It’s Saturday, and you’re pumped. You’ve been climbing your way up the ladder and are now only 1 win away from reaching your promos. All the essentials have been obtained: snacks, drinks, music, and something new on Netflix to watch during queue times. You have everything you need to finally make that promotion a reality.
Game 1 has you on the wrong end of a stomp. Game 2 finds your team with a significant lead early on, but a mid-game team fight gives your opponents a lead they never give back. In Game 3 you’re on your off-role, which you haven’t played in forever, and get completely outclassed in the 1v1 lane match-up.
Needless to say the night isn’t going as planned. What started as a potential promotion series has turned into a decent sized drop in LP. You could have played better, but these games aren’t necessarily your fault. There are so many variables out of your control in League of Legends, sometimes your fate is a losing streak.
Overcoming Your Impulse to Spam Games
It’s extremely difficult to remain calm and collected after the series of events mentioned above. Keeping your cool while dealing with so many consecutive undesired outcomes is a difficult skill to master. Unless you’ve molded yourself into a zen master who can accrue losses without impacting your mental state, you should probably just take more breaks.
Have you ever queued up for a game, decided you didn’t really want to play another game, and then the queue popped? Did you accept or deny the fresh game? Of course you accepted it. It’s hard to rule over your impulses and quit playing when you’re not really not as focused on the game as you’d like to be. When you’re trying to reach a rank you’ve never reached before you need to be as focused as possible.
When to Take Breaks
As a general rule I believe you should take at least 5 minutes between each game you play to take stock of your needs. Food, drink, bathroom, etc. It can be easy to get sucked into the game and ignore your real life priorities. Taking 5 minutes also allows you to gather your thoughts on the recent game and clear your mind for the next one.
After a loss take a longer break. Losing sucks, even if you know it wasn’t really your fault. This fact alone (that is wasn’t your fault) is a common cause of tilt. It’s super easy to queue up game after game under sub-optimal conditions when you’re desperate for a win. We watch streamers on Twitch instantly queue up game after game for up to 10 hours straight! More power to you if you’re capable of that kind of grind, but most of us need to take more breaks.
Tilting is a major LP leak that is best avoided by taking more breaks. Spend at least 5 minutes in between try-hard ranked games to gather your thoughts and check in with yourself. This is an easy to implement LP hack that can make a big difference to how you enjoy the game.