Bait Ping Becomes the Most Toxic New Ping in League of Legends History

League of Legends found itself with a game that relies on communication between teams, and the existing ping system that was outdated. So RIot Games, as would anyone else, created new pings, to better facilitate communication.

What Riot Games did not count on, however, is the fact that players would abuse the new pings even more than they did with the old ones. Especially when you give them an icon that can be abused so easily.

What Does the New Bait Ping Mean?

We all know what the new pings and the old ones mean in League of Legends. Or, at the very least, we know what Riot Games intended for them to mean, when creating them.

Over the years of playing League of Legends, we've found that the question mark ping, which was meant to indicate that an enemy is missing from lane, can also be used to question our allies on how they pulled off such an amazing stunt, or, oppositely to that, if they have any brain cells left.

The bait ping suffers from the same fate. In a recent Humzh stream, the new usage of the bait ping has been introduced. Seeing as the fishhook also looks like a hangman's noose, it is now a way to indicate to your allies that they should end their life with the usage of the same.

The streamer in question has called it "the best thing to come out of preseason", and it seems that the majority of the player base, unfortunately, agrees.

What do LoL Pings Actually Mean?

To refresh our memory, we should take a look at what pings mean, as Riot Games intended them to:

• Retreat: Withdraw from an unfavorable situation.
• On My Way: Ally is coming to the location they pinged.
• Assist Me: Help with a situation.
• Enemy Missing: An enemy is missing in action.
• Push: Clear out an enemy minion wave.
• All-In: Engage and start a fight.
• Hold: Defend something (hold the lines).
• Bait: Play a scheme (trick the enemy).

As far as we can see, the only thing missing would be a ping to freeze the wave. However, with how many players don't know what that even means, perhaps it's for the best that it remains unused.

On the other hand, seeing that Riot Games are making a lot of waves toward curbing the toxicity found in the in-game chat, all we can do is wait and see what kind of communication the ping system establishes between the players. It seems that it always boils down to hieroglyphs anyway.