Reference

LoL Glossary

Every term, abbreviation and piece of slang you'll see in LoL ranked, defined plainly. Bookmark this page — it's faster than asking Discord.

ADC
Attack Damage Carry. The bot-lane role focused on ranged auto-attack damage, scaling into late-game team-fights. Modern Riot terminology calls this 'Bot' but the community still uses ADC universally.
AFK
Away From Keyboard. A player who has disconnected or stopped controlling their champion. Persistent AFK behavior is bannable and triggers leave-buster penalties.
Autofill
When the matchmaker assigns you to a role you didn't select. Players in autofill queue get priority for their primary role on the next game, so a single autofill is often net-positive for queue times.
Backdoor
Killing the Nexus while the enemy team is elsewhere on the map. Often done via fast-pushing champions (Master Yi, Tryndamere, Singed) after a won team-fight.
Bot
Either the bot lane (formerly ADC role) or a non-human-controlled player using scripts/bot software. Context-dependent.
Carry
Verb: dominate a game so hard that you win regardless of your team's performance. Noun: a champion or role designed to scale into late-game damage dealer (typically ADC or Mid).
CS
Creep Score. The number of minions and jungle monsters you've last-hit (killed with the killing blow) in a game. Higher CS/min correlates strongly with rank — averages range from 4/min in Iron to 9+/min in Master.
Decay
LP loss for inactive Diamond+ accounts. Diamond accounts lose 50 LP every 28 days of inactivity; Master+ lose 75 LP every 14 days. Play one ranked game to reset the timer. See our Anti-Decay service.
Duo Queue
Queuing for ranked with one other player. League's main ranked mode is Solo/Duo queue — you can either solo queue or queue with exactly one duo partner (subject to rank-gap rules).
Elo
Originally a chess rating system, now used colloquially for any rank metric in League. Your 'elo' is your rank; 'elo boosting' is the act of paying someone to raise it.
Engage
Initiating a team-fight. Engage champions (Leona, Malphite, Sett) are designed for this. Counter-engage means matching the engage with your own to flip the fight.
Farm
Last-hitting minions for gold and XP. Synonymous with CS. Heavy-farm champions (Cassiopeia, Aurelion Sol, Kayle) are designed to outscale opponents who don't farm as efficiently.
Flex Queue
The 5-man (or any 1-5 stack) ranked queue, separate from Solo/Duo. Generally easier to climb in Flex due to the disorganization of solo-stacked teams. Has its own MMR independent of Solo/Duo.
Freeze
Holding the minion wave just outside your tower without pushing it forward, denying the enemy CS without dying to dives. A core lane skill at all ranks.
Gank
When the jungler (or roaming laner) moves to another lane to help kill an opponent. Successful ganks generate kills, plates and lane priority for the team.
Hardstuck
Stuck at a particular rank with no upward movement over many games. Usually a sign that your MMR matches your visible rank — climbing requires habit changes, not just more hours.
KDA
Kills + Assists divided by Deaths. A rough quality metric but a poor sole indicator of skill — high-KDA AFK farmers can lose games their team needed them to risk in.
LP
League Points. The visible ranked currency you gain on wins and lose on losses. Reach 100 LP in a division to enter the next division. See our LoL Ranks Explained guide for the full system.
Macro
Map-wide strategic decisions — when to take Dragon, when to rotate, when to push waves. Opposite of 'micro' (mechanical skill). Macro improvement is the highest-leverage area for sub-Diamond climbing.
MMR
Match-Making Rating. The hidden skill rating Riot uses to pair you with opponents. When your MMR is higher than your visible rank you gain more LP per win — the system actively pushes you toward your true bracket.
OP
Over-Powered. Used to describe a champion or strategy that's stronger than other options in the current patch. 'OP picks' are typically those with high pick rate AND high win rate.
Placement Matches
5 games (Solo/Duo) or 10 games (Flex) played at the start of a ranked season or split to determine your starting rank. See our Placement Matches guide.
Plates
Turret plates — the 5 layers on each outer turret that drop extra gold (160 each) when destroyed before minute 14. Plate gold is concentrated economy advantage; lanes that get plate denied fall behind permanently in many matchups.
Promo
Promotion series. Historically a Best-of-3 or Best-of-5 to advance a tier; in 2026 there's no explicit series but the LP threshold to advance still functions as a soft gate.
Riot Games
The developer and publisher of League of Legends. Based in Los Angeles. They run the official anti-boosting detection system and operate the live game servers.
Smurf
A secondary account used by an already-ranked player to play at a lower MMR than their main. Common for warming up, learning new roles, or playing with lower-ranked friends. See our smurf account guide.
Soft Reset
The start-of-season MMR reduction — typically 2-3 divisions downward. Your previous-season MMR sets a floor that placement matches re-confirm. The opposite (hard reset, where everyone restarts from Iron) hasn't happened in League since the early seasons.
Solo Queue
Queuing for ranked Solo/Duo without a duo partner. Most ranked games are solo queue. Solo MMR is shared with Duo queue — they're the same ladder.
Split
Either: (a) one half of a ranked season, ending with mini-placements; or (b) split-pushing, pushing a side-lane while team-fights happen elsewhere.
Team Fight
A coordinated 4v4 or 5v5 engagement, usually around an objective. Won by the team with better positioning, item composition and engagement timing. Mid/late-game team fights are the primary win condition for most comps.
Ult
Ultimate ability — the R-button ability with the longest cooldown and highest impact. Saving and timing ultimates is a core skill at every rank; 'ult cycling' refers to designing engagements around them coming up.
Vision Score
A composite metric of wards placed, wards destroyed, and time wards stayed up. Support's primary KPI; >25/game at Diamond+ is the benchmark. Higher vision score correlates more with climb rate than any other Support stat.
Wave Control
Manipulating the minion wave's position to deny enemy CS, set up a recall window or freeze the wave for a gank setup. The highest-leverage skill any laner can learn — most sub-Diamond players don't actively control waves at all.
Win Trade
Two accounts queuing against each other and one intentionally losing to boost the other's LP. Bannable when detected, and increasingly detected via play-pattern analysis. Not how legitimate boosting works.