This matchmaking bug lets you easily hit diamond in LoL

Nicholas James Published 02/10/2021

Julian “Tarzaned” Farokhian, a North American solo queue Challenger jungler, has revealed a matchmaking bug that drastically inflates an account’s MMR to diamond.

This exploit appears to work on EUW and NA servers. This bug uses a fresh, unranked account to fool the lobby into applying another player’s Grandmasters or Challenger MMR and having a third player reap the benefits. This doesn’t give free LP, but does make gains in LP much larger than they should be.

Tarzaned took to Twitter to reveal the bug. In his post, he despairs that Riot’s unable to fix it. Tarzaned has a mixed reputation and has a known past of accounting boosting and toxic solo queue behavior. Recently he’s toned down his behavior.

In a Discord screenshot, Tarzan shows messages from an anonymous player, presumably an account booster. Here’s how the matchmaking bug functions. A level 37 account with no ranked wins or losses joins a lobby with a high-ELO account. The lobby doesn’t have ranked information for the fresh account, and automatically sets the MMR to challenger level. Then the fresh account invites the beneficiary’s account and gives it control of the lobby. After it’s the leader, the third account kicks the fresh account.

Once the fresh account is gone, the matchfixing bug makes that lobby have Challenger-level League Points gain. This inflates the rate at which the third account can climb, and makes the higher-rank account able to boost it more easily.
Riot’s client is known for having many problems, and this is only the latest.

The bug only persists for as long as the lobby remains together, so for each string of games it would have to be done again. If you’re in the business of boosting accounts, it substantially cuts down on time investment to boost accounts to higher ranks. Fans should hope this bug gets fixed, and soon.

Nicholas James

About Nicholas James

Nicholas James is a gaming writer with a passion for all things geekdom, as well as live theater. Nicholas is best known for covering League of Legends and other top MOBA titles, but his expertise covers numerous games across multiple genres. When not watching the LCS or playing the latest new release, Nicholas can be found doing some tabletop gaming and painting his favorite miniatures. Nicholas has also published with Hotspawn, TheGamer, Dexerto, Esports.gg and other industry outlets.

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