Been struggling with this concept but didn’t really know how to put a finger on it / address it But who am I to doubt Coach Curtis’ ability to read my mind and come out with a video the next day…
Hi Coach, thank you so much. I just started playing ranked jungle climb this season and have gone from B4 0LP TO S1 96LP, with no indication of slowing down, and a huge part of it are thanks to vids like this! What I’ve learned these two months is that not throwing a lead by making a stupid play (and just saying no) is the hallmark of winning games down here, and I think that even though you target ur vids towards mid-high elo, a video like this is one that even me (and probably other viewers) in low elo can take something massive away from. Thanks!
Great content as always. You touch on the problems of ego and it's important to remember that our natural, default state is NOT to have that open-minded curiosity about decisions we've already made, but rather to defend our own decisions. Confirmation bias. This is why scientists are trained to think in terms of "if my theory is wrong, what would I expect to see" and then go searching to see if evidence disproves or fails to disprove their theory. If you instead presume that you're right and go looking for evidence that justifies your theory or your play, you will always find it. So what you're advocating for here is a bit like thinking like a research scientist, and we have to remember that this mentality HAS to be practiced and developed, it's not automatic. It takes work, but it also *works.* Just like going to the gym, you have to push yourself because our "default" state is inertia, not decisive action.
Don't making plays is a huge skill. The other day I was watching a vod where an Udyr player was trying to take dragon. He didn't have to since it was not a dragon soul and his team was far ahead. They lost the fight, gave up the Udyr's shutdown to a Fiora and from there she carried the game. The most shocking thing? This guy was a pro League player in Brazil, so even high elo players do indeed force plays that can lose them the game.
Coach Curtis, were/are you a teacher/professor at some point? Your style is so professional, clean, and well presented that it just screams professional educator to me! Much love from an ex-plat player who's been hardstuck Gold 4 and needs your advice!
ok this is reassuring, the amount of times I got pinged for not coming to terrible fights (I'm a Cassio main, so yeah, the notion of bad fight is a bit looser with that ult lmao) while I ended up 9-2 ultimately and fkin 1v9ing the game because the other team let me take both tier-2 turrets and get a 50 cs lead after 20 minutes 😅 it does make me realize that I go in for fights on autopilot mode without even questioning myself when the game is on a slow pace, amazing video as always coach 😄
So in a rather poor decision, I decided to have this playing in the background of my ranked game. And I forced my team to start dragon instead of turning with my body language and lack of pings, because Yasuo was pinging to start dragon. I should've back pinged and walked away but I just "went with it" and my team paid the price. We eventually turned around the game but I basically lost my team the game there... failure to say no really does happen every day
That's *probably* the incorrect takeaway, depending on the exact circumstances of course. It's generally better for you to stay and try the objective with your team, even if you think it's a bad idea. You're definitely correct that that specific situation in that game was a bad play, but when that scenario repeats its generally correct to make the "bad" play if it's what your team is committing to. The takeaway here was that you should try to get your team away from the bad play, but if they're committing to it you probably should too, unless it is blatantly extremely suicidal. Best case scenario, your presence swings the fight. Worst case scenario, you give up an extra 300g. In a losing scenario, whether you're there or not doesn't usually change the aftermath very much -if you're the only one who recalled and your team gets wiped, you can't contest objectives, you can't defend towers, you can't even really farm. What you could do, if your team is making a terrible call, is instead look to trade yourself to lessen the impact. Assume that it's the worst case scenario, your team is getting 4 man wiped every time no matter what. If you don't show up, you're 5v1. You might as well not exist, and you'll either die later trying to contest, staggering your spawns and potentially causing a death cycle, or you'll basically be AFK. If you DO go, maybe you can dive the backline and tale out their Ezreal as well as yourself, handicapping their pushing power. Or maybe you can root the Zed that's diving your carry, getting him killed and allowing your carry to turn the fight. TLDR you have a lot more to gain by showing up than you have to lose by not showing up.
@@SeisoYabai I think its more in the middle like coach cupcake ACE mentality. Make sure to communicate your idea to your team(they cant read your mind) if they decide to continue you do what you can to help.
It's pretty unbelievable that you put this into words. I want you to to do a video explaining aggression and confidence next, streamers have this notion that low elo players are "too aggressive hence why they die too much", which is entirely not true, low elo players IMITATE and confuse calculated aggression from content creators as being the "Mechanically proficient players in this scenario", instead of "I have more resources than you/I want those resources from you", the low elo player's reasoning for aggression is incorrect and the things they gather confidence from is incorrect, and I can prove it statistically by the average deaths being higher in lower elo, but invades/counter jungling being less, dives at all levels being less, staying for plates being less, pushing out waves mid game being less, baron is taken and contested less, drawing pressure being less ETC... This I cannot prove statistically, but it's a very interesting note that explains my point perfectly, I blew another coach's mind with this finding (I forgot your name, sorry Boss!); You know those times when you're in a bush in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly somebody stops your recall, and you have no idea what's going on before you tab out of the shop? The average Gold player will almost always run away trying to gather their senses, an average Masters+ player will always engage the threat before even realizing what the fuck is happening regardless of role as reflex, and during this aggressive act they will gather their senses and calculate if they should run or fight, it's the analogy of waking somebody up with a prank to see who they really are as a person, because this vulnerable egoless state of a person/player is the one time where they show their true colors, high elo players are naturally more aggressive players.
What timing! I've been focusing on this topic quite a lot lately in my own reviews. Glad to have Coach Curtis in my ear telling me I'm doing the right thing 💪 Thanks so much for the high quality content as always.
i feel like the first example is quite literally perfect for this, a solid overall teamfighting comp going for risky plays against an, almost exclusively, catching focused team ( rengar, lee, xerath, zac )
This video is CRUCIAL for unpacking the mental state of players and the champions they focus on. The champions I enjoy playing in League are ones that get into peoples head: Could I, the Fiddlesticks be in the bush right next to you? do I have ult up? Do I, the Karthus, have my ultimate? Did I see you with 12hp trying to back? Are you sitting on a ward? Making people question themselves is gaming on a whole other level. And all this without pressing a single button. But if 80% of players did nothing instead of TRYING to force a play then , as shown by this, they wouldn't be throwing games as often. Brilliant video Curtis, doing OCE proud dude.
Legit had a game tonight on ASol where my Graves tried to fight J4 on raptors at level 4. I was versus a nautilus mid who asol can’t touch early. Graves gets one shot by them and blames me for not moving. I stayed 0/0/0 for 10 minutes before cleaning up a botside fight. Carried the game. I think ASol embodies this philosophy completely tbh.
15:40 i find that sometimes i can take a bad play that i know is a bad play due to the fear of getting flamed, this is a more low elo thing, but i find that I can take bad plays in order to not tilt someone on the team and risk them running it down/flaming you. and usually when im getting flamed i just play worse. kinda annoying i do this sometimes without thinking much, but I have had many times when a fight is clearly lost and my jungler flames bc i'm not fighting a fight that in my eyes, is lost before it is even started. this kinda ties into the psychology of for example when you die and you have that bad feeling of making that mistake so you remember next time to not do so. my scenario was when i was azir with a yi jg on my team, i was laning into lucian and the enemy jg was j4. the j4 invades yi and takes his raptors and i spam ping to just let him have it rather than losing this 2v2 due to the fact that they are a lot stronger early, and already have a small lead. i then get flamed for the rest of the game for NOT rotating to this already lost fight and we end up losing due to these bad plays that are happening.
Great content as always but there is one thing I need to add to the topic- In last few days, while i was climbing I noticed there were much more games with situations like this: my teammate goes for objectively bad play because of tilt or because he was too cocky. Now i can a) join him and die/lose objective/waste resources for nothing or b) ping him to retreat and don't follow him. Now 9/10 examples its lose/lose situation because if i help my team is obviously getting behind and if i don't.. Well you know what is gonna happen. Sometimes they run it down, sometimes they "just" flame and stop trying or spam pinging you till the end of the game. Of ocurse I know that isn't anything new to league players and the solution might be easy as trying to calculate which scenario is "less bad" for me and my team, but when you have to face more of these for some time (and as I said I do face it more often nowadays) it might get hard to have strong mental after 2-3 games. Now when i think about it that was the reason why i stopped playing Aurelion Sol in last days (despite having over 60% win ratio after around 40 games) and started playing Anivia. Because too often i was too weak in early stages of the game to follow plays of my teammates and sometimes they could literally gave up and run it down or wait in some bush till 15. For me Anivia feels somewhat familiar in her playstyle to Asol but she offers decent damage early on and i feel much safer following those bad plays with my pasive being up. But still, more often than not I just stop playing for a day if i have to deal with 2-3 games with too many lose-lose scenarios and try to reset my mental having hope for better tommorow :)
All you said is true, for the psychological pressure to "be there" not to get flamed from the fast paced games that aurelion sol struggles to follow. But the best way is to become a very strong macro player. It’s hard to say to your team "no" for a call they already made / commit too (and sometimes, it’s more efficient for everyone to all-in on a "so-so" call than being hesitant on it which makes the call awful), but if you are AHEAD (macro wise), you can ping lane assignations, drake timers before, ping ward location to pull out, enemy jungle location etc. And kinda "force them" into doing the right stuff before they even had the time to think about what they want to do. I noticed that most of the time, people just play reactively. If you are proactive, and dictate the game, well, they follow (especially if you have kills - which gives some kind of "legitimacy" in your teammates eyes [it’s not fair, but hey, it is what it is]) because it’s easier to follow than to think by yourself. So the better you become at this, the more "stable" your games will become, and the more you can guide your team into leading macro plays. Not saying it’s a 100% true science, but for me, it does work. Don’t write too much tho, use pings. Clear concise efficient ones. For the very early game, try to prepare yourself for an incoming fight, cause the few early clears are always chaotic in soloQ, and will mostly require you to do something, whether is helping, getting prio, warding first to make your jgl / ally laner evoid a fight gank, or helping in a squirmish. But be FIRST to call, it helps a lot (and of course make good calls :) or it is non-sense). glhf ! From another old Anivia main :) ==> SanSiroBro is an amazing EUW and EUNE Challenger Anivia if you want to check his content ;-)
Yup, if you dont int with them, they just spam ping you and run it down. Or sometimes its 2 people at the same time and youre forced to go in and fight, because theres a chance u can win that fight and get some obj out of it, but if you dont they just die and then you lose it 100%.
@@Masterpouya Good tips! I do sometimes lead my games flow and try to use tempo but it was never my "deafault state" of playing, usually it just happens if my lane is going good. I need to work on having that mindset every game. I rarely use chat too, pings are enough. Also- Anivia seems fun and for now Im having even better results with her than ASol, it's really funny seeing how much damage she can do even before lvl 6 and playing vs assassins is so easy in comparison to ASol so yeah, im slowly getting higher ;)
There is never a simple solution. One of my favourite quotes is "A poor plan executed well is better then a great plan executed poorly". In reference to those chaotic situations, you need to weigh them up on a case by case basis. IF you are extremely fed and you have a clear win con top for example, leaving your bot to die is completely fine. Get specific
Remember that first clip from the BBC. BTW, the weird part is that there are lot of Master/GM tier players who tell other players to just join the play even if you know it's wrong. They insist that going to a bad play that your team is going to force anyway is better because of the "possibility that you can salvage it" instead of practicing making the right play. In other words, this peer pressure bad play making shit is a problem that exists even with high ELO players. BTW, what you're talking about around 15:30 is called "Results based analysis" and it's something pretty much everyone does, unfortunately.
The thing you're talking about with the Master/GM tier players is a bit a muddy water. I'm only speculating, but a good portion of the time I see a statement like what you talked about where you should back up your team's "bad" play is still VERY context dependent and also dependent on how someone defines a "bad" play. Is it bad to aram mid with your team and let a bunch of CS go in the mid game? Yesn't. There are simply too many variables at play to give a straight yes or no answer. Which team is stronger? Does the stronger team have a good way to engage/pressure if it comes down to a 5v4? Maybe you can afford to split/catch side lane waves because you're playing Shen or Pantheon who can be there cross map to help if a fight breaks out. Maybe it's Silver and a fight is guaranteed to break out, so you want to be there to influence the fight. Maybe it's Platinum and the enemy has a Garen who lost lane and a Soraka support so they have no way of engaging and your pings will be enough to dissuade your team from going in 4v5 (probably). Perhaps it's 50 minutes and you're trying to ping your team to trade Baron for Soul because you'll probably lose the fight due to being slightly behind and your whole team taking desynced late resets as Dragon spawned. But every single one of your team members are still running to Dragon to try and play an exit fight. Do you ignore your team and push Mid/Top? Do you go with them and try to make the play work because it isn't necessarily an auto loss fight?
@@Freakattaker That's a pretty big wall of strawman and copium my guy. I made a statement about bad plays that a person knows are bad. Your argument is to make up fantasy scenerios where something looks like a bad play but maybe isn't. Your entire argument revolves around changing the word "Knows" in my statement to "Thinks". If you want to have a discussion, bring something logically valid to the table.
I remember asking for a Veigar guide a year earlier and a year before that, and with the buffs to Veigar increasing his Q and W range, do you think it would be plausible? Once again, thank you so much and I've been watching you since S11 and still feel the same enjoyment as then
It's especially hard when you're playing Twisted Fate, because what's the one thing that everybody tells you to do when playing TF? Roam with R. You're expected to always be roaming and making plays.
happens to me a lot and I have a hard time saying no. I follow bad plays I know are not going to work, probably in fear of getting flamed for not following. They of course do not work xd. Starting to work on this and seeing progress and saying no is actualy so op
"I know if I do this I will 99.99% chance die but I'm going to do it anyway. haha!" The fact I and likely many others think this as they make places is borderline insanity. Why do we do things we know will fail? I think about this topic a lot, good video.
watching this in my games is so funny. usually its the enchanter support who ends up dying because they know they dont want to take that fight but also want to save their adc from it so they walk back and forth and end up dying or flashing when they could have just dipped. which should signal to the adc, that they are alone in this incentivizing the inter to disengage. only issue in saving yourself in those situations is the adc flames you for not following up even when you couldnt have made the difference, you're not pyke or bard who can make it out once things go south.
Hello Curtis ! I think one key for consistency and Replay review quality is asking yourself "what information do I look at next Time to not get baited for example" ?
this comment is slightly irrelevant to the video topic but something riot has done recently with their changes in LP gain and loss has caused actual frustrations for me. I dont have time to play all day so I only play about 3 games a day about and when those games are losses I tank LP really hard. it is mega frustrating because its such a big loss in LP and I dont get that LP back from wins. I am currently 55% win rate at silver 1 but im gaining 14-17 LP per win and am losing 20-24 per loss. it is the most frustrating thing ever. I understand that LP means borderline nothing in the game because it is all mmr based anyways. I was just under the impression that lp gains were meant to be on average 20-22 like they said but I have not seen that gain but a lot of the friends I play with are all seeing huge jumps in their ranks in only 5 wins and I have to still win 10 games in a row to get the same gains as them. now that I type this out i realize i shouldnt focus on others but it is still something that is terribly frustrating for me
I literally just brought this issue up (specifically as it pertains to Reviews) in Nathan’s low elo Saltu forum today. While this is mid specific in terms of examples, the overall concept seems still relevant as a jungle main.
100% I have a bad issue of forcing ganks when im ahead to “push my lead”, when really if you just make safe high percentage plays you will win the game
Force yourself to go for a 5 min walk every 3 of them or take a break from screens for 5 minutes every 3 games. It will light your brain and peel you from a (big) mistake :) Most of the time you are gonna stop and start over the next day with way clearer mind ;-) Sleep >> Skill cause it makes your macro & micro better. (I struggle quite a lot with it, but now that it’s fixed, it’s waaaay better !)
I think the most major thing that influences me when i am following a bad play is, i basicly don't want to be flamed. Here is the thing, i am a silver player and i imagine myself being that Jarvan, that guy actually didn't follow qiyana into that play, which is what he should do (not following up), he still died but thats not the point, imagine if he was fully commited to not following up and didn't even die. But because of all the toxicity between players i am more leaned towards following the play because otherwise that qiyana is just gonna flame/blame me entire game and we are gonna lose anyways. How i know? Because i used to be that flamer/blamer. Nowadays i just focus on my own playing and don't really flame/blame anyone even if they make a bad play, it is irrelevant to me. However that pressure of getting flamed for just saying "no" to joining a play is really a big issue i am dealing with still. And its not because i care about being flamed or not, its because when someone starts flaming, you lose the game 99% of the time. They stop playing the game entirely and just flame,flame,flame typing ENTIRE GAME (again i know this from personal experiance because i used to be toxic aswell) it is so annoying. I am basicly dealing with a situation that is worse than having an AFK at that point, afk players at least don't run it down/rage split while constnantly typing in chat. Also i see this happening in diamond+ games aswell, this is not really special to low elo. I know i shouldn't care about things that are outside my control like someone flaming, but it really is playing role in regards of following bad plays.
Totally true, but I still suggest doing it. Not everyone flames and blames, and you can use /deafen. I lost more games because of following bad calls than flamers.
Just INSTA mute chat and pings the moment ppl do any sort of toxic chat or pings. If you get affected easily, then mute all at the start of every game. Pings from allies are useful, but the opportunity cost of being tilted isn't worth it. Eventually you can learn to parse more of the information you need from just the map and your team/enemy's body language to know what's up without seeing your team pinging for Barons and what not.
wow i just returned to wildrift and my highest was emerald 4 with 770+ games and i still make manny mistakes which i could have sayed no too. Ty for this. It's so basic but still hard.😅
Ironically i would say that i ve been able to climb way better and faster by saying no to a lot of bullshits calls from my overall knowledge in this game so yeah i definitly approve the art of saying "no" great video as usual Curtis
Hey Coach Curtis, do you only do extended guides on Mid lane champions? Would you consider doing a top lane Mordekaiser macro guide? I love Mordekaiser and am trying to get to Gold with him.
Hei coach or anyone that can help me. I have a problem that has been following me for 4 ages now. I want to climb but im that tipe of player that cant stik to 3 or 4 champions for more than a week and i keep playing diferent champions and roles making my skills in each one of them not good enugh to climb. Futher more, im only atracted to dificult champs making it even harder. How could i try to solve this. I mean i have tryed to OTP a champion but im just not eval to do even a bit of it. PLs i need help and i trust in u and the comuniti for any sujestion.
as an adc, i often dont go for teamfights, try to take my farm on the side, but constantly there is a teamfight happening, and its usually still a 4v4, but i see my team is a bit behind and almost always lose the fight, so do i still say no or do i try to join the fight?
Hello! I'm a support player who loves Zilean and Bard, but I wish I was better at mid. I've heard the term facilitator on one of your videos (can't remember which) but would you be able to recommend some champions to go along with that playstyle? I definitely want Zilean to be part of that mid lane pool but I'm not sure who to add to him.
Im actually surpsised you say so many people have the problem with saying no, it's quite logical to see whether the benefit outweights the risk, for example, im a 10/0 vlad with 700g shutdown, completely not worth for me to risk giving 1k gold away to kill 1/4 kaisa on botlane. Really surprised
This video was significantly lacking a counter example where the issue was actually a micro problem. Both of the examples for how to review just assumed there wasn't a micro mistake or it didn't matter. It would be very easy to take away from this that no risky plays are good, just only fight when you're already ahead and have your fed teammates around. What about when you're the fed person? What about when no one's fed? What about when you do make the correct macro decision (play to your win con) but still lose the fight? Guess you should have said no to that right? Yes there was a slide about this at the end, but it doesn't matter if someone knows they should limit test if they can't see how. They're just going to int and not learn anything other than, "I shouldn't have played fast to begin with." Follow up video: "The Art of Saying YES"
Example: A vex player wants to know if they should use their e at level 1 to get an electrocute trade with 2 autos? So they play fast: they go for the trade in every matchup, every single game. Then they play slow: they never look to aggressively use e at level 1. The conclusion? Almost all of games using e at level 1 resulted in taking a bad trade and getting into a bad lane state. Meanwhile, holding e for level 2 resulted in not taking as bad trades. So, they decide to say no to using e level 1. But... they actually just were missing their e most of the time in the level 1 trades, not getting the fear, or the passive cooldown, or the electrocute proc. And it wasn't a one-off thing, this was the majority of their games. The player is actually aware of it and they say to themselves "well a masters+ player wouldn't be missing all their skillshots." They continue to play fast every game, always going for aggressive e level 1. 100 games later, they've inted a lot of lane phases and haven't really gotten anywhere rank wise. They show up to a coaching session and the coach says "look at this horrible trade you're taking, you need to visualize what would happen if you just farmed and didn't try to force this instead."
In the first analogy you gave, scratch the initial win con that you thought you had, YOU are now the win con (Besides Baron/Dragon which you're probably fighting for, but that's the means to an end), you're the big dick unit, and you have smaller units around you, I threw an insane amount of games being fed not realizing why, and after watching the replay I realized that yes, I might be 15/2/8 full build but I still need my 2 item Caitlyn even if it is for her health bar and miniscule damage, she still matters, look at your teammates and corresponding lane opponents items before starting a fight, if NONE of your team has an item advantage, it's a bad fight, if you still must fight, you need to play off your socks and carry the teamfight and use the feed gift that you got to perfection.
Most people don't struggle to review micro mistakes, e.g. If you miss a Syndra E, it's not difficult to make note of that, so I didn't over emphasize that point. The same micro/macro review process applies to ANY and EVERY fight. You might review it and say "oh that was that right play, I just missed my E and missed my ignite timing". Thats completely fine!
@@CoachCurtis I just disagree. If people didn't struggle to review micro mistake, then everyone would have amazing micro. But challenger players have better micro than masters who in-turn have better micro than plats. I don't think people struggle to note micro mistakes. I do think people struggle to fix them.
I stopped playing this game a long time ago in s8, but judging by the first plat 3 clip and some other reviews I saw... it's sad to see a generational downgrade of league players, they have gotten very good mechanically but are noticeable worse at playing the game.
Because you'll never know if it's a macro mistake IF you don't look at the micro. For example. Let's say you go to a dragon play, miss a Syndra E and lose the fight. If you look at it from a macro perspective first, how do you know if it's a good or bad play without first knowing what would happen if you played it optimally micro wise?
@@CoachCurtis Thanks for the reply, at 1st I disagreed, but I had an ashe game where I made the right macro choices, but lost the game because of micro failings. So now I agree with you!
Well it also is. −−> Everytime you wanna greed to procrastinate, put your sleep to later, eat that extra food you don’t want, or quit your sport routine. −−> Everytime you just don’t want to go to work/school/do stuff you have to and choose to make a "more funny / more appealing" decision, you don’t say no to the wrong choice and don’t explore the good alternatives :) Sadly we can’t review our day as easily as a game of league of legends, but thinking about it each day at a dedicated moment is MASSIVE to improve our life. So it kinda is an IRL tip ;-)
Are there content creators that do educational content for top lane. I do get to learn a lot from watching these videos but when i play top it feels different becase of the low agency in the first 14 mins
Coach Eragon is great. Shending Help is amazing as well if you happen to play Shen, but even then his 10~15 min coaching vods tend to have good tips on Top Lane Theory.
@@Freakattaker For Shen players, I’d add my beloved xPetu that has unique content (he is enjoying the game sooooo much) and is very educative on Shen but also and toplane as most of the concept are similar no matter the champion. (It’s also a good friend of Shending Help ^^)
Yasuo vs Swain: Again, GAME LOSING END OF REVIEW MISTAKE: Illaoi, your ONLY wincon, ends up dying(Dragon fight) makes 0 sense to fight for the drake JUST GIVE SOUL, ITS ALRIGHT feeling of loss(Yasuo vs Talon Game) =>Sometimes, Resetting is ALSO a way of winning. It's also about the plays you DON'T Make(Don't Forget) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zed vs Pantheon 1) Tether his 4th auto, and w range 2) Botlane did not have prio, Used your W on Zac, had no follow-up for enemy botlane because no prio => HOLD YOUR W Or, Just... Say.. NO Yasuo vs Galio: Not Pressuring Properly(Not Preparing for the drake fight) =>Lack of understanding of when to go to drake, and how to prepare for that fight When 1 min remaining for drake, recall, take pink ward and try denying vision if you are ahead and have first move into pit ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I kid you not, these are my last 3 notes that I took from my past 3 losses. Especially in this Yasuo vs Galio game, I GENUINELY did not know what to do. Imagine if I knew, just to "Simply say no", the ENTIRE game would have been different. It's easier said than done coach, but I am definitely trying my best!
I was with Curtis until he said champ tier doesnt matter. Playing weak champs make the game harder & usually ends up with less agency while OP/top tier champs make the game easier & gives you much more agency. More agency = more chances to learn & improve.