We’ve all experienced those long losing streaks that send us into a whirlwind of anger and frustration, otherwise infamously known as tilt. When you play while tilted you dramatically affect your quality of gameplay. You diminish your ability to make good decisions. You become short-sighted and get tunnel vision. In the most extreme cases, you give up and either choose to purposefully go against what your team strategy in order to stunt your team or you just feed the enemy team so they end the game and put you out of your misery. Ultimately, when you play tilted you lose LP.

So how can we stay so serene and calm when your mid laner goes 0/8 in the first five minutes of the game?

Before we start

First off, know that everyone everywhere gets tilted, and the unfortunate truth is that there really isn’t any way to always avoid tilt. That would be like trying to always avoid being sad. While some people have particularly high demeanors, we all have our downswings. More over keep in mind that tilting in a game generally comes from the fact that you actually care about the game. If you didn’t care it wouldn’t matter, so getting tilted is a sign of you caring about your own performance (which is a good thing). So let's get into what to do once you are tilted.

One you're tilted, take a break

Like I said before, playing tilted does not help you, your team, or (perhaps most importantly) your LP. So the first thing to do when you find yourself tilted is take a break. Sometimes, after an exceptionally tilting loss, I personally find myself desperately trying to get one win, so I may “take a break” from ranking by playing a few normal games. Ultimately, even if you do win in a normal, you haven’t really alleviated your tilt, you’ve only really sedated it. So if you go from a ranked game, into normals, straight back to ranked, you will quickly find yourself back where you started.

So when you take a break, actually take a break. Take yourself away from the game. This can obviously mean many things. You can go on Facebook for a while, go on a walk, talk to your family/friends/roommates, or even play a different game that you don’t really care about. The goal is to take your mind off the game and focus on something else. You’re trying to restart your mind, of sorts, and get into a normal way of thinking so that you are clear and level headed when you start playing again.

Once you've calmed down, keep your cool

So what do you do now? Once you’ve done what you need to to get your mind in the right place, how do you keep it there? While tilting is inevitable, it can be delayed. In other words, yes at some point you will get frustrated and tilt, but that doesn’t mean single game needs to tilt you off the face of the Earth.

Keeping the right type of mindset while playing is so incredibly important. While everyone wishes that they could win every single game, we all know we won’t. So it is important not to put any specific weight on any one game. I am not saying to stop caring all together. You should always care about the games you play, that’s how you improve, but always remember as long as you have a positive win rate (50+%) then you will rise. It may not be at the fastest rate ever and you may lose a few promo series, but your dedication and improvement will put you higher on the Elo ladder.

One of the worst ways to put yourself in a position to tilt is this idea, “Listen team, I will carry us, just do literally everything I say and give me all the kills and all the buffs and we win.” The problem with this way of thinking is that League of Legends is a team game. Yes, that’s cliche but it is the truth. There are many very talented people in the League community, and you may find yourself able to take your team on your back and do very well. But ultimately you cannot function this way on the Rift. It is simply not how the game is played.

Any professional or high Elo player will tell you, team work beats out talent any day. Rotating, getting objectives, allocating resources, focusing, peeling, grouping; these are all things that go into the success of any team. If you try to 1v9, you’re not doing these things.

Not only is it important to play as a team, it’s important to work together as a team. By that I mean, unless you’re a five or four-man premade group, you’re going into a ranked game with three or four complete strangers. This means that you have five players coming from different backgrounds with different strategies, different insights, and different plans of how to win. So you have to combine all of these things together to be successful as a team. Even if you are right most of the time, if your team is unwilling or unable to execute your so-called “perfect plan,” it will fail.

Team synergy is one of the most important aspects of playing League. So flaming for whatever reason (even if you feel it’s justified), defying your team’s choices, and calling out people’s mistakes maliciously are all methods of failure. So respect the rest of your team, try to see their point of views, and do your best to work together as a team. This will help you avoid tilt because you will be more flexible and not be so hot and bothered when the game doesn’t go exactly the way you “know” it should go.

One last technique to help you stay tilted free is always keep in mind that you can improve in this game. There is always something you can do to improve, so look at every single game as a learning experience. I don’t care who you are, from GrildCHZ to Faker, there’s something you could have done better.

Always go back and reflect on old games. Think about your CS and if it could have been better, or what you should have done to make some of those teamfights better, or maybe how you could have positioned or warded better so you didn’t get caught out so many times. Maybe you should have rotated sooner or maybe you should have played slower. Even in your best games you can improve something. It may not be a lot, but if you’re always getting better then you will raise your LP and your rank.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to avoid tilting. No one specific statement can blanket everyone and just magically calm you down so you can have better games. So try a few things out, experiment, and find out what works for you. League of Legends is a team game, but ultimately you share your rank with no one. It’s your responsibility to improve and to rise. Do what you have to do to stay and remain calm and serene. If you have any great tips about staying tilt-free, don’t forget to comment below.

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