Ranking Inflation in League of Legends and Its Impact on Players

For those who are not familiar with League of Legends, I'll quickly go through what the game is about and how the Ranked system works, but you should look up the rest if you're interested in video games in general, but unfamiliar with LoL.

LoL is a MOBA game, which consists of 2 teams of 5 players to choose their champions, enter the "Rift" and fight until one Nexus explodes.

Ranked games are the most competitive games, where you can earn or lose League Points (LPs) after each game. Millions of players compete every season across tiers ranging from Iron IV (the worst, like Coco) to Challenger, the top 300 players on the server. The higher you climb, the more LP you accumulate. But since January, that number has gone completely out of control and has reached new highs.

Masters players have started experiencing an inflation in their LPs. Threshold for Grand Master, previously around 600 to 800 LPs skyrocketed to nearly 1000 LPs, and players would need at least 1200 LP to reach the top 300 and reach the Challenger tier. To give you some comparison, last season, the Rank 1 was usually around 1400 LPs, while as of the 3rd March 2026, the highest ranked player on the EU server has more than 2380 LPs, and the lowest Challenger player is currently around 1400 LPs.

In my opinion, there is one significant change that is responsible for that inflation of LP. Let me introduce you to the Aegis of Valor.

For me to explain that feature, I need to quickly go over roles, and how you need to select 2 different roles that you want to play while entering a Ranked game. The matchmaking system will then browse into players in a range of similar level, and combine players with their chosen roles. Sometimes, to allow shorter waiting time, especially at higher level where the player counts drastically diminishes, the matchmaking brings you in, but on of the 3 roles you didn't chose, and you're becoming what players call "autofilled". That has always been considered a big fault from most players, as it clearly unbalances some high level games, where the difference between your level on your "main roles" compared to other roles can be quite significant.

Late last year, when Riot Games announced the new season, they unveiled that new feature: Aegis of Valor, which changes the gains/losses of LPs for players that were autofilled and are still performing, with a stat-based performance indicator, doubling their LPs if they win while not reducing their LPs if they lose. This change does two things.

Firstly, and maybe most importantly, it changes the total amount of LP changes per game played. What used to be 0 (5 players will lose between [15;30] while 5 players will win similar amounts) and is now closer to 20 LP if one autofilled player performs well. That creates the equivalent of one win in the total LP pool, per game with a performing autofilled.

Secondly, it shifts the previous alignment in performance in-game. In the past it was simple: do the best of your capacity to win the game or lose LP. Now, if you're an autofilled player, your first goal should be to perform decently on a stats level, which doesn't always mean doing the best for your team to win. So, some players, who didn't get their role during the matchmaking, would just play as safe as possible, farm as much as they can and die as few times as they can to get their C grade after the game. If they do, they don't lose anything and can even win twice the amount of LPs.

One could argue that seeing your ranking go up, as a Master player, has a positive effect on you. Feeling progress and that your grind finally pays off is a good retention mechanism. So, if that's a motivational trick from Riot Games to keep the 10.000 Master players in a continuous grind, well, chapeau-bas (which means hats off in French).

On a personal level, I had never been so close to Grand Master, nor so motivated to play more games to reach that level. However, I don't really feel like I'm playing better, and sometimes I just assume that I was lucky during the first part of the season, and that the ranking changes have worked in my favor. Knowing that the system might be broken is not going to stop the dopamine flow.