Last Hit Assistance hits live servers in 26.5

After months of testing, Riot Games has launched a new feature designed to help onboard new players and usher in a new generation of MOBA fans. As its name indicates, Last Hit Assistance will, in specific queues, visually indicate on a minion’s health bar when it can be finished with an auto attack, helping players secure the killing blow and earn gold more consistently.

The addition is part of Riot’s broader push to modernize the League of Legends experience and make it more accessible to casual audiences. Recent updates reflect that direction. For instance, the introduction of optional WASD movement controls aimed to attract players from other genres, offering an alternative to the game’s traditional click-to-move system — a control scheme inherited from classic real-time strategy titles, a genre that has become increasingly niche in recent years.

Because it is primarily designed for newer players — and given concerns that it could diminish certain forms of skill expression at higher levels — the feature will be limited to non-competitive environments. “We’re going to be letting the indicators sit in queues that newer players are mostly playing and will be monitoring how they’re going before thinking about whether we should extend them further,” the developers explained. For now, Last Hit Assistance will be available in the following queues:

By default, the feature will remain disabled for existing accounts, while it will automatically be enabled for all accounts created after Patch 26.5. That said, Last Hit Assistance is available to everyone. Players can toggle it on or off at any time via the Interface option menu, under the “Health and Resource Bars” section, listed as “Show Last Hit Assist.”

Though it’s only now making its way to live servers, Last Hit Assistance has officially been in testing on PBE since August 2025. Riot has continued iterating on the system behind the scenes, refining how it calculates damage and how clearly it communicates kill thresholds without overwhelming the player.

At its core, the indicator factors in permanent damage modifiers — such as base AD increases from leveling or item purchases — and is also built to recognize many on-hit effects. Rather than being manually tuned for every individual interaction, the system pulls from existing spell data and damage calculations already present in the game. In theory, that makes it relatively self-sustaining: as long as prediction data is properly configured and updated when abilities are reworked, it shouldn’t require constant maintenance for every balance patch.

That said, the system is intentionally not all-encompassing. It does not account for active spell damage and excludes certain variables like critical strike chance. Damage types also aren’t fully differentiated in all cases, which can matter since minions don’t always share identical resist profiles — for example, melee minions gain armor over time, while super minions have distinct base stats and even grant resistances to nearby allies.

Riot has emphasized that this is by design. The goal isn’t to automate last-hitting entirely, but to provide clearer visual guidance. There may still be edge cases where players secure a minion unexpectedly, but the indicator should never suggest a last hit that fails under its calculated conditions.

Some champions with especially unique attack patterns — such as Azir (W) or Graves — are not currently supported. And for ranged champions, particularly those with lower attack damage, pre-firing autos before the indicator appears will often remain necessary to secure the gold consistently. In short, while the feature is robust, it’s not meant to replace player judgment — at least not yet.