Riot are making some changes to the next ranked split, something they've outlined in a recent blog post.
LoL Ranked Season 14 Split 2 is going to kick off with LoL Patch 14.10. Players who took time to play ranked in the first split are going to be able to earn the Victorious Kog'Maw skin with chromas and other goodies. Riot also revealed that they are working on some changes for the second ranked split of 2024.
Not only are they adjusting where players can start off their ranked split, there are also some major changes planned for high elo Masters players. All of this was outlined in a recent blog post.
LoL: Ranked Changes Incoming
Demotion Protection Changes
Riot are going to get rid of the demotion protection between division within a rank. This means that if a player is in Gold III and falls to Gold IV, they are not protected anymore for one game, but will immediately fall down a division within a rank. Riot is also going to implement a base LP that players can demote to.
[...] when you demote down a tier, you will demote to either 25, 50, or 75 LP depending on how far off we determine your actual skill level is. If you’re exactly a Gold IV 0 LP player, you’d be going through a lot of promotions and demotions each season, so we don’t want to slap you with a -50LP each time you go through that.
This is meant to make ranking much more dynamic. Demotion from one tier to another, so from Silver IV to Bronze I will still have protection, though.
Potential Highest First Rank
Riot has introduced a three-split ranked system within the span of a year. This means that high elo players need to climb harder and more, but that also has its downside. Riot revealed in their blog post that, "Apex players are experiencing more fatigue when re-climbing to their previous ranks" because they have much further to go in the same amount of time.
That's why Riot is going to be updating the highest starting point for players in the ranked split. Previously, the highest someone could start was Emerald I. This has been updated to Diamond III.
Duos For Masters Reinstated
A while ago, Riot removed duos from Master tiers and higher. This has been reverted, with players who manage to make it to Masters still able to queue up with a friend to play ranked from now on. But those who make it to Grandmaster will have to keep playing solo queue.
While solo queue only in Master+ did help with match quality, it has made playing the game more isolating. It's also not been good for content creators, according to Riot, which is why the change has been implemented.
This change is being implemented everywhere except for China and Korea, where the community was much more divided on adding duo queue back to the Apex levels.
We’ll be piloting these changes in all regions except for China and Korea. Different regions have communicated different sensibilities around where that balance point is, and players in China and Korea have presented as significantly more divided on bringing duos back than elsewhere.
These are the biggest changes Riot is making in League of Legends ranked for the upcoming split. Are you excited to try and climb once more?