For People with Ranked Anxiety

Idk if anyone else can relate but back when I had ranked anxiety I realized that I was thinking of ranked in overly formal terms. Now ranked is supposed to be the most 'formal' mode but what I mean by that is that I also play in Magic the Gathering tournaments (also some chess a really long time ago) and I was approaching ranked with the mentality I'd have before a big Magic or chess tournament.

Basically i just had this unconscious assumption that 'fun modes' were like playing at your friend's kitchen table since you played the game but could also jerk around, "normals" were like small-scale tournaments at a card shop (youre focusing to win but its not that seirous) and that since ranked was how you could qualify for the 'big leagues' that must mean it was like the a pro tour qualifier or a grand prix and you needed to only queue in ranked if you had massive practice and knew each possible champ you were willing to play inside and out. This basically just paralyzed me, I'd do things like practice constantly in normals or just even against bots so i can get muscle memory for certain combos. While those are very good things to do they were also just totally unnecessary if what youre trying to do is just queue in ranked in the first place. I'd practice someone like Singed or Master Yi for days and play one ranked game and lose and just beat myself up saying that I wasnt good enough.

The thing that actually broke me out of this mentality was watching streamers just play ranked for long sessions. Specifically Cowsep actually since he just do streams with a very casual or fun attitude (imo) and when he fucks up in a game he just shrugs it off and moves on to the next one in his marathon or whatever. Seeing people just play ranked games in marathons and shrug off misplays and defeats made me realize that I didnt actually really need to hit a certain level of absolute expertness to play ranked, I just needed to be confident and assured that I knew what I was doing. So I started playing ranked as my main mode and realized that it was silly to beat myself up over a loss. Other players would mess up and be awesome and be toxic and be friendly just like in normals.

Basically my misconception of ranked early on had to do with thinking that I needed to hit a certain level of excessive hyper-readiness to even queue up in ranked when in fact, if you actually want to get good at competitive League then the only way to do that is to actually just play in competitive League. Know your champ/role and know what youre doing obviously but think of ranked less as something you have to improve into and more as a means of how you can improve as a player. If youre disappointed about placing into Silver or Bronze then dont worry because that doesnt matter. It's easy to just google and find people who were in Bronze or Silver initially and just kept improving until eventually theyre in Diamond. Dont obsess about what your skills are right now, think about what you want your skills to become.

One lesson from tournament Magic that does absolutely transfer over however is that in the end its just a game and you are playing it for fun and the reason you log into your account is because you want to have fun playing a game. Chances are you are not on a professional team or aiming to join one in the near future and nor are you someone that streams as their main source of income. Youre playing LoL because you want to have fun and you queue up in ranked because become good at LoL is something that is fun for you. If it stops being fun then just stop and take a break because its only a game.

/r/summonerschool Thread