I want to share an experience that I had today that really opened my eyes on how you can change a team's mentality to help you have a higher chance of winning a game. I'll preface by saying this won't always work, but there is no downside to trying it.

Let me paint you a picture..

I entered my second ranked game of the day, I lost my first one but played well. I think to myself.. this is the game and we are going to win.

My team insta locks 3 dualists... I think to myself greeeeaat start but the other player goes Sage so I go Brim. Not the ideal team, but hopefully the dualist can carry.

We get into the game and round 1 they smash us, I don't even think we got one kill. Round 2 they smash us again. Round 3 we managed a very close win. We go on to lose the next 2 rounds.

Let me stop to say that I have seen all too often that prior to this point these players would have been raged at hard by their team. I can't think of 1 time in the last 9 years that I have played online team games that having my team rage at me has helped me to play better. I can think of MANY times where having someone tell me it's ok, you got this or you'll get them next time lets me know that they have my back

Looking at the game the team started to get a little negative since we are down 1-4 and the team starts to consider surrendering. At this point, I said no we can still win this. At this point it's safe to say that the bottom couple frags were not pulling their weight and I could tell they were frustrated. This is the moment that I decided to try to be a leader on the team and pump people up when they make a good play. Our 1-7 Sage manages to get a triple kill, I tell her "Nice job! You are more than just our healer!". The next round our Phoenix has a great outplay to clutch the round, I tell him "Come on let's go! Nice job dude!" The enemy team is also talking trash about my teammate, so I defend them in all chat. At this point I am not going to let anyone talk bad about my team, because I need them to feel confident.

So round by round our team starts to get in a groove and win more rounds than we lose. I keep it up and make sure to call out 1 of my teammates every round for a great play that they made. At this point every player on my team has stepped up and is playing well and victory looks in our sight. The score is now 12-11 in our favor and we just need 1 more round. We won the round and I ended up as Game MVP. After that game, I felt so happy that I was able to help make the game better for my team.

My teammate thanked me for helping to keep morale up and it really made me think about how important it is to be a good teammate in this game. Sticking up and supporting a team will not only help everyone to have a better in game experience, but it can also make people play better.

I hope that this helps players out there to try to be more positive and supportive in this game. :)

If you have ever been in this situation where you helped or were helped by a teammate to have an epic comeback I would love to hear about it below!