Teammate Help

[quote=ModusPwnens]I'm fairly new to LoL (level 21, to give an idea of how long I've been playing), but I've been lurking around forums, reading guides, and watching game recordings and such to try to get a better idea of strategy and my role in the team. I like to think that I've developed at least something approaching an understanding of strategy and teamplay. I typically play AD carry for the team (Vayne) and I'm pretty decent at fulfilling my obligations to the team, insofar as it's possible. Unfortunately, the people I play with most, most of which having a bit more experience in the game (most of them just hit level 30, so not a tremendous difference) are [i]terrible[/i] teammates. I can't really refuse to play with them since they're friends IRL and they're like [i]hawks[/i] in terms of noticing when I come online and inviting me to games. As a disclaimer, I do have other friends that I play with less often who have similar levels of experience to the above team who are better about these things and I typically end up with the sort of score you'd expect of an AD carry in a normal game when I play with them (one or two deaths, a dozen or more kills). So I really don't think it's just me being bad at my role in the game. The problems: (1) Most of them insist that wards are a waste of money and you "just need to pay attention". Or they insist that wards are less important than their money (our Zil says this because he lets the carry farm creeps and ends up with less money, thus he "can't afford" to use it on wards, see below for our tanks). I usually play AD carry for the team and it's frustrating to be the only one buying wards. It's also dangerous, since I'm usually the ideal target when they come to gank my lane and no one knows because we have one ward on the entire map. (2) The two people who play tanks most often (Shen and Maokai) both insist that they need just as much or more money than the AD Carry to be effective (I don't mean this metaphorically, they have said these exact words aloud). For Shen, this isn't a huge problem since he can't kill creeps particularly fast. Maokai on the other [i]constantly[/i] walks into the lane and takes all the creeps every time with the sapling. Speaking of which, said Maokai trypically tries to get the sapling off because "it's my main damage dealer" before the root, often causing him to miss the root. Seemingly nothing will convince him that the Vayne standing next to him is in fact his main damage dealer. Both of them tend to play tanks in such a way as to do the most damage instead of working to keep damage and CC off of the actual damage dealers. (3) The big one: the same Shen player has now switched to Wukong. Because he's got some damage, some CC, and some durability, he tends to get a lot of early game kills, which is obviously fine. The problem is that he has absolutely no willingness to not be the center of attention after that point. Once we get to mid game and the carries are still trying to farm (especially if I play Vayne, who can only farm one creep at a time), he [i]delights[/i] in running into the lane and stealing all the creep. Say we're all mid and there's a huge wave going top, I'll say that I'm going top to clear it. A few seconds later he'll say "oh me too", teleport there, get all the gold, then run off again. He does this [i]constantly[/i] and thinks it's funny that he can clear them all before I get there. The thing that makes this last one so especially terrible is that it convinces him he's doing everything right - he has tons of money and, consequently, tons of kills. And look at that supposed AD carry with no kills! He must be way better than the carry! (Since AP carries usually have strong AoE, it doesn't seem to affect me as much when I play one. But we have a teammate who mains Brand, so that's pretty rare.) Basically, he screws over the carry and then insists that [i]they're[/i] bad because he does so much better in the late game. I don't know how to convince him that this is bad for the team because when we [i]do[/i] win, he's usually the one leading the team to victory because of this. So the main issue is that the way they play seems to mostly validate their opinions because, while we lose far more often than we should, they consistently get better scores than the two of us who are trying to play as a team and are hurt worst by this behaviour. For the above reasons, they refuse to listen to anything resembling reason. I try to set a good example when I play support or tank for the team by avoiding last hitting when carries are around and such (and we seem to win more often), but still no one seems to pay any attention. Is there anything to be done here?[/quote]

[quote=Luther3000]Unfortunately this is going to happen when you play with friends. Aside from directing them towards helpful videos and guides (or simply not playing with them) I'm not sure you can do a whole lot. Hopefully when they have a little more experience they will figure things out for themselves. I should say though that they're kind of right on the tank part though, while it's obviously not as important for a tank to farm as a carry, a tank without any farm is completely useless because they'll die immediatly in every fight. I guess your best bet is to try and get other people to tell them the same things you are, whether with guides, videos or by playing with them. [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/lcsullla]This guy has some great game analysis style videos that helped me a lot when I was new to the game.[/url][/quote]

[quote=theBMB]Honestly, I just stopped playing with my friends. They introduced me to the game, but I honestly doubt they're better, as I tend to lose when I play with them. But your friends sound waaaay worse than mine. Honestly, just don't play with them. Start gradually declining their invites until they no longer expect you to play with them.[/quote]

[quote=ModusPwnens]I should be clear - I didn't mean that tanks should avoid last hitting (that part was meant to be about playing support). Obviously, tanks need money too. But I really don't think they should be running around spamming AoE and preventing the carries from getting any farm. The worst offender there is Maokai, but that's mostly just because he doesn't look at his creep count often and never seems to recognise that he outfarms most of the team with his saplings (when he does look at it, he looks at it early game and sees that it's lower, driving him to insist even more that he should be farming harder later in the game).[/quote]

[quote=theBMB]Maokai's a pretty bad pick to have all the farm anyway since he's a pretty mediocre champ all around. As a tank, he certainly can't take damage as well as he should be able to. I think his passive makes up for that, but if he's just bursted down, then it doesn't really make a difference. But I digress. Don't play with your friends. They sound like derps[/quote]

[quote=RamenL]1500 elo player here, won 2 tourneys, 1k + wins.. Lemme help you out, I understand your problems perfectly, and I cracked up with my bro by my side.. Add me ingame RamenL +rep After I help you :D[/quote]

[quote=Lugignaf]Ya' know what you need to do? You need to get them into an inhouse with 5 of the other "regular" members of MOBAfire. Tell them to, "watch what they do". If they don't improve after that, you have 2 options. 1. Punch them in the face and command that they listen. 2. Just dodge them. Put them on ignore. Just don't play with them until they improve. I have a bunch of terrible friends. Stop playing games with them and watch how "well" then do. Tell them what they're doing wrong over and over again. If you get to a better ELO once you all get to ranked, I'm sure that they'll listen to you.[/quote]

[quote=theBMB][quote=Lugignaf] Ya' know what you need to do? You need to get them into an inhouse with 5 of the other "regular" members of MOBAfire. Tell them to, "watch what they do". If they don't improve after that, you have 2 options. 1. Punch them in the face and command that they listen. 2. Just dodge them. Put them on ignore. Just don't play with them until they improve. I have a bunch of terrible friends. Stop playing games with them and watch how "well" then do. Tell them what they're doing wrong over and over again. If you get to a better ELO once you all get to ranked, I'm sure that they'll listen to you. [/quote] I vote for this, I'd love to play with your friends to see how bad they are[/quote]

[quote=ModusPwnens]Thanks for the responses. I'm not going to try to rope them into an inhouse since they'd probably see it as another instance of me whining and telling them what to do even though "they're better". I've avoided playing with them lately ("oops, I didn't see your message until I was already in the game, sorry") and have been winning about 75% more games. It blows my mind that strangers are better teammates than people I know and am communicating with over Skype. It's gotten worse over the past week though. I can't even TALK to them about the game anymore because it's not just that they're ignoring me, it's that they actually seem to believe things like "wards are a waste of money" or "Zilean needs just as much farm as Vayne". Previously, I had thought it was mostly just posturing to show off that they were more experienced with the game in that bizarre way nerds like to do. One particularly overbearing one (who unfortunately has no life and sits online all the time) not only believes these things, but thinks that they are the consensus among the "top players". And then everyone else just agrees with him because they don't want to look foolish. Ironically, this same person spends every game complaining about how OP every other champion is and then eventually quits playing because he's so disgusted with how bad Riot is at balancing the game (he is not a fun person to play games with, but tends to come as a package deal with friends who are, so it's really a more general problem). But I suppose there's no helping it. So thanks for the advice about just avoiding them - it's helped.[/quote]

[quote=Bryun]Basically tell your friends they are idiots, and need to play as a team not as a selfish hoe. That's how you get herpes.[/quote]