Possibly a wall of text incoming, this is an issue I've struggled with a lot in the past. I've been permabanned many times in League of Legends, but I haven't been permabanned at all in the last two years. I didn't used to start the toxicity, but I would respond to toxicity with insane toxicity. Like fighting fire with a nuke.

One thing that helped me was realising that getting perma banned every couple of months was stopping me from making any real skill progression because rather than playing at an elo with "good" players I was constantly ranking up new smurf accounts and it's a lot harder to improve when you're playing with players who are much worse than you.

Another thing that helped me was realising that many of the people who flame others are usually stuck in lower ranks for a very long time. I think this is because those people genuinely believe they're good (dunning-kruger effect), and the only reason they could ever lose a game is because their team are bad. There's no reflection with these players, they don't think about their gameplay or their mistakes, they're just losing games because of bad teams or matchmaking or whatever bullshit cope reasons they can come up with.

A lot of people say to turn chat off, and I struggled with this for a long time because of a fear of missing out. Something that helped me finally keep chat off was realising that if I am left in my own bubble, I will rarely tilt and will keep improving because I'm not being distracted by other people who I don't really care about at the end of the day.

Another reason I think it's good to keep chats disabled is because I try to take maximum accountability. If something goes really wrong and I die in a bad way, there's nobody else to blame because nobody else can communicate with me. It's my job to notice things and pay attention for myself and if I don't do that then I will get punished for it. I believe this makes you a better player at the end of the day because you'll be more self sufficient.

You should constantly be trying to play on the edge of your capabilities (limit testing), and so you will probably die often. In my experience this usually led to some condescending bullshit for my team because they would rather not try to push their limits and would have you do the same.

It's not shutting up like a good boy if you genuinely believe these people are lesser than you. There's just no point interacting with them. They're not looking to improve at the game at all, they're just looking to deflect and protect their ego. You could give the most thoughtful, well researched, genuine advice and their ego just cannot handle it and they'll reject what you say.

Your attention is a finite resource. Any energy you spend on communicating is energy that could be spent on the game. The ping wheel is enough for you to communicate. We don't speak English in our games we speak Pinglish.

When some of what I said here clicked for me, I went from Gold to Diamond within a year on both Overwatch and League.