LoL ranked decay is the system that quietly drains your LP if you stop queueing at Diamond or above. Stop playing for two weeks at Master and you’ll come back to about 1,050 LP gone. Stop for a month at Diamond and you’ll lose half your LP. It only affects the top 5% of the playerbase, but it punishes them at a pace that makes vacations genuinely scary if you don’t manage the bank.
This is the boost-team breakdown of how decay actually works in the current season – bank sizes, LP loss per tick, the floor at Master, what the 2026 hard reset did to everyone’s decay clock, and the bare-minimum queue schedule that keeps you safe. Numbers are pulled from Riot’s published rules and what we see across active boost orders.
How decay works in League of Legends
Decay is a single rule with three knobs: a bank of grace days, an LP penalty per tick, and a tier cutoff below which the whole system is switched off. The rest is logistics.
- Below Diamond, there’s no decay. Iron through Emerald can take an entire season off and come back to exactly the LP they left at. The system doesn’t care.
- Diamond runs a 28-day bank with a -50 LP penalty per day. Each ranked game (Solo/Duo or Flex) adds one day to the bank, up to the 28-day ceiling. When the bank hits zero, you lose 50 LP per 24-hour period until you queue.
- Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger run a 14-day bank with a -75 LP penalty per day. Same one-day-per-ranked-game refill, but the ceiling is tighter and the bleed is steeper. Apex tiers are designed to require steady weekly play.
The 1-day-per-game rule is the part most guides skip. Your bank doesn’t refill on a calendar – it refills on activity. Play three ranked games on Saturday and you’ve added 3 days. Don’t play for a week and you’ve added zero. The bank counts down whether you queue or not; only games can refill it.
Decay timers by tier
The cleanest way to think about decay is the cost of one week off. Here’s what a 7-day silence does to your LP if you let the bank run dry on day one.
| Tier | Max bank | Days banked per ranked game | LP loss per decay day | Cost of a 7-day vacation if bank is empty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 28 days | 1 | -50 LP | -350 LP |
| Master | 14 days | 1 | -75 LP | -525 LP |
| Grandmaster | 14 days | 1 | -75 LP | -525 LP |
| Challenger | 14 days | 1 | -75 LP | -525 LP |
| Emerald and below | n/a | n/a | 0 LP | 0 LP |
Two weeks off at Master, with a full bank to start, costs you nothing. Two weeks off at Master with an empty bank costs you about 525 LP, which on this season’s economy is roughly one and a half tier-equivalents of grinding. Most Master decay disasters happen because the player thought they had bank time they’d already spent.
The 2026 hard reset and what it did to your decay clock
At patch 26.09, Riot ran a hard reset on every Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger account in NA, EUW, EUNE, BR, LAN, and TR. Visible rank dropped to Master 0 LP. MMR partially reset. Decay banks were wiped clean and the 14-day timer started fresh for everyone the moment placements were done.
Practical translation: if you held an apex rank last season and you’ve been climbing back this year, your decay bank started at zero. You needed to queue 14 ranked games inside your first two weeks of being Master to fully top the bank up. Most players didn’t realize that until they took a long weekend and came back to LP missing.
For the full breakdown of what else changed at the apex this season – duo queue at Challenger, harsher dodge penalties, the Climbing Indicator – the full Iron-to-Challenger ladder breakdown covers the rest. For the granular LP-gain math underneath all of this, how LP gains and losses actually work is the companion piece.
Can decay drop you out of Master tier
Short answer: yes. Decay can demote you from Master back to Diamond if you let it run unchecked. There is no hard floor at Master 0 LP that protects you from dropping out of the tier – the only floor is that decay won’t drop you below the tier you placed into at the start of the season.
The mechanic is: you sit at Master 0 LP, decay ticks once and you’d go negative, the system demotes you to Diamond I instead. Once you’re in Diamond, the Diamond decay rules take over (28-day bank, 50 LP loss). It is genuinely possible to start a season at Challenger, ignore the game for six weeks, and come back at Diamond II.
The Challenger and Grandmaster cutoffs work slightly differently – those are leaderboard tiers, not LP thresholds. You can lose Challenger by sitting still and watching other players’ LP climb past yours, even if you haven’t decayed. You don’t decay off the leaderboard so much as you get nudged off by people who are still playing.
The realistic decay-management schedule
The minimum-effort calendars below assume you start with a full bank and want to never see decay damage. They are honest minimums, not recommendations for actually climbing.
| Tier | Bare-minimum queue schedule | Healthy bank schedule | Vacation budget on a full bank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 1 ranked game / 4 weeks | 3-5 ranked games / week | 4 weeks |
| Master | 1 ranked game / 2 weeks | 3-5 ranked games / week | 2 weeks |
| Grandmaster | 1 ranked game / 2 weeks | 5-7 ranked games / week | 2 weeks (plus leaderboard pressure) |
| Challenger | 1 ranked game / 2 weeks (decay) | Daily play recommended | 2 weeks decay + leaderboard erosion |
The Diamond decay system is the most forgiving in the game and almost never bites players who queue casually. The Master tier system is where decay starts to feel like a part-time job: a full bank lasts you 14 days, and topping it back up takes 14 ranked games. If you’re queueing once a week, you’re losing one day of bank per week net. That’s an exit ramp.
If life is making the bare-minimum schedule hard to hit – travel, work, a kid that doesn’t believe in 8-hour sleep – our League of Legends rank boost team can run decay-prevention games on your schedule. One booster, a small number of ranked games per week, your apex rank protected through the busy stretch. Same account, same MMR profile, no shared sessions.
What players get wrong about decay
A few patterns we see on a weekly basis when players reach out to us about decay damage – the kind of misunderstandings that show up across the r/leagueoflegends Master-decay thread and on the Riot Support pages.
- They treat the bank as a guarantee. The 14-day bank at Master isn’t “I get 14 days off.” It’s “I get a 14-day cushion only if my bank is currently full.” A bank you’ve been running below full will hit zero earlier than you expect.
- They try to refill the bank with normals, which doesn’t work. Only ranked Solo/Duo and Flex games refill the decay bank. Normal games, ARAMs, Arena, and TFT don’t count.
- They assume Master is a floor. It isn’t. Decay can drop you out of Master back to Diamond if you let it grind through Master 0 LP. The only floor the season provides is your starting-tier placement; everything earned past that is decay-eligible.
- They don’t realize the Diamond cutoff is generous. Diamond’s 28-day bank is enormous. If you’re Diamond and worried about decay, queue once a month and you’re fine. Riot built it to give part-time Diamond players room to live their lives.
- They forget that dodging counts as a loss at Master and above. A dodge there counts as a full ranked loss with MMR damage. If you’re managing decay and dodging into worse lobbies to game it, you’re losing LP twice: once to the dodge, again to the system’s MMR correction.
The cleanest decay-disaster story we’ve watched this season: a Master 2 LP player took a five-day work trip, came back to find the bank had emptied on day 3 (he hadn’t realized he was already running below full). Two days of decay ticks at -75 LP each, the system demoted him to Diamond I 0 LP, and then a single tilted promo loss took him back to Diamond II. From Master to Diamond II in 7 calendar days, zero games played. (Diamond decay is the most polite way the game has of suggesting you go outside.)
Decay vs other ladders’ inactivity systems
For context on whether League’s apex decay is harsh or gentle compared to the rest of the genre, the rough shape of inactivity penalties in adjacent competitive games:
| Game | When inactivity costs rank | How fast |
|---|---|---|
| League of Legends | Diamond+ only | Diamond: -50 LP/day after 28-day bank. Master+: -75 LP/day after 14-day bank. |
| Valorant | Immortal+ only | -50 RR after 14 days inactivity, then weekly thereafter. |
| Counter-Strike 2 (Premier) | All ranks | Rating decays after ~30 days of no Premier games. |
| Marvel Rivals | None inside a season | Hard reset at season end – no in-season decay. |
| Apex Legends | None | Hard reset per split – no in-season decay. |
League is in the middle of the pack – more punishing than Marvel Rivals (no in-season decay at all) and roughly equivalent to Valorant’s Immortal+ system, but less aggressive than CS2 Premier where the rating bleed reaches every account that goes dark.
Frequently asked questions
When does ranked decay start in League of Legends?
Diamond and above only. Diamond banks 28 days of grace before decay starts; Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger bank 14 days. Below Diamond, decay does not exist – you can take an entire season off and keep your LP.
How much LP do you lose per decay day in LoL?
Diamond: -50 LP per 24-hour period once the bank runs out. Master, Grandmaster, Challenger: -75 LP per 24-hour period. The tick is automatic and continues until you queue a ranked game.
Can you decay out of Master back to Diamond?
Yes. Decay can demote you out of Master back to Diamond I if you let the LP run below the tier line. There is no protected Master 0 LP floor that holds you in the tier without play. The only floor is your starting-tier placement at the season’s start.
Do normal games or ARAM refill the decay bank?
No. The decay bank only refills from ranked Solo/Duo or Flex games (one day banked per ranked game, capped at the 14-day or 28-day ceiling). Normal Summoner’s Rift, ARAM, Arena, and TFT do not count.
How often do I need to play to avoid decay?
At Diamond, one ranked game every four weeks is enough to never see decay. At Master and above, one ranked game every two weeks is the bare minimum. For a healthy bank that survives travel or work stretches, plan on 3-5 ranked games per week at Diamond+, 5-7 per week at Grandmaster and Challenger.
Did the 2026 hard reset change decay?
No – the decay mechanics are unchanged. What changed at patch 26.09 was that every Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger account in NA, EUW, EUNE, BR, LAN, and TR was reset to Master 0 LP, and the 14-day decay bank started empty for everyone after placements. That meant the first two weeks of the new season required steady queueing to fill the bank before any real time off was possible.
Decay is the smallest reason to use a boost service and one of the most common reasons we get asked. If you’ve earned Diamond or Master and you’d rather not have your apex rank quietly bleed out while you’re working, on a trip, or just done with the game for a week, our team can let our team play the games for you at the cadence that keeps your bank topped up. For the exact current rules, Riot’s official Ranked Play FAQ is the canonical source and Riot’s Ranked 2026 dev post covers the broader season changes; community rank-distribution stats are tracked live on op.gg’s tier statistics if you want to see how thin the Master+ population gets after the reset.