My First Temporary Ban: My Story

TL;DR this thread goes through my experience with Riot's punishment system.

As of this morning, I received an email from Riot, informing me that my account is being banned for two weeks. Let me be the first to admit that this ban is well deserved. Prior to this ban, I have received one warning, and two separate chat restrictions. The second restriction also came with a requirement to play 5 draft games before going back into ranked.

Every time I received a punishment, I went through the same process. At first I was extremely embarrassed by the fact that I had exhibited toxic behavior in game enough for Riot to acknowledge it. For a couple weeks, I would go into games with the goal to be extremely positive and refrain from any toxic behavior whatsoever. Each time though, I had a breaking point. This most recent time it was an ally in one of my games who spent the entire game singling me out. He was seeking a reaction and I gave him one, which only encouraged him to keep being toxic. Instead of taking a break and catching my breath, I went right back into ranked queues, performed poorly, and raged at teammates if they made any comment directed at me.

For me, the toxicity of he people I play with rubs off on me. And even though I had been reprimanded for toxic behavior before, it wasn't enough for me to stop it from happening again. This, being my first actual ban will hopefully change that. It's been only a few hours since I was first notified about my ban, and I have already convinced myself that I am going to come back to League with a new mindset. I am determined to be strong willed and ignore players who are being toxic to me or to my allies. I will worry about myself and my gameplay, and focus on self-improvement.

This ban came at a terrible time, as it means I will miss the entirety of the return of URF. I even bought the icons made for the mode. Also, I just bought a 20$ RP card last night so I could grab Battlecast Vel'Koz while he was on sale, and I'll be missing out on that as well.

Though these things are upsetting, I acknowledge that I have no one to blame but myself. Riot is an excellent company and I have supported them for years and will continue to do so. I plan on contacting support later today and see if they will go over my ban with me.

Edit: I got a reply from Riot today. They sent me one chat log from one game, and it only showed my messages. The most frustrating part? This was the game I referred to in the original post! I remember this game very clearly. I was playing adc as Corki and my mid laner was Katarina. He claimed to be smurfing and he was toxic to everyone on the team. I, however, was his favorite to pick on. The game was long and drawn out, but we ended up losing. Even looking at the chat log itself, the only "toxic" thing I said was: "Save yourself some brain cells and mute Kat." I later called this person the scum of the LoL community. Other than that though, I wasn't exactly toxic.

Kat's toxicity does not justify my own, and I acknowledge that. But doesn't Riot even consider the scenario? I sat through a solid 30 minutes of toxic speech from this Kat which was muted by almost everyone on both teams, and said one or two comments in response that could be considered "toxic" and I receive a ban for TWO WEEKS? I don't think my toxicity was extreme enough to deserve a two week ban, especially since it coincides with the long-awaited URF game mode.

I'm also somewhat irritated that they only provided one game as an example of my toxic behavior.

All things considered, I hold nothing against Riot for their decision to ban me temporarily. From now on I am just going to disregard chat altogether.