Two new ranks to be introduced in Season 9

Riot has recently unveiled their new plans to change the ranking system in the upcoming Season 9. This change will involve adding two new tiers along with compressing the current five divisions per tier, to four.

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Two new tiers

There will be two tiers being added to opposite sides of the spectrum, Iron and Grandmaster. The new Iron rank will be placed below Bronze, making Iron four the new rock bottom for the Season 9 ranked play. The grandmaster tier, on the other hand, will be slotted above the masters, but remain below Challenger. Riot has yet to reveal how the Grandmaster tier will work, however, it is likely they will introduce another leader board, similar to the Challenger.

Shrinking divisions

As more tiers will be added, Riot will be reducing the number of divisions in order to prevent ranking up from being more tedious. This will even out the climbing process somewhat, with Riot stating the combined changes intends to make the climbing experience more enjoyable through greater progression and separation in the divisions for the players.

Overall effect of the new tier and less divisions

The change will make it so tiers are able to better differentiate skill levels, with players currently in the same tier, yet the opposite side of the spectrum (Div 1 against Div 5), likely being separated by the new change. Riot mentioned they primarily intended the change’s implementation to address the difference in skill between players in the Diamond tier, where the skill cap in Diamond five had been drastically different compared to players in Diamond one. They further mentioned the Challenger tier had been designed to highlight the top 200 players when the game was smaller, now that it had grown, there had to be more significant rank progression for the larger player base.

Separate ranks for different roles

While this had been revealed in the past, it is important to highlight this change for Season 9. Ranks will be separated into the five different roles, Top, Jungle, Mid, Support and ADC. The lp gained will be accredited depending on the role played. This will encourage players to have their hand in a variety of roles, and reduce the impact of luck regarding the match making system.