Why Are You Losing More LP Than You’re Gaining?

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Just another huge League of Legends fan and a technology geek. I’ve recently got my Master’s degree in Computer Science, so now I finally have enough free time to play League. I’ve been playing the game for nine years now, and my highest rank was Master (231 LP – Season 10). I was also ranked #3 on LeBlanc in Season 10. Since I have very high knowledge about League, my goal is to help my fellow Summoners, which is the main reason why I founded LeagueFeed. LeagueFeed is a free resource website for all League of Legends fans worldwide!

Published on: April 20, 2022 | Updated on: July 4, 2023

Have you ever spent the day playing ranked only to find yourself in the same place you were when you started? Even worse, perhaps you’ve lost some LP. Some players find that even a 50%+ winrate is not enough to guarantee LP gains that are equivalent to the amount of LP you lose when you’re defeated on the rift. Why is that?

Also read: How to Equip Little Legends?

What is MMR?

Matchmaking rating, or MMR, is an invisible rating that every ranked account has in League of Legends. When you look at your rank, you’re only being told part of the story. If you’ve ever talked to a friend who was the same rank as you and found they were gaining more LP than you on a win and losing less on a loss – their MMR is probably higher than yours.

This rating is used for seeding players into games as close to their skill level as possible and is the most critical part of your LP gains and losses. If you win many games in a row, not only will you gain LP, but the algorithm will determine that you are presumably playing in games of a lower level than your skill – and your MMR will increase to attempt to seed you into better-matched games. If you’re on a losing streak, the same applies – the algorithm lowers your MMR and seeks to match you with players in the same ranking with MMR closer to yours.

If you’ve ever made a brand new account thinking you could absolutely dumpster some new players for easy wins only to find the games you queued into were surprisingly hard, this is because your accounts MMR is quick to adjust to your performance to get you into the correct games for your skill level.

As seen in this thread where a ranked player took to Twitter to ask Riot Support why he wasn’t gaining more LP, your gains are lower if your MMR is lower than the average for the ranked tier you’re in.

It’s not uncommon to not only have to fight to climb your way into a new tier – you even have to prove to the algorithm that you deserve to be there by continuing to win and raising your MMR.

Unfortunately, the only way to stop seeing -21 LP after a loss and +18 LP after a win (or whatever depressing numbers are rolling into your postgame lobbies) is to keep winning.

While it may sound like the kind of tips you’d find on r/KoreanAdvice (a League of Legends Subreddit that seems to only have one tip: “destroy the nexus”), if you want to gain more LP after wins, you’re going to have to win more. Thankfully, we have an entire site full of articles that might give you the competitive advantage you need to do that – so don’t stop studying the game, practicing your fundamentals, and winning; soon, you’ll gain more LP than you lose too.