Just like everything else in life, your journey to climbing the solo queue ladder in League Of Legends will never be a bed of roses. You will face many frustrations along the way: people AFKing in your games, people being auto-filled and playing terribly, and the enemy Level 7 mastery Yasuo flashing his emote every other second despite being hard carried by his team.

Back in Season 4, I was a hardstuck Bronze/Silver player struggling to climb and playing the game often made me feel frustrated, and I always wondered how high elo professional players managed to play for so many hours of solo queue in a row without feeling terribly tilted. I then chanced upon an article, which shared many useful tips regarding psychology which allowed me to jump from my humble rank then to the slightly more prestigious rank of Platinum 2. As such, I would like to share some of these tips with you and hopefully, this allows you to improve your play and your performance in games.

Before the Game

In solo queue, you generally do not want to spread your champion pool too thin because this will cause you to be extremely distracted and not play to the most optimal standard that you should. Stick to two champions each for your main role and your secondary role. Ideally, you would want to learn your main champion and another champion which counterpicks the champion that you main, just in case the enemy picks your champion. For example, if you are an Aatrox main and someone takes it away from you, learning how to play Kled helps you win the matchup.

You should also have the mentality that you will not always carry every game and sometimes, you would have to help your team set up the best winning condition. For example, if your ADC is the only one who is fed, even if you are playing a champion like Darius, you should try to peel for your ADC as much as you can.

Lastly, remind yourself before every game not to autopilot. Not thinking about the game during the game itself is detrimental and would drastically reduce your chances of winning. Knowing the game state at every phase of the game is vital to securing a victory.

During the Game

While this game is a team game, the best way to win is to actually focus on yourself and your own play instead of scrutinizing your teammates' plays. Just think about it this way: You will never be able to change the way your teammates play in solely one game and the only variable you can control is your own play. By focusing on what you do instead of what other people do, you will effectively be able to win more games.

For example, instead of thinking about your jungler going 0/7 when you are a top laner, think about how you can play your own lane instead: Is your win condition to farm up and get Trinity Force for a power spike so that you can fight over objectives? Or are you far ahead enough to punish the enemy top laner to balance out any advantages by the enemy bot lane/jungler?

Think about your role in the game constantly and play to the best of the ability. This way, the worst case scenario is that you leave the game knowing that you've done your best and played well and the best case scenario is to turn things around and secure a victory for your team

What Happens if I'm Losing Really Hard and My Team Does Not Want to /ff?

If you are in a situation where you are "held hostage" by your team who does not want to /ff despite having super minions pushed into your base and your Nexus almost fully naked, this is what I do: Practise CSing.

This is extremely undervalued but having waves and waves of minions crashing into your face is the best opportunity for you to learn the fundamentals of how to last hit and kill creeps, especially if you are a new player. While the enemy team is having fun toying with your team, take this time to learn how to be a better CS machine and a better player so that when you go into the next game, you are prepared to crush the enemy team.

Why Should I Know When I'm Tilted, and How Do I Know That I Am Tilted after a Lost Game?

The natural instinct of most players after losing one game is that they want to play one more so that they can win. Notice how similar this mentality is to a gambler's mindset: The reason why most gamblers lose so much money in a row without stopping is because of the gambler's fallacy, where they believe that the more games they play, the more likely the probability of winning would increase to the figures they picture it to be.

In both League and Legends and gambling, this is obviously not true, because getting a win isn't just about trying and trying mindlessly: It is about being smart about things and knowing when to stop to maximize your LP gains. Hence, it is imperative to understand when you feel tilted.

Here is a checklist to recognise when you are tilted:

1) You start feeling frustrated.

As simple as this seems, it is often overlooked by most players because they refuse to admit their feelings of frustration over "just a game." It is understandable to feel annoyed after playing League of Legends, so having the ability to admit that you are annoyed and want to stop is actually a valuable skill.

2) You start doing things out of the ordinary in game.

For example, let's take that you play Janna and normally, you know the limits of Janna and play her well. You know that you have to utilize your tornadoes and slows to create distance from the enemy, and you know that you have to play more backline to prevent yourself from being one-shot. However, if you are tilted, your first instinct is to take it on the enemy and try to kill them to seek revenge. You might do strange things like "flash tornadoes" into 4 people or be excessively aggressive when you are not supposed to.

3) You start personally assaulting your teammates or the enemy team for no reason.

Even without anyone provoking you, you might start to talk bad about your teammates and personally take it out on them. An example of this is that instead of commenting on their gameplay (Eg. You should have TPed here, why did you flash into 5 people), you start throwing nasty insults at them relating to their appearance or other aspects, even if you have not met them in real life at all.

When any of these checkboxes are ticked, it is time for you to take a break and stop playing.

In conclusion, learning how to improve and be a better player is mostly attributed to the mindset you have while playing the game. Think about what you are supposed to do in the game, think about how to win the game and take every chance to improve at the game. Stop playing when you feel miserable and don't force yourself, because that is only a sign of you being tilted and you would get nothing out of playing any more games.

With that, I wish you the best of luck on the Rift!