You queue up for a game of ranked, and immediately request mid. You're fourth pick, but no one else seems to want to go mid. So it comes to you and you lock Kassadin. That's when fifth pick decides that now is the time to say "I go mid". Try as you might, you can't seem to convince him that you called before him, and picked before him, and last pick always is support anyway. So you say fine, 2 mid, and try to get one of your teamates to dodge. No one does, and you play a game with 2 mid, constantly telling the enemy team to report your lanemate.

You've Decided To Not Win That Game.

Yes, the other guy was in the wrong initially. But by stooping to his level, by refusing to adapt, and by stirring trouble within your team, you've changed your chances of winning from 10% to 1%. Kassadin support is awful (Trust me, I've been in that situation). But two mid where both players are actively trying to screw each other over, not to mention an abandoned adc, is worse. To a certain degree, you don't care. At least the other guy gets a loss. But the thing is, your team is more than that autolocker. Your team is full of three other people that just wanted to win a game.

Was That Game Winnable?

Sometimes you lose the game in champion select. Maybe your entire team wants to jungle. Or maybe you have someone who doesn't speak english and goes support Draven while attempting to screw up as many last hits as possible. Sometimes you have that guy who went into the ranked game to ruin other peoples days. But those games are few and far between.

The Solo Queue attitude follows a few simple principles:

• I'm the only one I know for sure who is competent on this team.
• If I tell people which role I'm best at, they should do their best to accommodate me.
• Our loss is rarely (if ever) my fault.

I'm the only one I know for sure who is competent on this team.

This is a simple, true statement. You can't be sure of the skill of your allies for the most part. Sometimes you'll know them since you've played with them before (whether when Duo Queueing or when you get to the higher tiers where there is a smaller player pool), but even then you can only be truly sure of your capabilities. So there's this tendency of players to say things like "I've never seen a good Veigar" or "All Vaynes end up feeding," because either a)They're telling the truth, they've yet to experience a good player of that champ, or b)They're suffering from conformational bias. Whichever the case, they're judging their allies based on the limited information they have (such as their champion of choice, their conduct in champ select, maybe even their summoner name), which makes players distrustful of their random teamates. This causes players to be more likely to get upset at their allies if they do poorly, which can lose games fast, and makes them less likely to give up their role in order to help out the team as a whole.

If I tell people which role I'm best at, they should do their best to accommodate me.

This is a weird cognitive dissonance that many solo queue players suffer from. On the one hand, they can't trust their teamates to be good at the roles they request. On the other hand, they expect their teamates to allow them to take the role they request because they are good at it. This becomes a problem in ranked when you Queue up and all players immediately call top or mid, and then also all add that they can't support. All those players who suffer from "The Solo Queue Attitude" (Note, not all players who play Solo Queue suffer from said attitude) will request that the others change their own preferences and playstyle to suit them. The worst occurs when two players like this call the same role. Good luck with that game.

Our loss is rarely (if ever) my fault.

This happens constantly in solo queue. Maybe not as often as some people may think, but it happens a hell of a lot. Sometimes it's small, a snarky comment about "Leona, might want to ward that bush next time". Other times it's larger, such as "Wow, can you please gank top for once and stop helping mid? You're so bad." And sometimes it's massive, for instance "Wow, this ****ing Sona can't play for ****. They're literally the worst player I've ever played with. Cost us the game. Stay in bronze, you scrub." Othertimes they assign the blame to the enemy team, "Teemo is so overpowered", "They got super lucky", or "This Fiddlesticks is camping me." Rarely you will ever see this type of player admit "Whoops, screwed up." You'll be lucky if they say "I hate playing against Shen," which at least admits that it's a personal issue.

So Where Am I Getting To With This Rant?

Don't be that guy. The Solo Queue Attitude is something you need to break away from if you want to climb. Sure you can climb through pure mechanics, as all the ragers of challenger would suggest. But if you honestly believe that you are as mechanically talented as players such as Wildturtle and Nientonsoh, then you're probably delusional enough to believe that you aren't part of the problem.

For those of you who are nodding and are willing to admit you do any of these things from time to time, I present to you a few simple solutions.

Trusting Your Team

No need to trust the obvious trolls(Revive/Clarity Heimerdinger is probably not a serious strat), but other than those guys, give your team some credit. According to the ranked system, they are about your win rate (possibly not skill level) and they are all queueing up for ranked for a reason. This isn't to say that you absolutely must accommodate every single one of them, but at least put some effort into helping. Sometimes allow the guy below you to play mid if he wants. Maybe take on the dreaded role of supporting if you must. But I was once told by someone far wiser than me that improved my winrate significantly: If you start the game adamant that you'll be mid, or as soon as the game starts tell your midlaner that "they better not die", you're only hurting your own chances at winning.

Playing What You Want

Enter every game hoping that you'll get the role of your choice, not expecting it. Ask politely if you can have the role if someone else above you wants it. The same holds true for those below you, ask them if they mind if you take that lane. And be gracious if you are allowed to take it from someone above you, and acknowledge the kindness of those below you. If you aren't allowed to have that role, don't throw a fit. Take another role that remains, or ask if anyone else is willing to trade roles with you. And if all else fails, if you're stuck with a role you don't want to play, just try to do the best you can that game and it'll probably be better next game.

Taking Blame

This one is tricky. You shouldn't have to take 100% full responsibility for everything that goes sour on your team. But you should be honest with your mistakes. Don't blame lag unless you actually had a computer issue. Don't call luck. Ever. Even crits aren't really luck, as you chose to engage right then and there while aware they had crits. League does an amazing job making the game purely skill based. There is no Chaos Night or Ogre Magi for you to insinuate that they only won because the game favored them more than you.