How to practice level 1 farming.

I suck at LoL. I am trying to get better at it, and one thing I've done to improve is to practice my farming. I have practiced it enough that I now have a system in place to practice with. I am now posting about this because not only do I want other people to get better (which honestly wouldn't be great for me because that'll just make things harder for me), but also because I feel if I put this out there it help me as well as I can also get feedback from other people.

My system: I practice level 1 farming because that's the hardest point in the game to farm. I go into the practice tool, and lock in level 1 with the items I would normally start the game with, and just stay in lane. I've done this enough times that I've even figured out how to skip forward to the actually farming immediately to save a lot of time.

As soon as you get into the game (which should be very quickly since it's just me and not even a bot against me) pick your first ability that you normally would (although I don't even use any non passive abilities when doing this). Then buy your starting items, and click the level lock in button. Next, fast forward 30 seconds so that you do not need to wait for the fountain barrier to go down in real time. Teleport close to the point where the waves will meet, but not directly there, and try to not block the minions' path (I usually go up against the rock). Then fast forward 30 seconds 2 more times, and at that point the minions should just be getting to where you are. This just saved you about a minute and a half of waiting.

Now, part of the benefit to practicing farming in this way is that you can figure out patterns for how best to clear the minions. I've figured out some rules to best clear minions.

1. Do not let the minions take damage evenly. This will make it impossible to last hit all of them. I found that if you BA the first melee minion once BEFORE the waves start attacking each other, and then BA another melee and one caster minion once AFTER the waves start fighting you will be able to last hit all 6 minions in the first wave at least most of the time. This doesn't work when you have a large minion advantage, but if the waves reset you can do this again.

2. When there is a large minion advantage on your side you will have to preemptively guess when to last hit them. This is because you must stress the difference in AS between you and the minions. This is especially true when you have a lot of minions attacking one target. Honestly, I don't even know how much damage the melee minions do compared to the casters, or the difference in their AS (which is one of the reasons why I feel I'll improve by posting this).

3. Paying attention to where there are spaces between the minions is very important since getting blocked by minions can cause you to miss a last hit, or several. Now when it's a normal reset wave of 6 on 6, or 7 on 7 minions there will be a clear gap between melee and caster minions unless they move around by some factor. When you get uneven waves, however, it becomes harder to wade through them, and they will move around often.

4. Practicing level 1 farming is different than farming at any other level in several ways. It is harder to last hit at level 1 with hardly any items than at any other point because of champ AD and AS scaling with levels, runes, and masteries (or soon to be just runes) as well as items. However, just remember that it doesn't become completely linearly easier with all of this as now you must be careful not to poke a minions health to a point where you won't be able to last hit it. So, don't forget that practicing farming with builds and levels is also important.

I do this until the time reaches 5 minutes, and then I finish off any minions that already arrived. I compare my CS to what I get in other games to see if I am improving or not, and if I am getting consistent. If I did my math correctly there should have been a total of 48 minions that came through in those 5 minutes (at least in bottom lane). When I want to play an adc I try to get them consistently over 30 CS in those 5 minutes before I start playing them (and hopefully in the future I'll carry myself to a higher CS stand of maybe 35 - 40 before using that champ).

So, what else does this do besides just practicing farming? I have found that practicing with this method helps with several things other than just farming.

Having to guess when to last hit, especially when you completely feel like you will fail, teaches you to have more confidence in your abilities and experience playing the game (which is another important part of LoL). Little victories like correctly guessing when to last hit will improve your confidence, and might not only make you more confident in other aspects of your game play, like team fighting, but also improve your ability to keep calm under stress.

Doing this will also help you practice watching other things besides just the field in front of you that are also important. Getting into the habit of looking at the clock and CS allows for getting into the habit of watching the map and checking every player's builds easier to do. You can even practice watching the map while doing this to directly improve your habit of checking the map.

Another benefit of doing this is that it's a good way to warm up before games, and help you get comfortable. If you feel like your mouse sensitivity is off you will be able to feel the difference when practicing this as it gives you a good way to gauge that and other game settings.

All in all, I wanted to share this practice method with you all to help myself and other people improve in LoL, and hopefully more efficiently too. Feel free to comment any suggestions or constructive criticisms you'd like. Thanks for reading.

P.S. I know I said the word "practice" a lot in this, and trust me it felt annoying to me too when I read over this, but I'm not about to spend a lot of extra time finding synonyms and stuff.