Why do minions sometimes randomly switch targets? It can make last-hitting really annoying

Hate this. Especially when it's the cannon minion.

I believe it's cause by the minion distress call system

so y'know how tower agro works right? If you attack an enemy champ (or deal damage to them in any form, especially dots and also zileans bomb) while under the towers range, the tower starts hitting you?

well minion ai that will attack enemy champions and other minions that have auto-attacked nearby allied champions.

But it doesn't stop there, it will also "help" allied minions under attack by other minions, causing them to switch targets, and quite obnoxiously to me (and probably to you too OP, based on your post), it has a high tendency to switch to the low health enemy minions so I miss CS.

edit: here's a link to the wiki http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Minion (Man this takes me back, I haven't seen this post since I started playing in Season 3 and was really interested in minion/tower AI rather than exploring champs) But here's the important part:

Minions prioritize targets in the following order:

1. An enemy champion designated by a call for help from an allied champion. (Enemy champion attacking an Allied champion)
2. An enemy minion designated by a call for help from an allied champion. (Enemy minion attacking an Allied champion)
3. An enemy minion designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy minion attacking an Allied minion)
4. An enemy turret designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy turret attacking an Allied minion)
5. An enemy champion designated by a call for help from an allied minion. (Enemy champion attacking an Allied minion)
6. The closest enemy minion.
7. The closest enemy champion.

unfortunately, the wiki tells us also that it "checks" every few seconds- there's no actual set time that has been found that can be used so one can predict the ai's targetting system a bit better. Perhaps it's intended design that it's too difficult to find; a way to create variance in a relatively harmless way to encourage the player to pay attention and test their ability to react to the differing issue.

Shit like this is literally half the reason I'm a jungle main. Losing CS because of my own minions being unpredictable is way too much tilt.

Laning phase would be pretty boring if the minions didn't try to juke you every now and then.

I swear to god the next time a caster minion goes to melee my creep wave just so it can suicide to tower...

On a side note, how about dying because your own minions surrounded you and blocked you from getting away. Cause thats always good, right?

"rip skillcap"

personally In response to minion block, I think you should be able to move through allied minions, since they are on your team and your abilities don't affect them, same with allied champions, not sure about you guys but I hate getting hit by something because my ally "bumped" me into it by walking too close

Finally someone pointing this out. Holy cow. That moment where you try to last hit calculating your minion hits and they randomly change target out of nowhere, i mean i'm ok if they focus the enemy champion because he harrassed me but most of the times they just change into another minion without any logic.

What annoys me is when I'm fighting someone in a minion wave with a skillshot champion, and a minion randomly changes attack targets and runs in front of the projectile.

BUMP

I though the treacherous bastards rooting you down was a more serious problem

it's just the way they split their aggro. Pay attention to your dying minions or your position and predicting where they switch is easy.

A good way to get a feel for minion aggro range is to go into a custom and stand on the outside of a minion wave and walk back and forth between your minions and the enemies on the outside. This gives you a good feel for how quickly they'll switch aggro into you and vice versa.

I hate it when I'm staying in range limit of a melee minion to last hit it, THEN THAT FUCKER TURNS AROUND AND GETS OUT OF MY RANGE TO GO HIT SOMETHING ELSE and then I just miss the last hit.

I think I read somewhere about a "gang-up" mechanic that would sometimes cause minions to target an enemy minion that's below a certain hp threshold.

I've seen this a lot with champs like Rammus. You have a clear open path to the enemy and suddenly a melee minion decides to walk all the way around the outside of the pack to go hit an enemy range minion when he wasn't even done killing the first guy. I call shenanigans on that kind of stuff. Feels like they snuck in a "wall protocol" to block certain types of engaging.

The worst are melee minions that randomly switch from the opposing melees to the ranged creeps, often even trying to get in their back for some reason, randomly running into skillshots or barely out of range when they are about to die.

Because minion aggro code hasn't been changed since some time before Morello left.

IKR! Very annoying to deal with

I've been wondering why minion auto attacks weren't normalized a long time ago, I'm consistently dropping last hits for no reason other than the league engine can't handle two auto attacks hitting at once

They changed how minion waves fight each other, to help mitigate minion build up. It was one of the small things that was done to help deal with the problem of minion blocking. Minion waves will now try to split their attacks up, to prevent the whole wave from just focusing on one before the rest of the wave files in. High tier players were pushing the front minion of waves around to make them take longer, and let their own wave focus the front minions of other waves. This made those minions die quicker, and make the enemy laners miss that cs.

Yeah, I'm fucking bumping this shit. I'm so tired of this. Freezing the lane is so much harder when minions randomly walk into tower range. the other day an enemy minion walked in an 8 pattern around my cannon minion, blocking me from walking 3 times than walked into tower range and died. I cant understand how making a new champ or a skin or anything is higher priority than fixing this. just fix the minion aggro thing and unit collision, its ok to have unit collision but your own minions should not kill you. and its totaly unpredictable, it just adds randomness. that fix would be the most gigantic quality of life change since the game launched. the fact that they are ignoring it says something about them.