Dealing with League of Legends Stress

League of Legends like all multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBA for Short) is a highly intense and competitive game to play. While it's incredibly fun at its best, it can also be very stressful when you play to win, lose a lot, or are matched up with players who tend to grief others. Let's talk about some methods of handling the game so that it stays fun for you in the long run.

One of the great things about League of Legends is that it has a vast pool of reasonably well balanced champions to choose from. You might be used to sticking to a few select champions such as Zed and Katarina in the Mid Lane or Thresh as a Support but there's a lot more variety to be had as well. If you are getting stressed or perhaps just bored of playing your current champion, then consider trying out someone new. You might find it to be a rather different experience playing the champions your use to fighting against but that you rarely if ever play yourself. It's best to try a more casual mode like Team Builder when you want to become accustomed to a champion. It'll be a learning experience and a nice change of pace for you.

Ranked can be serious business for both you and everyone else involved. No one wants to lose their standing and status inside the game. If you hit a loss streak then you might be able to feel less pressure in an ARAM, Dominion, Twisted Treeline, Team Builder, or even Co-op vs AI game. I'd also wager that you probably play a little worse when you're on tilt from dying to something you shouldn't or getting some hard fought losses. Jump back into ranked mode once your mind is clear and you can focus on the game.

Talking with other players in game can sometimes be fun especially when you're playing with others you know. However, a lot of the time opposing teams use the all chat, where all players on both teams can see, to trash talk other players. One highly effective option to reduce the amount of flaming you have to deal with is to actually disable all chat all together. This doesn't hurt your team since all strategic chat and pings is handled outside of all chat. The only real downside is that you might not be able to share legitimate complements and witty banter with the opposing team until after the game.

League of Legends owes part of its success to how good it is at retaining players for longer periods of time. Every single League of Legends match is different and has the potential to be exciting. It's really easy to get carried away though. If you see yourself grinding away at 5 or 10 games a day for several games in a row, then it might be the case that it begins to stress you out. No video game is truly worth raging and feeling miserable over. Try stepping away from the game for a few days and you might come back to see yourself enjoying it even more then you had been.