League Of Scumbags: 12 LoL Tropes (Don’t Be These People)

1. The Instalocker: They refuse to acknowledge anyone who called before them or picked before them. They know who they want to play and have locked in with a decisive immediacy. Sometimes this only applies to stubbornly wanting to play a certain champion, but often it translates into stubbornly claiming a certain role as well. Then they force the rest of the team to work around their choice if they want to have any chance of winning. These are most often solo tops, ADCs, or mid-laners.

2. The First-Time Free-Week Player: First time Viktor, what can possibly go wrong! This is what bot games are for, not normals. The higher the difficulty bar on your champion, the harder I will facepalm when you inevitably suck it up.

3. The Support Who Wants to Carry: You’ve seen them. They take Flash and Ignite instead of Exhaust or Clairvoyance. They build selfishly, going straight AD or AP without considering any items that could aid their teammates. They steal minion kills, they poke even more than your actual ADC, and there isn’t a ward in sight. Then when you are ganked due to your lack of vision, they bitch at you, learning nothing in the process and returning to lane with an inventory still devoid of any wards.

4. The Feeder: Feeders come in many forms. It could be an ADC who is too aggressive and paying for it. It could be a top or mid-laner dealing with a camping enemy jungler. However, the worst by far is the intentional feeder. They have given up all hope of their team making a comeback and will gladly go jogging into a cluster of enemies to speed up what they feel is their imminent defeat.

5. The AFK: An AFK from the very beginning I can almost excuse. Maybe their computer suddenly burst into flames. Maybe they became violently ill and had to be taken to the hospital. Maybe their ex-lover appeared at their doorstep seeking reconciliation and they saw no other option but to join them for a heart-wrenching duet that ultimately mends their relationship. But comments about “lol so much lag,” 700 ping, and multiple disconnects really grind my gears. If you knew your internet was that shitty, don’t start a game. If you don’t know, test it in a browser first. Or tell your brother to stop downloading porn, dammit, ’cause this is important.

Honorable mention goes to people that say halfway through the game “sorry guys gotta go.” If you knew you had to be somewhere, you shouldn’t have even queued.

6. The Rage-Quitter: Unlike the AFK, their sudden departure can be attributed to losing lane, being killed too many times, not getting enough ganks, or otherwise throwing a hissy fit. Witnessing this in normals is irritating enough, but when it happens in ranked, it’s downright ridiculous. (And yes, I’ve seen it before.)

7. The Non-Communicator: Unlike most of the other tropes, this player is absolutely silent. This may go hand-in-hand with initiating team fights unprompted, retreating when everyone else intends to stay and fight, over-extending, or many other unhelpful behaviors. They do not respond to anything, whether it’s praise or criticism or earnest pleas to just recall already. There’s nothing quite like watching a Gragas pushing the first top turret while the rest of your team is dead and your base is getting destroyed.

8. The Colorful Curser: “vi wtf” “I TOLD YOU TO FUCKING RETREAT” “fucking noobs” “STAY AT FUCKING BASE” “cait ur a cunt” It’s like they never learned how to communicate without insults and expletives.

9. Sir Pings-a-Lot: The ping system is an effective way to communicate your next move with a click instead of frantically typing it out. Sometimes you may even ping a couple of times to get your point across or if you’ve changed your mind about a previously agreed-upon tactic. But spamming pings is annoying to the rest of your team and can come off as condescending if coupled with one of the other tropes, such as the Colorful Curser or the Blamer.

10. The Blamer: But mid never came to gank so we lost bot turret! But top never called MIA! But this jungler sucks! Blamers may zero in on a single target of their displeasure, or they may resort to blaming everyone else on the team but themselves. Sure, in some games, there is one person who is noticeably dragging everyone else down, but they probably fully realize that and don’t need you making them feel even worse. However, more often than not, when a game is going badly, it’s because everyone is performing poorly or the other team is more organized. They cannot possibly conceptualize this though and continue their toxic behavior.

11. The Expectation of Omnipresence: Similar to The Blamer, only this person primarily focuses on junglers and supports. They expect a jungler to be everywhere on the map at once, perpetually available for ganks, always gifting red buff to the ADC and blue buff to the mid-laner, holding lane for someone who needs to shop but pushing lane when one is empty because the turret is so low! With supports, they expect the cooldowns on their heal and shield spells to magically disappear; the building of a Sightstone and not much more; wards in our jungle, their jungle, the river, and every bush; the avoidance of any farming whatsoever; and no accidental kill-stealing. In summary: they expect junglers and/or supports to be gods, which simply isn’t possible. Sometimes it becomes not just one person but an entire team demanding the impossible, which is why jungler and support are often the hardest role to fill.

12. The Troll: This is a catch-all term that fits any of the other tropes you can think of but can’t quite name. This may include those who break the meta but do so very badly, those who build contrary to their champion without having tested it first (AP Miss Fortune or AD Ahri, anyone?), those who exhibit their disgust at the way the game’s panning out by wrecking their build (think all wards, all boots, or all Bloodthirsters), or Teemos who spend their time making a mushroom minefield instead of helping the team.

So please, as maddening as this game may be at times, don’t be that guy.