League of Legends Brings Back Ranked 5s With a Caveat

League of Legends has long since been a casual esport that millions of players love engaging with; its robust, strategy-heavy gameplay paved the way to help turn the MOBA genre into the titan it is today. With competition at the forefront of the Summoner's Rift, players longed for the times before League of Legends banned the five-stack Ranked queues.

As a competitive title with plenty of ranks — spanning 10 total — the game's high skill ceiling makes it difficult for five like-minded friends who want to enjoy Ranked together to be able to do so with ease. Due to disparities, it's tough to ensure fair matches between all players, which often leads to lopsided matches that clearly favour the team with the strongest average MMR.

The latest Dev Update officially announced the return of Ranked 5s, which allows players to fight against another full team. The return is exciting, though there will be a caveat for how the system will be handled, which might be met with some controversy from enthusiastic teams.

Ranked 5s will be a limited-time queue available only on weekends. The why was simple: Riot Games wants to ensure that, with a limited time frame, teams can all be queueing up at the same time and making matches more balanced.

Due to the new approach, Ranked 5s will also allow players to queue with any team they want, so long as it's comprised of five players. There will be no rank restrictions, so any players can play the mode together so long as they create a five-stack, since the queues will be handled by MMR rather than ranks.

These will be running at set times during weekends, beginning from June 26th to September 6th.