Riot’s Changes to 2019’s Ranked Ladder
“Can I play X? I can’t play Y.” The dreaded sentence of any person of any rank in Solo Queue champ select. The question, followed by its guaranteed accompany that is the admission to sucking, puts one in quite an awkward spot.
Your ADC wants your mid, and not only does he want your mid, but he wants your mid because he’s is trash at ADC (or whatever ADC is right now.)
Do you say no? You don’t have to give it to him, right? But wait, he’s trash, so is he saying you’re likely to lose with him on ADC?
All terribly difficult and just questions to be asking, and while I stand by the standard of “If you can’t play X,Y and Z, you’re a bad LoL player.” Riot has decided to take matters into their own hands in a way that throws that maxim out the window.
Role Specific LP
Starting in 2019, your rank on the LoL ladder will be tied to your main position. That is to say, when you win a match with your main position (Say, mid lane) you gain a full 20 LP for your position’s rank. You move up on the ladder mostly with mid, but only slightly for all your other positions.
With this change, a player who is at gold level with his mid lane play will play against other gold summoners, but if that same player is at the skill level of a bronze with his support play, he will only play with bronze players when he gets filled into support.
This applies for all positions.
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I know what you’re thinking: “This is highly abuse-able.”
You’re correct, and Riot has addressed the feedback regarding that (and some other things) right here in case you like reading lengthy explanations.
But in case you don’t, I’ll recap what they wrote.
Concerns and Solutions
Regarding the changes making the ladder TOO grindy (since you’ll likely have to do the same amount of work you did each season for two or more positions,) Riot states that “Starting next season, we’re going to soften the season reset, which means most players will have a higher initial rank”.
Essentially all this means is that instead of starting in silver to get to plat, you’ll probably be in Gold 5 on your main position. As I hinted to earlier, Riot also will make your LP you gain on your main position splash onto your other positions at a lower rate so that you are climbing with them even when you don’t play them (even if at an extremely low rate.)
Regarding people abusing this new ranked mechanic (I.E. position swapping when placed in their lower ranks:) Riot states that they will be able to detect when you swap positions. Occasional swaps won’t do anything to your rank, but the more you swap to your main position, the tighter they will link your off position ranks to your main rank.
Next: Three Principles of Solo Queue
Basically, if you try to abuse the system, they’ll just put in the old one again. So I guess no hard feelings if you don’t like the changes?
Specific numbers and details about their exact plans for 2019 haven’t been released yet. After all, we’ve still got half the year to get through before any of this will be put into effect, but until that time comes, we’re left with this vague idea that seems like a huge change with little support (as it stands.)
-GLHF