I See People Complain About Being Punished for "Defending" Themselves

You see the issue isn't that you're defending yourself from someone flaming. It's not even that you're responding to them.

I learned that you cannot win a game if your team is tilted or arguing. You just can't, it won't happen unless you're already very ahead and typically toxic banter only happens from behind. Winning games from behind is possible, but only if everyone stays calm, level headed, and in the game.

Often times I see some ADC die and then blame the support or jungler and then they just go into an argument of who is or isn't trash. Jungler tries to justify their actions, ADC tries to justify their actions and they go at each other with no end until maybe someone else gets mad cuz that fed ADC ganks them. See "defending" yourself by attacking the person accusing you of being bad or simply going "No I'm good because, XYZ" or "No this happened because XYZ" doesn't deescalate the situation.

No, you just solidify that this is a situation that will lead to poor performance for the whole team. No one plays well when they're focused on fighting their own team. This is why you get punished, because you took the bait that lead to a poor game experience for everyone. It's not just that tilted ADC or jungler or what have you, your team has to see that shit and it will tilt them as well. It's already off putting enough that a bad play happened, why drag it on till the end of the game? Why make enemies of your teammates?

What the correct response is, is not to mute. I keep seeing people say "mute and all is fine." No, not all is fine. When you mute people, you lose information that might be handy at some point of the game. You cannot always expect your team to know where to go when you set a ping or what plays to do during what situation. When you are playing a game from behind, communication is CRUCIAL. But communication that is just arguing or never ending banter is not the kind of communication you need.

The focus should be to deescalate the situation.

I've found that doing this can completely turn around games with bad starts. Rather than trying to justify your skill or put down the person putting you down, focus on calming that person down. Say things like "my bad that was a bad play because XYZ," say things like "It's okay we can still win this if you do XYZ." Whoever messed up, knows they messed up. If they don't, tell them what happened. Because when a bad play happens, it happened. There's nothing you can do to undo the mistake. So you play as if the mistake happened and try to win.

When people are feeling down about the game or flaming eachother, if you aren't the one involved, rather than muting them, tell them what they need to know.

"We can't win if we don't play as a team" "Calm down, we can still win this game" "X buy X so that doesn't happen anymore" "If you guys keep fighting then you both will be the reason we lose" "Don't make this a free win for them" "We're all bad, but let's prove we're better than them" "I can't carry this game if you don't play as a team" "I need you to win this game"

Stuff like that. Because even if someone is playing shitty or in a bad match up, they're still a key component to winning the game. League is a team game, part of winning is working together. You can't win the game if someone is tilted and decides to lose. The person who gives up is the one who loses the game. So be someone who makes sure the game can be won and take responsibility for doing bad decisions rather than arguing about why your decision is not bad. I don't care how toxic that guy is, you have to make him your friend to play as a team.

If you stay level headed and deescalate problems while making sure you aren't who drags it on, people will play better for you. They will try to play better to impress you, they will listen to what you have to say, they might even thank you after the game. I believe full well that if you were banned for "defending" yourself, then it's your fault.