Boards›Gameplay

MMR, LP gains, and forgiveness

wakefire·3/17/2016, 5:15:56 AM·1 votes·503 views

I've played quite a few games this ranked season. My placements put me in silver 4, but I was able to climb back to gold relatively quickly, peaking at 70ish LP into gold 3. When climbing, I was gaining about 20-22 LP per win, and losing maybe 17 or 18 per loss.

Unfortunately for me, I then endured a horrendous stretch that saw me lose something like 27 out of 30 games. Super unlucky. I mean, even if you lose lane every game (which I didn't) you should get carried at least a third of the time, right? Anyway. My rank plummeted all the way to the bottom of silver 1, and what's worse, my MMR cratered. Now I'm gaining something like 14-15 LP per win, and losing 23-24 per loss.

My point is, after cratering, it's much, much harder to climb back up. Whereas before, going 8-4 over 12 games might have gotten me from 0 to 100 LP in my initial climb, now going 8-4- against the same level of competition as in the initial climb- might get me 20 LP, if that.

This is extremely frustrating.

I'm not-- and I doubt the average player is-- aware of the mechanics of MMR, outside of looking it up on third party sites. I'd like to know: is there any kind of MMR forgiveness in place, for those who have cratered and are trying to climb again? Or is it more worthwhile to roll a new account, level it to 30, and try to climb the ranks free of past mistakes (and the champions, runepages, and skins I've acquired over the years?)

I really hope it isn't.

2 Comments

Mysticman893/17/2016, 5:50:46 AM2 votes

You're actually not against the same level of competition though, since you're matched based on mmr and not based on rank, and the LP gains/losses are based on your mmr relative to average of the division you're currently in. So if you're in silver 1 with a silver 5 mmr, you'll get matched with/against silver 5 ish level players, and only gain a dozenish LP for wins while losing 20+ for losses. If you're a silver 1 player with a silver 1 mmr, you'd be matched with/against silver 1's, and gain approximately the same as you lose. If you're a silver 1 player with a gold 3 mmr, you'll be matched with/against gold 3ish players, and you'd be gaining 25ish per win and losing 15ish per loss, and so on.

In order to be demoted to Silver 1 from gold 5, you needed to have had an mmr comparable to the average of a silver 5, so assuming you're a gold level player, you've probably won a bunch of games since that demotion (as after all you're or were likely facing silver 5/silver 4 ish level players). As a result, your mmr is probably around silver 4 or so, which is around the starting mmr for fresh ranked accounts, and so you'd have nothing to gain by making a fresh account, as going 7-3 in a fresh account's placements might put you silver 1ish, but winning 7 out of your next 10 games on this account would probably bump your mmr to silver 2ish by itself. Taking into account all the games you'd need to play to get a new account to 30, it'd almost certainly be much faster to just fix your current accounts mmr than trying to start fresh.

A 20+ loss streak does tragic things to your mmr, but if you really are a gold level player, you should have a pretty easy time bouncing back, potentially sneaking in some pretty big win streaks as a result of getting matched against easy opponents (granted you'll have worse teammates than you're used to). Theres no mmr forgiveness, but it's not a permanent handicap, you'll just be against relatively low mmr opponents for a while until you show the system you do deserve a higher mmr. That's all you essentially did when you first did your placements and rose, so you just have to do it again to show it wasn't a fluke and you'll be back in the saddle as it were.

Urgonnalearn2day3/17/2016, 6:08:04 AM1 votes

It works in reverse too... if you got really unlucky during promos once you do get into a new rank you tend to climb fast.