You just came home from work, or school, sit down at your PC and sit down to play your favorite video game. After spending 2 minutes in queue, you find a game and are matched with your teammates that will help you get that win! Only it does not work like that. Not everyone that you will meet in League of Legends wants to win and is willing to their best. Sometimes you can spot such people from champion select. Learn how to save your precious LP and, even more importantly MMR in our LoL dodge guide.
Table of Contents
What is Dodging in League
Like in real life, dodging in League stands for avoiding something. While in-game dodging means avoiding enemy spells and skillshots we will be focusing more on the other type of LoL dodging. Perhaps your dinner got ready, or you got that infamous Teemo jungle and just don’t want to play anymore and leave the champion select. But sometimes it is not in your control and your internet connections dies, or your PC freezes and you are unable to lock in your champion. This is known as a lol dodge.
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How to dodge in LoL
In order to dodge in League of Legends, you need to close (exit) your client before the game starts. Another way to dodge the game is by not picking a champion, and letting the timer run out. It is also advisable to make sure your “Stay Signed In” button in the login screen is not checked. While its replicate rate is not 100%, it will still sometimes fail to exit the client and proceed to enter the game marking you AFK. We want to minimize LP losses fully so we recommend manually logging in and avoiding such scenarios.
LoL Dodge Timer
After you have successfully dodged, you will be given a temporary penalty that prevents you from joining the next game immediately. Your dodge timer resets 16 hours after your latest dodge. The time penalty given depends on the queue mode, as well as how many times did you dodge before your dodge timer was reset.
Dodge Penalties
Alongside dodge timer, harsher penalties can follow depending on the queue type. If you have dodged a ranked SoloQ or FlexQ game you will be given -3 LP penalty in the respective queue type. On the second dodge you will lose 10 LP, as well as on every dodge after that one until your dodge timer resets (16 hours since your latest dodge). Furthermore, if you dodge a normal game, but then go onto to dodge a ranked game as well, you will skip -3, 6 minutes penalty and go straight to -10 LP, 30 minutes penalty. Only exception to this rule is that if you play a game between your dodges, timer penalty will be reset to 6 minutes, while LP penalty will stay at -10. Check out our Table below for more information:
| Queue Type | First Dodge | Second Dodge | Third and every dodge after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 6 minutes | 15 minutes | 30 minutes |
| Ranked SoloQ | 6 minutes | 30 minutes and -10 LP | 30 minutes and -10 LP |
| Ranked FlexQ | 6 minutes | 30 minutes and -10 LP | 30 minutes and -10 LP |
| ARAM | 15 minutes | 30 minutes | 60 minutes |
| CO-OP vs AI | 6 minutes | 15 minutes | 30 minutes |
| Featured Game Mode | 6 minutes | 120 minutes | 120 minutes |
Starting from patch 11.14 onwards, Riot is going to start experimenting with new dodging penalties. Each third dodge is now going to result in a 12 hour restriction from playing. This penalty is shared between the queues so you will not be able to play any of League of Legends modes. Furthermore, the dodging time is not going to be resetting anymore after 24 hours, but rather one “level” of dodging will be reduced each 12 hours. So if you have dodged twice, after 12 hours it will look like you dodged only once and on the next dodge you’ll be applied penalties for Second Dodge. These penalties are still not in full effect, but some people will start seeing them soon.
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How many times can you dodge?
Riot did not implement any rules limiting the number of times that you can dodge. There is although, a cap on the maximum negative LP that you can have which is -100LP. Any dodges after you have reached -100 LP will not count towards negative LP but will continue to carry a timer penalty.
Does dodging affect your MMR?
No. Dodging has no effect on your MMR. It is even advisable to dodge unfavorable games such as the ones with trollers in them in order to save your MMR. While your LP will be getting reduced with each dodge, your MMR will stay the same resulting in higher LP gains.
Dodging in Promo Series and Placement matches
If you dodge a champion select while are in the promotion series, the game will count as a loss. On the other hand, if you dodged during your Placement matches, game will not count as the loss but you will receive LP penalty depending on the amount of dodges that you had in the last 16 hours. It is one of the best ways to maximize most wins in your Placement matches.
When should you dodge?
While dodging is not a Riot approved way of gaining elo and carries some penalties, it can certainly help you rank up faster. Here is a list of some guidelines that can help you decide should you really dodge the game, or in fact proceed with it and demolish the enemy team.
- Check op.gg of your teammates using op.gg/multi/query=, or some other 3rd party program such as Blitz
Simply copy paste names from the champion select into the query to get information about your teammates if you are using op.gg, or make sure your 3rd party application is running
Look out for players that are not playing their main role, have low win ratio on their selected champion, or are even first timing them.
- You are OTP and your champion got taken
OTP’s pride themselves as masters of their champion. If their main champion gets taken away they are left unsure on what to play next. You will not be as good on your secondary champion and your win chance probability will be much lower. This is why we advise you to take the -3 and carry your team in the next lobby.
- You don’t like playing against a certain champion
We all have some champion that we hate and that is ok. Mental block is a real thing and can affect your performance badly. If you are really not comfortable playing against a certain champion and are already in a bad mental place just from knowing you’ll have to face them, dodge the game and save yourself the frustration of dealing with them.
- Your Teammate is trolling or being toxic
Pretty self-explanatory. Having trollers or toxic teammates will instantly lower your chances of victory.
- You got Autofilled
Majority of the players are not comfortable playing every role in the game. Before Autofill that was not an issue, but nowadays people are forced to play something they are not good at. If you play only Top/Mid and are averaging 55% win ratio, but you get autofilled jungle sometimes and win only 20% of your jungle games it is clear you should be dodging when you get autofilled.
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Conclusion
While sometimes we can not control whether or not we want to dodge a game of League of Legends it happens. On the other hand, knowing when and when not to dodge can help you get higher rank must easily. It is important to keep track of your latest dodges so you will not get hit by -10 LP penalty randomly.