Riot Games released a developer update for the end of the League of Legends ranked season on the morning of Thursday, September 17th to discuss the changes that would be made to the ranking system in Preseason 2021, as well as the end of season rewards for 2020. The most interesting part of the update is the confirmation that duo queue will be removed for players ranked Master tier or higher in the preseason, which usually begins around the start of the holiday season. 

Duo queue allows two players to head into matchmaking together on the Ranked Solo Queue ladder, but starting in pre-season, players in Master, Grandmaster, or Challenger will be forced to queue up for ranked play solo.

This change hits high-level bot lane duos harder than any other roles, and Cloud9 support Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme took to Twitter to express his displeasure with the upcoming change, sarcastically stating he would have to allow his account to decay to Diamond 1 to practice in solo queue with his AD Carry Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen.  

Riot has already introduced massive changes to the game in a new class of items called Mythic Items, but are evidently looking to overhaul the entire League of Legends experience in the preseason as they have several times as LoL heads further into its second decade of existence. 

Preseason 2021 will also remove promotional series from ranked divisions, which will be counterbalanced by changes to MMR and matchmaking — especially at the higher tiers — to make for a more consistent ranked season. End of season rewards were also broken down in the update alongside a teaser of the 2020 Victorious skin. The skin shows a humanoid figure with what looks like a handgun augmented with a crystal emanating energy throughout its build. 

Players who finished the ranked season in Gold or higher will receive the Victorious skin as per usual, but a chroma will be added to the skin for every tier between Gold and where the player finishes their respective climb. 

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