Riot has clarified how Lol LP gain and loss will work in Emerald and above-ranked tiers.
Season 2024 of League of Legends has kicked in officially with massive changes all around the game. Map, Baron, objectives, Rift Herald, and items have all received significant changes. Besides gameplay, Riot is also working on improving the aspects tangential to the core gameplay.
This includes bringing ASUs, VGUs, new game modes, and skins. They have already talked about Lee Sin and Teemo ASU and gave updates on the highly anticipated Skarner’s VGU.
Then, there are the changes regarding ranked matchmaking. If you are a regular rank player, you may have already noticed some of the changes Riot has brought to make the ranked experience better for everyone.
These changes include more precise identification of player skill, thus better matchmaking with fewer smurfs. Then, they have also made it so LP gains and losses feel balanced across all tiers. For Emerald and higher, the LP gains are reduced to maintain competitiveness.
Regarding the LP gain and loss, Riot has given further details, which I will explain in this article.
Read More: League of Legends Patch 14.2 Notes
Lol LP Gains and Losses in Emerald Tier and Below
In the previous season, you could easily see gains centered around more than 25 LP plus or minus. This facilitated the change of rank without having to play many matches. While that purpose was fulfilled pretty well, this created a bigger issue.
The emerald tier, which is equivalent to the old platinum elo, represents the top 15% of the player base. This is considered quite a competitive zone, despite all the ‘plat is elo’ jokes. Therefore, it seemed unnatural when one could jump between Emerald tier with four wins. Because one can easily have a lucky day and climb a division higher and that doesn’t represent the true competitive nature of the tier.
That’s why Riot is going to experiment with a lessened LP loss/gain with Emerald. In season 2024, the Emerald players will see an average of +- 20 LP gain/loss. That’s an average number. Practically, you’d be looking at +19/-21 and +21/19 for a range of matches, depending on your recent performance.
The average is centered on 28 LP (+-) at tiers below Emerald. So, you might be getting +29/-27 and -27/+29 LP gains/loss, depending on how well or badly you performed in the recent few matches.
Addressing Issues with Demotion
Usually, when you reach the boundary rank (the IV divisions of the tiers), and reach 0 LP, you get a demotion shield that prevents you from instantly demoting. This shield used to tank a lot of losses back in the day. But with the augmented overall LP gains from last year, the shield only sustains for far fewer matches lost.
In this season, there seems to be an issue where people are not demoting despite losing many matches at IV division 0 LP. In such a scenario, your net LP gain will be negative after one win and one loss because your MMR will be recognized to be far below the tier of the one you are in due to so many losses there.
Riot hasn’t clarified how they will resolve this issue or if they even will. But we’ll have to wait and see for this one.
Apex Tier Lol LP Gain and Losses
Apex tiers refer to Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger ranks. Apex tiers are soft reset at the start of each year. Riot has provided further clarifications as to how it works.
So, when all the players from the apex tiers undergo the reset, the player who would sit at 600-700 LP would, at year-end, move down to Diamond 1. At that moment, D1 gets more valuable because the highest LP player would be moved down to 500 LP if he had ended the year at 1500 LP.
If the apex tier players went with an average of 50% win rate, they would most likely be reset to D3 or D4, Riot adds. Therefore, after the reset, it will take a while for players to return to the apex tiers. Granted, this reset won’t change the relative rank with other players (since the top % will not see huge changes).
Communication is always appreciated by the community. Providing the players with such in-depth information helps build a culture of transparency and trust between the community and Riot Games.
