Having a Voice in Your Team

One thing it seems a great deal of League players overlook is the importance of communication. Having a voice in your team is a skill that can augment your fundamental mechanics, game knowledge, and lead you to win more games. Moreover, the game is becoming increasingly based on your team's ability to function cohesively, as opposed to in the past when one player could snowball and hard carry the game easily. For this reason, it is important to utilize the chat function to your advantage whilst playing League of Legends.

Ranked 5's are arguably the easiest place to have clear communication with your teammates. In this game mode, you are probably playing with your friends or at least people you are familiar with. You'll likely have a game plan at the very least, and will surely communicate throughout the match. Why not translate this communication into solo queue?

Timers: Calling your timers in chat is a good way to begin to have a voice in your team. I know what you are thinking, “But Yeboy. Riot gave us the timers when we press tab.” See, taking time to call timers of your buffs, dragon, and baron is still useful for two reasons.

First, if you actually type when the objective will respawn, you are keeping your mind active and will have a better ability to keep track of these objectives. Second, and most importantly, just because you are keeping track of these things, does not mean your teammates are. That one second you spend calling a dragon timer could be a reminder for a teammate who would otherwise not be prepared when the time comes to take it. In addition, it is in your best interests to keep your teammates aware because let's face it, no matter how poorly your teammates are playing or how toxic they are, they are still your teammates, and if you want to win, you'll need them.

If you find yourself in a place where you are comfortable relaying objective timers to your teammates, feel free to move on to calling enemy summoner spell timers and ward locations. Remember, there is no wrong time to feed information to your teammates because even if your information isn't utilized 100% of the time, it will still benefit your team in many scenarios.

Leadership: Too often I see a team with a solid early game lead fall apart simply because all five players have different plans and end up accomplishing nothing. You never want to sit by and just let the game happen. You want to take control of the situation. Sometimes, you will get a team that naturally gels together and are all on the same page. If this is the case, then by all means just roll with it, but other times you may get teammates who are strong players but don't necessarily have strong teamwork skills. Sometimes, a leader needs to emerge and there is no reason why that shouldn't be you.

Don't be afraid to call for your team to group mid and pressure a turret, or to sweep and take dragon. If you have an idea of what your team should be doing, then call for it. I find that many players fear making a call because if that call does not go in their team's favor, they fall under blame. This could happen. Most likely, all of you will make a bad call at some point; however, if you never take the leap and try, you'll never learn what separates a bad call from a good call.

Things to Consider:

- Sometimes, your teammates simply won't follow your ideas and will fail to act as a proper team. When this happens, there isn't much you can do other than try your best to keep them working as a team. Unfortunately, having a voice in your team can't win you every game despite being an important skill that will definitely increase your likelihood to win games.

- If a player is displaying that they don't agree with your calls, that is okay. At least they are communicating back at you, and you may see a different perspective that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. If they are acting with hostility on the other hand, don't hesitate to mute this person. A discussion can be constructive, but an argument will always be detrimental.

- Lastly, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! If your teammates are working cohesively, don't try to derail what you have going for you.

Keep it up summoners, and realize that there are more things to improve upon then simply your mechanics and game knowledge. I hope you have an understanding now of how you can use the chat function to your advantage by having a voice in your team. Communicating with teammates can be stressful at times, but beneficial if you can maintain a positive demeanor throughout these situations. Have fun improving your information distribution and leadership skills, and until next time, I'll see you out there on the rift!