Alright, learning to last hit is a must. Your elo will be low if you run solo que and can not last hit but if you improve you are one step closer to being able to carry a team.

[CENTER](Rant: I'm at a low elo right now the reason being, even though I have improved dramatically, I was really bad when I started ranked. It was not just one area I was just... bad... at everything. Now I can raise my elo anytime I feel like it but I only play a couple ranked games at a time because they can be annoying. Aside from the obvious leavers and trolls there are the people who complain about elo hell. I do not believe in elo hell, it is more of an elo purgatory. It's harder to rise from it than from the basic but no, it is not impossible. The other team is at least as likely to have an afk/leaver/troll and while such annoyances can make your score fluctuate, odds are you belong right around where you are [though the mid 800's are better than most 900-1300 players because you have to have played at least a certain amount to drop that low. Below 800 is the realm of trolls, do not go there if at all possible] so while I think that the system could be improved, it's at least ok now. Own your suckage and improve... don't just complain)[/CENTER]

Even if you plan on playing support, knowing how to pick off minions under your turret when your carry had to go b (and only then) can be really helpful in reaching your gp/10 items soon and by extension being able to buy more wards throughout the game (Buy a ward save a life and all that), it also helps you understand how to not deny your carry farm.

For a while last hitting was something that I was terrible at... just plainly awful. Part of this was because I played like an idiot constantly using skills to farm and improving little, with most champs this pushes your lane and a pushed lane is usually a vulnerable lane. After reading some guides and realizing I was an idiot I came across a suggestion in a comments section on the LoL wiki for some carry from an anon contributor. Since then I have improved dramatically, here's and expanded version of the concept:

[CENTER]Set up a custom game w/out any bots buy no items take no skills and go last hit minions in mid lane for around 15 min's (more than this and your base damage reaches a point that does not really help you improve your early game), see how you did. Rinse and repeat.
Different champs have different auto attack animation lengths and so you should do this with any champion you plan on using, you might be surprised how much a fraction of a second of additional travel time can matter.

For this 15 min. practice here are some cs rates:
Around 120 is OK when you can hit 130 consistently you're good, 140 and you're great. The max possible is 153 in 15 min but it is virtually impossible to reach a prefect score. (expect to start out in the 90's but don't be dissapointed, early improvement is rapid)[/CENTER]

For last hitting under your own turret, mele minions can be last hit after taking two turret shots, for caster minions, hit once before a turret hit and then you can finish the minion off. (When you have more damage, you just let the turret hit the caster first and then you finish it off, do the same as before for mele minions. Also pay attention to what your own minions are doing... they can be really annoying and deny you cs under your turret sometimes the only way around this is to learn their order of targeting and even that does not always work out)

I think it would be amazing if there was an official tutorial/arcade mode for last hitting but I realize that doing so would take a ton of work (I know, I've worked on student game projects as the lead artist and designer and I'm familiar enough with coding concepts to understand how much effort it takes to pull off something like this) and a custom game is good enough anyways so it's not something I would really expect.

Do this practice on a regular basis and you will have taken a step on the road to awesome.



tl;dr:

1.Practice last hitting minions in a custom game
2.Keep practicing
3.????
4.Become Awesome (and you know... profit)

A lot of last-hitting is timing.

You watch how fast the health of minions are dropping. You also have to account for your attack animation and the travel of your projectile. That is, you have to fire earlier if the minion health is dropping fast, if your attack animation is lengthy and then include the time-of-flight in your prediction.

You can also watch the volleys from your own Casters to predict when your throw should happen. So if the first two Caster bolts don't last-hit the minion, but the last one would, you need to time your throw so that your attack beats that last minion.

So many folks advise learning to last hit. So few show excellent ways to learn (custom game) and discuss adversities (friendly creep damage.)
Thanks for the help.

@PlayGooYa
Yep, all good tips.

@Pceth
No problem, glad I could help

this.^
In some cases, using abilities to farm is perfectly fine, especially AP mid.
leblanc,ryze,karthus,lux,kass

You can use abilities to farm, but it's much harder to do so if you don't know last-hitting. It's rare for your abilities to be so strong that they just one-shot minions. And you only use abilities if it will secure you multiple minion kills immediately or allows you to soften that back-rank of caster minions enough to last-hit them in rapid succession.

Last-hitting is still a vital skill for AP mids because you need to conserve mana and avoid over-extending. Wasting mana on farming gives the other mid initiative, since he can now just out-sustain you if he's last-hittnig well. And sometimes that mana gives him the ability to just harass you out of lane, which means he'll outfarm you eventually anyway.

You only shove the lane very early if getting hits on their tower is a priority and you can survive their jungle ganks. Otherwise be careful about using abilities to farm.

Sometimes you farm so well that the minion wave gets pushed to the tower on its own. That's fine, but if you don't want to risk a jungle gank, that may be a clue to let the wave swing back naturally and only use single-shot auto-attacks to farm.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. Morgana, Mord, Ziggs and Malhazar are all champions who can mass AOE farm while shoving their own waves into your tower to deny you farm.

Of course, just saying abilities can/should be used at times.

consider a Kass against an Ahri. Every attempt at last hitting with his purple fluff stick could result in a auto attack q, auto attack.
Watch some live streams. I see leblancs use their q and disregard the whole "conserve mana and avoid over-extending" part.

@MitchMate
Some champs like akali can be much more skill dependant for farm in which case practicing w/ their rank one skill is a good idea. Other situations like the ones mentioned by PlayGooYa also come up but even then skill use is often situational and last hitting is always usefull.

Or play Twisted Fate and 1-shot the entire minion wave.

http://gyazo.com/acf6b4d75279888300ceefc7101d9381

Im sorry, you say low elo, due to not getting last hits? Having an elo period would mean they can play ranked, which means theyre lvl 30. Wich also means theyve played roughly 370-450 games of LoL

How would anyone not know to last hit by then? Last hitting is something newbies learn to do when theyre in their early days. You should be last-hitting before youre lvl 10...