Do You Lose Less LP If Someone Leaves

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If you’ve ever wondered things like: How the LP system works, do you lose less LP if someone leaves, what is consolation LP, or you just want to know a few things then you’ve come to the right place.

In this article we are going to explain a few things that are important for anyone looking to climb in Ranked League of Legends.

Some of the questions that we’ll answer might look obvious, but you’d be surprised how much you didn’t know. For example: Do you lose less LP if someone leaves? What is the highest LP gain? Can Riot give LP back? Keep reading to learn the answers!

What is LP?

Before we start talking about LP, we should make it clear what LP is. LP stands for “League Points” and together with MMR (Match Making Rating) determines your rank. Let’s talk more about what affects LP.

When a player reaches 100LP they will advance to the next division. So, if a player currently has 90LP, wins a match and acquires 12LP he will have 102LP. He will move up a division and start at 2LP.

Likewise, if he loses next match and takes a -10LP hit, he will get to 0LP but the deficit is disregarded. If he loses again, he will go down a division.

Promotion also has another system, the promotion series system is a series of best of 5 matches, if the player can win 3 of them, he is promoted.

Demotion can also occur if the player loses a lot of matches at 0LP, so be careful.

This is a pretty simplified explanation of the entire system, if you want to learn more, we’ll leave our sources in the references section so you can check it out in more detail.

Do you lose less LP if someone leaves

One of the most asked questions is what happens when someone leaves the match, either early on the match or at the 20-minute mark. Do you lose less LP? No LP? Or is it handled just like any other match?

Well to understand that we need to know what Consolation LP is, this is a weekly pool of LP that every player has. If the system flags a player as a griefer, their team may receive consolation LP as long as these conditions are met:

From Riot support:

You’re on the losing team
You lost LP (you won’t be given Consolation LP if you’re at 0 LP in division IV of your tier)
Another player on your team is marked as a leaver or AFK
The player marked AFK is NOT part of your premade group
You’re not in a promotion series (LP can be neither gained nor lost while you’re in promos)

What is the highest LP gain

You might wonder what determines how much LP you gain. There are multiple factors that come into play when the system decides how much LP to award you.

The amount of LP you gain on a win and the amount that you lose after a loss is determined by the difference between your MMR and your Rank.

If you gain the same amount of LP that you lose then the system is confident that you are playing at your true rank, so if you only win 50% of your matches you will stay on that rank indefinitely.

On the other hand, if you start winning a lot of matches without losing the system will start giving you more LP because your MMR has risen, it’s trying to match you up with your “true rank”

So, the highest LP gain possible is if your MMR is very high compared to your rank, one possible way this might happen is if a player is “smurfing”. He may lose games intentionally to play against weaker opposition, then when he decides it’s enough, he starts winning a lot, so his LP gains skyrocket.

Another way that might happen is if that player buys an Iron account for example, if his true rank in his main is Platinum, he will win a lot of matches, something like 60-70% so his LP gains will be massive.

One way to remember it easily is that MMR changes quickly and rank takes time, if you overperform/underperform for only a short while your rank won’t change much. Focus on consistently winning more than 55% of your matches to climb steadily.

Can Riot give LP Back

Unlike the consolation LP system, riot themselves won’t manually add LP to your account even if they determine someone is scripting or hacking.

Even if you can provide hard proof that there was a scripter/hacker Riot has a strict policy regarding this.

Don’t waste your time sending Riot a long letter, with evidence about someone cheating or scripting. In general, they deal with those internally, they will never give you LP for this.

Eventually they should be banned from being reported and the system should adjust, the number of players that engage in this behavior is low anyways, no need to think too much about it.

Can you avoid losing LP if you get disconnected

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of losing your connection in the middle of a match, then you know how frustrating it can be.

Riot games has implemented the LeaverBuster system to discourage players from idling, going AFK or leaving matches.

After leaving or idling a certain amount of matches, which varies depending on the total number of games played and the distance in time between each leave, the player account is initially warned and then placed in a low priority queue for a certain amount of games.

LeaverBuster doesn’t kick in for practice tool, custom and tutorial matches. For everything else (Normal, Ranked, Co-Op vs AI, and game modes the system will flag you if you leave matches.

The system will warn you when staying still for 3 minutes, and after 5 you will be flagged as a leaver. From that point on you won’t gain LP even if your team wins.

If the game was a ranked match, the leaver will get a penalty for LP gains for a specific amount of matches in the future.

Sadly if you disconnect because of internet issues, and you don’t come back before 5 minutes you will be considered a leaver. There is no way to recover your LP or avoid punishment.

It can seem unfair but it’s the best way Riot has to police every player’s behavior. If it only happens occasionally, you won’t suffer too much, so don’t worry.

Queue dodging

Another thing that happens frequently is players leaving the game before it starts. This is called queue dodging and there are also penalties in place for this.

It doesn’t matter if you “dodge” intentionally or not, the system will detect it all the same, so be careful. The client is famously buggy and it’s been more than a couple of times that I was forced to “dodge” by closing and opening the client.

The penalties are not as severe as leaving an ongoing match, but they can still hamper your progress on the ladder in ranked.

If you queue dodge once in a 24-hour period you will receive a 6-minute timeout. If ranked: -3LP
If you queue dodge two times in a 24-hour period you will receive a 30-minute timeout. If ranked: -10LP
If you queue dodge three times in a 24-hour period you will receive a 720-minute timeout. If ranked: -10LP

Queue dodging used to be rampant before they added the LP penalty, but it can still be useful occasionally when you have a terrible draft, but don’t overdo it!

There is also another thing that counts as a dodge: failing a ready check. The penalties are identical starting at 6 minutes and -3pl, 30 minutes and -10lp and so on.

Make sure to stay close to the computer when you are queuing for a ranked match if you don’t want to lose your precious LP!

Closing thoughts

There are many things that come into play when it comes to LP, MMR, Rank and so on. It can be a bit overwhelming at first but don’t worry it all boils down to this: win more matches than you lose and you will climb!

Make sure to test your internet connection before starting a match, many times before I have been blindsided by an unusual high ping that is fixed in an hour or something. By checking beforehand, you can avoid playing Akali at 170ms.

Do not leave matches, afk or grief and you will not face LP penalties. The same applies to dodging and failing ready checks.

Keeping these things in mind will go a long way to reaching your desired rank. Don’t play while “tilted” either. If you have lost two games in a row consider stopping for a while, losing can be pretty frustrating and you don’t want to play ranked matches when you’re not at your best.

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