Positional ranks are coming to solo queue in 2019

Solo queue hasn’t changed too much in the last couple of years. After the addition of Position Select back in season 6, everything has stayed pretty much the same. But Riot is also after improvements, and in a recent post detailed all the changes they are planning for next year’s ranked experience.

While there are quite a few changes on the horizon, perhaps the most sweeping is the addition of ranks based on the position you’re playing. This means that you might be a Gold II support, but only a Silver IV jungler. According to Riot, breaking things down like this will help them sort players into games that best fit their skill level.

Riot Games

In the current system, if you get autofilled to a role you play poorly, chances are the game just became a whole lot harder for you and the players around you, because you won’t play the role up the standards of someone who mains it. With this new system, players who get autofilled will have a separate rank for that role, meaning that they will likely get placed into a lower ranked game if they are autofilled.

Since players will have up to five ranks now, this also means that your autofill games won’t count towards the rank of your main role anymore. In order to help avoid players taking these games less seriously, Riot is also looking at a system that gives you bonuses on your next main role win if you win an off-role or autofill game.

These changes are still early in development, and Riot is mentioning them now in order to help generate some community discussion and feedback. That means none of these changes are set in stone, and with almost nine months until the 2019 season begins, it’s likely that there will be quite a few tweaks between now and then.