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PSA: Surrender Is An Option. It Is Not The Only Option

Xonra··7 votes·669 views

Surrender is NOT there for you to be pouty at 20 minutes because you died twice and the jungler "won't come help you" because you are pushed up all laning phase dying to enemy ganks.

Surrender is NOT there for you to threaten people with "surrender or I afk" when you don't like the champion they picked.

Surrender is however there for when you are about 20 kills, 4 towers, and every objectives on the map down, but refuse to "give up" even after someone rage quits and the enemy has taken down all the inhibs.

An obviously lost game (not a close game, or some kills down at 20, I'm mean like all objectives and double to triple your kills) game is a good time to surrender. Raging because you can't handle dying twice in 20 minutes is not a good use of Surrender. People need to learn when not to give up and when to call it a game and try for the next.

There is no shame in surrendering, and there is nothing wrong with having a bad laning phase and letting your team carry you if necessary, or play for the team fights and objective game (or split pushing). You aren't going to suddenly get a shot at joining TSM because you never surrender. You also aren't going to get into the LCS by giving up at 10 minutes in and pouting.

Surrender -option- is there for a reason. Use it, but don't use it as a threat because you can't handle losing.

5 Comments

LuluInWonderland2 votes

Just re-iterating some points that others have made in the past...

  1. Don't surrender below ~mid-gold elo unless it's a complete landslide or you're down a player (afk/dc/etc.). People don't take advantage of being ahead very well until at least gold, if not plat.

  2. Take team comps into consideration. This kind of goes with #1 since many players below that elo don't fully understand team comps and power spikes. If the other team has a super fed fizz/darious/etc., and ytou have wave clear, then you can generally play around that and stall the game until your vayne/ryze/azir/etc. can scale.

  3. Stalling out a game is a viable tactic to win instead of surrendering. Yeah, it may take an extra 20+ minutes and you may still lose. But it certainly takes less time than surrendering and playing another game with a ~50% win chance.

  4. Surrender is still only an option. Threats to afk/dc, or report or otherwise complain that x won't surrender does nothing to your benefit. It only makes things worse. If you try to surrender and it dies 1/4 or 2/4 a couple times - STOP. It's not going to happen on your terms so focus on winning...not how much longer until you can /ff again.

Admittedly, I don't surrender often. But I've won roughly 25% of the matches that I didn't surrender but most others wanted to surrender. 25% doesn't seem like much, but in only 100 matches with a 30% surrender rate, that's 8 more wins...from merely just playing a game from behind. That roughly equates (in ranked terms) to ~180 LP. That's almost 2 divisions in elo higher in only 100 matches. I can guarantee that you lose 100% of the matches where you do surrender.

Edit: Wow...my math above is way off. I completely neglected (doh!) the loss of LP from losing. So...double the LP gain to ~360.

Xonra3 votes

{quoted}

Just re-iterating some points that others have made in the past...

  1. Don't surrender below ~mid-gold elo unless it's a complete landslide or you're down a player (afk/dc/etc.). People don't take advantage of being ahead very well until at least gold, if not plat.

I don't agree with this simply because while people say the whole "It is Bronze, they will throw" it is just as likely people are already giving up and not even trying to win. Or the fact that they are likely that far behind for a reason. Don't give up if it is close, but don't force people to play out a game that you have no business playing out because "I won this 4v5 once 2 years ago.". It just puts people on tilt and they aren't going to try to carry if they are ready to surrender and move on.

  1. Take team comps into consideration. This kind of goes with #1 since many players below that elo don't fully understand team comps and power spikes. If the other team has a super fed fizz/darious/etc., and ytou have wave clear, then you can generally play around that and stall the game until your vayne/ryze/azir/etc. can scale.

No team comp is going to matter if you have no dragons, enemy has Rift Herald, you have 1 turret to 4-5, and you are losing every team fight. There comes a time when "late game comp" doesn't matter, when you are clearly not going to make it to late game in shape for the late game to matter. If they are controlling all the objectives, then they are basically balancing out the late game comp anyways with all those dragon buffs and are most assuredly ahead in gold. Not advocating giving up, but it grinds my gears when people refuse to ever surrender a clearly lost game because of reasons that sound good in a vaccuum, but not to the game at hand.

  1. Stalling out a game is a viable tactic to win instead of surrendering. Yeah, it may take an extra 20+ minutes and you may still lose. But it certainly takes less time than surrendering and playing another game with a ~50% win chance.

Yes and no. It isn't that simple.

If you have low wave clear, you aren't stalling anything

If you are losing all of the objectives, they are simply further snowballing.

5 strangers aren't going to be coordinated enough to "stall" even as high as diamond I've found at times, because everyone has a different idea of "Stalling". Be it farming, just "defending at tower" or what have you. That works for pros, but when an enemy takes all the map and you don't even have wards out, you aren't stalling to win, you are just stalling the loss, and that is just as bad and frustrating as giving up a game you could realistically come back in.

  1. Surrender is still only an option. Threats to afk/dc, or report or otherwise complain that x won't surrender does nothing to your benefit. It only makes things worse. If you try to surrender and it dies 1/4 or 2/4 a couple times - STOP. It's not going to happen on your terms so focus on winning...not how much longer until you can /ff again.

Pretty much on the nose

Admittedly, I don't surrender often. But I've won roughly 25% of the matches that I didn't surrender but most others wanted to surrender. 25% doesn't seem like much, but in only 100 matches with a 30% surrender rate, that's 8 more wins...from merely just playing a game from behind. That roughly equates (in ranked terms) to ~180 LP. That's almost 2 divisions in elo higher in only 100 matches. I can guarantee that you lose 100% of the matches where you do surrender.

I don't like surrendering more than anyone else, but there is a time and place for it. I think it is the problem that most people refuse to surrender even when the game is very clearly over. I only have so much time to play in a day, and I'd rather get another game in, then sit for another 15 minutes because 2 people "never give up" like they are being scouted by a pro team. I would say I've probably won closer to 15% instead of 25% of games I wouldn't surrender, but if I personally am even or ahead, I won't surrender, because I know I can carry. I admit I am less likely to keep going if I am far behind because of the fact I don't trust other people to carry all the time, and that is on me and I will be the worst to call myself out on it.

Edit: Wow...my math above is way off. I completely neglected (doh!) the loss of LP from losing. So...double the LP gain to ~360.

LuluInWonderland1 votes

{quoted}

I don't agree with this simply because while people say the whole "It is Bronze, they will throw" it is just as likely people are already giving up and not even trying to win. Or the fact that they are likely that far behind for a reason. Don't give up if it is close, but don't force people to play out a game that you have no business playing out because "I won this 4v5 once 2 years ago.". It just puts people on tilt and they aren't going to try to carry if they are ready to surrender and move on.

I'm not actually saying never surrender in low elo. Just that the chance of a game being thrown is far, far higher. I spectate a lot of games (probably a few thousand in the past couple years alone) from low bronze through master and higher (plus LCS and such). I've seen way, way too many matches change large leads (5k+ gold) back and forth in the same match for no good reason below gold. It happens everywhere, but dang...it happens more often than people think or realize. I would easily say it happens (when somebody doesn't afk/dc/int. feed/etc.) > 30% of the time. YMMV, but it's a very real circumstance. People don't know how to close out a game and it stalls, somebody gets caught out at 35+ minutes in, etc. Anyway, the point is that you can/should still surrender at low elo if the circumstances merit it, but don't let a 5-8k loss in gold, x kills down, etc. be the sole reason for it.

No team comp is going to matter if you have no dragons, enemy has Rift Herald, you have 1 turret to 4-5, and you are losing every team fight. There comes a time when "late game comp" doesn't matter, when you are clearly not going to make it to late game in shape for the late game to matter. If they are controlling all the objectives, then they are basically balancing out the late game comp anyways with all those dragon buffs and are most assuredly ahead in gold. Not advocating giving up, but it grinds my gears when people refuse to ever surrender a clearly lost game because of reasons that sound good in a vaccuum, but not to the game at hand.

Absolutely...assuming you can make a proper determination of getting to late game being actually feasible. Honestly, many people don't. As I noted in my original post, it depends on the circumstances. Being down 3 dragons isn't the end of the game. A fed Darius/Fizz/etc. probably isn't going to lose a match if you let it play out. One fed champ...especially an early or mid game champ like those, aren't game-ending. That said, a fed top, mid, and bot lane is probably time to call it quits even with a vayne, azir, etc. A super fed late game champ w/o the team comp to blow them up, is a different story. As always...it depends.

Yes and no. It isn't that simple.

If you have low wave clear, you aren't stalling anything

If you are losing all of the objectives, they are simply further snowballing.

5 strangers aren't going to be coordinated enough to "stall" even as high as diamond I've found at times, because everyone has a different idea of "Stalling". Be it farming, just "defending at tower" or what have you. That works for pros, but when an enemy takes all the map and you don't even have wards out, you aren't stalling to win, you are just stalling the loss, and that is just as bad and frustrating as giving up a game you could realistically come back in.

Right...but then you messed up long before the game even started. Every team comp should have at least one strong wave clear champ..preferably 2 (in case 1 is killed). A good team comp needs at least 1 champ of each: 1) strong wave clear, 2) pick/engage/disengage, and 3) split push/dueling potential (this goes even for a comp not relying on split pushing to win!). If you don't have wave clear, then you will have a hard time stalling the game. If you don't have the ability to reliably disengage or get a pick (which easily stalls a game by 2+ minutes overall by itself), then you're in big trouble. So yeah....if you messed up and don't have the tools you need to stall the game and are behind, then it's time to ff.

I have to (partially) disagree with the "stangers" argument. By that logic, how do any (non-queued together) teams do wombo combos, split push, etc.? Being coordinated with friends certainly helps tremendously, but so does stepping up in chat to focus on how to properly stall the game.

Pretty much on the nose

Exactly, and seemed to be the main point of your post.

I don't like surrendering more than anyone else, but there is a time and place for it. I think it is the problem that most people refuse to surrender even when the game is very clearly over. I only have so much time to play in a day, and I'd rather get another game in, then sit for another 15 minutes because 2 people "never give up" like they are being scouted by a pro team. I would say I've probably won closer to 15% instead of 25% of games I wouldn't surrender, but if I personally am even or ahead, I won't surrender, because I know I can carry. I admit I am less likely to keep going if I am far behind because of the fact I don't trust other people to carry all the time, and that is on me and I will be the worst to call myself out on it.

Correct. That said, the issue is making the proper determination that "the game is very clearly over" differs from person to person. When it's just 1 laner that's way behind, their perspective much more often tends to be that it's clearly over because they fed X so hard and are now useless. Or because jg/whatever didn't help..or whatever other blame they place. You can feed sometimes....and you can rely on teammates to get carried sometimes too. That's how the game works. But people just need to step back and look at the game as a whole to determine if there's a real possibility of recovering or not. If not, time to /ff.

YMMV on the exact % that you win by not surrendering, sure. I generally play against high gold-plat players with my silver friends (solo queue is just a mess this season)...so I hear that game x is unwinnable much more often than it is actually the case. heck, my one friend gave up 12 kills to darius in lane and was raging pretty hard to /ff....but it was clear to me that we were still more likely to win based on the totality of the data (and recognizing that they didn't know how to capitalize on their advantage). We won nearly exactly at the time I called in chat. Anyway, this isn't mean to be a "see?! It's still possible to win any match!" example. It's just to illustrate that there's much more to it than just gold, kills, turrets, dragons/barons, etc. It's really about stepping away from how bad things look right now and making a good determination of if the game is winnable or not. That takes time to develop that skill. So if it's still feasible to win, try it. If it's only getting worse, then it's probably time to call it quits.

Even with 15%, that's around 5 more win instead of loss, which is about 2 divisions of elo. Not bad. XD

Xonra2 votes

First, just wanted to say thanks for responding and not taking what I responded with personally. Too many people go straight for the insult instead of just debating the points.

With that being said:

" Anyway, the point is that you can/should still surrender at low elo if the circumstances merit it, but don't let a 5-8k loss in gold, x kills down, etc. be the sole reason for it."

Fully agree.

Pretty much agree with the second point as well

"Right...but then you messed up long before the game even started. "

Correct and agreed.

" Every team comp should have at least one strong wave clear champ"

But not every player is going to want to be the "waveclear guy" when they would prefer to play...I dunno...Zed or Maokai or Cait, or whatever champ that they'd prefer to play instead of say, Ziggs, Lissandra, or Sivir and so on. Once you are in game you can only control you, and rarely do people look at comp as much as they go "what champ counters the enemy" and don't think past that.

You can know going in what is optimal, but that doesn't mean your teammates are thinking the same thing.

If I am first pick, I just have to go with what isn't easily countered, and can be picked around well. The problem is, if I pick Rumble (I play a lot of Rumble top) I can't then control the jungle Yi, adc Cait with a support Ali, and a mid LB. At that point we have a terrible comp with some awkward scaling, and little to no waveclear realistically, let alone pushing power. I know you disagree with the strangers point, but in ranked, you have to look at your situation first, because you can't control what the other 4 are doing.

When you start focusing on them, then you stop focusing on your play, and that is when the "well they are doing this wrong" start creeping in, or "if only we had more wave clear" and so on.

Nothing really to add to the last point as that was on the money.

LuluInWonderland1 votes

{quoted}

First, just wanted to say thanks for responding and not taking what I responded with personally. Too many people go straight for the insult instead of just debating the points.

Thanks to you as well. I'd love to continue, but I'm calling it a night. Good chat, and best of luck on the rift.

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