Possibly the worst and most frustrating part of solo queue is the lack of coordination between five random players. People often tunnel vision and have their own ideas of what to do in a game that doesn’t match your own, which leads to focusing wrong targets in team fights, players getting caught alone and 4v5 fights. Typically a couple of these mistakes is enough to lose a match so you should do everything in your power to make sure all five players on your team are on the same page.
Pinging makes that much easier. While you may not think it’s effective I assure you I tried it countless times and for whatever reason it works extremely well. There’s a plethora of different pings in the game like Danger, Retreat, MIA, and you should take full advantage of them whenever possible. It takes a split second to notify your team about what’s going on and if you’re trying to get out of lower elo this can be incredibly productive.
- When an enemy is missing from your or some other lane ping MIA always. It takes just a moment and may save your team mates life.
- When you see a jungler somewhere on the map, ping on him. It helps focus your teams attention and see where he’s at, allowing them to possibly make plays in their lane or countergank.
- Try to ping on ward locations whenever possible, it helps (mostly) your jungler know how to gank without being seen.
- When you’re a jungler or just roaming and hoping for a kill, ping to your team and let them know you’re coming. It will make sure they react in time.
- When buffs, dragon or baron spawn ping them to alert your team about it. Helps to make sure your AD carry doesn’t go farm bot lane when everyone else is trying to fight for baron.
- Most importantly, ping the targets your team should focus in teamfights. Just think about countless times you complained in chat to your teammates about not focusing the right person: a simple alert ping on an enemy player will always remind your team who to focus.
Pinging is really simple, takes but a moment of your time and may improve the coordination and communication within a team. Nobody pays 100% attention to the minimap all the time and you can save lives by notifying your team when they’re about to do something stupid. Why whine about it later when you can do something about it?
Curious observation: the most effective ping in my opinion is “Assist me“. For some reason, perhaps psychological, players respond better if you’re asking for their help rather than forcing them into it.
Solo queue is not just about how bad the four other players on your team are or how much they feed; you win by improving their awareness and making sure those four people are working together. Even the best professional teams didn’t succeed because of their individual skills, but because their communication is light years ahead of anything we’ll ever see in solo queue. Lack of voice chat in your game doesn’t mean you still can’t communicate with your team so stop the flame and prevent your team making bad decisions altogether.
