When you queue up for Ranked, it's important to know what's at stake. Sure, every win and loss will affect your MMR, but climbing—or even falling!—between tiers might also be on the line. As might be your starting position on the ladder!

Placements

Placement matches are how we determine your starting position on the current year's Ranked ladder. You'll only play them if you're unranked, which happens if you've never played Ranked before or if it's the start of a new year.

You'll have to play five placement matches in each Ranked queue to lock in your starting tier/division, which will depend on the outcome of these matches, the difficulty of the opponents you faced, and your rank from the previous year. If you've never played Ranked before, your normal MMR will be taken into account for your placement matches. You also cannot place any higher than Diamond III, even if you were previously in one of the top tiers.

You cannot lose League Points (LP) in placement matches! Instead, you'll simply gain 0 LP upon defeat. But be sure to play with a good connection, as going AFK will also count as a loss in your placements.

Promotions

Once you're placed in a division, you'll earn LP for each match you win and lose LP for each match you lose. Breaking 100 LP within a division will promote you to the next division of your current tier. You'll even hang on to any leftover LP!

If you accrue 100 LP in division I of any tier (like Iron I, Emerald I, etc), you'll automatically move into the next tier. It's as simple as that!

Of course, what can be won can also be lost...

Demotions and Decay

Winning is the only path to promotion, but there are two ways to drop below your current division and tier: demotions and decay. 

Demotions

Demoting between divisions within a tier (ie. Silver III to Silver IV) happens whenever you lose more LP than you have. For example, if you're at 5 LP in Silver III and lose 20 LP in a game, you'll be demoted to Silver IV with 85 LP.

Demoting between tiers (eg. Silver IV to Bronze I) will still have protection as we want to give you an opportunity to protect the rank you've earned. However, this does come with a slight adjustment: 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.

Apex Tier Demotions

Just like promotions, demotions for players Master and higher are a little different. Check out our article on the apex tiers to learn everything you need to know!

Decay

Decay only occurs for players in Diamond and up, so if you're in Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, or Emerald, feel free to skip this section!

Reaching the top tiers of League is just the first step. If you want to keep your position, you'll have to fight for it. Let too many days go by without a match in that queue, and decay will set in, causing you to automatically lose a set amount of LP each day.

But that doesn't mean you have to play every day. When you enter a division with decay (ie. Diamond+), you’ll be given a number of banked days. At the end of each day, your number of banked days will decrease by one. Once you run out of banked days, you’ll lose LP instead. 

You can earn more banked days by playing matches, but how many days you earn per match (and how much LP you lose if you decay) differs by rank:

Diamond Tier

• Banked Days per Match: 7
• Maximum Banked Days: 28
• Initial Days Before Decay: 28
• LP Lost on Decay: 50

Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger Tiers

• Banked Days per Match: 1
• Maximum Banked Days: 14
• Initial Days Before Decay: 14
• LP Lost on Decay: 75

If you fall to or below 0 LP as a result of decay, you'll be placed in the next-lowest division. If you're already in division IV of your tier, you'll fall into the next tier down (ie. Diamond IV to Emerald I). However, Apex Tier players who decay due to inactivity will descend into Diamond II and restart their climb from there.

Also note that decay will still activate even when you're banned, so protect your hard-earned spot on the ladder by playing with apex-tier sportsmanship!

Other Ranked Resources

Have questions about other aspects of Ranked? Find the answers in our Ranked FAQ!