Absolutely. One of the most frequent mistakes people make is to prioritize harass much higher than last-hitting. Think of it this way: if you harassing someone doesn't result in a kill, and they wind up last hitting more than you did, you lost out. That's actually really likely to happen if you go after someone aggressively who last hits well under a turret while you largely ignore creeps.

Related to that is trying to get farm from build up minion waves in the midgame without leaving your team a man down if a fight breaks out. Knowing exactly how long you can farm lanes for when a teamfight might break out is probably one of the most difficult skills to acquire, since it's always a very precise timing call, and it's something even pro-level players misjudge a lot. I'm certainly terrible at it, and frequently have much lower farm than I should just by trying to be everywhere in the mid/lategame when I should just be farming and trusting my team to not get completely caught. It's another example of the power of wards/map vision to let you estimate whether you can safely farm a lane.

One thing I'd suggest is to do bot games and just see how high you can have your CS while not completely ignoring kills. It's actually fairly challenging even against bots to have perfect CS since they'll try to harass, so it's a pretty good practice regimen.

Alright I appreciate your help, I usually just did bot games for the xp and ip. I've never really tried farming on them, just rushing through the turrets and making it a 30 minute game everytime. Again, thanks a lot.

Hi Sk8,

Normal games and Co-op vs. AI games actually differ in a lot of ways. For example, bots do not dedicate a champion to clearing their jungle and ambushing lanes, but that is basically the standard in normal games.Since bot games tend to be more predictable, they do no emphasize the some of the more competitive aspects of playing LoL.

I would strongly recommend watching some of our featured spectator games which you can access from the main page of the client. Particularly, try to find a game where a certain character or role you are interested in is being played and observe how they play. The featured games are typically between high level players and can help you learn a lot.

Unfortunately, the main page of the client hasn't shown featured spectator matches since a few days after the Syndra patch came online. One thing I've been hoping to find out is, is there any other way to browse/find matches to spectate in the game that don't include our friends? I think that most of us who've used the feature agree it is very useful.

But until then, (for those reading) it appears our best bet for watching games might be streamers, though that's far from an ideal situation.

In the beginning of the game often you don't want to kill a turret. Killing a turret early means your creeps will push far into the enemy's lane, so you can't farm them. It does let you start roaming to gank/team fight, but if you do it too early you lose valuable farm, especially if you're a carry ie: you need a lot of farm.

Often it's correct to clear the enemy's creeps, let your creeps push to the enemy's tower, then go either a.) farm the jungle, b.) recall and heal/buy, or c.) roam to a lane and attempt a gank.

The other benefit of pushing your creeps to the tower then leaving is that all your minions die to the tower, meaning your opponent receives 0 experience or gold from them. By the time you get back, fresh minions are out from both sides, and you've gained a large advantage in both experience and gold.

Think of it this way:

Early game, any time you push past the river, for any reason, you're on their side of the map. This gives the enemy jungle or a ganking top/mid the chance to come at you from the river and cut off your retreat. If you're sitting there against a tower, you can often end up 'pinned' against the tower, where your escape paths are extremely limited. This can be a very bad thing.

When you take their tower down, the lane pushes further. This means that to farm that lane, you need to be even deeper into their territory, where all the same things apply. Your main goals at the start of the game, typically, are to stay safe and farm up as much money as you can; taking early towers can cost you that.

You actually do get experience for minions the turret killed; just, of course, it's VERY difficult to consistently last-hit minions your tower's shooting at, hence denying you the gold.

But other than that you're fully right: pushing early is risky. It can make sense to push a tower, but in many cases if it's TOO easy you should focus on getting more fed than your laning opponent; if it's easy to push their tower down than it should be easy to deny them all that farm, or possibly even kill them a few times. That could set you up for an advantage you could use and gank, spreading it to all lanes.