Winning With Words

Today I won a game I never should have, and it earned me a promotion. I was meant to fail that promotion due to that game. Here's how I turned it around, and here's how you can do the same.

I was top lane Tryndamere. I was against a retardedly over-aggressive Riven. However, each time she kamakazed, I'd accidentally go down with her. By the 6 minute mark we were both 2/2... but for some reason she scaled from the kill gold WAY faster than me. I returned to lane and got smeared faster than I could ult/flash. Then it happened two more times. Riven was 5/2.

I single handedly created a monster, and I failed to lose gracefully, which I previously blogged about. I fed the shit out of a riven. I threw the game.

Then my other two lanes lost badly. We got pushed into our base and lost all of our turrets. Surrender was initiated and 3 votes said yes. It was real bad.

The sort of things they were saying:

• "You're all f***** idiots"
• "Plz just surrender so I can get this loss over with"
• "F*** this team."
• "None of you are good at this game"
• "Please uninstall"

Then I won the game for us. I don't accept defeat.

I told my teammates that I'm a diamond smurf (which I'm not) and if they all just do what I say, we'll win. They listened, which happens surprisingly often.

The sort of things I was saying:

• "I can tell you're actually really good, you just got behind!"
• "Vayne - you lost lane but have insane high CS... you're clearly good enough to win"
• "I've won worse than this in diamond, trust me. Let's do this shit."
• "Rainbows!"
• "Sunshine!"

They called me liar and flamed me hard! .... but then they did exactly what I told them to do. Because they wanted to win. It always works that way.

I told them to:

1. Ward our jungle heavy
2. Eat our jungle until the opponent show up somewhere. 
3. 4 man defend that area without really engaging. 

I then split pushed. It worked. Within minutes all 3 lanes pushed against enemy turrets. My teammates got kills while defending because the opponents tried to force fights under turrets.

Then an amazing thing happened.... they started apologizing to each other. Like, genuine "man-I-never-should-have-said-that-about-you" apologies.

My team followed my every ping and went where I said. We never caught up in farm or level, but we never got aced and we always had vision/map/lane control. We dropped a couple turrets and the opponents surrendered. Why? They were toxic to each other.... just like my team had been in the beginning. The other team didn't have me in chat to keep things positive.


Split pushing is not what really won the match. I could write a whole blog just about split push technique, which is hard. What won the match was my positivity that re-engaged my team, turned us into friends, and then my leadership communication and pings to keep us effective.

I would estimate 10% of my ranked wins come directly from me cheering up a losing team. Compliment your teammates, make them your friends even when they're toxic. DON'T put your entire team on mute like most do. Yea, it's not a fun way to eek out wins, but it's worth the promotion.

Minor Tips on Team Fighting

Piggy-backing on yesterday's thorough breakdown on team fighting, here are some minor tips to aid you in fulfilling your role during team fights.

• Learn to play screen unlocked (press Y).
• Massively increases awareness
• Prevents bad engagement
• Helps you notice when you need to change target 
• If you need to stay screen locked during a fight to keep track of your character, at least play unlocked while the fight is being sniffed out, so that you can see the entire opposing team. Lock your screen after you engage.
• Play with colorblind mode on. This prevents losing track of your champion in melee. Your health bar will turn yellow. You'll pop out visually.
• While sniffing out a team fight, don't be afraid to ward directly between you and them, even in the dead center of a lane, to ensure you have vision on their back row.

How To Team Fight

Today's post is all about Draven, and about how damn good looking he is.

Wait, no it isn't. Sorry, Winternova!

Today we learn how to team fight. Indeed, that climactic mess of colors and movement generally decides the game, and so here we detangle the confusion and aim for perfection. Congratulations, you've hit the jackpot. Nestle in and grab a drink, this will help your game more than any post.

To begin, let's talk about roles. Note, I'm not talking lane positions. Riot assigned each champion a role from the following list.

• Assassin
• Fighter
• Mage
• Marksman
• Support
• Tank

You've seen these before, but may completely ignore them and choose instead to mentally categorize your champions as top/mid/jungle/adc/support. That's a very normal behavior in bronze through gold, since we have this convention of putting a fighter or tank on top and a mage in mid, etc etc. 

However, when we look at team fighting, we need to consider the champion's role from above rather than their laning position. For example, if you bring Lulu into the mid lane, you should probably team fight as a support (unless you get fed and build for carry). If you bring Leona in to the bottom lane, you should probably fight as a tank during team fight.

The Beginner Strategy

You may recall this strategy. Perhaps it still feels painfully familiar.

1. Right click nearest champion
2. Press all the keys 
3. Probably lose track of your champion entirely in the melee
4. Death or victory
5. If you're still alive, repeat.

Don't fret. There's hope.

The Bronze Strategy

You may already be familiar with this basic strategy: "Target the ADC! OMG NUBS TARGET TEH CARRY!!!1111"

That's actually a good start. Tanks die slow and aren't usually a threat. However, it can't be every man's goal. Not all the 5th graders should chase the soccer ball.

The LoL Cents Team Fight Strategy

Find your role below and do as advised.

Marksman (ADC)

If you built purely offensive items like most ADCs, you are the squishiest and also highest threat member of your team. Marksmen have less escapes than any role in the game. Look at Ashe, she has none. This means surviving is your #1 priority. Priority #2 is outputting damage, priority #3 is killing folks. Never compromise your first priority for your second or third.

Stay behind every single member of your team, all the way at the back, and always attack the nearest target. If the nearest target is the tank, so be it. It's better for total damage output over the course of the fight for you to attack the tank than to enter the fray like a moth into a flame. Besides, you built last whisper, right? You can cut that tank down better than anybody on your team.

Obviously if the nearest enemy is not a tank, that's better for you. And of course, if two targets are equidistant, select the squishier target until they flee. Don't chase. Stay back. Your #1 goal is survival and constant damage output. 

When an opponent crosses the fight to isolate and kill you, run. Somebody on your team should CC the person diving on you. This is called "peeling" because they peel the person off of you.

If nobody peels for you, CC the attacker yourself. If you know how to kite, or peel for yourself, for example by using a BORK, then do so. The best thing you can ask for is a squishy, threatening target from the opposing team diving on you but getting CCed so hard by others that they spend the entire team fight doing absolutely zero damage whilst you kite backward and roast them.

It's really important you understand what kiting is: As your champion walks, their attack speed timer counts down at the same rate as when standing still. This means you can move backward between auto attacks and still output the same damager per second. So, take a step back, then auto-attack, and repeat. If you have slower attack speed, you need to walk longer. If your opponent is slowed, you can put out damage this way without them catching up to you. This is why BORK is recommended for you, not for offense, but for defensive self-peeling while kiting.

Support
Some supports, such as thresh, are great for initiating a fight in a way that gives your team an initial advantage. If you are this type of support, do so, but ping beforehand so your teammates see it coming.

If you're not good for initiation (looking at you Soraka), wait until the team fight erupts.

In either case, your priority is protecting the ADC. Stand just in front of your ADC, blow your spells toward the fight, however save your best CC spell(s) to peel any carry that comes for your ADC. Sometimes this opponent carry will notice that your ADC is out of reach and switch to you... This is still an acceptable time to peel. Run the away from your ADC. Your ADC will likely switch to this person and kill them while you kite. Again the ideal situation is your carry auto-attacking the hell out of the opponent carry whilst they're stuck CCed chasing.

Assassin/Mage/Tank/Fighter

These roles must already know which opponent is the biggest threat. This is your target. Sometimes the opponent tank will become the biggest threat - such as a superfed Jarvan IV. Believe it or not, this means you attack the tank first. As a team. In solo queue, this is an awful situation because their biggest damage output is seriously tanky, and folks will ignore him and chase a supremely underfed and poorly played ADC, who is really inconsequential. Communicate ahead of time so you're not alone attacking the beast.

Also ensure you know the 2nd target, so that you don't get a determining kill and then throw the fight by switching to a trivial but tanky Leona.

Gap close on the opposing team's biggest threat. You have the simple goal of getting to them and killing them. Remember items/spells that cleanse if you get "peeled." Remember every CC item that will help you isolate that carry. Slow, stun, knock up, BORK, exhaust... whatever. When they're dead, choose the next biggest threat.

Don't use CC items on anybody except your target. Don't waste a BORK or an Exhaust spell on a support/tank (unless they're your target).

And of course - don't attempt to dive a target so out-of-reach that it's unrealistic. You'll give the opponent that ideal situation mentioned in the support role: you're so CCed and stuck that you do no damage while they roast you from back line. If you find yourself in that situation, use your escapes and re-engage once you're forgotten. If you have no escapes... target the lowest nearby healthbar before you die.

Tank
Make sure you enter the fight first. If nobody follows you'll melt fast, so ping your intentions ahead of time! 

Assassins
You are squishy and deal short bursty damage to their carry all at once and then find yourself a bit useless. Make sure you enter well after the tank. Don't initiate on your own unless you catch a valuable squishy target absolutely out of position and know you can secure the kill immediately.

Mages/Fighters
You usually have more CC than assassins. This makes you backup support. If there's no support in the fight (dead, other side of the map, none on your team to begin with) you should fulfill your normal role more cautiously while saving your CC ability to protect your ADC.

Fighter
Don't forget - if you built tanky and are the tankiest on the team, you should probably play like a tank.

Hope you enjoyed. 'til next time.

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.

Quit while you're ahead!

Continuing this week's theme of cognitive biases, today's bias is "opportunity" during a powerplay.

Powerplay is a term my team uses to describe a situation where you've killed more than 1 opponent on the opposing team; when you've earned a 5v0 or even 5v3 advantage for a short period of time. When the ace happens (or triple kill or whatever), the shotcaller immediately says "powerplay," announces the rez timer, and then an objective. Sometimes the powerplay is as simple as stealing a red buff after a double kill.

Today's bias occurs in low-mid competitive play (bronze and norms) but I've seen it even in silver players: when you've achieved the ace, you know to hit an objective, and in solo queues folks flock to a turret. However, I consistently see people stay because they won't let go of the emotion of solitude and opportunity at the turret. They're not watching rez timers. They won't let go of the feeling of being alone at the objective. They won't be happy hitting a turret to 50% and walking away.

3 tips to help you win games and overcome this bias:

1. Make it habit to check rez timers after EVERY double kill or higher (ace etc.)
2. If the rez timer is less than 20 seconds, make their jungle the objective. Clear, ward, and sweep their jungle. Now you've used the powerplay to steal their buffs, gain timers on their buffs, and most importantly, gain offensive vision advantage to "catch them out" as they return to their jungle. This is more valuable than a quick risky turret hit.
3. When at a powerplay objective, be it a turret or monster, leave if teammates give a danger ping. If your teammates make the mistake of leaving too early, you'd rather make that mistake with them than stick around by yourself and give up a death.

Cognitive Bias

Today I introduce a couple examples of cognitive biases in League of Legends. These are irrational errors in your thinking whilst in game, impacted by common natural emotions, which prevent you from being all that you can be. Fix this issue and seriously improve your game!

Today's cognitive bias: Investment.

After investing into "a good idea," don't allow that investment to influence you to pursue a bad idea when the scenario changes.

Example 1

You “catch somebody out.” They’re clearly alone in the jungle. You caught them and can kill them. Attacking them is the right idea. However, they run and successfully make it back to their jungle. You have no vision and no guarantees about who they’re running towards. Your teammates type "dont chase noob!11" as they always do.... but why do you chase?

You feel you've invested time, energy, cooldowns, and a significant portion of your own health bar into the attack. You've spent a lot on this attack, and it feels owed to you, by the universe, fate, buddha... Your mind is still calculating the odds of killing somebody caught out-of-position. You need to let go of the investment, continually recalculate, and cut your losses. Recognize when the odds of victory have shifted viciously.

Example 2

You pummel somebody during laning phase and they run under turret. Again, you feel invested, and in fear of losing that investment, chase them under turret. They use summoner spells, abilities, and items you hadn’t considered at all and killing them under turret becomes impossible. While pummeling them in lane was the right option, dying under turret is the wrong option, especially compared to farming copious last hits whilst the opponent recalls under their turret.

Here, the major cognitive bias is not only the investment, but especially that you feel the kill is owed to you; that you've done the right thing and it would be unjust if they get away. In this case, it's easy to let go of that bias by considering the 10 last hits you'll get while he's recalling, which are roughly equal to the gold you get for a kill, and come at no risk.

TL;DR

Let go of your investments, don't pursue emotional justice, and you will avoid situations that cost you defeat!