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How do you help keep your team's spirits up in close games?

JaFaR Ironclad·7/31/2014, 3:30:21 AM·1 votes·695 views

We've all been there. Those games (particularly ranked) where one or more of your lanes has been set back, and with the tension of the situation, a teammate gives in to stress or despair and calls "we lose gg", or worse, starts ranting at teammates, threatening to further drag allied morale down.

Sometimes you, too, are similarly dispirited, but refuse to vent it in chat (good job! This takes a lot of effort to resist!). But other times, you refuse to give in, and find a way to keep your team's spirit and focus elevated to fight back and, if not win, make a close loss of what could have been a blowout. Those games tend to make for the most memorable League experiences, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, or challenging a tenacious opponent all the way to the deciding team fight, to the point that even they admit that it was a harrowing victory.

How do you do it? Lets hear your methods and stories.

2 Comments

Sir ArmaMalum7/31/2014, 5:05:29 AM1 votes

My catch-all strategy for that is one that sounds simple but is in actuality very hard to pull off.

#Be a Leader

What I mean by that is to take command of the situation in a respectful, confident manner and start calling the shots. It's hard, very very hard, to do right. Especially if you're not doing well yourself. Your team has to have a modicum of confidence on your decision making, and you have to stay on top of everything. I don't mean micromanaging, you have to let your teammates play the game to win, but I mean keep the information coming.

Call the dangers when there is a real danger, keep the wards up on objectives, call the lanes that are pushing and give a broad battle-plan like "rotate bot, push the lane and group mid. We'll teamfight there and even if we lose they won't be able to take any objectives quick enough." Give your team a reason to listen to you, and more often than not thy start listening more and talking less.

This goes hand in hand with staying a positive or at least neutral player behaviorally as well. For the simple fact that i you're muted by even one person, you cannot direct them. Equally as important is being a mechanically sound player yourself. Not only do you have to simply be able to make good calls but you also will have a significantly easier time if you're the MVP or close to it. It shows you know what you're doing.

Here's a "quick" list of tips:

  • Don't get a superiority complex, just because you're trying to call the shots does not mean someone else won't have a better idea. It's yourjob to discern what the best plan is. That pan may not be yours.

  • Make sure the shot-calling is needed. Nobody likes a player that pings a thousand times or writes several paragraphs in chat about every step to take, Do this, and you'll probably see the rest of your team shine in their own moments of brilliance.

  • When first trying to 'take the reins' in a game ask don't order. It let's stubborn players (in my experience that's most of us, myself included) listen to you while still saving face.

  • If someone else is calling shots and you don't believe they're doing a good job, don't undermine them, work with them. I've found the best way to so that is give information based on what you wan to do. (i.e. he/she calls to group bot, but Baron will be up soon, tell him/her "Baron in X secs", not only are you not-so-subtly hinting at what you want to do, it also forces him/her to weigh the options, if he/she calls it wrong thenthey and the ret of the team may heed your word more)

Most of all though, admit your own mistakes, seriously, it's really easy and saves you from so much headache as well as saves your own standing partially because you've shown that you recognized what went wrong and by extension know what to do better next time around. An added benefit is that f anyone gets on your case after said confession then they're just doing that to be an ass. It's much ahrder to condone rude behavior towards someone who shows themselves as competent, which ironically admitting your mistakes does much better than sitting there silent or raging. It shows you're learning and gives them much less ammo.

This applies directly towards shot-calling as well, which is why I mention it. If you make a bad call, admit it. It takes pressure off anyone who may be singled out to be blamed (A jungler's and support's life sometimes).