5 Hidden Gems: What happens when I Dodge League of Legends

Is it safe to dodge League of Legends ranked matches?
Developers have recently announced their plans to increase penalties for people who dodge League of Legends games, but the community seemingly changed the developers’ minds. Indeed, dodging is a very powerful and disruptive tool to improve your SoloQ experience. Below are just some reasons why.

Provisional Game(s) Dodging

This one is pretty simple. Your displayed rank can’t take a penalty if you don’t have one yet. As a result, you may dodge as many SoloQ/Flex games (before completing the first one) as you please. How would they deduct LP if you don’t have any? How dangerous is it to dodge League of Legends lobbies?

The trick used to be much more powerful back when you’d have to play all the provisional games before receiving a rank. Should Riot decide to roll back on the new model (after all, it’s been mere two seasons), you will be able to dodge for free before completing all provisional games. So to dodge League of Legends games used to be different and is likely to change in the future.

No MMR Lost

What happens when you dodge League of Legends ranked matches?
League of Legends Ranked

We’ve already covered the difference between LP and MMR, and the short version is that your long-term concern should be MMR. Even if you lose some LP for dodge League of Legends ranked game, it doesn’t slow down your climb. The game adjusts your LP gains relative to the MMR. Should you be dodging a lot of games and subsequently losing LP, League will be making up for that with each victory. 

If you’re in for the long con, you may even consider to dodge League of Legends promo games as well. Sure, I hate missing out on a new rank as much as the next guy, but sometimes the match is lost in the champion select. Should the Nemo desktop assistant tell you that an auto-filled Support-to-Mid player is first timing Yasuo, you may as well dodge to preserve your MMR. The game was lost anyway. 

Low(er) LP Losses

The penalties when you dodge League of Legends matches have been the same since 2013, so long-time players know the drill. You lose 3 LP and wait 6.5 minutes after the first dodge. The second dodge costs you 10 LP and puts you on a 30-minute cooldown. Subsequent dodges within 24 hours cause the same penalty. 

What most people don’t know is that the dodge count is reset upon completing a game. You can dodge a game at the cost of 3 LP and the cooldown, play out the next match, and then dodge again to a more lenient punishment. The same trick works if you dodged two (or more) times in a row: finishing a match will wipe this away. Unlike the initial penalties, this trick has been around for about two years.

Unfortunately, the dodge count reset will probably be removed in the future. Riot have identified “a misconfiguration in the dodge timers”, and given the lack of details, I have to assume that this mechanic is now deemed a bug to fix. 

Duo Dodging

What happens when you dodge a duo ranked game in League of Legends?
Duo ranked games in League of Legends

Now, this may be obvious, but the dodge penalties apply to the person who refused to play the match. Although you’d naturally have to wait for your friend’s cooldown to expire before playing together, only they will lose LP. You can take advantage of that by taking turns to dodge games, especially if one of you has a low/high LP number.

Combined with the previous trick, this makes duo dodging extremely powerful. You get to dodge two sketchy games before ever treading onto the -10 LP territory, and completing a match on the third try brings the count back to square one zero.

Negative LP Trick

Normally, you lose a rank after losing too many games at 0 LP. As long as you’re above 0 LP, however, you’re perfectly safe. Dodging is even more favorable, as you can do it even at below 0 LP. You’ll be increasing the LP deficit if you continue dodging, but this alone is not grounds for a demotion.

Should you win the game with a negative LP count, the game will simply cover the deficit from the LP that you just earned. You’ll be also getting more LP to reward you for the higher MMR number that you preserved by dodging seemingly lost games. 

Losing the game at -X LP, however, will keep you at -X LP and not further drag you down. You will not even be demoted unless your MMR got too low from previous losses. League simply does a quick MMR check once you reach 0 LP or dip below that: it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been dodging games.

Related

Guides And Tutorials
League of Legends
by Denis Matusovskiy
April 15, 2020

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