Dear 1300 ELO players and fellow non-pros,

We have a problem. I know, you’ve been trying your hardest. You’ve been picking the champions you see the pros picking. You’ve been begging your last-pick teammates to please just play support. But you’ve also been complaining about your team not having CV. You’ve been complaining that your teammates don’t ward. You’ve been complaining when you see anything that doesn’t look familiar from one of those 2200 ELO streams you watch on a daily basis.

I’m going to give it to you as straight as I possibly can: You are not a pro. I know this is hard to hear. I know it’s just your teammates getting you down. I know it’s the noobs feeding that are keeping you in the 1300s. Nevertheless, you are still not a pro. You are a 1300 ELO player, and that means a few things.

First, you don’t have to do everything the pros do. The pros play the game a certain way because they are experienced, skilled, consistent players. They make very few mistakes. They select team compositions based on their lack of mistake-making. They choose team comps based on their intimate knowledge of one another’s playstyles. Even when they don’t seem to be communicating, they are counting on their teammates based on thousands of games of experience. You don’t have that luxury. You need to go in to every game with the goal of giving your teammates as much information as possible. You need to choose champions you can personally succeed with.

Just so we’re clear, support + ranged AD is not the only combination of champions that can be successful in a lane. Champions with high damage and crowd control can effectively shut out a support and AD. No buts. I don’t care that you only see support + AD on streams. You aren’t a 2200 ELO streamer. You are a 1300 ELO player. You are playing against 1300 ELO players. They will make plenty of mistakes, I promise.

Second, we all need to stop acting like we can pinpoint exactly what went wrong in every game. I’m guilty of this, too. Each game has mountains of data that will lead you to often faulty conclusions about the reasons for winning and losing. Granted, it’s not a good sign if your mid has 50 creep kills at the 20 minute mark, but if you haven’t been controlling dragon, if you haven’t been aggressive in your lanes, if you haven’t been helping out in teamfights, well, it’s not just your mid’s fault. League of Legends is a very fragmented game with several different phases and each champion performs differently at every stage of the game. Giving up two kills at level 1 is not the end of the world. Hopefully it will encourage more careful behavior for the next ten minutes, but the game is still winnable.

Third and lastly, try banning champions that are extremely forgiving over the course of the game, not champions that require a high level of skill. Ban Morgana. Why? Because she gets a free farm for one button press. Ban Irelia. Why? Because she has a crazy kit that allows her to survive her mistakes. Stop banning Fiddlesticks. Very few people play him and even fewer know what they’re doing. Stop banning Kassadin. Most Kass players at our level miss their Force Pulse at least 25 percent of the time. Stop banning Gangplank. He’s extremely soft for the first 12-15 levels of the game. Force your opponents to play champions that suffer when they make mistakes.

I want to repair our relationship, I really do. If we continue down our present course, though, I can’t see a future for you and I.

Sincerely,

The Wiggin Boy

I’ve had a couple particularly bad games recently, mostly thanks to unapologetic trolls or unbearable wannabe pros. In a couple games I’ve tried to be a force of change, asking my teammates to not be so negative, but for the most part I prefer to just drop everyone on ignore and be done with it.

It seems the community attitude, at least the worst of it, has been wearing on the Rioters lately as well. Guinsoo recently tweeted that he was sad to Irelia do well in a test game after he had nerfed her. The community jumped all over that, hoping to stave off a harsher nerf. Guinsoo replied as pictured above:

And you guys wonder why we don’t post here?

All I did was say that it made me sad that she can do this. There are so many overreactions and hyperbole here it’s not even funny.

Good day.

It’s not surprising that he feels that way – I’d imagine any company with as much public interaction as most game developers have feel less than warm toward their customers from time to time. It is surprising that he would come out and say it on the forums. I see it as a pretty clear sign that the community is in bad shape, and it’s not the only evidence, either. The formation of leagues like the Runeterra In House League also point to the fact that players are unhappy with the queue experience and want a higher quality play experience.

I’m hoping that last part will help drive some change in the community. It’s tiresome to play with trolls and know-it-alls, and even more so when the forums around the game don’t offer any relief.