Why Communication matters:

Communication is fundamental to getting your team to work together. All of us have experienced games where our team is uncoordinated and running around the map like headless chickens.

Symptoms of Poor Communication:

People not realizing there is a fight near them they could help with

People giving uncontested (free) towers and or objectives

People letting their jungle be invaded

Teams spread across the map (not counting laning phases)

The goal of communication is to turn your awareness into your team’s awareness. By making your team aware of critical situations you increase the likely hood of a favorable outcome.

Eliminate Toxic communication by turning off chat:

Always keep in mind that negativity and toxicity are the destroyers of Teamwork.

The 3 Hells of Chat: Chatting during games hurts way more than it helps.

Flaming and the Cycle of Loss: People flame you -> you feel the need to defend your self -> Good Game (half your team is AFK typing) Tilting: Even if you never type just reading all the negativity accumulates over time. Eventually, you get emotional, you get pissed off, and you feel dejected like winning is impossible and then guess what winning has become impossible because your emotions are out of control. Going AFK to type mid game: Don’t even think I need to talk about why this is terrible. Most of us do it out of emotion not logic.

In conclusion, please just turn off chat. Note that you can still type in hero select or draft while chat is off.

Customize your quick chat to match your play style:

Ask yourself what you most commonly want to communicate to your teammates and add it to your quick chat. For instance, if you call Dargon and DS a lot add them to your quick chat. If you find yourself telling people to back off and farm added it to your quick chat.

Below is a screenshot of my quick chat setup. I have also included an explanation for when and why I use each quick chat message.

Note: A lot of people, like us, don’t always know what they should be doing. Pinging and quick chat help people make better decisions. They keep your team on the same page. Keep in mind people may not always listen, but a lot of the time they will 😀

“Attack the Abyssal Dragon!”: I start sending this when I want my team to set up to take dragon or when I think the enemy team is taking dragon. Taking dragon at 2min mark is very important because it gives one team level 4 and their ultimate while the other is still level 3.

“Rally for a team fight!”: I use when I see a team fight breaking out or I see teammates sitting under tower doing nothing.

“Clear the minion wave!”: Probably my most used message, which I use when waves are getting on our towers or minion waves are all pushed to my team’s side of the map

“Hang on. Don’t engage without me!”: I see my team wanting to fight or getting ready to fight when I am far away. I also use this when I need to heal or have low health.

“Everyone push mid!”: All enemy towers down, 3 super minions pushing down mid and your team is off in the jungle, sound familiar? or enemy pushing mid onto your core and your team is defending other towers.

“Watch the jungle!”: I use this right when the game starts to make sure that people are going into the jungle to provide the vision they should be. I also use this when my team’s jungle is invaded.

“Don’t overextend! Get back to farming.”: For some reason, when people get behind their brain tells them that overextending to farm is the best idea… It is not, overextending to farm just results in even more deaths and loss farm time.

Ping with a purpose:





Understand that the more explicit information is the more people will understand your intentions. For this reason, quick chat is better than pinging, but quick chat + pinging is the best communication option. For instance, when I send “Hold on I need to recover” I follow it up by pinging retreat.

The 3 types of Pings: