Can someone explain ranked placement to me?

FilipinoTacos·Feb 7, 2016·1 votes·701 views

I won 10 out of 10 ranked placement games, and I went positive in every game. I even got a pentakill on my last placement game, but I still ended up in Bronze IV. Can someone explain how or why? I was in Bronze last season, if that is important. Thanks

3 Comments

Virgin RayFeb 7, 20161 votes

Placements don't matter at ALL. It only matters if this season is your first season ranked. You get a lower elo for certain every new season. You have to prove to riot that you can climb back to where you were so you truly belong in that division/tier.

bloodybadger1Feb 8, 20161 votes

Everyone gets reset. MMR is what matters which is essentially your skill score. Some say it is only based on your W/L ratio, but I dont think its the only decider. Essentially you take your previous season's mmr +1200 and divide by 2. So this means if I am challenger I get (3000+1200)/2 = 2100 which is around diamond 5. However, the highest you can be placed is plat 1. This is where the problem lies because all those challengers and diamonds are in plat and destroy actual plats. This pushes the plats down to gold and they crush the golds and so on. So every season people come on the boards and complain about their placements and how well they did, but winning 10 games against actual bronzes isn't very good. If a challenger goes 0-10 they will still probably be placed in plat 1 because their mmr is still high despite losing games.

Being bronze your last season does matter, but the beginning of every season is like this where everyone is getting lower than they expect becuase there are more skill differences in ranked compared to if you play in the middle of the season. If a plat 5 gets placed in silver then good luck to the actual silver who got lucky and is now placed high silver against this plat 5. Ultimately, after a few more weeks everything will settle down and everyone who is better than where they are will rise. Right now all it takes is playing a ton of games to get to where you were last season (in most cases).

tldr MMR is what matters, not how many you win, although winning games inevitably raises your mmr rating