Do our preseason ranks matter for placements?

General Esdeath ·Dec 8, 2017·1 votes·3,869 views

I finished the season gold 2. If I keep playing ranked and end preseason at say plat 5, will it take that into consideration when I do season 8 placements, or will it only count up to gold 2?

11 Comments

OtomColdDec 8, 20171 votes

I believe it helps a bit, but not noticeably.

https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/find-out-about-ranked-play-preseason

^ this will be able to explain it much better than any of us :)

ShadòwDec 8, 20171 votes

Only the MMR will count.

If you make it to Plat 5 mmr you'll be ranked higher, but prob still somewhere in low gold/high silver

Quil EvrythingDec 8, 20171 votes

From how I understand it, they arent really "placements", so much as a soft reset. (unless you're in diamond+. but obviously youare not)

Basically, its just an excuse for them to reset your rank level to match your MMR. so if your MMR is more like gold 5, or even silver 1... that's roughly where you will end up. They also add some kind of MMR penalty, so if you do nothing, and then do average on your placements, you'll probably place gold 4?

Whereas if, like you say, you claw your way uyp to plat 5.... you might get placed down to gold 1 or back in gold 2.

They really suck. Riot are aholes in their re-placement schemes.

oOBestEveNAOoDec 8, 20171 votes

There is some reason to up your ranking in preseason to help place higher after the reset. The best way to find out if it is worthwhile (as climbing a lot higher is not worth the effort) is to consider the algorithm for the reset: (preseason ending MMR + 1200) / 2 = reset MMR.

This means that in order to place in gold at the least one would need a reset value of 1400ish MMR. Which would mean you need at least 1600 MMR at preseason end in order to be assured of a gold 5 placement. Now, to jump up to a minimum of plat 5 placement would require a preseason ending MMR of 2200 allowing a reset value of 1700, or plat 5 roughly. If you can climb all the way to diamond now, why waste that effort when you can just do it during the season and get rewards? But for a player right on the cusp of the next placement tier (say a diamond 5 player at 2100 MMR or a gold 3 player at 1530 MMR) it can be worth it to play a dozen or so more ranked games and assure yourself of skipping the ever so annoying best of 5 promo matches where you are handicapped in terms of MMR (which make these games more difficult to win).

Essentially, in very specific conditions, you can use a short climb now in preseason to avoid playing a frustrating promo series at the start of next season. It may not seem like much of an advantage to skip a single series, but some people do appreciate being able to bypass promo series purely because they can be frustrating to play.

QuephaDec 8, 20171 votes

Yes

AzadetheDec 8, 20171 votes

Your placements will start in a different position based on your Preseason MMR, and your starting MMR for that Placement will be based on an Average MMR combined with your Current MMR.

So, if you have a 1800 MMR, the average MMR is 1200. So, your starting position on placements will be about 1500 (Just barely Gold V after being Gold I). If you win a lot of your placements, you might be able to climb to about Gold III. If you do poorly, you'll be in Silver, and potentially have to play hundreds more games to get back to where you were, because Silver sadly gets placed with Bronzes in ranked games.

The Moral is more or less, that 200-300 points of MMR can more or less put you in Elo hell, or it can help you slightly avoid it and start at a safer spot. Plats/Diamonds get hit harder than lower rankes because of the soft reset average, but they'll still place with Golds/Plats, so they at least won't have as many trainwreck - troll games they can't climb out of.

Never underestimate the cost of 200-300 games just to climb a few rungs. That's a lot of days/months, and you only get 10 months per season, so it's really worth the effort to try to get to use these 2 months to better your MMR from the previous season.

New Accounts are treated differently, btw. New accounts have no existing MMR, but will borrow your Normals Performance when assessing where you should start in placements. If you're a really good player on a new account and play at a Plat or Diamond level, and have enough games in norms to prove it before you take that account's very first placements, you can skip the "Averaging or 'Soft Resets' and place directly in Plat/low Diamond if you win 10/10. It's probably not worth doing this unless you know every champ, can play every champ, and play them all at those play levels, because if you ever get filled in something you don't know how to play, you're probably going to lose your rank pretty fast (A support main in Plat who suddenly gets placed a lot in jungle might lose their ranks harshly if they can't keep up with the momentum or make bad plays as a jungler).

I'm gonna give you this account's history as an example.

I made this account in September, and it started Gold. I support main., and maintained a 71+% rate of win on all the champs I was playing. I was climbing Gold well, and had an estimated Plat IV MMR based on rankings sites.

Then the Evelynn rework came out, and I gambled with it. I've played Evelynn for years, but I played her more hybrid than anything, because that's how she was best played. Going full AP on a champ built for the new runes on the old runes was a pretty harsh slippery slope. I didn't do horribly, but I couldn't win games even if I went 28/9/19. Late season is full of boosting accounts getting paid to carry people, as well as trolls trying to force people down the ladder out of spite. She just didn't have a lane push presence and couldn't even survive Baron, because her new kit has no actual sustain at baron on old runes. Even if you got ahead on kills/carries, a better Jarvan or Zed came along and just wrecked the game, because they could serve those functions.

I plummeted. Was as low as 13% win rate on Evelynn, and i pushed my luck at Gold V to try to climb back up. Didn't work, and fell down a major hole. Kept getting trolls/Silver int feeders. if I didn't have a duo with me, there was a high possibility of 3 trolls, which pretty much was a no carry situation. Ended season recovering Eve to about 43% from that 13%, but still only Silver this account. 200 games in Preseason later, I'm still in silver, but climbing back out fast, as I've varied my champ choices. I'll probably be back to gold within a couple days. I might be able to get to Plat if I catch a ride with one of my Plat duos then by the end of December, but that's iffy. I'll just be happy if I can place Silver I/Gold V instead of friggin Bronze I or Silver V (might as well be Bronze V, because those queues get Bronze V's on them).

Another word of Advice: Don't play a lot right when the new season comes out. Placements are brutal then. You can end up on Diamond team with Silvers/Golds, and a lot of people intentionally grief as well. Wait until it all sorts out about a month later.

oOBestEveNAOoDec 8, 20171 votes

{quoted}

New Accounts are treated differently, btw. New accounts have no existing MMR, but will borrow your Normals Performance when assessing where you should start in placements. If you're a really good player on a new account and play at a Plat or Diamond level, and have enough games in norms to prove it before you take that account's very first placements, you can skip the "Averaging or 'Soft Resets' and place directly in Plat/low Diamond if you win 10/10.

I would merely like to correct that winning 10/10 placements on new accounts cannot place higher than plat 5. At least to my knowledge. And in order to do that you need to duo the placements with basically a gold level player to hike up the MMR aggregate of the opposing teams in order to inflate your MMR enough for a plat 5 placement. Typically speaking gold 1 is the max for 10/10.

Tested this pretty thoroughly over the years and its stayed consistent, although I am always on the lookout for new data on this topic for when I sometimes do my PSA stuff regarding ranked placements at the beginnings of seasons.

AzadetheDec 9, 20171 votes

{quoted}

I would merely like to correct that winning 10/10 placements on new accounts cannot place higher than plat 5. At least to my knowledge. And in order to do that you need to duo the placements with basically a gold level player to hike up the MMR aggregate of the opposing teams in order to inflate your MMR enough for a plat 5 placement. Typically speaking gold 1 is the max for 10/10.

Tested this pretty thoroughly over the years and its stayed consistent, although I am always on the lookout for new data on this topic for when I sometimes do my PSA stuff regarding ranked placements at the beginnings of seasons.

I can't find it atm, but I'm pretty sure they say the placement cap is Diamond V, although it's unlikely, and you need an insane norm game record to get started in a position to get there.

Plat V is a pretty reasonable assumption for a 10/10.

Mysticman89Dec 9, 20171 votes

Plat 1 is placement cap.

Plat 5 the highest I've actually seen on a fresh account in streams/youtube vids.

In principle someone could get an arbitrarily high MMR without ranking up (by dodging a crap ton of matches), and so get a high challenger MMR while still gold ranked, and hence still be eligible to duo with a fresh account. If that fresh account went 10/10 while duoing with the gold ranked challenger, I think in principle they could get placed as high as plat 1.

Spending literally days dodging to get such a low ranked high MMR account is super impractical however, when anyone who could actually handle those mmrs would be far better served to just place in gold and stomp their way to diamond+.

wei270Dec 9, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Plat 1 is placement cap.

Plat 5 the highest I've actually seen on a fresh account in streams/youtube vids.

In principle someone could get an arbitrarily high MMR without ranking up (by dodging a crap ton of matches), and so get a high challenger MMR while still gold ranked, and hence still be eligible to duo with a fresh account. If that fresh account went 10/10 while duoing with the gold ranked challenger, I think in principle they could get placed as high as plat 1.

Spending literally days dodging to get such a low ranked high MMR account is super impractical however, when anyone who could actually handle those mmrs would be far better served to just place in gold and stomp their way to diamond+.

i think the best way to get arbitrarily high MMR is have a high MMR friend duo with you in your placement