League of Legends players who actively play ranked matches share a common desire to earn a more prestigious border than the one that they earned the season before. Players queue up for game after game, hoping to be matched with a team of 4 other players with a similar skill level, and perhaps more importantly, positive attitudes. On a virtual battlefield masked behind summoner names, it’s not uncommon to be held hostage in a 40 minutes game. Your desire to win breaks with each condescending comment made towards you by this stranger playing the jungle role. Eventually it becomes clear that you really aren’t on the same team. This Shyvanna has turned your focus off of your teams win conditions, and on to your in-game insecurities. It’s at this point that you lose all hope and become considerably less effective at playing League of Legends.
Learning how to maintain your sanity has become a game mechanic for regular players. There are a couple ways to deal with friendly fire; diffuse, ignore, or mute. Diffusing is the riskiest option and forces you to be the bigger person. Often times responding to not-so-constructive criticism with a genuine apology can show weakness. Trolls feed on weakness. Ignoring can be effective against tilted team mates who are having a rough day, but will prove difficult against true trolls. Most sane human beings can shrug off a couple negative comments, but I don’t think the Dalai Lama himself could survive 37 minutes of spammed MIA pings and all chat slander. Muting prevents you from reading anymore hate, but for some reason, does not stop the spammed pings from going through.
Pro tip: If someone is spam pinging you and it’s really bad, turn “ping volume” in your sound settings all the way down. It might be a good idea to tell your other teammates so they can type “mia” and “otw bot” to communicate with you.
The first episode in the legend of DoTot: an ongoing series of videos showcasing League of Legends streamers imaqtpie and IWillDominate being trolled. There are currently 20 minutes worth of content featuring DoTot on imaqtpie’s YouTube channel.
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League of Legends streamers imaqtpie and IWillDominate recently endured playing a long series of consecutive games with the now infamous DoTot. DoTot is an intentional feeder. You have probably played with a dozen players like DoTot. DoTot essentially forces players to dodge champion select once they see his name on their team, or forfeit additional LP and time by playing out the game. Imaqtpie and IWillDominate were matched with DoTot somewhere around 6+ games in a row, something more common in high ELO where there is a smaller player base. Luckily for the duo, they are streamers who can convert the unfortunate event into entertainment, and then profit from that entertainment. The average LCS pro would have lost a day of practice.
The reality is that trolls have a lot of power in League of Legends. We have mid lane Zeds rage quitting won games because they didn’t get the second blue buff. Jungle Fiddlesticks’ throwing away a lead because a team mate provided feedback on their build. Smurfs who have a negative win rate demanding their role, “or else”. Playing in ranked queues is like navigating a mine field. One bad joke gone wrong can trigger a team mate into abandoning your team.
Pro tip: It only costs 3LP to dodge a ranked game. That’s 6 times less than the typical -18LP you’ll be charged playing out a game with a disco Nunu.
As of right now, there isn’t a fail safe way for the average player to deal with trolls. Thankfully the number of relatively “normal” people playing the game out number those who just want to watch the world burn.
As long as you don’t get sucked into the black hole of negativity, you’ll be fine. Choose to ignore, or mute, your trolls and do your best to salvage the game.
