League of Legends can be very frustrating. There can be days on which it seems to be impossible to get even a single victory. Sometimes it just doesn’t click, the flow doesn’t come; you get stuck and can’t get yourself out again. I always compare it with writer’s block. You end up staring at your screen, looking at what brought you to this point but with no explanation to what should happen next: No moves, no targets and no clue how to end this game or plot hole. This frustration originates in the constant competition that is the very nature of League. At every point in the game, on every other day and in every single match, you are trying to find out how good you really are. Though Riot implemented Tiers and Division to prevent fast climbing and falling, it still doesn’t give you safety in your spot, you constantly have to prove yourself inside the game. Your rank doesn’t mean anything if you are not able to perform in a match. You might tell yourself otherwise, but you know it to be true. On these devastating days you start doubting yourself and your abilities. Did you deserve to get to your current rank? Were you just lucky? Did you get carried? Not living up to your own expectations is a horrible feeling; you’d rather blame your teammates for the losses. This is where the problems start.

I’ll make it short: even if your team was to blame for a loss, your team is not an important factor over the span of several games because it is interchangeable, unlike yourself. If you happen to play with premades, well, that’s a different story. You might have heard about elo hell, teammates holding players back and similar rubbish. It’s just not the case and plain out wrong; there isn’t even a case to be made. If you constantly improve and belong to a different elo than you are in and if you are consistently performing on said level that is above your current rank, you will eventually get there.

How can you constantly improve and perform consistently? The solution is a carry mindset. Did you every suddenly catch yourself in bot or top lane at the 20 minute mark, no outer turret down yet, 3000 gold on your bank and nothing going on but farming back and forth between you and your opponent? Do you remember that 0/0/0 jungler with more farm than your mid laner who complained about his lanes after they all lost their inner turrets? Both of these scenarios stem from the same sickness that I can observe in many games of League: minigame possession. League of Legends consists of a ton of these minigames, like the laning phase, jungle farming or the infamous baron dance.

They all have a characteristic pattern that is repeated time and time again. For example, during the laning phase on bot lane this pattern is a constant pushing in from one side, while trying to last hit and poke, with the other side trying not to get poked and not to lose creeps to the tower. These patterns can actually be pretty intense and demand a lot of focus and concentration. Not paying attention to potential poke can very well end up with you losing the minigame, your tower, giving your opponent a gold lead and ultimately the game. The problem is that because of the intense nature of these patterns you can end up getting stuck only thinking about them and losing the grasp on the game. You start to forget about your mid lane and about neutral objectives. All you have in your mind is how to grow your cs-lead over your lane opponent and how to poke him down to potentially get a solo kill around 5 minutes, when his resources are drained and he finally makes a mistake.

You need to remind yourself of your win conditions constantly. There are always possible plays to be made, not even the best teams in the world are without mistakes and with every mistake there comes a potential for you to take advantage of the situation. In the former situation for example, where your enemy bot lane is repeatedly pushing you to your tower, you could try to place a ward inside a lane bush behind them or in the small bush towards the river – you can place this one over the wall from your tribush on purple side, on blue side you could just place it in the river over the big wall next to your tribush. Placing a ward behind your enemy allows your top laner to Teleport behind your enemy, setting up a potential double kill. Other possibilities are placing vision wards or sweeping away enemy vision to allow your jungler to make a play. Also, communicate this plan with your teammates. Tell your top laner where you placed your ward and in what pattern your opponents are pushing in the lane, so he knows how they're leaving themselves vulnerable to his play.

The important part is not this particular play; it is the mindset behind it. You need to have a fresh mind all the time. As soon as you start to fall for a pattern, you are not playing to win anymore because then you start losing the macro perspective of the game and don't realize how things are developing outside the minigame. Constantly remind yourself of the situation, what your win conditions are. A fed mid laner, maybe, or a well-farmed marksman. Try then to find ways how to complement these strengths and take advantage of them.

The second part of a carry mindset starts as soon as the game itself is over. It’s what you take from away from the things that happened during the match and what you instantly forget again. If the only thing you can get from a match is that a miserably failed gank by your jungler in the early game gave your enemy an advantage, you will not improve. You can’t change the plays your teammates made, what you can change is yourself and only yourself. Maybe you got killed not paying attention to the minimap, maybe you missed a lot of last hits and fell behind the item curve, maybe you didn’t roam in a game at all where you could have helped out your bot lane. Improvement comes with learning and learning comes from realising and fixing mistakes and trying out new things.

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