Former TL Head Coach Jatt Ranks LoL’s Solo Queue Environment in Top Regions

Former Team Liquid Head Coach and League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) caster Joshua "Jatt" Leesman recently shared his insights on the new Champions Queue system in a new episode of JLXP. The focus of the video was to discuss the Champions Queue that debuted in North America (NA) on 7th Feb. While throwing light on what it actually is, Leesman also spoke about the Solo Queue environment across the four major regions of Korea, China, Europe, and the NA player development systems that help build a pro career in League of Legends.

Solo Queue environment in different regions

Leesman said he strongly believes that Solo Queue is very important for career growth and said, “I don’t think you can just grind scrims 24/7 to become good. Having a competitive practice environment outside of scrims allows you to have more experimentations, limit-testing, and also varies the amount of pressure that you practice under.”

Stating Solo Queue as one of the fundamentals, he ranked the quality of Solo Queue across the top four regions. He credited Korea as the top league in terms of the Solo Queue environment and the level of play since players and pros alike have a strong work ethic.

“They (Korea) have the best, most competitive Solo Queue in the world. It’s partially due to the server population. It is also due to their culture. It is an incredibly grindy work ethic culture,” he opined. Leesman also pointed out the fact that Korean Solo Queue gets a fair share of pro players competing because of the server’s centralized location and pros even from China and Japan play in it. On top of that, the Korean region also has very low ping and incredibly short queue timers.

While talking about the second strongest region -- China – Leesman pointed out that the region has over 30 servers and also separate super servers for highly ranked players. “The top players from the 30 servers can be invited to the super server where they have some of the bloodiest games of any Solo Queue server in the world because people are limit-testing 24/7,” he said.

Following China, Leesman ranked Europe’s Western server next, and lastly North America. While discussing why NA’s Solo Queue system “sucks so much,” he addressed the high ping issue that the region faces after the centralized servers were moved to Chicago from Los Angeles and the inherently low population that the NA server has. He added that the “unmotivated pro player base” was also a reason for the downfall of the region.

How NA’s Champions Queue works

Leesman briefly explained in his video that Champions Queue consists of LCS players, Academy players, amateurs, players from Liga Latinoamérica (LLA), and alumni of the LCS. Riot Games has also promised an application system that allows for top players from the Solo Queue to eventually make their way into the system without actually being affiliated with a pro team.

The Champions Queue system is run on LA ping and only has specific hours of operation to allow for pros to practice both scrims and Solo Queue. It also has a prize pool that gets distributed at the end of each split that runs for one month. The players who fall below a certain LP are removed from the system.

“What I like about this [Champions Queue] is the council that is going to be able to update this frequently to make it adaptive to what is needed. So that’s going to be made up of five pro players, two amateur players, two LCS work staff, and one LLA player. The point of this is to get a lot of perspectives but ultimately have a large voting share for the LCS players,” said Leesman.

Josh Leesman also explained what seems to be some of the drawbacks that are evident with the Champions Queue at present. He pointed out that matchmaking is currently non-existent and the LPs distributed are set. Winning a game gives players +10 LP and losing a game means -5 LP.

While pointing out that Champions Queue could help NA overcome its Solo Queue disadvantage and help perform better internationally, Leesman pondered about what would happen to the actual Solo Queue system and its quality if all the pros and top players moved on to the super server. He also weighed in on instances where a really talented player could be based out of New York and had no means to relocate to the West Coast to compete.

As closing thoughts, Leesman hoped that these risks would eventually pay off in the near future.