Get ready for the 2015 ranked season!

It’s time to slim back down to fighting weight and pull those tryhard pants on, because on January 21 we’re opening up the 2015 ranked season! If you’ve spent the holidays hiding under a large rock, then you’ve only got a few days to catch up on the latest updates and get prepared for the 2015 season! However, all’s not lost - here’s a super short list of the biggest recent changes along with a couple of pointers for the coming season:

Seeding

As usual, you'll have ten placement games to fight through before settling in to your tier and division, ready for the climb. But this time, they work a little differently: in previous seasons, placement games were way more impactful than regular season games. Challenger players could lose all ten games and end up in Silver during the 2014 placements, while Bronze players could go on lucky winning sprees and end up in Plat before getting their butts kicked repeatedly until they fell a few tiers. Neither of these are good experiences, so while this year’s placements are still important, they won’t cause established players to swing as far up or down because of good or bad luck. Your placement will still be heavily influenced by where you ended up last season. If you’ve never played ranked, then your form in your placements will be all that matters!

Finally, with the pretty substantial changes that preseason brought, we figured that everyone should have a fresh opportunity to rise to the top. Because of that, we’re again running a soft reset to player position with the start of the ranked season, meaning you’ll likely place lower than where you ended the previous season.

Summoner’s Rift

We gave Summoner’s Rift a Sion-sized update back in November! We could tell you about the new map, or you could just click here and explore it at your own pace. You should totally do that.

Preseason

We also brought in some huge preseason changes at the end of last year! Aside from looking different, Dragon and Baron now give different rewards to the team that kills them, and the jungle’s teeming with new camps that actually do things. Like kill you! Seriously - the raptors hurt SO MUCH NOW.

Preseason also brought in a heap of new items and tweaks to existing gear. Check out the full details here.

Rek’Sai

Finally, we introduced a new champion to League over the break. Rek’Sai’s a subterranean nightmare who stalks her prey with her unique tremor sense before digging tunnels to claim kills when the time’s right. Check out her spotlight here.

Rewards

We’ll have more information as the season progresses, but there will definitely be a victorious skin, and you’ll unlock unique wards as you play ranked 5s!

That’s it for now! We’ll have more updates as the season develops, but for now, get practicing, because ranked is coming up FAST!