Ranked Teamfight Tactics returns on Wednesday with significant changes

Ranked Teamfight Tactics will return this Wednesday following a two-week hiatus.

The competitive game mode was disabled on November 9 with the release of Patch 9.22, allowing players to grow accustomed to the new set, titled Rise of the Elements. The update led to significant gameplay changes as players adapted to the new champions, origins, and classes.

Now that players have had two weeks to adjust to these changes, ranked play will be enabled once again on Wednesday, November 20, but not without some major changes.

A Riot Games blog post states, “given that we’ve introduced almost entirely new champions, spells, and strategies, we feel now is a good time to go for a big change.”

The ‘big change’ coming with Patch 9.23 is a ranked hard reset; all players will have their rank set to Iron at the start of the next ranked split.

Riot explains the reason for the hard reset as wanting to provide players with the ability to enjoy the satisfying feeling of ladder progression. It now seems likely that ranks will be hard reset with the release of every new set to cater for this experience.

The gameplay experience won’t change significantly for all players, however. The blog post noted that although ranks will be hard reset, matchmaking rating (MMR) will be soft reset to keep games feeling competitive and fair. The soft reset intends to hit the middle ground between matching players with similar experience and skill-levels but also adjusting matchmaking slightly, considering the significant changes to gameplay.

The third change coming to the next split of ranked play is an adjustment to the way league points (LP) are awarded after a game. Previously, it was possible for players who finished fourth (in the top 50%) to be hit with an LP reduction, despite the desirable result. Changes to ranked in Set 2 now mean that players who finish fourth will never lose LP, but a fifth-place finish always will.