Although they are the main source of Gold in League of Legends, many players may not know everything about them. We are not talking about the famous “Last hit”, a mechanic that every good summoner tries to master to perfection, but about statistics and knowledge that everyone can see — and that almost everyone ignores. Let’s go over some cool things about minions that you (necessarily) don’t need to know.
Minions run on diesel
If I ask you if a minion is faster or slower than a champion, it’s probably clear to you. Often, when the game drags on, you have to cover a lot of ground to find the waves and be able to push.
It’s because minion movement speed is not static. This stat evolves over time according to the following formula: 325 base + 25 every 5 minutes between 10 and 25 minutes of play time. From there, it remains at 425, a movement speed higher than certain champions, boots understood.
Minions almost never fire
What happens if there are no champions in a League of Legends game? Well, one side wins, even though this phenomenon is completely random. What happens if we let the minions while champions are playing and leveling up? Well, it’s more complicated to explain. Because yes, the minions are also growing in power.
But they do it in a particular way. As they do not gain experience, they rise in rank thanks to a system as simple as it is ingenious. Minions always have the average level of all champions on their team. If two players are at 13, one at 14 and two at 15, the minions will be at level 14, and this for the base statistics that define them: attack, health and, in the case of melee minions, armor.
A bug, priorities and a first pacifist wave
In the video above, a player can be seen attacking his counterpart with LeBlanc in a very particular way. You can see how he synchronizes his hits with those of opposing minions, managing to avoid their targeting, which always happens between his attacks. Soon after, it became clear that this was a bug and not fully reproducible, although it is possible.
Even with that, it’s interesting to be able to talk about the minions’ attack priority, something that not all players are yet familiar with. Here are the minion priorities right now (in descending order) and it will help you understand these little creatures:
- Enemy champions attacking an allied champion
- Enemy minions attacking an allied champion
- Enemy minions attack a friendly minion
- Enemy turrets attacking a friendly minion
- Enemy champions attacking an allied minion
- Closest enemy minion
- Nearest enemy champion
But perhaps the most interesting thing is that the first wave behaves differently. Unless hit, or taunted by hitting an ally, these early minions ignore enemy champions. This action is timed this way to prevent an enemy from sneaking into the jungle and distracting the mid lane minions, creating a favorable push situation.