A few easy pointers to stay calm in games.

Hi there boards!

I used to be an EXTREMELY toxic player. I'd flame over the slightest thing. A gank failed? Flame. Toplane died? Flame. Jungle isn't ganking. Hard flame. My team loses a fight? Even harder flame. I received numerous punishments, and for the right reasons.

However, I'm happy to say that I've reformed, recognized that how I was acting was wrong, and have changed my ways, and now I try my very best to remain positive and inspire my team in my games, even when we're losing and everyone is tilted. In the words of Olleh: "If you are nice to your team, they will be nice to you. The time that we play together is short, but why should I spend that time on being negative to other people, when I can spend that time praising them instead?"

Now, onto a few tips that might help you when games get heated!

1. Mute people who are flaming, or who seem tilted. This might seem obvious, but I know from experience that if someone is flaming or trash talking me, I'm very likely to start flaming them back. Just mute them, and ignore them. They're most likely trying to grab your attention and trying to make you quip back at them.

2. It's just a video game. I recently had an EXTREMELY tilting game, where my support Thresh decided to run it down mid, but not before constantly going botlane to last hit my farm, effectively delaying my powerspike and making me useless against Draven. I was very, very tempted to flame the living shit out of him, but then I thought, "What's really going to happen if we lose? If I flame him, I'll be the one getting punished. By flaming, we'll never win." So I simply kept my cool, and played the game through, and we actually won! I reported him after the game of course, but sadly he seems to still be playing, despite his behavior.

3. Hit ESC.

Type what you want to say in chat, but instead of hitting enter, hit esc. That way your message doesn't send, but you still get it out. Alternatively, say it out loud! I find that cursing my teammates out for being boosted monkeys out loud instead of in chat helps even more than flaming them in chat.

4. Take frequent breaks!

I used to play League for 8 hours straight every day, only taking very occasional breaks to use the bathroom. And that certainly made me prone to tilting, especially during a loss streak. If you're tilted, then not only will you play worse, but you might take it out on your team too. Take a break! Have some food, a cup of tea, maybe watch some Netflix. Take a run, work on that project you've been procrastinating. Afterwards, you'll feel refreshed and hopefully go into game with a good mindset!

5. Stay positive!

Praise your team when they get a kill! Instead of saying "top stop feeding", you could say, "top, RIven is really strong. It'd be a good idea to play safe." Think of it this way: the enemy team doesn't have twice as many kills as you, they only have five more. Reassure your team! If they make a bad play, say "mb". Calling them out on their bad play is just going to tilt them more.

I hope this was of help to somebody! Sincerely, a reformed Silver 2 player trying their hardest to reform :)