Hello friends. Long ass story short the practice tool is completely bonkers when it comes to minions. It does not work properly and you need to take certain actions to assure you are getting valid training during your time spent smacking the little bastards around. If you dont you may end up with one sides minions doing 200% damage, or having them start with 1k hp at level 1 after a reset.
Yesterday I found out that minions HP / Damage was not scaling properly and made a post. When I made it I just put a giant wall of text with no formatting and vague information. Since then I formatted it to make it easier on the eyes. Others joined in my crusade and we really figured out what the problems were. Which is good, but also bad because there is a lot of incorrect and misunderstood aspects to it that were left over from when we started. With this new info I spent some time to see if I could get practice tool to work properly. I think I succeeded. For reference here is the other post. other post
Its not too important that your read it at this point. What is important is a few steps you need to make to insure that your CSing is mirroring what would happen in a regular game.
Cool story bro, what can we do?
For starters we can very briefly identify the problems, then try to solve them
Problem 1 - Every 90 seconds, or 3rd minion wave, all minions get an increase in their stats. A very minor buff, including some additional HP. Resetting the game using the soft reset wont revert them back. If you have a long enough game they can actually start level 1 with 1,000 hp or more, which means you may as well close out the game and start a new one, which is exactly what practice tool was designed to avoid. To fix this problem after you load into your practice tool soft reset the game before the minions spawn (ctrl + shift + P). This somehow breaks the logic for them to slowly increase in power. Even a 40 min game will have them remain at level 1 stats.
Problem 2 - There is a hidden buff to minions called the Pushing Advantage Buff which basically means that whichever team has a higher average level (no opponents so their level is 0) gets a buff to their minions making them do more damage and take less damage from the other sides creeps. Your minions also do more damage according to how many more towers you have taken than your opponent. This does not get reset and also STACKS resulting in almost an infinite amount of extra damage your level 1 minions are doing to theirs after a reset, in some cases killing them in only a couple hits. To fix this problem you need to load the game with a bot. In my experience the CPU will always go to the bottom lane. This fixes it for the most part, but you have to make sure when you go for a soft reset that you and the other champion are the same level. If there is any disparity between you, whichever champ that is a higher level will have stronger minions upon the reset skewing your new CS opportunity. Also toggle towers invincible to stop any potential shenanigans.
TLDR
To make minions normal;
- Add a bot to your game
- Soft reset the game as soon as you load in (before minions spawn)
- Toggle towers invincible
- When you soft reset to practice more, make sure you are the same level as the bot
If you follow these steps, you should have normal minions until you quit. Keep in mind this is for LOW LEVEL csing. Doing these stops minion growth meaning that if you try mid / late game farming with these tactics you will [too]easily 1 shot every minion and it would be a bit unrealistic. I would personally reset before level 7 or 8.
--------------------------------- Random helpful advice -------------------------------------
- When practicing CSing you should do it at varying ranges to account for missile travel time. In real games you are most likely at max range to avoid poke.
- Using attack champions only click command is very helpful for melee characters moving around minions as it will stop potential accidental attacks on minions while trying to move.
- Auto Attack is optional. There is no wright or wrong answer, whatever is more comfortable to you.
- After you get good at CSing alone, try to take your runes and masteries off. Once you get good at that try to add a bot to lane against. Once you can do that try to 1v1 a friend to get practice denying a real player. Take each step slow and make sure you are ready to move on.
- Practice farming under tower. To do this add an ENEMY target dummy behind your first tower so all your creeps stop to attack it. This causes the enemies minions to always get under your turret.
- To kill minions under tower keep in mind 2 tower shots + 1 auto kills a melee minion. 1 auto attack and a tower shot followed by a 2nd auto attack kills caster minions.
- Do not just practice last hitting with autos. Practice last hitting with abilities as well to mimic fast pushing. This is helpful for when your laner gets ganked you can fast push it under their tower to deny them exp BUT you also dont want to miss all the gold while doing it.
