Character balancing changes isn’t the only thing getting tweaked in League of Legends Season 3. With a new league system, summoners will be offered different challenges for competitive players and an even greater sense of progression. Even newcomers can get a sense of their improvement (or digression) through the multiple new tiers being added to the ranked system.
When you win a ranked match, you gain League Points which are what you use to move up in rankings. By gaining more points, you get the opportunity to jump up to the next tier. On the opposite end, if you lose enough points you can drop a league. Once you reach a ‘skill tier,’ you can’t drop from your position unless you go idle for a long period of time. So while similar to the old ELO system of before, you are still getting matched with like skilled players. Top 5v5 ranked teams even have to opportunity to reach the highest tier known as the Challenger tier; these teams have the possibility to go pro in season 3.
The basics of the new system and how it works is as follows:
Sure. For the sake of illustration, let’s take the hypothetical (and non-existent) player Steve McQueen. Steve completes his placement matches and falls into division three of the Silver tier. He’s then placed into a league with up to 250 other Silver tier players. Based on their skill level, these players are evenly distributed across the five Silver tier divisions, so Steve’s league contains around 50 players in each division. When Steve acquires 100 League Points by winning ranked games, he’ll have the opportunity to play a Division Series to move up. If he were already in division one, he’d get to play a Promotion Series to break into a new league in the Gold tier.
A new league system is being created to mix things up a bit. In the old system, there wasn’t a whole lot of incentive for players to advance when you’re ranked 300,000 and move up to 299,900. With the different divisions there are slight rewards and feelings of accomplishments when you move up. The smaller ladder system is better for your average player.
While there is this new sytem, ELO isn’t necessarily gone – just less visible and doesn’t effect your rewards at the end of the season. Standing now is determined by the league you’re in, division, and League Points. If you’ve played 10+ solo/duo games or 5 team games, a combination of your current ELO and top rating will determine your league you initially get placed into. If you don’t yet meet those requirements, you will be placed after a series of placement matches.
Although you are placed into a league, you WILL still play players from other leagues. You will continue to play players who are ranked equally to your skill level. With this said, players can still solo/duo que with anyone they want to. It will be slightly harder to compare your season to your friends, but the league system will try to put players on the same friend’s list in the same league. As of now, there is no plan to allow people in the Challenger tier of 3v3 or solo/duo to go pro. Riot suggests making friends in that tier though and make a 5v5 team to attempt pro game play.
So these are the major changes coming to season 3’s competitive scene. If you have more questions you can join the AMA on Reddit today (January 16th) at 12:01 PM PST. Ask your questions live and have Riot answer it for you. After all, no one else knows better.
