Here are all the newly announced ranked and new player changes coming to League

Riot has dropped a blog post and a video that explains how League of Legends is going to differ from what we have now in 2019. Not only are we getting huge changes to ranked, but there are some gameplay features coming in, too.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, here are some of the most notable changes we saw in the posts.

Ranked changes

Ranked queues will now rank you based on position

Next season, players will have up to five ranks in solo queue instead of just one, thanks to the new positional rankings. These ranks will help to determine what kind of opponents you play when you are placed into a specific role. If you get autofilled on support and play it at a Silver IV level, you’ll get slightly easier opponents than you face when you play top and are ranked Gold III.

The season will be broken up into three splits

Riot is also planning to make ranked a little more rewarding than just a border and an end-of-the-year skin. To do this, they’re going to break the ranked season into three separate splits. While your rank will still only reset at the end of a season, you will have a chance to earn new rewards and make new progress in each split.

Riot Games

Two new ranked tiers will be added and one division will be removed from each tier

Diamond and Bronze are just way too crowded with players that have differing skill levels. To help remedy this, Riot plans on adding a tier to break up both of those ranks. In addition to this, the fifth division from each tier will be removed, making it so there are only four divisions per rank.

Provisional ranks will help you get feedback during your placements

To help you throughout placements, each player will get a provisional rank after they play their first placement game. This will be lower than your rank last season, but this will also tell you the lowest rank you can possibly end up with. As you play and win, you will rapidly improve up the ranks and you will never lose provisional rank LP. The only place to go is up!

New Player changes

There will be an item auto-buy system to help newbies learn

This feature was mentioned only very briefly in the video, but any optional auto-buy system will be put in place to help new players learn how to build. Lead producer New001 noted that players will be able to opt out of the feature, so it shouldn’t hinder any veteran players.

The tutorial will be updated

Yes, the old-school “Thornmail Ashe” tutorial is moving out of the game and making way for a new tutorial system for players to learn how to properly play League of Legends. The video only gave us a peek at it, but it looks way better already.

Riot Games

Smite is going to be available for earlier levels?

With runes no-longer being an issue for low-leveled players, jungling is also less of an issue. New001 doesn’t blatantly say that low-leveled players will be able to take Smite, but he does say, “Jungling will be possible from the get-go.” So ...

Keep in mind that all of these changes are not final or concrete. Riot is looking for feedback from players, so things can change!