Following Your Instincts: When Is It Okay to Ignore a Teammate?

So I'm pretty sure you all know what baiting is. But there's a second form of baiting that occurs when you follow your teammate into a fight then you both get wrecked. Most summoners would blame the teammate who was in the lead and say something along the lines of "omg thanks for baiting me" or "deff not helping you again." In my opinion, if you followed your teammate into a fight that you were probably going to lose, or into a part of the map that the enemy controls and you have no vision it is your own fault that you got baited.

You could have just let Ezreal facecheck, get Thresh hooked and jumped by Kha. Or you could have hand delivered the blue buff you have to Kha as well, making him a very satisfied and very dominant grasshopper.

I have two examples on both sides of the bait. I was jungling as Wukong, I had just finished my blue and was headed over to my red. I walked over to my red and stepped on a Nidalee trap. Apparently Nid had taken bushwhack at level 1 and was hoping to catch me out. I told our Olaf (I was on purple side, so top was closest) that Lee might come for me. And come for me he did. I started red, ducked out and warded the red bush when the vision wore off and waited for Lee. When Lee came, Good Guy Olaf slowed him, backed off, and let me take first blood. The enemy team miscalculated because Nid never came for me. Lee let himself get put into a 2v1 situation and when their top showed up I was already back at wolves. This was effectively a situation where we had better communication than the enemy team and we came out ahead because of it. We all managed to get so fed the other team surrendered at 23 minutes. When you help the jungler, because of his role, he is able to spread his wealth and high level throughout all the lanes. It would have been easy for Olaf to execute Lee with his E, take blue (why'd you start blue, Lee?) and try to beat the living troll out of Trundle. But he didn't. He instinctively knew that if I got first blood, I'd be able to help Caitlyn and Ahri much more effectively.

In the second example, I was playing as mid lane Nidalee (Midalee, if you will) against Zed. Our Blitz got first blooded and immediately went "wtf Rammus" even though Rammus was at his wraiths and was level 3. Blitz kept going for a bit and I calmly told him to cool it. He told me I wasn't roaming and helping the team and that I was only getting farm. At higher levels, Zed is a strong pusher and I couldn't go down to roam or my tower would get taken. So I waited for Drake to come up so we could start a teamfight. We came out 3 kills for 0 and got Dragon. I said gj to everyone, went back to lane, and Rammus gave me blue. A few minutes later another fight broke out in the upper river. It was Garen and Nocturne versus our Gangplank and Rammus. Without any pings, I went up, landed my Q on Garen, and went into cougar form on Nocturne for the double kill. Even though our Blitz was semi-toxic he restrained himself enough to not swear at us and Rammus and I didn't respond to him. Their bot lane still won because when Blitz hooked, Jinx could snare and slow for the lockdown kill. After the lane phase, I knew that Zed would be out looking for blood, so I made a point to stay near Jinx and Blitz so Zed couldn't burst her down. Zed killed Jinx only once when she and Blitz were split pushing. The other two times I healed Jinx, went into cougar form, bursted Zed down and used Zhonyas when Zed went to ult me.

We ended up dominating that game and I went 10/1 to Zed's 9/10. Maybe it was because i was so focused on my lane that I didn't have the time to respond or maybe it was that it had been a long day and I had no emotional stamina to get into another argument with a teammate. I don't know. Sometimes it's good to not respond to a toxic teammate because sometimes despite their whining they're really only talking to themselves and won't be responsive. And sometimes your lane hasn't been frozen so you can't head down to bot lane and attempt to catch Karma out. It's okay to follow your instincts and recognize when a teammate's call is bad so long as you don't tell them they're stupid or making a bad call. Honestly, so much of League comes down to simply having good communication with your teammates and knowing when to delete that toxic message you're about to put into all chat.