Why You SUCK at FARMING (And How to Fix It) - League of Legends

you're going to learn exactly why you suck at farming in League of Legends in simple easy to apply ways to fix it my name's hex I'm a multi-season challenger player that's been teaching League of Legends here at skillcap for over 10 years and if there's one thing I've learned in that time it's that getting good at farming is one of the fastest ways to climb ranks the problem is there are tons of myths and misconceptions around farming the biggest myth about farming is that having high CS numbers means being good at csing in the laning phase getting insane Farm leads at actually mainly comes from macro in the mid game let me explain 1 minion wave is worth 125 gold on average that is until the 15-minute Mark where 1 minion wave is worth 147 gold on average meaning they become 18% more valuable this is because at the 15minute Mark Siege minions begin spawning every two waves instead of every three increasing the average gold value and finally at the 25-minute Mark each minion wave becomes worth 195 gold on average again this is because Siege minions now spawn on everying single wave that's a 33% increase in gold now while minions themselves become worth more gold you as a champion actually outscale them too you get more items which means more damage which means you can clear those waves even faster and you'll have boot upgrades meaning you can move faster to take other things on the map here's an easy way to visualize this so every 30 seconds a wave spawns in the early game if you last hit two waves perfectly you would get 12 minions in 1 minute however later on in the mid game you can clear waves and move so fast you could clear one wave wave then go and farm nearby camps and get back to the next wave or you could clear one wave then rotate to an empty Lane to pick up the wave there both of those scenarios allow you to potentially double that 12 minions in 1 minute to 24 it gets even crazier cuz when Towers fall it means you can move up the lane while farming multiple waves this means you're clearing waves faster since you're not waiting for those minions to get to you like in the early game instead you're saving time by moving further up the lane clearing that next wave sooner eventually you hit a tower or a point in which you can't continue moving forward but again you can then rotate to take jungle camps or simply recall and if a lane is pushed to your side you can push that out farming at an accelerated rate by moving up the lane while you clear waves basically what this means is that when it comes to farming the early game is more about not falling behind rather than csing perfectly this is because if you fall too far behind it will make you slow in the midgame macro phase since you have less items and you'll clear wave slower you won't be able to start taking jungle camps as early on while also having to play around more enemies that are stronger than you which means you can't push a lane as far up up if all of that isn't convincing enough that big farm leads are created in the mid game then the cherry on top is death timers early on dying doesn't really result in M Farm simply due to the fact that death timers are so low while you'll also spawn with homeg guards however in the mid game death timers are going to be 30 seconds or longer and since you can farm at that accelerated Pace as we just covered it means each one of those seconds are incredibly valuable so if the first biggest myth about farming is that it happens in the early game well then the second biggest myth about farming is that everyone should be aiming to farm 10 CS per minute in reality your CS per minute should be entirely determined by the champion and role you're playing for example Master Plus top laners that play trendir average 8. 5 CS per minute compare that to Master Plus top laners who play Mal fight that average 6. 34 CS per minute the difference in CS per minute is caused by surprise a difference in midgame macro strategies in the mid game trinary can push a s Side Lane into then farming jungle camps easily between waves due to his high damage per second however Mal doesn't have that high DPS he's more about burst and tankiness and so his main macro strategy will be pushing a wave than roaming off that timing to get takedowns so make sure you have reasonable expectations for the champion and role you're playing now here's the thing regardless of the macro strategy you implement or the champion you play if you want to improve your farming then you absolutely need to understand the essential concept of Deadtime dead time applies to both laners and junglers but it's easier to understand if you look at a jungle example first don't worry we'll be showing laning examples after so at its core dead time is a simple concept when a jungler such as this Talia Farms her entire jungle there's a period of time she has to wait until her camps start spawning again this is what's called Dead time because it's when all the camps are dead the reason why it's so valuable is that any place she makes during this time has much lower risk since if it doesn't work out she didn't give up any Farm to do it it's basically the most efficient time for you to fight now here's why Deadtime is such a Secret Killer if you don't understand it or use it so when carus respawns he he heads to the botside Scuttle this is perfectly fine however notice how his camps are beginning to respawn he's hitting the end of his Deadtime yet he's not aware of this and is going to make the mistake of trying to make plays outside of his Deadtime this will pretty much single-handedly lose carus this game let me explain why so he finally Farms the Scuttle and then after decides to invade when you do something like this trying to make plays or fight outside of your dead time it has two downsides first it's riskier because if he dies or it doesn't work out he's going to lose the golden experience he would have gained if he farmed those camps in this case he could have farmed his gromp which is worth 80 gold you then also have to factor in the time it takes to walk all the way back to his camps which is approximately the time it would take him to farm his wolves and that wolf Camp is worth 81 gold so you can think of it as him risking 161 gold right now to go for this play since that's what he would have gained if he just AFK farmed secondly it actually means any positive play he makes will be less valuable Raptors are worth 81 gold however when you steal a camp it's worth double since you also deny that amount of gold from enemy so carus stealing this Camp was worth 162 gold however remember he could have just farmed gromp and wolves during this time which is worth 161 so he literally risked 161 gold to gain 162 going for this play got him one additional gold compared to if he just AFK farmed his jungle are you starting to see just how hard it is to be efficient with your gold generation when you force plays outside of your dead time basically carus would have had to not only steal the Raptor camp but also kill Talia for this play to end up being worth the risk RIS you can think of when your camps are alive or as you're going to see shortly a minion wave has arrived in Lane as your time to farm good players look to get past this farming time as fast as possible to maximize the amount of dead time they have to then look for plays dead time is a complete Game Cher once you start using it and I'm actually really curious to hear from you guys what's the one thing that you've learned that gave you the biggest boost to your win rate let me know in the comment section below as I read all of your comments and speaking of boosting your win rate if you want to learn how to carry bad teammates and finally rank up then you absolutely need our brand new season 14 multi-chapter courses teaching you how to carry as a top laner jungler mid laner 80 carry and support pair that with our other new courses on how to counter op top laners op midlaners master your jungle clears or checkout our new bronze to Diamond Series it doesn't stop there we have new season 14 courses on macro Wave Control trading settings and hotkeys csing Vision mechanics low ELO mistakes the list goes on then head on over to our Smurf commentaries select your champion to watch live commentaries from Challenger experts teaching you how to carry out of the exact rank you're stuck in you can try all of this out completely risk-free since if you don't rank up while actively using skill cap you'll get your money back no questions asked you can unlock all of this right now through the discount you can only get from the link below so what are you waiting for click the link in the description below to get the rank you've always wanted all right now you've probably heard of the concept of tempo before really good news now that you understand Deadtime it's a lot easier to understand Tempo a really easy way to understand Tempo is to identify who is going to get to their dead time first since that's the best and most efficient time for someone to go for a play notice how after this Raptor steal Talia only has two camps left while carus will have four this is what's known as a Tempo Advantage this is another hidden downside to forcing plays outside your Deadtime if it didn't result in a loss of farm it probably resulted in a loss of tempo so by the time Talia enters her dead time she's now in a perfect position to take the void grubs uncontested since carus is behind in Tempo and still farming his wolves and after Talia finishes the void grubs she's still in her Deadtime ahead in Tempo so she gets that super efficient Deadtime gank on mid lane meanwhile carus still stuck in his clear this Tempo Advantage Talia has will be permanent by the way she won't lose it until she makes a mistake that results in a loss in her Tempo now after carus full clears he recalls then grabs his blue and looks to gank bot this is actually great since he's looking for a gank during his Deadtime but look what he does after despite his camps respawning he's going to force Drgon outside of his Deadtime remember this means this play comes at a higher cost making it less valuable than taking it during Deadtime while also coming with a higher risk so when Talia ends up punishing him and it all goes wrong well now carthus is in insanely far behind this single mistake of not playing around Deadtime not only through cars' early game but is a big reason why Talia ended the game with 9.

7 CS per minute while carus only had 6. 4 now as we mentioned everything you just learned also applies to laners with minion waves for example it's why a good recall timing involves pushing the wave first the time it takes for the next wave to arrive is your dead time time as a laner so you're executing your recall during your dead time allowing you to get back to Lane without missing any Farm it's also why a bad recall timing is recalling without pushing away first or in other words recalling outside of your dead time as now that recall costs you an entire wave of golden XP it's also why a good roam timing involves pushing the way first and then roaming during your Deadtime this way you get back to Lane without missing Farm while a bad roam timing is forcing a play outside your dead time while a wave is still alive and just like the carus example this comes at a higher cost and risk the minions you could have farmed instead for laners the cost is usually easy to calculate every 30 seconds a wave spawns and a wave before 15 minutes is worth 125 gold on average so the fact that this Ram took Fizz 1 minute that's equal to two waves or 250 gold nearly a kill even if Fizz got a kill on this Ram he risked 250 gold just to gain 300 from the kill an extra 50 it's the exact same issue the carthus had is just really hard to be efficient fighting outside your dead time the key difference between a laner and a jungler's dead time in the laning phase is how frequent and how long it will last for junglers have to full clear so it takes a while to enter dead time but when they do they're in it for longer whereas laners get possible dead time every 30 seconds between waves however that dead time is much shorter this shorter dead time for laners leaves them more vulnerable to making really common mistakes so the first mistake they make is not understanding the concept of a half roam you see if you go for a ram on a nearby Lane it's rare to be able to do that fast enough to get back to your own lane on the next wave in other words expect to lose at least one wave and possibly give a turret plate to the enemy if you want to roam so instead you should imagine that around halfway into the river is how far you can roam to without losing Minions on the next wave for this reason you shouldn't push into immediately committing to RS you should do what's called a half roam a half roam looks like this you push to enter Deadtime then go halfway check the state of the nearby Lanes if they're gankable you commit if not you head back to Lane the nice thing about this is it applies a ton of pressure to the enemy team since they don't know if you're committing to the gank or not this will make it incredibly hard for them to play aggressive so in a way you get to protect your laners while if they do die you're there to commit to the RAM and clean up what's even better though is that you can turn these half Rams into fake Rams where you look to gank your own lane this will be done either from the enemy laner trying to follow your Rome while you jump them from the brush or you just let them think you've committed to the Rome so they overe extend to start farming or pushing only for you to then gank them from a weird angle they weren't expecting often resulting in a kill you otherwise wouldn't get if you Lan normal basically there's two parts to this mistake RS are not free even when you push waves so don't commit to RS unless you're EX extremely confident it's going to go right don't force it at the same time if you never look for RS off your dead time and you just sit in Lane AFK well you're basically wasting your dead time completely you should be consistently looking to half room and clear Wards and put down pressure that way the second mistake players make is not understanding the power of the smother technique here you're going to see Tristana get a really good trade where Fizz ends up super low in health a common mistake players make here is tunneling on this kill you have to realize if Fizz never recalls he's inevitably going to either die or just get zoned off a ton of farm basically forever at the same time with fizz this low drana is under no threat so she gets to focus on farming perfectly while possibly getting Tower plates off pushes not to mention Tristana will always be able to react to fights first and impact them way more than a low Health Fizz this is known as the smother technique and Faker uses it all the time to get big leads in Solo Q instead of forcing anything you just patiently let them bleed out over time now here's the secret why this is so good for farming it often bait someone like the enemy jungler to try and help their losing laner a big mistake you can then punish when the enemy laner is so low in health you're trading kills at worst and at best getting a double kill like this the reason this is so good for farming is you don't have to waste time having to roam to fights you're sitting in Lane getting maximum Farm while winning fights come to you essentially if you're in a really strong winning position in Lane don't tunnel on getting the kill and don't be scared of being ganked use the smother technique let the enemy stay in Lane while you get to focus on csing taking Tower plates and waiting for a winning fight to either break out near you or come to you this Trana basically used these two concepts you just learned to generate insane lead shortly after gets a gank from Noo-noo doesn't get the kill so begins to Pivot to the smother technique clears the wave to enter Deadtime and spots Le in within that range we taught you earlier that lets her roam without missing CS picks up the kill and is back to Lane in time without missing any Farm Fizz is still low in health so we can default to smothering he gets forced into a bad recall timing so that's easy turret plates and denying Farm to the tower then simply push the next wave to set up an efficient recall during their dead time now one Advanced trick you can use as an exception to utilizing Deadtime is to take a winning fight when a wave is pushing into you this is because if you leave your lane you won't actually miss much CS as the enemy's bigger wave will just be killing your minions the reason why this is Advanced though is it's extremely situational and the timing can vary widely based on how big the wave is and the position in lane for example here a big wave is pushing towards Fizz usually we can't leave Lane here since we're in our farming time not our dead time but when Vigo shows at our Raptors that's really close to us and we can leave and barely lose any CS due to it pushing to us this is risky since if you die you'll lose that big wave to your Tower so you better be confident you will actually win the fight at the same time with that wave being so big and so close to fizz's Tower he has a very small window so after the fight he needs to get back to Lane as fast as he can the closest jungle example of this Advanced concept would be doing what's called a transition gank if you have all your camps up you can Farm one quadrant then transition gank mid as you're still moving to your bside camps it's a really efficient gank you just lose a few seconds since you took a longer path and have to fight but is obviously worth it if you get a kill however again keep in mind this is riskier since if anything goes wrong you're losing those camps you could have farmed during that time so you have to be very confident the gank is going to work now as we mentioned at the start the mid game is really when you can generate massive Farm leads however before we can even get into macro tactics you need to make sure you're following two rules in the mid game the first rule is to always play around your team's map pressure notice how in this example for The Blue Team Leona cidan and jyn are all off the map they aren't pushing or pressuring any objectives when your team has no map pressure like this that's when you really want to transition to playing a bit more safe and focusing on farming as much as possible notice how set is playing out of sync with his team's pressure so naturally he's going to die and it's really obvious why this happens when you look at the enemy's point of view they literally can't see any other enemy besides set it's like moths to a flame now compare that to Talia she plays in sync with her team they have no pressure so time to just focus on farming notice how as she transitions mid her team is looking to fight but again set is dead right now and there's a wave mid that needs to be pushed it's all completely out of sync so just continue farming waiting for set to respawn now just like in the laning phase we're in our dead time and it's perfectly timed with set respawning great we can start looking for plays and what do you know an insanely efficient kill this exact same pressure concept applies to leaners too for example here Tristana is pushing a wave mid but we can see our bot Lane is recalling that means no M pressure from two teammates you'll always have two ways to farm safely in these spots as a laner Tristana can either take nearby jungle camps between waves Raptors in this case or if another Lane has a wave getting push to your Tower simply rotate to that lane picking up that wave is literally making you farm twice as much as every other laner since you're doing it in your dead time just always be conscious of your team's a mat pressure if you have none that's your time to focus on farming the second rule you have to follow in the mid game is to always go to empty lanes this applies to both junglers and laners for example after Talia recalls here and is heading back onto the map she can see her bot Lane is looking to roam top with cidan that means mid lane is empty before you do anything always try to push out an empty Lane first remember our previous lesson about waves and dead time in the laning phase you should now know how bad it is to try and roam without pushing a wave first well when there's an empty Lane you can easily Farm then any play you make now becomes more risky and less valuable since you could have just farmed that wave instead so head to that empty Lane and push the wave it has a great bonus effect of now forcing an enemy to go to that lane to pick up the wave this pins them down temporarily while they Farm giving you potential number advantages and if they don't go to that lane well that's now a wave they've lost to the tower so you're just getting ahead and farm you can see Talia then picks up the nearby camp this follows our previous rule we have three teammates who have no pressure top side by the way when I say pressure I'm saying the enemy has to respond to what our teammates are doing or they're going to lose something right now cin would have to push all the way to the inhibitor Tower before there's really any threat or in other words pressure anyways when there's no pressure we focus on optimal farming so Raptors into Scuttle makes perfect sense the next midwave is arriving as is solo Q Jin is completely unaware that this empty Lane needs to be farmed before minions start dying so that's another empty Lane we can push back into our Deadtime the ENT team is off the map except for cidan so we're still focusing on farming that means taking our red now a bit of a weird spot set is still dead so no map pressure Jin is heading mid so we can't take the wave there top wave is obviously too far away and Bot wave is super pushed up so really risky going to that empty Lane right now so a tiny bit risky but we look for a sneaky blue steel using our sweeper to make sure the enemy doesn't see and positioning as safe as possible since we have no other option now I want to make it clear pretty much every tactic and strategy in the mid game is always going to rely on you paying attention to the mini map and identifying where people are I don't want you guys to think you can just do all these things without paying attention to the map for example we saw Urgot topside and we see Pike and Tristana mid that means the only two enemies missing are Misfortune and carus and we're stronger than both of them right now we also have a key word here to protect us that's how Talia knows it's no longer risky to go to this empty Lane that's pushed up if we go back and instead a bunch of enemies were missing well she can easily just fall back on farming of Raptors and potentially topside camps after you can actually see these adjustments in real time shows on our Ward but Misfortune also shows at Raptors so we know it's only carus who isn't really a threat we can push the next wave and get some turret damage but as soon as Misfortune disappears heading towards us Pike is missing carus is missing and Urgot running towards us yeah that's our time to back off now remember how I said earlier in this Talia game she ended with 9. 7 CS per minute while carus only had 6.