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Tips to Keep Calm?

Drunk Rummate·11/10/2014, 3:57:47 PM·4 votes·1,023 views

Okay going to start this off with a long story (you've been warned) and how I dealt with it.

Last night I had a pretty bad experience in the second to last game I played. I was mid Zyra with a Lee Sin Jungle, Lucian ADC, Xerath Support, and Riven Top. http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1625545011/45565234

The game started out with Lee Sin trying to level 2 gank my lane (a Lux). She managed to get to her tower and Lee landed his Q. Naturally he went in, got binded, and died to the turret while I sat in the middle of the wave trying to make sure I didn't miss CS since his gank had already clearly failed in my brain. So Lux had red buff at level 2 and a gold and experience advantage. Even after all of this I was able to do really well in lane (Zyra is good against Lux and I was able to dodge most of her skills and harass effectively) until I notice Lee is invading their jungle top and fighting with Rammus. I go over to help, so does Lux (naturally). Lee and Rammus trade kills, but Rammus gets a taunt on me and I die to Lux. So now Lux is 2-0-1 with blue buff and a refreshed red buff and I'm 0-1-1 with a chalice.

I think to myself "I can manage this, Zyra is good against Lux" so I buy 2 stealth wards and immediately go to the river to ward (because it's Rammus and you can't just ward the close bushes or you die). As I'm walking back into lane, Rammus somehow managed to sneak into one of the lane bushes (on Drake side) taunts me, I get comboed by Lux and die instantly.

So I'm upset now, but to make matters worse Lee takes this point to say something snarky. I don't remember exactly but it was something like "wtf Zyra." While I'm dead he walks into my lane, smites the cannon and kills the caster minions before leaving despite a couple caution pings from me. This causes my wave to push towards Lux's turret and she freezes it so I'm unable to CS very safely.

Here is where I made my first mistake. When Lee says "wtf Zyra" I respond with "what did you expect after dying level 2 and level 3 in my lane." I shouldn't have said anything here, and it came back to bite me when Lee poorly shoved my lane and left me hanging out to dry against a Rammus jungle. At this point I recognize that I'm on tilt because of this lee. I haven't been playing particularly bad, but it's definitely impacted my decisionmaking a little.

Later on I notice Lee fighting Rammus in the river again. I leave lane to help him, gangplank shows up, Rammus taunts me and I die. Lee gets out. At this point I'm worth a lot less gold than him so it was probably worth it.

I notice Riven is doing well top. My wave is shoved and bot lane just killed thresh. Riven is shoving to turret so I cycle my way top to potentially dive their gangplank for a kill. I get there and the wave shoved at the perfect time. Riven and I both go in, I ult, GP flashes it and Riven kills him. Then Rammus and Lux both show up and start chasing us. Riven dies and I make it to our turret, but despite dodging the Rammus I still die in the dive.

So now I'm 0-5 with 2 or 3 assists. Other than getting caught once while warding, each death has been an attempt to help a teammate. Despite this I've managed to take the mid turret due to Zyra's waveclear and poke being better than Lux. At some point later on I find myself mid with Lee and Xerath and we're trying to take the inner turret. Xerath is positioned by the purple side wraiths and rammus is under turret defending. I'm just doing my best to poke with plants and auto the turret down. At this point Lee decides that Rammus is low enough to go in, so he lands his Q, ward hops behind and pulls a beautiful Insec. Kicking Rammus directly into me. The 0-5-3 Zyra. Rammus taunts me, Lux shows up with homeguards and binds me, and Ezreal ults me. Lee and Xerath run away unscathed after finishing off Rammus.

I ask Lee in chat "why did you kick Rammus into me?"

I guess that was just the tipping point for him because he decided to really go off on me. So much so that our Xerath who had been quiet all game said a few words. I said something along the lines of "it was just a simple question" but that just fueled his fire. Anyways, after Xerath spoke I recognized I was on tilt. So I muted Lee and decided to take a deep breath, buckle down and try. Up to this point I don't think I was playing a bad game. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time... several times. It led to me having a bad score, but I had really solid objective control, we still had our mid tower and they were missing an inner mid. After I changed my attitude I managed to rack up 10 kills and win a couple of clutch fights almost single handed. We went on to win and I did almost 66k damage, over twice as much as everyone else on my team except Riven who did 36k.

So, thanks for sticking through the story, here comes the actual reason for telling it. I'll label it for people who don't want to read:

TL;DR How do you control your emotions when you're having a bad game that you feel isn't wholly, or even remotely your fault? How do you deal with people like this Lee Sin? Personally even muting the guy didn't help me. I was on tilt already from the words he said. I'll admit that they stung. I thought I was playing a pretty good game despite my score and anyone watching my champion may have thought the same.

Thanks -Nasreth

16 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar11/10/2014, 8:49:48 PM5 votes

Just focus on your own game. It's never a good idea to ask questions like that to your teammates (the "why did you kick Rammus into me" really wasn't gonna help). I find that the less I focus on my teammates mistakes, the better. You can ping your teammates, but criticizing their strats in chat is almost always taken negatively.

IMO, you should mute sooner, and think about what you can do to play better. For instance, it sounds like you went to river to ward when you had no vision on Rammus. In future games, you should think about that risk. Even though you say losing wasn't your fault, and I agree, there are still ALWAYS things you can improve. By focusing on those things in yourself instead of in your teammates, you can reduce the likelihood of toxicity in your own games.

ValyrianBlade11/10/2014, 4:31:27 PM3 votes

You can't control any other player in a game, not even your teammates. Also, unless you're playing at plat+, you probably can't depend on your teammate to make the move you think they should make (either because there isn't trust between you to both commit, or because one of you doesn't know the full capabilities of either their ally or their enemy or both).

I say this because it's important to realize when your score is bad because your playing poorly or when your score is bad for a different reason. It's also vital to see this on teammates as well.

I recently played a game (normals as I'm not quite 30 yet) where I was jungle and the mid laner complained about 5k ping at 1:40. She dc'ed and reconnected a few times, by the time she got to Lane their swain was level 5 with free farm. I was hecarim so there really wasn't much I could do against him in Lane (so I just jungled and rotated to Lane when it reached tower). One LeBlanc connected I tried to camp mid to protect her to farm and ended up dying to swain (definitely my misplay) but otherwise was playing well. LeBlanc was playing surprisingly well despite being behind. Our top laner was winning easily. Our bot Lane was feeding badly, but or vayne had good cs (so I assumed the support was the reason they were losing). Swain also rotated bot a few times for kills and got fairly fed, and when he rotated top for a kill she complained "fed swain, bot and mid you give me cancer" (I probably avoided ridicule because just 1 minute earlier I pinged their rengar going up from my ward near red buff and followed him top to countergank securing a double kill for her and then taking the turret with her).

Anyways, my point is our top laner didn't care about circumstances of why we were in this situation, she was only thinking her and I would need to carry. I was thinking we had a good mid laner that needed to catch up and a good adc (who also happened to be a hyper carry) that just needed to get out of laning phase. I spent a lot of time mid helping LeBlanc farm safely and netting her a few kills, and once laning phase ended I engaged a few times with my ult knowing I would die but that vayne would clean up 2+ kills. By the end of the game LeBlanc was able to do her job (burst down their fed adc) and vayne had the most gold in the game (even more than our fed top laner due to cs) so she was able to handle the fed swain while I engaged and tanked. By recognizing certain players were good but just had external issues, I was able to help them get to where they could carry the game.

This is getting long but I hope this helps. If you're playing badly, build defensive and try not to hurt your team (stay back, play passive). You're not going to carry, so make yourself as light as possible to be carried. If your score is bad but you're playing well, you just need to keep playing. Of course decisions will differ by scenario but with some help from a teammate who recognizes you're not just a bad player, you can still make huge contributions to your team winning the game. By focusing on what you've done right and that you can still help, it should allow you to stay calm and not start to tilt.

Of course, being happy in life and taking breaks from league are important as well ;)

RuGu11/10/2014, 8:43:20 PM2 votes

Don't play ranked on the weekends, during the summer, during winter / Christmas, or near the end / beginning of the season.

Smooth Crimiñal11/10/2014, 8:20:49 PM1 votes

What I do is I just mute anyone who shows any signs of negativity. When he said "Wdf Zyra" I'd would have already been thinking of muting him. I give people only 2 strikes before I mute them.

tortellini11/10/2014, 4:09:04 PM1 votes

My best recommendation is to use the mute button for people who get under your skin (which I'm glad to see you did with Lee Sin) and remember everyone makes mistakes and bad games will sometimes happen. By doing so you will remember to try to have fun, and not put as much pressure on yourself.

Drunk Rummate11/10/2014, 9:21:33 PM1 votes

thanks for all the advice and kind words everyone. sorry i didn't respond to you all personally, but I did read everything.

i find it amusing that people think that our community is generally toxic because it clearly isn't other than the few bad apples you will occasionally run into.

AetherKingdom11/10/2014, 4:37:06 PM1 votes

Best way to keep calm. as soon as the game starts put in all chat " everyone except me is a huge faglord" mute everyone

Fickle Genie11/10/2014, 7:29:19 PM1 votes

I start singing some silly music to myself. Like the Benny Hill theme or something. It really adds an element to comedy to the game.