League of Legends Season 9 Ranked Changes: A Breakdown
By Richelle Lau
With Season 9 fast approaching, Riot is planning to implement some major changes to League of Legends’ current ranked system. Keep reading to find out what these changes are and how they will affect you in the upcoming season!
One of the biggest changes being introduced to the game with this preseason patch is the new ranked system. Of course, these changes won’t be applied until the 23rd of January 2019 (when Season 9 starts) but since they are pretty massive, better to go into the new season prepared!
New Tiers/Divisions
Gone are the days of memeing Bronze 5 players as Riot has decided to add a new bottom tier; Iron. In addition to Iron, they will also be adding a new tier between our current Masters and Challenger called Grand Master. With the two new tiers, Riot will also be cutting the divisions within each tier from five to four, meaning for example, Silver IV would be the lowest division in Silver and not Silver V.
Hello, summoners! Here's the sneak peek of the new Challenger emblem—we're still iterating/polishing, but please share your feedback! I also went ahead and updated the side-by-side with the latest art based on the feedback we got so far.#leagueoflegends #ranked #season2019 pic.twitter.com/d4N9MkKAZN
— Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer) (@Sapmagic_) October 4, 2018
According to Riot, these changes aim to more evenly distribute the skill level of league players while also making the climbing journey more stable when it comes to the player base’s skill improvement. These tier additions won’t change any gameplay aspect of the game, rather just the way players are divided.
Riot hopes these two new tiers will “smooth out the bad experiences in Bronze, Silver, and Diamond” and that “they’ll bring more differentiation for Diamond players”.