There are no easy answers to this question. There are too many different factors that help generate the saltiness that one finds in LoL. However, I can offer a few suggestions and observations.
- in general anything that can be taken as criticism is dangerous as you could end up with a very salty response.
LoL may be a "game", but there are a lot of people who take very seriously. Many of these people want to believe they are the best in the world, so criticism is taken poorly if its accepted at all.
a) my related advice is to never offer criticism during the game. No matter how poorly your teammate is playing suck it up and just play your game.
- Defending yourself from criticism almost always starts a flame war.
It's the flip side of point number 1. Remember that too many players here think they are the greatest ever and if you tell them that their unsolicited advice is unwelcome they often get unhinged and start berating you more.
a) my advice is to say at most: "I'm sorry" or "My bad" and then don't respond if someone starts criticizing. You won't win the flame war if you do argue, and often the one arguing in the one reported. (I have ended up reporting the one who uses all chat to say "report X for flaming me" more than once.)
- Remember that many LoL players are not exactly well adjusted socially in real life.
This might not make sense at first, but the way I look at it is to picture that the person screaming at me is probably someone who's seen the bottom of too many trashcans during school lunches. After all someone who is social and popular probably isn't going to spend hours staring at a computer screen and beating up on a set of pixels.
a) This means that you run into people who don't know how to resolve differences in a friendly manner. You have to be the "big man" and just take the abuse as you'll never win if you try to argue them to your side.
- Another warning is that there are some LoL Players who enjoy getting other players in trouble. They will deliberately troll in order to get you to stay something reportable.
a) The only way to avoid this is to ignore someone who tries to bait you into an argument, of course, it can be hard to tell if its a bait, or if they are honest. The easiest solution is to not talk unless necessary.
As you can probably tell my main suggestion is to keep your conversations in chat to things like lane declaration and champ suggestions in the pre-game and then game related facts. Things like "dragon in 30 seconds" or "We're being pushed, can we get a gank?" Don't be negative and never name a teammate directly except when congratulating them or saying "nj". It won't eliminate the anger, but it will make it difficult for anyone to direct it at you and you'll find that your games go more smoothly.