Dota 2 Last Hitting Guide (2026): Last Hits, Denies, Creep Maths

Ask any coach what separates a Herald carry from an Ancient one and the answer usually starts with the number in the top-left corner of the screen: LH / DN, last hits and denies. Every creep you finish is gold in your pocket; every creep you deny is gold the enemy never sees and experience they only half get. Nothing else in Dota is as repeatable, as measurable or as quick to improve. This guide covers how a last hit works on patch 7.41f, what each creep is worth, the deny rules, why your hero's attack animation matters more than its damage, the maths behind a good score at ten minutes and a practice plan you can start tonight.

How a last hit works

Every lane creep has a gold bounty and an experience bounty. When it dies, the hero (or the hero's unit) that dealt the killing blow gets the gold. The experience doesn't need a last hit: enemy heroes within the experience range share it, which the Dota 2 Wiki puts at 1500 units. That split is the whole economy of a lane. Cores stand where they can take the killing blows; supports stand close enough to soak the experience and harass, but leave the creeps alone.

A creep killed by your tower, by your own creeps or by nobody in particular still gives experience to heroes in range, but the gold simply vanishes. That's why a lane where creeps die "on their own" is a lane where somebody is losing money, and why holding the wave away from your tower (covered in our laning guide) makes last hitting easier: tower shots ruin your timing.

Some heroes are built around last hits. Valve's own hero data for Shadow Fiend describes his innate Necromastery as stealing a soul from every unit he kills, with 1 bonus damage per soul, so every missed creep is damage he won't have. Others get gold or damage from kills in their own way; the habit is the same for all of them.

What every creep is worth

The base wave is three melee creeps and one ranged creep, sent every 30 seconds from 0:00. Siege creeps (catapults) join every 10th wave, and Liquipedia lists the numbers below as base values; melee and ranged creeps upgrade every 7 minutes 30 seconds, and patch 7.40 made the melee creep's gold bounty rise by 1 with each upgrade. Patch 7.41 brought the first extra siege creep forward from 35:00 to 30:00 and added a second at 60:00.

Creep values: Liquipedia (community), read 8 November 2026; the in-game unit tooltip is the final word. Flagbearer values: Valve's 7.40 and 7.41 notes.

Two practical conclusions. First, the ranged creep is the priority: it's worth the most gold and experience of the base wave and, with 300 health and no armour, it drops fast, so it's the one players miss most. Second, siege creeps are slow to kill but pay the most; their 80% magic resistance (Liquipedia) means you take them with attacks, not spells.

Denying: the half of last hitting most players skip

When one of your own lane creeps drops below 50% health you can attack it; the Dota 2 Wiki lists the same 50% line for all non-hero units and 10% for towers. Finishing your creep is a deny. It does three things at once:

Halving experience is a big deal in the first minutes, when a level decides the trades. A ranged creep is worth 69 experience, so denying it leaves the enemy roughly 35. Deny two ranged creeps and an early level arrives a little later for them. Patch 7.41 also made creeps that are sacrificed by abilities count as denies, giving the enemy experience as a deny would.

Which comes first when a last hit and a deny are ready at the same moment? BoostPirate's rule: the enemy creep first if you're the farming core, because gold is the reason you're in the lane, and the deny if it's your ranged creep and the enemy core is standing right on it. Supports should deny freely; they lose nothing by it.

Attack animations and projectiles

The single biggest reason players miss last hits isn't damage. It's time. When you right-click, your hero plays an attack animation and the damage lands at a fixed point in it; ranged heroes then send a projectile that takes time to fly. Valve's hero data for Shadow Fiend, for example, lists a 1200 projectile speed and a 525 attack range: at full range the projectile is in the air for well under half a second, and the creep is losing health to the other creeps the whole time.

So the skill is predicting: start the swing when the creep will be low enough when your hit lands, not when it already is. Watch how fast the creep is losing health (how many enemy creeps are hitting it, and whether a ranged creep is about to shoot) and start earlier the faster it drops. Three techniques help:

1. Attack-move cancel. Start the attack, and if you see the hit won't kill, press Stop (S) or move before the damage point. You lose nothing and you're ready to try again on the same creep.
2. Hover and wait. Stand at attack range, the cursor already on the creep, and don't attack until the moment. Constant right-clicking makes you auto-attack early and push the lane.
3. Use height and position. Stand where you can reach the whole wave without walking: every step you take is time your animation isn't using.

Damage, armour and Quelling Blade

Your hero's attack damage is a range (shown on the HUD), so even the perfect timing sometimes falls one point short. Armour matters too: melee creeps have 2 armour and ranged creeps none (Liquipedia), so your hit does a little less to the melee creeps than the number on your HUD. Learn your hero's real kill threshold on each creep type by watching the health bar: after a few dozen tries you'll know "about one-fifth of a melee creep's bar" by sight.

Quelling Blade is the classic fix. Valve's item data gives it, for 100 gold, +8 attack damage against non-hero units for melee heroes and +4 for ranged heroes, plus an active that cuts a tree (350 range, 4-second cooldown). Several blades don't stack. On a melee carry the bonus turns many coin-flip last hits into sure ones, which is why so many starting builds include it.

Spells can last hit too, and on some heroes a spell is the only safe way to take a contested ranged creep. But mana is a lane resource: spend a nuke on a last hit only when it also hits the enemy hero, or when the creep is the ranged one and you'd miss it otherwise.

The ten-minute maths

How many last hits are possible? A wave of four leaves each barracks every 30 seconds, so before the 15:00 extra melee creep a lane gets 8 creeps a minute, plus a siege creep every tenth wave. That gives the ceilings below. Nobody takes every creep (some die to towers, some to supports, some to the enemy), but the ceiling tells you how much you're leaving.

Use the number as a mirror, not a target. Valve doesn't publish what each medal averages, and the right score depends on your position: a safe-lane carry who takes 50 of the 80 by ten minutes is doing well in most games, a mid with a hard matchup may take fewer and still win the lane on levels. Check the last hits graph on your match's summary after every game and compare your 10-minute number with your own average, week by week.

Last hitting under pressure

A lobby is easy; a lane against two heroes who want you out of it is not. Three habits help the most:

• Pick your creeps. When you can't stand near the wave, give up the melee creeps in front and take the ranged creep at the back, the most valuable one, from the side.
• Pull the wave to you. A quick attack order on an enemy hero draws nearby enemy lane creeps toward you for a moment (creep aggro), so the fight between the waves moves closer to your tower. Our laning guide explains the timing.
• Take tower last hits properly. Under your tower, hit a melee creep once before the tower does, then finish it; for ranged creeps, let the tower hit first. The exact rhythm depends on your damage, so test it in a lobby.

If you're the support, your job is the opposite: make every last hit expensive for the enemy core. Stand where you threaten an attack as they walk up, deny your own creeps, and keep the enemy support busy so your core can farm alone. Our planned guides on the carry and the hard support cover the lane from both sides.

A practice plan that works

Here is BoostPirate's suggested routine. It takes ten to fifteen minutes a day, and the lobby number gives you an honest measure of progress. Create a private lobby with no bots from the Play menu, pick the hero you play most and go to your lane:

Two rules make the routine work. Practise one hero at a time until it's automatic, and stop after fifteen minutes: tired practice builds bad habits. When your lobby number at 5:00 is close to the ceiling of 40, your problem in real games isn't mechanics any more; it's positioning, which is a laning question.

Common last-hitting mistakes

Last hitting is the foundation, not the whole house. The next steps are where the wave should be (laning guide), how to keep farming after the lane (farming patterns) and which position fits you (positions explained).

Related guides: laning · farming patterns · carry guide · mid guide · beginner heroes