League of Legends patch 12.15 is combating smurfs with the new ranked Duo queue changes

League of Legends patch 12.15 dropped yesterday, and a new set of changes have implemented a system that will work towards significantly reducing the number of smurfs in the game.

Like most competitive multiplayer games, the MOBA also sees its fair share of smurfs in ranked matchmaking, which ultimately hampers the game's competitive integrity.

High-rank players often do not shy away from making a smurf account to either help out a friend or just ruin the fun for another who has taken their ranked climb seriously.

This issue has been plaguing League of Legends for many seasons now, and with patch 12.15, Riot has implemented a solution that will look to combat a fair bit of the issue.

The developers have addressed the growing concerns with smurfs earlier on in Season 12, and with the new update, they will eliminate the ranked Duo queue for high-level players and primarily make it a Solo-queue only option.

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League of Legends patch 12.15 will reduce the number of smurfs in the game

League of Legends patch 12.15 wasn’t exactly a big one when it came to introducing champion balance updates. While one of the more significant changes was buffs to the energy champions, the patch, to an extent, dealt with fixing some of the issues with the title.

Riot introduced changes to the Duo queue system, which will now not let high-ranked players employ the system.

In the patch notes, the developers stated:

“Having a premade duo is a slight advantage, and while current Apex Tier (Masters, Grandmaster, and Challenger) players aren’t able to duo with anyone, the system only works off current rank. With this change, we’re tightening up the Apex Tier restriction to apply to MMR as well.”

“The goal of this is to prevent climbing smurfs from being able to duo queue into Apex Tier. That said, decayed Apex Tier players and the highest skilled Diamond I players may also be impacted by this change. Up until now these players could duo and reliably get into Apex Tier games, which isn't fair when the people they're playing against can't duo. If this change works as expected, we'll evaluate shipping it to the rest of the world with plans to re-evaluate before Season Start.”

From now on, League of Legends players will no longer be able to queue up for a ranked game with a friend if they are both of the Master rank or higher. The system will not take MMR into consideration and will ultimately look to reduce the number of smurfs that one gets to experience in ranked matchmaking today.

Riot Games have also mentioned that they have successfully tested this method back in patch 12.10 for both the Korea and NA servers, hence, with 12.15, they have officially made it live for all regions.