[Weekly] The Sunday Salt Mine: Vent Your Frustrations Here

Two quick notes before we start:
(Edit1: in the very end I will keep you guys up to date, something is happening!)

1. Scope: I am not here to discuss whether this specific ban was deserved or not. This thread is strictly about Riot's support system and automated ticket handling.
2. Irony: Funnily enough, this post was refined with an AI tool to ensure correct grammar and better readability.

So let’s see how we got here:

I have read and heard a lot from friends and peers about undeserved bans happening over the last two months. At first, I assumed people were exaggerating or simply unlucky, but it has increasingly looked like a widespread issue.

Then it happened to me: a 3-day ban for "trolling" in a match where I was actively trying to win, and the only play that could even remotely look suspicious was a cross-map move—invading to grab farm while the enemy team took Baron because I was sitting exactly 200g short of an item spike.

I appealed for a review. Just 19 minutes later—on a Monday evening—I received a standard template response essentially boiling down to: deserved, get good.

Not a single piece of reasoning, no context, and no specific misbehavior pointed out—information that is normally included when a gameplay ticket gets reviewed.

So I replied requesting an actual human review, stating that if another automated generic reply came through, I would take the issue to EU consumer protection authorities. And sure enough: my ticket status changed to "paused". That usually indicates the system flagged it for either:

• a) silence / do not reply, or
• b) escalation to human / legal review.

Under EU digital service regulations (specifically the Digital Services Act), platforms operating at this scale are legally required to provide a clear, specific statement of reasons whenever they suspend an account or restrict access. Denying paying customers basic transparency and hiding behind automated bot dismissals is not just bad customer service—it directly violates mandatory compliance standards.

Again, I am no angel: I type a lot in games, and if Riot really wanted to dig through my chat logs across other matches, they could probably find an excuse to punish me for typing. But this isn't a chat restriction or a toxicity penalty—this is an automated ban strictly for "gameplay trolling", and that is where the support system completely falls apart.

We have all seen the clips: players getting false-banned for simply dancing near the Nexus or strategically selling items, only to have their bans lifted after the clip went viral on social media or a top streamer stepped in to escalate it. If you don't have clout, you are left completely at the mercy of automated dismissals.

I’ve already tagged numerous streamers, Rioters, and support accounts on X with zero response.

So my last 2 cents: shame on most streamers for ignoring this issue, which ACTUALLY hurts the game. It’s not the patches or meta changes that kill this game, it’s the treatment of the owning company which screws over their fanbase.

I am not entirely sure what to expect from this post, but I just want to get this information as public as possible so players know there might be ways to push back and bring more attention to this matter.

I will keep you updated on how this turns out and whether further steps are needed.

Thank you for your attention!

Update 1: my ticket is open again, I think I will get a human answer to it, if this works spread the word!

Update 2: the ticket got paused again. There are 2 options: either somebody manually paused it, or they tried to let AI answer again and it is still alerting for higher hirachie.

Does your enemy heavily stack HP? Go for BotRK and deal shit ton of health based damage, How the fuck dare them?

You need huge damage? Go for Infinity Edge deal 400 crits per auto and Q, your crit chances are doubled so don't even need to worry about it! You don't even have that tiny bity crit reduction anymore, thanks to riot!

You need lower cooldown on your Q and W? And you want to get some ability haste because of that, dont be silly! Just go for even more attack speed items! Buy daggers! add daggers to the boots to get your gunmetal greaves! buy even more daggers! add daggers on top of your daggers, to get even more daggers!

Are you too squishy? Go for Death's Dance too so they will never be able to oneshot you, if they really want to one shot you go for Immortal Shieldbow, dumb mages have to stack their tears (irl) to get Seraph's and get shit load of mana, just to be able to get a part of Immortal Bow's shield! Like your W wasn't enough!

Are their CC chain getting rough? Does their dumb mage make you angry with their tiny bity damage? Just build Wit's End or Mercurial Scimitar! You dont have to worry about the rest! Their CC's cant even stop your fucking ultimate!

Is your opponent going for full armor build? How dumb they are! just build Dominiks! It even gives you crit, like your crit wasn't enough at all!

Now you have shit ton of crits and hybrid damage due to your passive (and your beautifully designed cherry on top true damage E), you can one shot their ADCs, melt down their tanks, and bend their bruisers over as you want! Now you have an open slot because you just reached 100% crit chance in two items? Don't worry! You can get Jak'Sho to become a tank if you want, and it won't lessen your damage! You can become a tank, you can become an assasin, you can become a bruiser, at the same time! We yone lovers hope riot will add a specific class for yone and his brother!

So lets sum it up! They cant one shot you, they can't go head to head in a long fight against you (since you can stack Lethal Tempo and fuck them into nonexistence), they can't group up and catch your ass, you can simply ult away and they can't stop you with CC!

In exchange of what? Do you need to snowball? Do you need to win your lane? Of course not! Thats just an extra work dummy! You just have to keep up your farm, and it won't even matter if your enemy laner has 2x more after you get that juicy shieldbow and infinity edge!

Have fun!

I accidentally fat fingered my barrier and died in a 5v5 shortly after and the game instantly flagged me and gave me a 1 week suspension for trying to lose and sent a surrender vote to my teammates for game termination. Anyone can watch the replay and see that. This is the second time this happened. First time I just got an AI response from Riot. This time will likely be the same. Even my teammate was confused. No, it wasn't because someone did something I didn't like, it was just a fat finger with no cause. I tried my best to win, farmed up, even played safe when my teammates asked because they were winning the map, and contributed to fights as much as the rest of my team. We lost but I will still trying my best to win an otherwise very close game to the very end even when my team wanted to ff. This new ai system really sucks. It's too sensitive and prejudiced toward certain roles. People are getting banned left and right when they are trying to win. Something has to change.

OPGG: op.gg/lol/summoners/na/elo%20savant-autsm

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Most stable yone player

In terms of quality and even art style, the PNG of their silhouettes legitimately looks like it was taken straight from the classic era League of Legends splash art, which is not at all a compliment. I'm a professional artist so maybe I'm biased, but the quality here is really just so subpar given how popular and important K/DA is to a lot of people in the community.

For some reason the K/DA finisher gets completely blown out of the water by the random thematical season finisher's, like Spirit Blossom?! I could maybe understand Jinx's finisher being higher quality considering it came off the heels of Arcane's massive success, but why is Spirit Blossom higher quality than K/DA??? Considering K/DA is their most popular music group, pulling them in more than a billion views on YouTube, this deserved to have much more effort and quality put into it.

I can't even say that I want to buy this, which sucks because I'm a huge fan of K/DA but this just objectively looks so much worse than Spirit Blossom and Jinx's Arcane finisher that I can't say that it's worth it. I would love if this finisher got reworked, but I don't think that's on the table as a possibility because none of the other finisher's have ever gotten any revamps or updates, to my knowledge. Such a massive let down.

Riot CANNOT have a 100% automated support system, and yet, it's literally impossible to get a human being to actually review your help ticket via their support. You constantly get a bot sending you an automated reply and instantly closing your ticket.

This is a direct violation of the EU AI act & EU digital services act (DSA), as well as just simply a complete violation of the standard EU consumer rights.

Nonetheless, they don't seem to be afraid of that, and are allowed to keep doing business in Europe despite acting in total illegality. How come?

I want to talk about something every ADC main has dealt with and nobody at Riot seems to care about: supports can grief their duo with almost no risk of punishment, while the ADC gets punished for the results.

Here’s my day so far:

Game 1: Arcane Comet Rek’Sai “support.” Did not spend one second in bot lane. Not one. Game ended while they were level 6. I was left 1v2 the entire game.

Game 2: Same player. Locks Swain, then leaves bot open again. Another loss.

Game 3: AP Blitzcrank hooking cannon minions, ulting the wave so I can’t farm, then spamming laugh emote.

Three games, three losses, and every one was decided by a support who had no interest in playing.

Here’s the problem. The system flags results, not intent. If I go 0/15 because I’m stuck alone against a full bot lane for 25 minutes, I’m the one at risk of a penalty, even though I was trying the entire game. Meanwhile the support who caused it gets nothing, because their KDA is clean. They weren’t there to die.

Any other role doing this would be reported into oblivion. A jungler who never left fountain, a mid who walked top and stayed there. But a support who abandons lane, steals waves, or hooks minions just to mess with you slips right through.

And it creates a power imbalance that everyone in bot lane feels. You learn to tiptoe around your support, never say anything, never push back, because if they decide they don’t like you, your game is over and you might be the one who gets punished for it.

What Riot needs to do:

• Detect lane abandonment. Track time spent near the assigned lane, not just KDA. A support with almost no time in bot lane should be flagged.
• Detect wave and minion interference. Hooking cannons, ulting waves, repeatedly stealing CS from your own carry: these are measurable patterns.
• Stop punishing deaths in a vacuum. Before penalizing a high-death game, look at whether that player was left alone or sabotaged.
• Weigh reports for griefing against your duo specifically. When the ADC reports their support for intentional sabotage, that report should carry context.

This isn’t about one bad game. It’s a blind spot in how the system works, and griefers have figured it out.

If this has happened to you, comment, upvote, and share your story. The more of us speaking up, the harder it is to ignore.

I know it's not often said and maybe hard to believe, but I really mean what I'm saying. From my experience, toxicity in League usually stems from frustrations in-game, but in the case of DL those people are actually disgusting. I was excited to try DL because it actually looked interesting to me and I thought it's been a while since I tried a new competitive multiplayer game.

I gave the game a try and played around 10-15 games and despite toxicity, it didn't bother me at all. But try to compliment any game on their subreddit and see how they react.

I'm actually D4 in League but have zero shooters experience so I made a post on r/deadlockthegame asking about the similarities between League and DL since I only played around 15 games and felt completely lost. I also asked about keybinds and what people recommend. The top comments said I'm absolutely either lying or boosted otherwise I'd be in top 10% of players right now because the GAME IS A MOBA NOT A SHOOTER whether you like it or not. I literally wrote in my post I only had 15 games and using their logic, what are they even implying? I posted my opgg and said add me on discord I can livestream games to you or we can play together (the commenter said they were Masters in League too) but my comment was instantly downvoted to -15 the moment I clicked post and he pretended not to read anything.

It's not just about this post, that place is always an absolute cult of delusional miserable losers who have some sort of mental-issue about Deadlock being called a shooter game over a MOBA game or something of that sort? Which isn't what I was implying or trying to imply at all. I was just asking for advice on similarities with League so I can learn the game better. I can say with certainty that despite in-game behavior in League being insufferable and having to mute chat every game, the community outside of that on reddit and Youtube have been extremely helpful and some of the most chill people I talked to online.

Chart (Yunara's picks by day around 26.20): https://imgur.com/a/x75v883

This started with Jojopyun. On Caedrel's Will the West Win?, he talked about "placebo nerfs": Riot nerfs a champ, everyone drops it, and two weeks later people realize it was fine. Then 26.20 came out as the Worlds patch, K'Sante got nerfed for being too reliable a blind pick, and he went 0-5 at Play-Ins. I wanted to know if we're all a bit mind-controlled by the patch notes.

How I counted

• I pulled ranked games for 18,523 random NA players, Iron to Challenger, 9 Sep to 25 Oct: 202,725 games, weighted so the sample matches the real ladder.
• Pick rates move for a ton of reasons (a streamer, Worlds being on, weekends). So I compared every champ Riot changed against the champs Riot didn't touch over the same days. If those moved too, it wasn't the patch.

Yunara

• 2 less on-hit damage at every Q rank, her slow stopped stacking, and a note calling her the leading candidate for "handshake hyperscaler do nothing."
• She went from about 1 game in 8 to 1 in 12. A fifth of her players dropped her on patch day, before anyone could've felt the nerf in games. A third were gone in two weeks.
• Her win rate moved about a point (anywhere from -3.5 to +1). The bot laners Riot didn't touch: 50.3% before, 50.3% after.

Everyone else

• The four champs Riot nerfed in 26.20 (Ambessa, Ashe, K'Sante, Yunara), together: picks down 14%, win rate down about 1.6 points. Players moved way further than the champs did.
• Most of you didn't leave on patch day, though. Picks drifted down over two weeks: 15% after one, 18% after two.
• Jojopyun said people come back to a nerfed champ once they realize it's fine. So I checked the five champs Riot nerfed in 26.19 (Nocturne, Poppy, Rumble, Ryze, Vi), which then went four weeks with no more changes. Players never went back to them: picks were down 9% in week one and 19% by week four. I added that check after locking my plan, so treat it as a lead, not a result.

Meanwhile, at Worlds

• Pros do the opposite. Every Worlds since 2019, teams pick or ban the champs Riot nerfed beforehand in 28 to 43% of games, against 7 to 12% for untouched ones. This year so far: Cassiopeia in 2 of every 3 games, K'Sante in half.
• Yunara's the exception: 88% pick/ban at last year's Worlds, 20% this year.

What I can't answer yet

• Pro teams were drafting the nerfed champs on stage in the same weeks solo queue players dropped them. So I can't tell whether solo queue reacted to the patch notes or to watching Worlds.
• I wanted to test whether K'Sante really got worse as a blind pick, but I didn't have enough K'Sante top games for the full test.
• I swapped one test before looking at any results, because my sample was too small for the sharper one. The method page has all of it.

If you dropped Yunara, was it the patch note, a streamer, or did she feel worse in your games? If you kept her, how's it going? And which nerf should I look at next while Worlds is still on?

Write-up, method and data: greyscreenping.lol. Solo project, not affiliated with Riot.

Really but im kinda pissed off, Why does the support system, where u cand send tickets arguing about stuff, works bad as fk? I recently got banned for 1 day without being actually guilty, so i sent a ticket to the support and ended up with an AI or BOT closing my ticket without saying anything usefull. AND im not a flamer guy, im even honor 5, so idk why im going throught this.

The next day, to avoid loosing 100lp in master, due to the decay thing, i had to play 1 game so it resets the timer. After that game i got another 1day ban for toxic, keep in mind that i had the chat baned, so i couldnt use it to toxic another ppl in game. SO... i made another ticket, and i've got another AI/BOT replied.

But yesterday, cause again, i have the 1day timer, i tried to play another game but got the same problem, instabanned after 1 single game, but now 14 days, why? It doesnt even says it on the banned info, just the "14 days ban". And i tried to ask the support like 5 times, showing screenshots, previous chats, showing that im honor 5 on this acc and my second acc. But nothing, just an AI or BOT comes and automatically closes my ticket 'cause ive send another one before that one.

Could i have any help or advice? Cause the timer to decay its today, and im on a winstreak of like 20 wins. I can only play a few games or a game per day cause to work/uni. So the effort of like, 2 weeks, its going to be lost by today.

So, i deserve maybe to be perma, because this game wakes up the worst in me, i wish i could be permanently chat banned, because sometimes i cannot hold myself from activating chat just to vent and then turn it off again (this would be beneficial for me and for others).

Also, i was perma in the past for scripting, it was in a different computer, in a different country, and in an account with a different email, since then ive been more than clean 1-2 years+.

I have my main account, and made this account to play only Elise, I HAND LEVELED IT playing normal games+arena+swift games, and paid some exp boosts (you can actually check it if you go a few pages back in the matches logs).

But this is different, i was banned 15 days for intentionally losing a game (i genuinely got invaded on repeat since lvl1): https://op.gg/es/lol/summoners/euw/TwTv%20Noelvansek-ELISE

I took the L and accepted the 15 days ban, but today i tried to log and now im perma banned, and NOT FOR INTING NOR TOXIC, but for using unauthorised 3rd party tools to INTERACT with Riot games or services!

When i see bans out there i see they say using unauthorized 3rd party tools/cheats/hacks, mine it says INTERACT.

I deserve to be banned for 99999 reasons, but not for 3rd tools.

I dont use any overlay.
I dont use any AI.
I dont use scripts or anything at all.
I play on a mac.
My other 2 accounts are completely fine(i play them in the same computer in the same way).
I don't know if this matters but, in riot support it says i received the perma ban more than a week after my last game (while the account was already temporarily banned for more than a week).

Some days before my last game i did got disconnected 2 times on a live game due a pop up saying i need to have vanguard active, it closed my game, i opened again from launcher and worked well again (Thinking back im not even sure that happened on this account or one of my other accounts, and as far as i see on google, is an error that happens often randomly to some players specially mac, so i doubt it is related to my ban).

Just had such a fun game only to be ruined by a support Blitzcrank not wanting to play anymore, running mid, placing wards, then backing, for 13 minutes straight.

And now I can't even upload the video on reddit because I'm too dumb to understand how :(

I wish I could understand the psychology of these players. I have diagnosed severe depression and autism and not even I soft int when my games are bad. Why do these players?

Sorry for venting. I'm just so sad.

How I can justify playing OTP Zyra (no dash, no mobility, super squishy)
When there are all these overtuned as fuck champions.

Locke for example has movesspeed on his W - he has a DASH on his E and on top of that SLOW on Q and R ... isnt that a BIT to much considering he also gets resets?
Talon basically has invis + double MS because he jumps over walls ...

I still managed to climb to D1 with Zyra JG only but sometimes I wonder ... do I play her because I truly like her? Or do I play her because I have 0 hands for other champions?
Idk but its slowly getting hard to play the game

I Never used any thrid party programms or cheated . Is there anything i can do about it ?

he has 0 mastery and he spammed the message you get on champ select when you report someones

then talked to himself that we reported him

Literally didnt even type a word in chat???? I just went up 40 cs and shes started screaming

like picking nunu or rammus and just running straight down mid turrets and dying

Hey everyone!

I'm currently an ADC main, but I've been seriously considering switching to top lane, and I'd love to hear some honest advice from experienced top lane players.

I've played top for a while before and genuinely enjoyed it, but I eventually moved away from it. One of my biggest frustrations with ADC has always been how dependent the role can feel on your support. Different playstyles, poor synergy, losing lane because of things outside your control, and feeling like you have very little agency when your support isn't playing well have all made climbing frustrating at times.

I still love ADC champions, but I'm also really interested in champions like Camille and Gwen. I like the idea of having more individual responsibility over my lane and being able to improve through matchup knowledge, wave management, trading, and better macro.

My long-term goal is to reach Emerald–Diamond and eventually play competitively. I'm also involved in building a team, so changing roles would be a significant decision for me.

What I'm wondering is:

• How realistic is it to climb to Emerald–Diamond as a top laner if you're genuinely consistent and committed to improving? I am currently a G3 adc.
• How much agency does top lane actually give you in solo queue?
• If you were in my position, would you stick with ADC and try to overcome its frustrations, or commit to learning top lane properly?
• And for someone interested in Camille and Gwen, would you recommend focusing on one champion first or learning both together?

I'm not expecting climbing to be easy, and I know that improvement takes time. I'm more interested in whether top lane feels rewarding for players who approach the game analytically and are willing to put in the work.

I'd really appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who have climbed through the ranks while actively working on their gameplay rather than just grinding games.

Thanks!

I recently woke up to a "permanent ban" and instantly started drafting up a support ticket. They answered rather quickly and made it a 1 week ban instead.

They say those bans are for "fraudulent gifts", meaning if you ever accepted a gift from someone that isn't a close friend, you might be in trouble and caught by this automated system.

Don't worry too much about it, write a ticket and your ban will be shortened.

League players need to accept that Riot hates them and will eventually ban every single one of them. At this point, I literally deleted the game. There’s no reason to keep playing a game where you constantly feel like the company is working against its own players. Just uninstall it and move on.

Super cool, people who played over 20 games on classic will get it before 21st oct. Woulda been cooler if this was communicated beforehand or let us comlete the 20 games this week but no biggie

No communication regarding if classic-ish ARAM games counted, no communication if Classic Bot games counted

We getting communication though that it will be available on the blue essence emporium for 150k BE.... but no communication whatsoever regarding IP... Will out IP convert to BE? It should... or at least Rustier Blitz should be purchasable with IP before emporium ends... idk...

really unhappy/dissapointed with how they've been communicating everything, extremely vague and with no-one to answer doubts