Riot has a tool that lets you test your connection—and you should use it before you queue up for ranked

Look, we’ve all been there. You’re in a ranked game, and your connection starts flaking out as your ping spikes into the hundreds. It’s ridiculously frustrating, it isn’t your fault, and you’re going to keep pinging your connection in the chat so the rest of your team knows you’re lagging.

What if, however, you could test your connection to the game before actually queuing up for a ranked game and bringing the rest of your teammates down with you? Then, theoretically, no one could be blamed for actually starting a ranked lobby except yourself, right? Right. Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.

Let us be the ones to present to you Riot’s very own Lag Report Tool, which will tell you how your connection to the game’s servers holds up—and if it’s bad, it’ll provide suggestions to help you try to fix it. Warning: Some suggestions get pretty darn technical.

The tool, and Riot’s facetious video marking its release, came out in October. For starters, it grabs your current ISP’s connection and grades it on things such as packet loss, latency, and and jitter.

You can do several things with that grade, including comparing it to other ISPs in the area to figure out whether you can upgrade to something more stable.

If it’s low, and you can’t upgrade to another ISP, the tool will provide you with several other methods of bettering your connection, including troubleshooting your computer, your router, and your ISP itself.

So, the next time you’re spamming your connection pings to your team through the muffled screams at your internet, Riot may actually have some tips to help you out. Whatever you do, though, if you know that your connection will be struggling when you queue up for ranked, at least warn your teammates before the game starts to give them the chance to dodge if they so choose.