The Solo Queue Mentality

Hi everyone and welcome to the first post of the New Year. I hope you all had an enjoyable set of holidays; filled with all the things you enjoy doing while on vacation. For me (and for this blog), that is gaming. Sadly, I have to say that the majority of my game-time is given to League of Legends. This is sad because I have so many other things on the shelf to play, and the "beast" of LoL is becoming more and more apparent. This may be because I only play 5v5 Normal Pick - Solo Queue matches. You would imagine that Ranked matches would have more serious players, but in the lower ranks, it isn't too different from Solo Queue. The way I play Solo Queue is pretty simple with my roster of champs:
1) Don't die.
2) Be confident in your own abilities, not in other's.
3) Force interactions between the team that you feel are advantageous.

Looking from the outside in, anyone would say that ALL players should be thinking this way. The hair-pulling part about it is that they don't, and this is why Solo Queue Mentality exists.

When I say Solo Queue Mentality, I don't mean being a lone ranger. 80% of the people who play in Solo Queue, play the same way. As if, upon selecting a Solo Queue match, they decided to throw away their brains and play the Solo Queue way! Before becoming level 30 in LoL, I had a decent win::loss ratio. I seem to be lacking pictures, so let's just say it was something like 160::130, 1 loss for every 2 wins. It isn't the best ratio in the world, but I felt like I was finally getting good at the game. In a lot of ways, its true, I know more about builds and I make better decisions than I would in the past. Today, my record is:

That is a 1::1 win::loss ratio. Every time I win, I lose, and that is not fun at all. Yes some of it is my fault for various reasons:
1) Not being able to super-carry the team when I'm playing a top-tier character.
2) Crashing upon loading and missing the first 5-8 minutes of the game.
3) All of my losses before level 20.
4) Having a bad computer.
5) Etc.
But I will say that a huge percentage of my losses are from bad players. Not every bad player suffers from Solo Queue Mentality, but many of them do, and it causes you to lose that much faster. There are maaaaaany things that people do in Solo Queue that they really, really, REALLY shouldn't, but we can list the worst things that make up Solo Queue Mentality:

The Chase
Chasing players with no instant kill and/or escape is terrible. Chasing characters into the jungle is almost always bad. Even if it is not a trap, you are spending time running around for nothing when you could have spent that 20 seconds killing minions for gold. Whoever you are chasing probably needed a recall to their base, regardless of you chasing them. This means THEY are wasting YOUR time. Even worse is if they are kiting you. Kiting anything in any game is when you purposely allow something to chase you, usually in an attempt to kill them. Getting kited in LoL can be even worse because of Ultimates and CC. If you don't get kited into an ambush, you may be kited while someone's R-button attack cools down. Any example would be chasing a Leblanc with a melee character with no escape or natural movement advantage like Garen. Depending on Leb's hp, she can kite Garen for as long as she wants. Her low cooldown on the ultimate can mean instant death to any bad player. Since Garen has relatively high HP (which makes it seem safe to chase with), you can still eat an Ethereal Chain->Mimic that sticks you in one spot, awaiting enemy ambush. Some characters can chase, even ones like Wukong and Vayne. If they get caught, they will probably die, but they have tools to escape an ambush. Players with solo queue mentality don't care about being kited. If they think they can get the kill, they will chase the enemy. Even if they can't kill them, they will chase just to show dominance. Scare the other champ off their turret, push a ganker back into the jungle, etc. People who chase usually end up with x-5/x/x-5 records, with half the amount of kills and assists than deaths because they are never in the team fight.

The One-for-one
Solo Queue Mentality cause people to want as many kills as possible, no matter the cost. Every kill you get is a "+1" in your(and your team's) advantage. Every death you get is a "-1", giving your opponents gold for killing you. In League of Legends, gold dictates how powerful your character will be in the middle and end of the game. Because of this, SQer's will want as many kills as possible; to make their character better, sooner. The best exchange would obviously be a free kill with no deaths. In many situations, if you are going to die, you may as well take down another character with you. At least, this way, the gold exchange is even. The problem is when you go in for a kill, with no plan to escape. Unlike chasing, you're pretty confident you can kill at least 1 guy on their team, and that is all you need. It may be 300gold you needed for a specific item, or that character may have a winning streak that you wanted to end, SQer's have to get that kill. What they don't know is that because you died, you and your opponent were both awarded money. If the bottom lane is 3/3 between all 4 characters and the top lane is less than that, then those top lane characters will be at a small disadvantage to the 3/3. It doesn't usually happen, but if one of those 3/3's helps the top push, they will probably succeed. With a possible 1200gold advantage, their main competition is whoever else is +1200g. This happens to me all the time: one of my teammates will be so aggressive that they one-for-one all game. The worst is when they complain to you about not helping. Most of the time, a battle between 2 evenly matched champions is down to the initiate. Example: if a TF face-checks a bush with a Garen in it, the Garen has an advantage in damage because of how he initiates the fight. However, if the Garen simply ran(or spun) toward TF, TF is now at an advantage. If the fight is 2v2, Garen could PROBABLY kill a character, and may die in the process because the fight was on equal footing. Seven times out of ten, Garen will blame you for his death. Which leads us to the next point:

Knowing when to attack
If I didn't help Garen in a 2v2 fight, it is usually for one reason:
The initiate provided us with no advatage.
Against ranged characters, Garen's initiate has probably cause him to take hits. If the enemies used no skills on Garen, then I will walk into those skills. Since Garen has no stun or root, ranged characters can kite him. Once you run in to help, they can run backwards, tagging you if you are close enough and staying away from Garen. The end result, without the use of summoner spells, is probably a skirmish with no deaths. If you decide not to assist your teammate, they should notice and pull out of the fight. Of course, SQer's don't know when to pull out of a fight as well as start one. The risk of fighting an even(though increasingly uphill) match is often too great, and your only hope is that your teammate never does that again. In the "new jungle" small monsters give less gold than ever before. This means that unsuccessful ganks drags the jungle champ behind. In SQ, the more ganks the jungler misses, the more reckless he may become. You may see Lee Sin at level 6 trying to jump on a level 8+ Malzahar, or a level 7 Warwick use his ultimate when the enemy has a Volibear in lane. They are attacking at terrible moments because they don't know what else to do. Team fights are no better, as SQer's love to fight with less characters. If you are the odd man out of the fight, you will be the one to blame for the lost battle. In some ways, you should be, as any team fight needs all the players. What sucks is that if the team is missing a key player, such as a tank or the carry, then they have no business starting team fights. If the fight is 4v5 with no escape, the best they can do is hope to one-for-one their team, leaving you and the only survivor left on the map.

Poor team composition
Most teams are the same: Ability Power champs, AD champs, a Tank or Support, and possibly a jungler. You mix it up because if your team is focused on 1 damage type, then your opponents can build defensive items to counter your entire team. Many SQer's don't care what the team composition is, if they have a champ they want to play, then you can't stop them. This is especially true when a new champ is released. You can usually expect every team to have that champ and take up an AP or AD slot. The day Ahri was released was terrible, as you can expect an AP on every team. Some games will have you with no big damage dealers on your team, some games will consist of an all-squishy champ team, all of which are difficult to win against typical builds. This can extend to bad character builds too. As much fun as playing with unconventional builds may be, it may cause your team to lose. The most recent game I had was with a jungle Janna. In my head, I imagined it to be similar to Maoki. You can build great support items on your support character, then jump into lanes, turning it from a 3v2 into a 3.5v2. Instead, this Janna only wanted to play as a ganker, building attack damage and banking on Janna's slow spell to ensure kills. Obviously, their team lost.

As much fun as LoL can be, there are equal moments of not-fun. Why I continue to play is because I love the way that -I- play the game. One day, I may be able to carry my team, regardless of how bad they may be. Until then, I will continue to blame others for my losses!