The Final Bias

Today I conclude with the final emotional bias I plan to cover this week. That which claims the most deaths: anger.

This blog will yield one major and one minor point of improvement.

In General

When you're angry at an opponent, you want badly for them to lose. When you convince yourself there's a moral aspect to the conflict, perhaps because you're being flamed or you witness the player do something immoral in game, then your emotions dominate your ability to calculate a situation and determine whether to fight or flee.


Major Tip: Lose Gracefully
During the laning phase, recognize when you're beat. Here are indicators that you're beaten:

1. Your lane opponent chose a champion that counters yours, like rock-paper-scissors, and you're constantly taking hits.
2. Each time you "trade" with your lane opponent (do damage to each other) they're clearly doing more damage than you
3. Things seemed in your favor, you seemed to be playing better, but now he's killed you twice in a row.
4. You just feel like you're getting beaten up.

When you notice this, the worst thing you can do is try to fix it alone. Don't get mad and attempt to kill him. Calm down and stick to these tips:

• Recall when you're low on health, happily let him get ahead on level
• Buy your health potions
• Play passively
• Get as many last hits as possibly whilst just surviving the laning phase.

A couple deaths is fixable once you transition to mid/end game....But feeding 5 times in a row can grant irreversible power to the opponent during team fights.

Minor Tip: All Chat

A common emotional trigger that causes poor calculation, and thus feeding the opponent, is all chat. For example, you may be a black kid at his whit's end with racism, and you see racist comments in /all chat. Or maybe they just make fun of your build. I don't need to list examples, you've seen enough for yourself already. However, playing with /all chat turned off may save you an emotional trigger that leads to seriously bad judgement. Keeping /all chat off may save you a defeat or two in the long run.