League of Legends: everything you need to know about the Teamfight Tactics ranked queue

Teamfight Tactics will debut a ranked queue next week, giving everyone a fresh chance to hit Diamond! What do we know about this new queue and how will it affect the meta of the League of Legends newest game mode?

With the announcement that Teamfight Tactics will be getting its own ranked queue, debuting in Patch 9.14, there are a lot of big questions. Unlike the regular League of Legends ranked games on Summoners Rift, where your LP and MMR gains are purely based off who wins or loses, Teamfight Tactics does not have an equal chance for players to win or lose.

With eight players battling each other at once, only one can win while seven others lose. Does this mean that you only have a 1/8 (12.5%) chance to win and gain LP in Teamfight Tactics ranked?

Well, luckily, Riot addressed this in a recent /dev post, explaining the mechanics of how ranked will work in TFT. How it works, while intuitive, also has some implications for how players will likely adapt within individual games to maximize their chances of climbing.

Divisions and tiers

First, Riot confirmed that ranked TFT will be structured the same way as it does in Summoner’s Rift, with tiers (Diamond, Platinum, Gold, etc.) and divisions (Gold I, Gold II, Gold III, etc.). These tiers will be broken down approximately the same way as in the League of Legends proper mode, with the truly elite (around the top 2% being in Diamond).

However, Riot has confirmed that there will not be any promotion series in Teamfight Tactics, explaining “since there isn’t a single winner or loser in TFT, promotion series don’t translate very well.” Instead, you simply need to hit 100 LP to advance to the next division. You will also carry over any extra LP with you (meaning if you start a game with 99 LP and gain 15, you’ll go into the next division with 14 LP already).

One consequence of this, though, is that you will demote easier. Riot is providing less protection (it is unclear whether this decreased protection also applies to demoting between divisions, as it does in ranked on Summoner’s Rift) so you can move through divisions more quickly. However, you cannot demote unless you lose a game which you started at 0 LP.

This means that players will likely play much more conservatively when they are close to that 0 LP threshold. Because of how LP gains and losses work (explained in a second). In games where a player doesn’t think they will be able to win, they may decide that instead of aggressively re-rolling units to try and get a better team composition, they’re better off sitting with a less optimal team comp and just try to end with minimal LP loss.