maximum I could earn from minions by 30:00 is 7,100 gold. Instead, I earned 3,000 gold. This is a difference of 4,100 gold, which equates to 14 full value kills. This means that a 5/0/0 Akali with 100 CS by 20 minutes has earned the same amount of gold as a 0/0/0 Graves with 175 CS, and that's only if we ignore the diminishing returns for repeated kills on the same champion. This is not counting outside factors, or variances in minion gold. With this math, it is abundantly clear how much improving your can change your impact in a game.

How Do I Improve My CS?

The only way to get better is to practice. However, before you queue up, thinking that you're going to magically improve leaps and bounds by reading this guide, let me warn you: it's not that easy! Queuing up is one way to practice, but it is not the optimal way to practice. In my opinion, the best way to practice something is to isolate each individual core skill, focus on them one at a time, and then bring it all together. If you try to do everything at once, you will water down your practice, and not get maximal results.

In PvP games, there are a million things to think about. Also, there is the possibility to use things you are good at as a crutch for poor CS mechanics. In a custom game, there is less to distract you from your fundamentals. Therefore, I have designed nine exercises to complete in a custom game, in the first 5 minutes of game time. Why 5 minutes? Because it's most difficult to CS in the early game, and because it's easy to fit the practice around other things. Note that the maximum possible CS at 5:00 is 38-44 CS, depending on the lane. Mid lane gets an extra wave. Another way to track maximum CS is by counting cannon waves and keeping track of which of the three waves it is. You multiply the number of cannon waves by 19 CS and add 6 CS for each wave after the last cannon. Please note that mid has slightly different timing because of the length of the lane.

The exercises are as follows:

1. Achieve 95% of max CS with full runes and masteries, no lane opponents, and normal items. This will let you CS almost perfectly when no one is bothering you, and makes it a huge problem for the enemy team to leave you alone in lane for long periods of time, as you will get farmed very quickly relative to other players.
2. Achieve 95% of max CS with full runes and masteries, no lane opponents, and normal items, but this time, keep moving between each auto attack. Stay out of auto attack range of the minions before you last hit, and go in for the CS only when you will one-hit the minion. This exercise will naturally increase your mechanical ability, and by enhancing your mobility, will allow you to remain safer in lane. (Note that you can cancel the second half of the auto attack animation by clicking immediately after the damage applies to the minion for melee champions, and after the projectile leaves your character for ranged champions. For ranged champions it can look like the ranged projectile has left the character, but when it arrives it does no damage to the minion. This is because you canceled the animation a hair too early)
3. Achieve 95% of max CS with full runes, masteries, no lane opponents, normal items, while moving between each CS, and alternating on each wave between auto attacking as much as possible and auto attacking as little as possible. This teaches you how to both push and freeze a lane when alone, thus giving you the option do either, depending on the in game situation.
4. Do 3, but add 1 bot as your opponent to simulate an enemy laner's harass. You can ensure 1 bot in your lane by adding 3 bots to the enemy team. 1 will go to each lane. Remember your goal is not to kill the bot, but to perfectly CS. You will have to weave in harass while you are last hitting to keep the bot from killing you. This will help you not only focus on the minion wave, but also on your laner as well.
5. Do 4, but add 2 bots for even more harass. You do this by adding a full 5 bots to the enemy team. Mid laners will either have to settle for 1 bot, or move to another lane. Unfortunately I have not found a way to put 2 bots in mid lane.
6. Do 5, but drop your runes, masteries, and items. This makes harder on you, and simulates the higher pressure of a PvP game, because the bots will pack a larger punch if you're not running runes and masteries. It also teaches you to last hit by a smaller margin. You will better walk the razor's edge of a minion having 10 hp when your auto hits and a minion having 0 hp when your auto hits.
7. Do 6, but practice your awareness. There are many things you can do to practice awareness. Press tab and examine the Scoreboard; check for items, KDAs, and CS scores. Remind yourself of the team compositions and summoner spells, and what cooldowns others might have. Also examine at the minimap to account for the other champions and see how lanes are pushed. Check other lanes for HP values and such. Which of these to do depends on how much time you have between minion deaths. This reduces your tunnel vision and promotes a wholistic understanding of the game.
8. Do 7, but predict the order of minion death and when each minion will die for both sides. Later on this will help you to plan harass better on the enemy, so it's best to get in the habit now.
9. Do 8, but use your auto attacks to change minion health in such a way that makes a minion from one side not die at the same time as one from the other side, but also practice making the minions from both sides die at the same time. This will give you the opportunity to both open up more chances for harassing the enemy and protecting yourself from harass at a later point. The second part may not be always practical in game, because the more auto attacks you make the more windows for harass you will create for yourself, but some players will not take advantage of this so its good to know how to do, and it is still good practice.

Conclusion

Pro level players get about 10 CS/minute regularly (note this is only possible after 11:00 unless you farm jungle or other lanes). If they can get 10 CS/minute in pro games with their jobs on the line, and you can't manage to do it without this pressure, then how can you expect yourself to carry yourself very high up the ladder? If you're determined to improve, then surely you can spend 5 minutes every once in awhile improving your fundamentals. There is no excuse not to if you truly want to improve.

Before I end, I want to give some parting advice on things you can do to help yourself.

-Recording your CS per game before and after you finish the practice can show you how much you have improved through the regimen.

-You can check if you will kill a minion by left clicking them, and comparing their HP and your AD. For minions armor is negligible, so you don't have to keep track of it.

-Usually for minions under tower, it takes 2 turret shots and 1 auto attack to kill melee minions, and 1 turret shot and 2 auto attacks to kill ranged casters. For cannon minions it is best to watch the cannon minion take a turret shot so you know how much damage the turret will do to it, then manually adjust its hp using auto attacks. The cannon will usually be damaged in some form or another before it reaches the turret or while underneath the turret so knowing the number of turret shots is not as helpful. Keep in mind that lower AD champions will have to adjust these rules to compensate for lower AD. You can check the turret AD by left clicking it if you don't know how much damage it will do. Remember, siege minions take 70% damage from turrets. (I don't know numbers for cannon minions. I play it by feel, so if anyone has exact numbers feel free to shout out.)

-You are allowed to use skills during practice, but keep it to a minimum. The less reliant on skills you are to farm, the more power you have to fight your laner.

-Minions are worth different values. If you have to choose between two minions it is better to choose cannon minions first then melee minions and finally caster minions last in terms of gold value.

I guarantee practicing this will improve your last hitting. The gold lead accrued by your superior last hitting will become a foundation that you can use to improve on all the other aspects of your game. Remember, no matter what happens in a game, there is always be CS to be farmed. Thanks for reading and I hope that this guide helps you!