Confessions of A Reformed Rager; What's "Pro"

I recently read an article by an unnamed reformed player that resonated with me, so I wanted to share my story, too.

Let me start by putting it all out there. This isn't my first account, my first account (genocidealive) was straight up banned. The account I have now is under chat restriction, for the same reasons the first one had problems: allcaps raging. That said, since the chat restrictions first started (however many months ago), I learned a lot about myself and my behavior.

At first, and largely overall, I never really cared about my behavior. I didn't really mean most of it, and my ragefits were generally meant in good humor. I never said anything crazy to teammates (racism, "Kill yourself", "I hope your family dies", "Get cancer", etc.) but I wasn't above letting the profanity-laced insults fly. I often laughed about it, and I had a girlfriend at the time who also thought it was pretty funny. Obviously, I'm not excusing the insults, but rather attempting to give insight to my mindset.

Two things really brought about change for me: the permanent ban of my original account, which I didn't contest in any way, and I suddenly decided that I needed to get out of Bronze. These two things put together did something to me that I hadn't experienced before: a desire to seriously look at myself, my play, and what I was doing wrong. Why does this matter? Because up until this point, I firmly believe I would never have reformed; bans, restrictions, etc. had no effect on me. I felt my chastising other players was "leadership" and having a strong personality and commanding presence was what was required to win games.

But once I did start to do research, I realized I needed to pay more attention to the flow of the game. I did. I stopped worrying about getting the best KDA and started worrying about making good plays. It didn't help much. I was still in B1. I was flabberghasted--literally stuck in "ELO hell". These morons couldn't be taught, pros don't have these problems! They have competent teammates that listen and teamplay. I'd seen plenty of pro games, they were NOTHING like the ones I was playing.

Destitute, I decided to watch some pro streams (Scarra, shoutout!) and realized a HUGE difference between their play and mine: compared to me, their energy level was almost TRANQUIL. In most competitive sports, intensity is a gigantic part of winning. In the 20th and 30th ruck of a game, you have to find a way to keep reaching down and pulling up more energy. I realized I was bringing that intensity to my games, and more often than not, it would result in me typing something like orders of magnitude more than the average Challenger-level player. And it was not producing good results; some people would AFK or begin to antagonize me in game. Why wasn't Riot banning these jerks?

At one point I just realized: I'm simply not being a professional. Cam Newton got in a fair amount of hot water in his first pro game because he was throwing a hissy fit on the sideline while the Panthers were being beaten. There was a ton of media backlash as they remonstrated him for his lack of professionalism, and lack of leadership. When I realized I'm being unprofessional (and I'm older than Cam Newton), I realized I needed to DRASTICALLY alter the way I play in order to achieve. I also realized I wasn't being much of a leader; I was simply spouting the first critical things that came to mind. I was Cam Newton, raging and dissing the people around me because things weren't going my way.

This triggered perhaps the most important changes of my LoL play (in the past 6 mos or so). I stopped caring about early kills, because I realized a very important point: early game mistakes can be painful, but the game flow changes drastically over the course of 30 minutes. Lee Sin might be completely dominating Nasus with ganks and be 3-1-3 early game, but if Nasus keeps his head in the game and farms well while we continually gank down their mid, it is a no-brainer win for us. This helped me realize that kills in general happen when they happen, and you might be able to give someone a pointer, but more than likely they'll just argue and assume you're blaming them. Better to simply focus on your own play, in every single way.

This became my mantra in a lot of ways. So mid is doing poorly, fine. How am I doing? Can I help? So top is doing poorly, fine. How am I doing? Can I help? I attribute a lot of this to playing jungle, because you have to understand the flow of the game in the jungle moreso than anywhere else. You learn to enable your team, instead of trying to be the carry-all badass. Mid Zed? OK, I have to take Fiddle for AP. Mid Yasuo? OK I'll take Sej for AP & Knockup. Someone took jungle, OK I'll take Malp top. Playing one role isn't a crime, but most people in higher ELOs kind of roll their eyes when someone says "ELO hell" discovering you can only play one role. Being adaptable and a team player is the most important contribution you can bring to the team.

"I'm so sick of hearing that, I'm a team player". Lip service to team play is not enough. Look at game summary afterwards. Who had most wards? Second? Third? When I play, I am invariably first or second most wards bought. Why? Because if I have any change, it goes to wards. Take pride in those wards saving someone, even if it's not you. A pink can last ALL. GAME. if you place it conservatively and provides vision the entire time! That is invaluable, even if nobody notices but you (your ladder rank notices). Are you playing a fighter that could be tankier for utility? Are you playing tanky or are you going full DPS? Are you screening for your squishies or are you chasing that support kill for gold/KDR? Chasing is probably one of the easiest low ELO player traits to spot--if they burn their Flash, good job. Now back out and back to work; like a professional.

And like a professional, you have to learn to recognize your priorities. At any given time a jungler needs to be checking for ganks, counterganks, farm, and timers. ADC needs to be counting CS, denying, and watching for zoning / ganks. On and on. Do you really have the time to park by a tower (or ye gods, in lane) and start bickering? If you die, is the first thing you do is to type something like "YOU SHOULD HAVE..." or is it thinking to yourself "What did I screw up there, and how will I catch up / get back in it?" I discovered sometimes the answer is "farm better", "watch ganks", "take advantage"...and sometimes the answer is "buy wards and help someone else that is on the edge of snowballing". And that is the true key between a professional and a Bronze...the ability to recognize that you have fallen short, and your best contribution to the team is to simply enable someone else to the best of your ability.

Lastly, if you're a baseball fan you know what a "heckler" is. Someone who sits in the stands and shouts insults at players as they stand on the field. The entire idea is to get in their head, and get them off their game. This is a decided advantage for the home team, who will sport the most hecklers. They can cause errors, if they are disruptive enough. Make players drop balls, screw up throws or pickups. Don't be the heckler; if you make some pointless diss when someone screws up, all you're doing is creating an opportunity for them to make them preoccupied with their mistake. If you have to type, type what to do to fix it AND DROP IT. A lot of errors in league are the result of a complex series of events, there isn't really time to rehash every little back-and-forth without sacrificing what you should be doing to catch up.

If someone attacks you when you make a mistake, try to put aside your feelings and see if there's a real point there. Apologize if you fucked up and move on. If you're being heckled, MUTE THEM. Do not at any point TRY to defend yourself. More often than not, this person will delight in your response, and it will only get worse. This is so key. Today I had two people take turns harassing me, telling me from 0:00 that they were going to report me, enjoy the reports, etc. After getting ganked mid 3x and asking for a countergank / gank from our Lee Sin, and being told all kinds of excuses, he never came. But then he started telling me to "type" etc. He was intentionally throwing the game and trying to get me to get upset and respond. I muted him and from others' chat I could tell he continued abusing me all game long ("report this guy", "you expect the impossible", etc). It felt awful, but I realized quickly how miserable these players were--they were me 6 months ago. I was in my Gold 4 promos, and I was less obnoxious than they were. And that felt good.

What can you do in these situations? Nothing. This is something that a ton of players run into all the time, and have all kinds of things to say about. But the the fact is, you won't win every game. Period. Even if you play perfectly. That's OK. There will be another game. There will be another opportunity. You can hope that your other lanes will benefit from the constant mid pressure, but if they don't...well, that's how games are lost. And that's OK. That's probably one of the most important things William taught me from his streams--even though he doesn't know the difference between "turn radius" and "understeer". :D He taught me that you win, and you lose, and this isn't the LCS. And that helped me climb in the ladder, a lot. Focus on yourself, and learn the metrics for a successful role. Then worry about others--and how you can help them, like a professional.