Don’t Smash Your Keyboard: Tilt And How to Stop it in League Of Legends

Cover Image courtesy Riot Games

• Learn what is tilt and what causes it
• Identify your tilt triggers
• Learn how to beat it

You’re in your promos, just one game away from the next division and the bottom lane ends up feeding so bad that no matter how hard you try, you just cannot win. You end up getting mad maybe flame your team and the whole thing ends up leaving everyone salty. Everyone who plays competitive games is all too familiar with this situation.

What Is Tilt?

Simply put tilt is when your mind is distressed or you’re emotionally frustrated. Your brain is hijacked with the ‘fight or flight’ response. This overpowers the centre responsible for logic and reasoning (a.k.a. good decision making). It can make you over-aggressive, misjudge trade outcomes or make very basic mistakes. This causes loss streaks and takes away the enjoyment factor from the game.  

Some Tilt Triggers in LoL

1. First Blood – We often associate First blood with snowballing.
2. Feeding – Doesn’t matter if it’s your team feeding or you.
3. Miscommunication – During ganks, team fights, dragon or baron calls.
4. Inting games – People intentionally feeding can be a huge cause of tilt.
5. Bad Team fights – Picking bad fights where you end up getting aced.

Cumulative tilt is also a thing. Tilts adds up game after game and may cause you to be tilted even in champ select. If your mid laner fed and lost lane in your last game and the mid laner in your current game gives first blood, you can end up tilting purely from the last game.  

How to stop tilt in its tracks

 If the tilt is coming from inside the house, the first step is to be more aware of it. This will also help you with the second step; Identifying personal tilt triggers. The more you are aware of your tilt, the easier it is to get out of that mindset and into a more logical and reason focused one.

Another tip is to start valuing what you learn in games, over winning them. This might sound like it defeats the purpose of ranking but you will become a better player over time, which will help you win more ranked matches. Another hard thing to learn is to bite the bullet and accept the occasional loss, you just can’t win them all. Try to deviate your attention away from the loss and to what you can learn from the game. Also remember to take breaks between exhausting games,  if you’re unsure about playing your next ranked game, just don’t. Relax for a bit, let the stress hormones leave your body and then get back to it.  

If your teammates are tilting you by being toxic, just mute them. Proper use of pings is good enough to communicate your intentions without having to type. Taking away unnecessary comments from the chat bar will make sure that you’re not constantly distracted by the chat and it takes the source of distress away.

We’ve all been tilted at one time or another, it happens to the best of us. However, what sets the good players apart is how they deal with it.