'League of Legends' Is Adding Iron and Grandmaster Ranked Tiers in 2019

Riot Games is putting two new ranked tiers in League of Legends in 2019 with Iron now being the lowest rank and Grandmaster being one more rung near the top of the ranked ladder.

Announced in a new Dev Diary on Wednesday, Riot Games shared information about the new ranked tiers and other ways that ranked games are changing in 2019. Two new ranked tiers were known to be coming in 2019 after Riot Games announced the ranked changes in April with the new details confirming the ranked names and why they're placed where they are.

Ed "Riot SapMagic" Altofer, ranked lead for League of Legends, explained in the Dev Diary video above that the Iron tier will now be beneath Bronze while the Grandmaster tier will be squeezed in between the current top tiers.

"We landed on adding two new tiers," Riot SapMagic said. "The first tier, Iron, is going below Bronze to help give those players an opportunity to get better recognition as they get better at the game. The second tier is Grandmaster which is going between Master and Challenger and gives us a chance to perform a long overdue calibration of the top of the ladder and better differentiate those players based on their skill."

Primus "Riot Gortok" Majda, game designer for League of Legends, followed up Altofer's comments about the new ranked tiers to alleviate some concerns that players might have about the grind to the top being worsened in 2019. Reiterating Riot Games' previous comments from April about next year's ranked changes, Majda reminded people that Riot Games is dropping one of the divisions in each rank in 2019. This means that there will only be four divisions to climb through before advancing to the next rank, so Bronze V, Platinum V, and so on will be no more next year.

"If you're already doing the climb in your head, you might be worried that we're just adding an extra grind with the new tiers," Majda said. "That's why we're dropping to four divisions instead of five. So yes, that means that next season, there won't be a single Bronze V player in all of League of Legends."

For those League of Legends players who are already nearing the top of the ranked ladder and aren't looking forward to another rank separating them from the top tier, Riot Games published a separate article specifically focused on the Grandmaster tier and why it was necessary to add another ladder rung before reaching the highest level of play.

Riot Games' ranked changes for League of Legends will be fully in effect in 2019.