What’s different between League of Legends and Wild Rift ranked?

Wild Rift’s ranked system is different to League of Legends in many aspects. However, they are also quite similar. If you are a player looking to make the jump between the two, here’s exactly what you need to know.

Wild Rift’s closed beta has so far been a major success. Riot are happy with how the mobile League of Legends clone is shaping up, and are looking at expanding to a worldwide launch shortly.

With this, many players would be interested in grinding to Level 10 and playing ranked straight away. However, League of Legends players might be a bit thrown off by the differences between the two games.

They aren’t too big, but they will affect exactly how you play Wild Rift ranked. Here’s everything you need to know about League’s mobile ranked system, and the major differences between the two platforms.

Ranked marks introduce new progression system

The most major difference in Wild Rift’s ranked system compared to League of Legends is how you progress. While there is an LP system, it doesn’t kick in until the upper echelons of play.

• Read more: How to join Wild Rift closed beta

Ranked marks will be in effect from Iron to Emerald ⁠— Wild Rift’s new rank between Platinum and Diamond. You’ll earn one mark for winning a game, and lose a mark for every loss. You’ll need anywhere from one mark to five marks to promote, depending on the rank.

While this seems like a hard system to climb in if you have a 50% win rate, there is hope. No matter if you win or lose, you’ll earn Ranked Fortitude, which can help prevent you losing a mark even if you lose a game.

The Victory Points (VP) system, aligned with League of Legends’ League Points system, will kick in at Diamond. There’ll also be a ranked ladder to track your progress at these higher ranks.

Position select removed, but draft mode remains

The most controversial difference between League of Legends and Wild Rift’s ranked system is the latter won’t have position select. You won’t be able to queue up for certain roles like you can do on PC.

Riot are instead putting faith in their matchmaker to look at your previous games and put you in the right position.

“Instead of position select, we’ve optimized our matchmaker to build teams with as wide a mix of preferred positions as possible. Behind the scenes, it’s constantly looking at where you play, and putting teams of different preferred positions together,” developer Ed Knapp said in a blog post.

However, they will look at changing it if things go awry.

“If the matchmaking system isn’t performing up to snuff, we will make changes to hit the position and champion agency you expect.”

Wild Rift’s ranked queue will also be played on draft mode and not blind pick. However, given the limited selection of champions, there’ll be no bans. Once Riot adds more champions though, they’ll introduce the system.

Only one queue, but Riot promises better match balancing

Riot has done away with solo/duo queue and flex queue for Wild Rift, instead going for a one-size-fits-all approach in ranked. However, that doesn’t mean ranked matchmaking is going to descend into chaos and have wildly unbalanced teams.

• Read more: League devs praise “awesome” viral ‘Brenvar’ champion design

The developers are implementing a pre-made balancing system to try and alleviate some of the concerns. If you queue up solo, you’ll get matched up with solos. If you queue up as a five-stack, you’ll only play against other stacks. The only thing? You still can’t queue ranked as a four-stack with a standalone solo.

“Our algorithm is optimized to match teams with equal power. This means that in the majority of cases teams will have the same comp, so: 1-1-1-1-1 vs 1-1-1-1-1; 2-2-1 vs 2-2-1; 3-2 vs 3-2; and so on,” they said.

“In the extremely rare cases where this won’t work, we’ll be increasing the challenge for larger premade groups so they play against higher skill rated players.”

Wild Rift’s closed beta is returning soon, with Riot pledging to expand to more regions and more players worldwide. You can find out how to get involved here.