While it has certainly changed in recent times, supports aren’t the most sought-after roles to “main”. And by extension, the same could be said about assists. That isn’t to say that assists are exclusive to supporting champions, it’s just that they often do it on purpose, rather than just losing it to whoever is the most fed in your team. Executing juggernauts like Darius and Garen find it hard to pass up the kills, even when the allied team carry is present.
Often overlooked in favor of kills, assists aren’t the most glamorous statistics, it’s still a respectable badge of honor. A lot of this has to do with the experience and gold you get from kills. It is almost instinctual in nature to want to improve your champion as fast as possible.
However, this is – ultimately – a team game, and we need to ensure our carries get fed. Lulu simply doesn’t snowball and scale as well late into the game as much as a fed Vayne. Just to make ourselves feel better, today we’re going to discuss how much gold you actually get from assists in League of Legends.
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Gold Makes Runeterra Go Round
Besides bragging rights, there’s another reason kills and assists are so impactful: gold and experience. For the purpose of discussion, let us focus on the gold aspect. I don’t need to explain or get into too much detail about how important gold is and how it improves your chances of winning.
Gold allows you to buy items and consumables for your champion. The sooner you get your desired items, the sooner you can use them to your advantage. Imagine getting your first mythical item while your opponent is still using their tier-one items. It doesn’t happen too often and it’s a bit of an extreme example, but you get the point.
A mechanic in League of Legends that you can also use strategically is how items are bought. Unlike in most other MOBA games, League of Legends requires you to go back to base to purchase items, regardless of how much gold you have. Let’s look at a hypothetical example.
Let’s say you’ve been laning against the enemy champion for a while now. It’s 15 minutes to the game, and both of you have mostly been going 0-0-0 and focusing on minion wave control. Suddenly, the enemy jungler manages to gank you and your opponent now has a kill under his belt and a minion kill advantage for the time it took you to respawn and walk back into the lane.
However, your opposing laner gets complacent and forgets he was still using the basic items. He has full health and continues to lane. Because you were able to buy your first set of items, you actually have an advantage over your opponent despite him being worth more gold.
Things like these really come into play, and from personal experience, the aforementioned complacency is more common in the bottom lane, because having an extra lane partner gives people a false sense of security which could lead to misplays.
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How Much Gold: The Alchemist’s Formula
So how much gold do you really get from assists? Well, to put it simply, assists give everyone who participated in the kill a portion of what the actual killer got. It has a lot to do with the bounty system. The more champions get involved in the kill, the more gold is split evenly. Fortunately, the formula is available to the public viewing and is calculated through tiers that are numbered from -9 to 8.
| Bounty Tier | Consecutive Kills | Consecutive Deaths | Kill Bounty | Assist Bounty |
| 8 | 8 onwards | 1000 gold and increases by 100 gold past the 7th kill | 150 gold | |
| 7 | 7 | 1000 gold | 150 gold | |
| 6 | 6 | 900 gold | 150 gold | |
| 5 | 5 | 800 gold | 150 gold | |
| 4 | 4 | 700 gold | 150 gold | |
| 3 | 3 | 600 gold | 150 gold | |
| 2 | 2 | 450 gold | 150 gold | |
| 1 | 1 | 300 gold | 150 gold | |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 300 gold | 150 gold |
| -1 | 1 | 274 gold | 137 gold | |
| -2 | 2 | 220 gold | 110 gold | |
| -3 | 3 | 176 gold | 88 gold | |
| -4 | 4 | 140 gold | 70 gold | |
| -5 | 5 | 112 gold | 56 gold | |
| -6 | 6 onwards | 100 gold | 50 gold |
As you can see, the formula requires a bit of calculation, at least, for the actual kills. Assist formulas are pretty straightforward, so hopefully, this table made it a bit easier for you to understand. Fun fact: the in-game announcements start at the 3rd consecutive kill, and start with Killing Spree all the way to Legendary on the 8th kill.
Abusing the System: Easy Assists
Earlier we talked about a way to take advantage of the system. We’ve also established that gold you get from assists is nothing to scoff at. Now let’s look at easy ways to make assists, especially when you know you can’t – or more specifically, SHOULD NOT – take the kill. For that, let’s establish what counts as an assist.
Let’s establish the rules. Generally speaking, an assist requires you to have hit the enemy champion within 10 seconds from his or her death. That’s the simple explanation. However, a secondary is in place, specifically for champions who help in ways other than hitting. The following counts as an assist:
- Inflicting some kind of crowd control to the enemy champion. Everything is fair game except the cripple and blind status. Teemo’s Blinding Dart counts, not because of the blind, but because of the damage.
- Damage over time skills like Singed’s Poison Trail count from the last tick, so DoT spells and attacks work well for scenarios where you have to dart in and out of a fight.
- Revealing an enemy champion. However, this doesn’t work if the enemy champion was already revealed.
- Enchanting your ally through supporting actions like buffs, heals, and shields.
As you can see, there are several ways to do it. The easiest to abuse would be the last one on the list. Let me explain. When an opponent is too far away and you are unable to reach for an assist, an option could be to buff your ally who is in range with a heal or shield. It doesn’t matter if your ally has full HP. You heard that right. It still counts. Area of effect and global skills work wonders as well. Spammable spells also contribute to your assist count.
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Final Thoughts
At the start of the article, I was hoping that by the end of it, we would all gain a newfound appreciation for how useful assists are. For me at least, I’ve certainly accomplished that goal. It might not be as flashy as actual kills, but it definitely adds up as the game progresses. The level and gold advantage you get from it is especially impactful in the early game. Oftentimes we take little things like these for granted, but hopefully, this has helped you learn a bit more about this underrated aspect of League!
