u/Caeiradeus

We really need to give a massive community update today. It's been a long month. We're currently at 2,100 members, which is huge considering our last 1,000 member update happened just 26 days ago. We sat here for years with less than 200 members, and we grew to 2,100 in less than a year.

We're seriously grateful to all of you for that. This community helped us get to this point, and we really couldn't do it without you. This post is about giving you guys the credit, not taking it from you.

This month was a really big month for our subreddit. We had some incredibly noteworthy events, and I want to cover them right here:

• The Azzapp & Nemesis Reactions: It started with u/LordAzazel_'s post criticizing Azzapp for his bias during a recent interview with Drew Levin and Riot Phroxz0n. That blew up, and both Azzapp himself as well as Nemesis reacted to it in a very fun way considering the "unfiltered" nature of our subreddit.
• Getting Real Answers from Riot: u/AAbattery444 created an expose gathering all the recent research on Riot's patents regarding Engagement Optimized Matchmaking. He broke down the legal realities of accountability and explained why the wording actually matters when addressing the topic publicly, all in one place. Drew Levin himself actually noticed and responded to the post. u/AAbattery444 followed up by asking him a comprehensive set of very specific questions, and he actually answered them in a very straightforward, honest, respectable, and informative way. He didn't dodge any of the specifics. He comprehensively and thoroughly denied the existence of "losers queue," which actually moved the needle forward on the conversations surrounding the use of Riot's patents beyond just guesses and conspiracy theories.
• A Visit from the Main Sub: A particular main sub moderator paid us a visit to "show our sub some love".

I chose to share these specific events because we are finally getting noticed by streamers, YouTubers, major developers, and even the main subreddit moderators. There are only 2,100 of us. We're up against main subs who have hundreds of thousands of members, but we're churning out content that gets more attention and actual results. It serves as an amazing proof of concept of the potential communities actually have when they stop pandering to PR machines. We pushed past all of the bullshit censorship that held this community back for years. We finally moved the needle forward on real, important topics of discussion like EOMM and put pressure on Riot to actually address the issues.

I know our subreddit has a little bit of a reputation now as having a few "schizo" members. I think that's important because we still love you guys anyway. We listen to everybody's community feedback and take everybody seriously because this subreddit is about transparency and freedom from censorship. We won't just ban topics or people just because we don't like them.

Moderating this space definitely brings some challenges, but the rewards are so much greater. Moderators all over make it seem like preventing toxicity is this hard job. The reality is that it's not. We haven't had to ban more than about 10 people over the course of the last year and none of them have been permanent. Our mod team spends time talking to, warning, and educating users instead. We try to lead by example to set the tone we want the community to have.

We definitely had a little bit of toxicity at first, but we're noticing a seriously impressive culture shift over time. Toxicity is going down by a hell of a lot. We just let people get it off their chests, and the community starts to detoxify itself. Nobody feels like they have to be loud, abrasive, or annoying just to be heard. People are slowly becoming less toxic because we trust you guys. We actually care about our community. We aren't paranoid that you're going to say some stupid shit that's going to make this place worse than it already is. This is League. For better or for worse, this is what we are.

What brings us hope is that this community isn't as toxic as people keep hyperbolizing it as. We see plenty of awesome content full of people having thoughtful discussions, helping each other, and connecting with coaches. There's so much potential here. I'm glad it's finally catching on, and we have nobody but you guys to thank for this.

We really trust our community. That's our mod philosophy here, and that's how it's going to stay. We have to strike a balance between cutting out the worst of the toxicity while still enabling freedom from censorship and free speech. It's a hard balance to follow, and we sure as hell have a lot of ideas on the horizon for how to structure our subreddit moving forward. But time and time again, this community continues to surprise us more than we ever dreamed.

Seriously, Thank you guys.

Phr0xzon will stop at nothing.

As much as we all like to be the main characters and as much as it feels good to absolutely stomp our lane opponent, I'm sure we all get super fucking pissed when we personally do well but still lose anyway.

For context, I'm an Adc main. So I'm biased. Feel free to call me a whiny bitch all you want. We kinda deserve it half the time. Especially Draven mains.

Jokes aside, I've been trying to be critical of my own gameplay and paying attention to win cons more, as well as the gameplay of my teammates and other people's op.gg's in this subreddit.

Maybe it's just me, but I keep noticing a specific pattern: everybody's greedy as fuck. And here's the thing: you're right to be that way. But league is also a team game and it's important to play like it's a team game.

I think my two biggest pieces of advice with this post involve a dialectical train of thought:

• a rising tide lifts all ships

• a chain is only as strong as its weakest link

I see a lot of people talk about wincons but they don't always seem to know what their wincons are. And I see this a lot myself particularly as an ADC main who plays hyperscaling late game carries like kai'sa and Jinx.

League is a toxic game with a toxic playerbase. We see it here in this sub all the time. The players in game are no different. Bit they're also human deep down (really deep. You actually have to dig unfortunately). What I mean by that is that mentality and carry potential matters.

You might have a 10/2 zed. And a 1/5 Irelia/yasuo/kai'sa/ Ashe/ (insert any hyperscaling champ here tbh.).

You'll see a lot of advice to "play for your wincons" or "play for yourself and mute all". But I think a lot of people don't really fully understand what that means.

The zed who went 10/2 is an early and mid game monster if he gets ahead. And clearly he's good enough to be independent on his own. There's very little need to actually put this player even further ahead. It's going to have diminishing returns later when the enemy kai'sa finishes zhonya's hourglass or the enemy cassiopeia, yasuo, or irelia get ahead.

The joke about yasuos hitting their 0/10 powerspike is ironic because the sarcasm is justified but there's also a bit of truth to every stereotype (unfortunately).

That feeder on your team might be toxic and mentally tilted off the face of the earth. And they might be somebody you want to jump off a cliff (in game of course). But at the same time, if they keep feeding, it's going to affect your game. Because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Unfortunately, you need that inting feeder toxic troll to help you.

But why are they toxic? The real answer is because they have low self esteem and gave up on themselves. They just just wanna "ff15, go next" because they have bad mental and perceive themselves to have already lost. So now they want to ff and go next just to repeat the cycle next game.

There are plenty of games as an ADC where I'm behind and I tell my team "just chill tf out and I promise I can win this for us in 15 minutes". And people doubt that statement harder than anything until they see me building kraken>rageblade>terminus>D&D>jaksho>rift maker with elixer of iron on kai'sa with 4k hp, 70k+ mixed damage and just as much hp tanked as our tanks (call this build troll all you want. It's OP as fuck actually but this post isn't about how to build, it's about mentality) and close out the game after going like 1/5 in the early game.

Conversely, there are games where I know I fucked up and I just try to stop the bleeding while trying to come back later and let the other carries do their jobs without trying to sabotage them.

As an emerald 3-4 player (here's my op.gg for reference since i know know people are inevitably going to ask anyway. Keep in mind I'm currently taking a break from the game but inevitably plan to return and continue my climb), i might not know a lot about the game yet but, as a licensed professional therapist, there's a lot I know about people and I try to use that knowledge to my advantage in my games, especially as an ADC main that solo queues exclusively because I want to be able to climb independently without relying on anyone else. I might not necessarily have the skills or the time to climb to Masters or above but I'm definitely going to try to push for it . But there's a lot I know about people.

The amounts of times that I have salvaged games simply by just stopping my own bleeding, recognizing who the Tilted players are on our team, and who is salvageable is staggering. In my opinion, as a therapist, I feel like 80% to 90% of players actually want to win deep down but just don't have the self-confidence or the patience to. People genuinely don't feel confident in themselves and just want to keep queuing up in games because they feel like it's more worth their time to go next and to keep playing with the same shitty mental than to just try hard the first time.

The flip side (and hopeful) aspect to this is that the mental of most players is actually extremely salvageable. Simply just giving them a kill, refraining from feeding, or just showing them that the game is winnable by trying to perform your best is usually enough to convince the feeders, soft inters, and quitters on your team to course correct themselves and to start trying. I think of this as "babysitting". It's a mentally taxing way to play and think about the game, but it works really well. If you just babysit and coddle these players' mentalities, it's usually enough to make them feel good about themselves enough for them to start actually trying to win again. That being said, doing so requires you to drop your ego and to stop playing like the main character when you need to stop playing as the main character. Conversely, to climb, you also need to know when you are the main character and when you need to be playing like one. This isn't about fake self-confidence or ego, this is about true self-confidence and earned self-respect. You need to know when you're the boss and start fucking acting like it. Bosses don't act like little bitches who flame their teammates. Bosses know when to fucking mute people, how to identify productive members of a team, and how to encourage everybody to work together and drag everybody across the finish line without complaining about it. If you lift up the moods and mentalities of your lowest performers, you're inevitably going to win more games.

Which brings me back to my main two points:

1. a rising tide lifts All Ships
2. the chain is only as strong as its weakest link

As an emerald 4 player , I still have a lot to grow as a player. But I do have an understanding of human psychology. I can assure you that, even if you don't believe it, 80 to 90% of those people you think are uncarriable are actually extremely carriable if you just stop pissing them off and give them some kind of Hope or Reason to Believe In themselves. You shouldn't have to act as their therapist or babysitter for people, I get that more than most of you. Because I know I don't want to be performing my job when I'm off the clock I know it's not fair. But just treating other people like human beings and focusing on yourself is definitely a viable strategy to improve as a player.

Feel free to Flame me for my rank as much as you want. I'd like to pretend that arguments stand on their own merits so, if you have any problems with what I'm saying , feel free to call me out.

Conversely, feel free to use this thread to share your own thoughts, advice, and feedback with me or any other players you feel like might benefit from it.