Having a bad game?

Having A Bad Game? Here's What You Can Do

In League of Legends, there are various skillsets that can and will influence your winrate and ability to climb the rank ladder. You can climb the ladder by being a mechanically skilled player, by having great knowledge in the game, or by being a leader and micromanaging your team to victory with the right calls. However, sometimes there are some things are just aren't in your control. Even if you possess all of the above skills, you can run into a bad game. For some reason, you just can't seem to perform. You're not getting the picks, you're making all the wrong calls, you just can't seem to do anything. Everyone will get a game like this every now and then. This is when another essential skill for dealing with bad games comes into play -- Controlling your emotions and knowing how to get carried.

We've all had these games where everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. You all-in your opponent and he survives with a sliver of health, while his jungler comes from the only path that isn't warded, or you make a small mechanical error at the early stages of laning that causes a huge snowball effect that ends up with you not being able to show your face anywhere near the minions without getting slaughtered (this is actually really common if you're a top laner). Shit happens, you know?

Bad games will happen to everyone

You need to understand that bad games can happen to anyone, regardless of skill, and this can happen because of many reasons. Maybe you lost the last couple of games and you're badly tilted now, or your first mistake made you so frustrated that you're not thinking objectively anymore. Whatever happened, if you're in one of these games, one thing should be clear in your mind: you're not going to be able to carry this game anymore, so get a grip and let your team mates do the heavy lifting.

Learning to take control of your emotions when a game starts to get out of control is a very useful skill to have. It will take some practice before you are able to master this skill, but it's definitely essential to helping you come back into the game when things aren't going too well. All you need to do is take deep breaths, accept that mistakes were made, or your opponent got lucky, and move on.

Getting carried or relying more on your team is also another hard concept to grasp because it messes with your ego. Most people think that they are too good for this mentality, and that if they can't carry, they're going to lose. This is definitely true if you're in a game where every single person on your team is doing badly. However, there are games where you're getting absolutely shat on, but your team is actually in a decent position to still carry you to victory. You just need to learn to let it happen.

Help yourself, by helping your team

The first thing you need to do is to accept that mistakes were made. For example, if you've already died twice in lane, you're definitely super far behind your lane opponent. What most people would do is to keep trying to take trades and asking their jungler to gank for them. This is wrong, and definitely won't improve your chances of winning. What you should be doing is telling your jungler "Hey, my lane is done for. If you come, and we get counter ganked, there's a high chance we're both gonna die. Go and help the winning lanes instead". Of course, if nobody is winning their lanes then you guys are probably f**ked, anyway.

What you don't want to be doing is, making a bad situation even worse. Don't go for risky trades, don't let your team mates waste resources on bailing you out from your sinking ship, don't do things that you would normally do when you're playing an even matchup or winning matchup. You need to accept that you're having a bad game, you're not in a position to carry the game anymore, so you need to change the way you're playing.

Channel your inner support

Let's just say you're laning up top with Nautilus or Trundle. You're pretty far behind in terms of levels and gold. Which means you're not really doing damage. You can't tank that effectively now. What can you do to help your team? As a Nautilus or Trundle, you will always have CC and utility, so instead of providing a front-line tank for your team (which would probably take a lot more gold and items), you will provide peel and protection for your carries instead. Stay close to your backline and wait for the enemy bruisers or assasins to go for your carries, then help them by using your CC/utility to peel for them. That's how you can still contribute while being behind.

What if you're playing a champion without CC? Like Tryndamere or Master Yi, for example. Assuming that split pushing isn't an option, or they are shutting down your split push attempts. What can you do during a team fight? You're not bursting down the enemy carries fast enough since you don't do enough damage, or you die way too fast even when you go in with your tanks. Here's what you can do - stay with your backline. Again, try to keep a safer position during team fights and dish out safe damage to the enemies that are trying to go after your carries. Most people wouldn't be expecting this, and would very likely overextend, thinking that your carries would be easy pickings.

These are 2 very specific examples, and they wouldn't apply to every situation. The lesson here is that you need to adapt. If you're able to put your ego aside and learn to adapt to different situations, you will definitely find yourself winning more games, even the games where you're not performing so well.

Don't be an ass

This shouldn't even be a thing to follow only if you're having a bad game. Always follow this rule if you want to win more games. Don't start blaming your team or certain team mates just because you're not having a very good time. Even if it really was their fault that caused you to lose some CS, or your lane, for that matter. Flaming/blaming doesn't help anyone win games.

Don't be stubborn. If your team is trying to do something, even if you think it's the wrong call. Either voice out your opinion or just tag along with them. Chances are, even if it's a bad call, the fact that you sticking with your team might help them to win a team fight if just one of your opponents decides he rather have 10 CS over winning a team fight. 5 people doing the wrong thing together will always be better than 5 people doing the right thing separately.

Don't give your team mates any more reason to tilt or complain. If you're already behind in lane, and you keep dying over and over, it's going to affect the morale of your team, and this will definitely affect your chances of winning, so here's what you're gonna do -- DON'T DIE. You're probably thinking now, "Oh wow, great Korean advice, but it's not like I choose to die". Actually, most of the time, you do. Think about it. I'm sure you once went for that minion when you were 50% sure that the enemy jungler was camping in the bush, or when you were low on health. I'm sure you also went for some risky tower-dive play because you wanted to get the kill and "get back into the game". The list goes on forever. You need to learn to just lose those minions, lose the experience, get zoned, and even lose your turret if need be. Losing any one of those things are better alternatives to dying, because when you die, you lose all of them anyway.

Remember, you're here to win and climb the ladder, so if by being an all-around nice dude is going to help you win games, it would be a good idea to do just that.

Conclusively

IF you can adapt to the situations presented to you, control your emotions, learn to accept that mistakes were made, and be a nicer/better team mate, you won't have to lose every game that's going super badly for you. Of course, you're still going to lose. Even the best Challenger players rarely have over a 60% win ratio (unless they're Faker or it's a new smurf account). The whole point is, limiting your losses by taking control of bad situations and making the best out of them. If you're on tilt, you might want to take a break from playing. Remember that it's just a game, any kind of addiction is bad, so try to balance your life out!

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