Unfortunately, the automated banning system means that Riot doesn't decide what bannable offenses are.
The players do, and a lot of players spam the report system for any reason whatsoever. I frequently get reported for "offensive language" in games where I say ABSOLUTELY NOTHING the entire game, including pre and post lobby.
Other "bannable" offenses the community frowns upon:
- Split pushing.
- Avoiding fights when the other team is fed.
- As a jungler, not being able to gank all three lanes at once.
- As a support, you better have a lot of kills, because assists don't count.
- Frontline tank, who is focused on protecting carrys? Better not take any damage, because if you die you will get reported.
- Defending your nexus turrets against superminions when the rest of the team wants to chase Ahri through an unwarded jungle.
- Losing the game.
I've found that i get report Notifications A LOT when I play Nasus for example. Nasus basically stacks his queue and split pushes all game, and though I will help my team in an emergency or a critically important objective, Nasus's job is to split push and force the enemy team to choose between dealing with him or dealing with the rest of his team. Most toxic players don't really understand strategy, they just run around the map trying to increase their kill score, regardless of what it costs the team. Then, when too much "kill chasing" ends up costing the team, they decide to just report the player with the lowest kill score.
I've also found assassins tend to be the most toxic players, as they don't respect their declining powerspikes as the game goes on. They just think "well I got a lot of kills in the early game, but now I can't kill the enemy tank since he's had 30 minutes to stack tank items, so it must be my team's fault".
So this is the situation right now, and unfortunately the deluge of "I got banned unjustly" threads by obviously toxic players are reducing the credibility of good, friendly players who are getting unjustly banned for ridiculous reasons.
Riot isn't doing anything much about it, although removing report categories like "unskilled" and "refusing to communicate" is a step in the right direction.
The only comforting thought is that this happens to most players in Solo Q if they lose a game. Eventually, enough players will get tired of getting griefed by false reports that Riot may fix it.
In the meantime, either queue with friends, or type "/mute all" at the beginning of Solo Q games. Right now, those are the only two ways to avoid getting banned by the toxic players who like to spam revenge reports when they lose. I would say the third way to avoid getting banned is to just win 100% of your games, but I've found that some players will report their teammates even if they won.
TL;DR - mute, never use the chatroom or just queue with friends. Everyone has the power to ban right now - the current report system is like Riot giving everyone a machine gun and hoping only "bad people" would get shot.
