I.10b - Method and Discipline - promotions

10. By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the graduations of rank among the officers.

Acknowledging your teammate's success is critical to supporting your team's improvement. Take time to acknowledge your teammates achievements, particularly during losses. One practice I've tried is to ask my teammates to list one thing they did well when we lose, and what they can improve on after a win. This prevents the team from getting down after a loss. Taking a break and keeping the environment lighthearted after a loss can give everyone a chance to relax and reset their focus. The worst thing you can do when your team is down after a loss is to requeue. In his excellent post on improving your elo without improving your skill, a platinum player named Pat the Power advises you to introduce a stop loss, meaning that you stop queueing ranked after two losses in a row. You won't lose 300 elo in a day if you follow this very valuable advice.

Promotions may also mean giving your teammates a chance to play a different role. Having a flexible team can give you a lot more freedom during champ select, so if a player wants to try something new, support that. Give him a clear goal (master two champions at that role well enough to play them in solo queue) then give them a chance to try out the role with a team. Feedback is critical so you need to encourage your teammate to ask for feedback. If he's not interested in hearing from the team how he can improve then you can do little to help him grow. One example of where this principle should have been applied was Elementz on CLG. He's a very strong player but the team wasn't happy with his support role. Instead of giving him feedback, they kept silent about it until they chose to bench him out of the blue. They could have given him a chance to play another role or grow in his existing role but instead they let the problem fester until it meant breaking up the team.

Supporting your teammates applies to solo queue as well. Make sure you always tell your teammates gj after successful ganks or kills. When they mess up, encourage them to keep trying, offer a lane switch, buy them a ward. Rage loses more games than any other factor in solo queue. Often the players who are the angriest accuse their teammates of being trolls while they drag everybody down. Mute these players, you'll be more relaxed and better able to focus on the game. Unfortunately you can't communicate with that player but it's better than spending half of your game typing responses to the guy.

Pat the Power on Improving your ELO