LoL Low Priority Queue: Every Penalty Tier, Ranked Consequences and How to Get Out

Ever rage-quit a League game and then got slapped with a timer you can’t skip? That’s the LoL low priority queue doing its thing. Riot built this system around LeaverBuster, which runs in the background of every matchmade game and tracks disconnects, AFK behavior, and early leavers. Once it flags your account, you sit through a forced countdown before each match, and at the highest tiers you’re straight up locked out of playing for up to two weeks. The penalty ladder goes 8 tiers deep (Tier 0 to Tier 7) and has stayed mostly the same since Riot overhauled it in September 2023 by adding queue lockouts on top of the existing delays.

Quick cheat sheet before we go deeper:

What You Need to Know	Answer
What is LoL low priority queue?	A forced wait timer before matchmaking starts, triggered by leaving/AFK
How many tiers?	8 total, from Tier 0 (slap on the wrist) to Tier 7 (nuclear)
Queue delay range	1 min at Tier 0, maxes out at 15 min from Tier 3 up
Queue lockout range	Starts at 24 hours (Tier 4), tops out at 14 days (Tier 7)
Games to clear penalty	Just 1 at Tier 0, but 5 at every other tier
Affected modes	Ranked, Draft, Blind, ARAM, Arena, Swift Play, rotating modes
Exempt modes	TFT, Clash, Custom, Practice Tool, Tutorial
Can you appeal?	No, Riot does not remove penalties manually

What Is LeaverBuster and Why Does It Exist?

LeaverBuster is basically Riot’s hall monitor for AFK players. It sits in the background of every matchmade game you play, and if you go idle for over 3 minutes, it flags your account. Hit the 5 minute mark without moving your champion and it straight up boots you from the match. After enough flags, boom, you’re in the LoL low priority queue.

And yeah, it sucks when you get punished for something you didn’t choose. Your power flickers, your ISP drops for 30 seconds, Windows force-restarts for an update mid-teamfight. Next thing you know, there’s a fat timer on your screen and you can’t queue for 10 minutes. I’ve been there. But the 4 people left in your game don’t know if you tilted out or if your house lost power. They just know they’re playing a 4v5 and their LP is gone. Riot picked the side of the 4 over the 1, and honestly it’s hard to argue with that.

The system only tracks matchmade games. So Ranked Solo/Duo, Ranked Flex, Draft Pick, Blind Pick, ARAM, Arena, Swift Play, and rotating modes like ARURF all count. Custom games, Practice Tool, and Tutorial matches do not trigger LeaverBuster. TFT and Clash are exempt too. If you get a warning popup after leaving a Custom game, that’s a legacy notification from a previous offense.

Complete LoL Low Priority Queue Tier Breakdown

The penalty system has 8 tiers total. Each time you leave or AFK in another game while already penalized, you move up one tier. The penalties get progressively worse and the upper tiers add full queue lockouts on top of the timer delays.

Tier	Queue Delay	Games Required	Queue Lockout
Tier 0	1 minute	1 game	None
Tier 1	5 minutes	5 games	None
Tier 2	10 minutes	5 games	None
Tier 3	15 minutes	5 games	None
Tier 4	15 minutes	5 games	24 hours
Tier 5	15 minutes	5 games	3 days
Tier 6	15 minutes	5 games	7 days
Tier 7	15 minutes	5 games	14 days

Tiers 0 through 3 only slap you with a queue delay. You sit through a countdown, then matchmaking starts. Annoying but manageable. Tiers 4 through 7 are where it gets brutal: you’re locked out of every affected game mode until the lockout period ends. And once it ends? You still drop to Tier 3, meaning 5 more games with a 15 minute wait before each one.

If you’re unlucky enough to land at Tier 7, here’s what you’re looking at: two full weeks where you literally cannot play League. Then after the lockout lifts, you drop to Tier 3, so that’s another 5 games with 15 minutes of staring at a countdown each time. That’s over an hour of just waiting in the client on top of the 14 day ban. Riot really does not mess around.

How Fast Do LeaverBuster Tiers Reset?

Riot hasn’t published exact numbers on how long it takes for your tier to decay back down. From what I’ve seen on Reddit and various community threads, it seems to take several weeks of clean play (no leaves, no AFK) to drop one tier. Some players report it taking over a month to fully reset from Tier 3 back to zero. The system also considers your highest historical tier and how recently you reached it when deciding where to place you on a new offense.

So if you hit Tier 5 six months ago and your first leave since then bumps you to Tier 1 instead of Tier 0, that’s the historical factor at work. The system remembers.

How Queue Delays Actually Work

This trips up a lot of players because the queue delay is not the same thing as normal queue time. The LoL low priority queue delay is a forced countdown timer that appears the moment you press “Find Match.” You must sit through the entire timer before your matchmaking search even begins. If you cancel the queue, close the client, or fail to accept the ready check, the timer resets to its full duration. No partial credit.

A few key details that most guides skip:

• If you dodge champion select after your delay finishes, your timer resets and you don’t get game credit. But if someone else dodges, your timer stays cleared and you re-enter the queue instantly.
• The game you play must last at least 10 minutes to count toward clearing your penalty. Remakes and fast surrenders don’t count.
• If you AFK or leave during the game, it doesn’t count and your tier increases by one.
• Declining a match or not accepting the ready check also resets the timer without giving credit.

So basically, once you’re in the LoL low priority queue, you need to be completely locked in. No dodging, no declining, no tabbing out and missing the accept button. Five clean games, start to finish.

Low Priority Queue Penalties in Ranked Games

If you leave or AFK in a ranked game specifically, you get hit with extra penalties on top of the standard LeaverBuster placement. Ranked games are treated much more harshly by LeaverBuster than normals or ARAM.

Here’s what happens when you leave a ranked game:

• The game counts as a loss on your match history regardless of whether your team wins the 4v5.
• You receive an LP reduction penalty that carries into your next several ranked games. Both wins and losses give you less LP until the penalty clears.
• If the LP reduction would prevent you from promoting past 100 LP, you simply don’t promote. You stay stuck.
• Ranked Flex leaves only affect your Ranked Flex queue, not Solo/Duo (and vice versa).
• You earn zero XP for the abandoned game.

I checked the official Riot LeaverBuster FAQ and they confirm that LP penalties apply to both wins and losses within the same ranked queue. So even when you win after coming back from a leave, your LP gain is reduced. That stings.

On top of all that, your teammates get notified that you’ll be receiving reduced LP. So everyone in the lobby knows you’re a recent leaver. Not a great look in champion select.

Does Low Priority Queue Affect MMR?

The queue penalty timer itself doesn’t directly touch your Matchmaking Rating. But the automatic loss and the LP reduction penalty do. If you leave enough ranked games, your visible rank tanks and your hidden MMR follows over time. That means weaker teammates, harder opponents relative to your team’s skill, and a longer grind to climb back up.

I’ve talked to players on r/leagueoflegends who claim their LP gains dropped from +22 to +14 after a string of leaves. Whether that’s entirely from the penalty or also from MMR decay is hard to pin down, but the result is the same: leaving ranked games puts a serious dent in your climb.

How to Get Out of Low Priority Queue in LoL

Getting out is simple in theory, but it requires patience and zero mistakes. You need to complete the required number of games (5 at most tiers, 1 at Tier 0) without leaving, going AFK, dodging, or declining a ready check.

This video walks through the removal process step by step if you want a visual rundown.

1. Wait through your queue delay timer completely. Do not cancel it, do not close the client. Just wait.
2. Accept the ready check immediately. Missing it resets your timer with no game credit.
3. Do not dodge champion select. Your top locked in Teemo ADC and your jungler is hovering Yuumi? Doesn’t matter. Eat the loss, play it out. One bad game is still better than resetting your entire penalty progress.
4. Stay in the game until the Nexus explodes. The match has to go at least 10 minutes or it won’t count toward your penalty.
5. Repeat for all required games. Any break in the chain resets your progress back to the start.

Fastest way to grind through it? ARAM or Draft Pick. Both tend to run shorter than Ranked and you’re way less likely to tilt halfway through. At Tier 3, you’re sitting through 15 minutes of delay per game, and a typical ARAM runs maybe 18 to 22 minutes. So five of those plus the delays is about 3 hours total. Yeah, it’s a whole afternoon. But it’s way better than sitting out a full two-week lockout at Tier 7.

Can You Play Co-op vs AI to Clear the Penalty?

This comes up constantly. Co-op vs AI games do trigger the queue delay timer, so you’ll still have to wait through your penalty before each bot game. But based on community testing and the LoL Wiki, bot games don’t seem to count toward reducing your remaining game requirement. I’ve seen people on Reddit say they spammed 15+ bot games and their counter didn’t budge at all.

Just queue into real PvP games (Ranked, Draft, Blind, ARAM, Arena, Swift Play) and your progress will actually count.

5 Myths About LeaverBuster That People Still Believe

I spend too much time reading League subreddits. Here are the myths I see repeated every single week.

Myth 1: “LeaverBuster can ban your account.” No. LeaverBuster is strictly a queue delay and lockout system. It cannot issue suspensions or bans. But repeated leaving does generate reports and flags your account for manual review, which can lead to a ban through Riot’s behavioral systems team. So LeaverBuster itself won’t ban you, but the behavior that feeds it absolutely can.

Myth 2: “Playing bot games counts toward clearing the penalty.” Already covered this above, but it bears repeating because I see it in every thread. Co-op vs AI does not seem to count. Play PvP.

Myth 3: “If I reconnect before the game ends, I won’t get penalized.” Sort of, but not really. Reconnecting before the Nexus falls does help, and LeaverBuster goes easier on you in that case. But if you were gone for over 3 minutes during the disconnect, the flag might still land on your account. And if the game got /remade because of you, reconnecting won’t save you from the full penalty.

Myth 4: “Low priority queue is the same as losers queue.” These are completely different things. LeaverBuster’s penalty system is a real, documented mechanism with visible timers. “Losers queue” is a community theory (never confirmed by Riot) about matchmaking placing you with losing players. Two totally separate things, zero overlap.

Myth 5: “Just message Riot support and they’ll remove it.” Nah. Riot’s support page says it plain: they don’t lift LeaverBuster penalties manually. Period. You play through your games or you wait out the lockout. I’ve seen screenshots of Riot support replies where they basically tell people “we can’t help with this” in the nicest corporate way possible. Don’t waste your time filing a ticket.

Queue Dodging vs Leaving: Know the Difference

I see this confusion in literally every thread about LeaverBuster on Reddit. So let me just spell it out real quick.

Queue dodging means leaving during champion select, before the game starts. In a normal queue, this gives you a short time penalty (you can’t re-queue for a few minutes) and costs LP in ranked. But it does not trigger LeaverBuster and does not place you in the penalty queue. You can dodge a terrible draft without worrying about LeaverBuster flagging you.

Leaving/AFK means disconnecting or going idle after the loading screen. This is what triggers LeaverBuster and feeds into the penalty tier system.

But there’s a catch. If you’re already in the LoL low priority queue and you dodge champion select after your delay timer finishes, your delay resets and you lose your game progress. So dodging while already penalized extends your punishment even though dodging normally wouldn’t trigger LeaverBuster at all.

The Patch 14.16 Ranked Queue Pop Penalty

Riot added a separate system in Patch 14.16 that targets players who repeatedly decline the ranked ready check. If you miss or decline the ready check twice from your last four queue attempts, you get a 5 minute penalty before you can queue again.

This was aimed at high-elo players (Diamond+) who were declining queue pops to dodge specific opponents or snipe streamers. It’s a different penalty from LeaverBuster and the queue delay system. It only applies to ranked and only triggers from the ready check, not from in-game leaving.

But I’ll say this: if you’re already penalized and you miss the ranked ready check on top of that, your queue delay timer resets AND you might trigger the Patch 14.16 penalty on top of it. Double penalty. So pay attention to that accept button.

Can You Get Permanently Banned for Leaving Games?

LeaverBuster itself maxes out at Tier 7 (14 day lockout + 5 games at 15 minute delay). It cannot issue account suspensions or permanent bans.

But here’s the thing: if you keep leaving games after clearing your Tier 7 penalty, you’re racking up reports from teammates every single time. Those reports feed into Riot’s broader behavioral evaluation system. Players who are consistently reported for AFK or leaving can receive temporary suspensions (usually 7 or 14 days) and eventually permanent bans through that separate system.

So the answer is yes, you can get perma-banned for chronic leaving, but it’s not LeaverBuster doing the banning. It’s the report-based behavioral system. Wondering if your account already has a strike? We wrote up a guide on how to check if your LoL account is banned.

Is LeaverBuster Fair? The Community Debate

This debate pops up in every Reddit thread about LeaverBuster. And I think both sides have a point.

On one hand, the tiered approach is actually pretty forgiving at the lower end. A single disconnect puts you at Tier 0: one minute of waiting for one game. If your connection holds up most of the time, Tier 0 comes and goes and you probably won’t even remember it happened. The really ugly tiers, 4 and above, only hit players who leave over and over. And if you’re hitting Tier 4+, let’s be real, it’s either your ISP being garbage consistently or you’re alt-F4ing out of games you don’t feel like playing.

On the other hand, the system genuinely cannot tell the difference between “my toddler unplugged the router” and “I inted 0/8 and ALT+F4’d because jungle diff.” It treats both the same way. And for players in regions with unstable electricity or ISP issues (looking at you, EUNE and BR servers), hitting Tier 3 or 4 through no fault of your own feels terrible.

Riot’s counter-argument on their support page is fair: even accidental leavers ruin games for the other 9 players. The system starts gentle and only gets harsh with repeat behavior. If your connection drops once a month, you’ll never get past Tier 1. If it drops three times a week, maybe League isn’t the right game to queue for until you fix that.

Since Vanguard rolled out, Riot has shown they’re serious about enforcement across the board. LeaverBuster handles the leaving, Vanguard handles the cheating, and the behavioral system handles toxicity. The LoL low priority queue is just one piece of a larger punishment framework.

Practical Tips to Avoid LeaverBuster Penalties

Some of this is obvious, but after playing since Season 4 I still watch people make the same mistakes every week. So bear with me here.

Check your time before queueing. A ranked game can last 40+ minutes, and if you factor in champ select and loading screen, you’re looking at close to an hour. If dinner is in 20 minutes or you need to leave for work soon, play an ARAM or don’t queue at all. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen someone type “gtg sorry” at 15 minutes. That’s a leave, and it’s 100% avoidable.

Test your internet before ranked. Open a browser, load a page, check your ping. If things feel laggy, run a quick speed test. Packet loss above 1% is a red flag. Don’t gamble your LP and your LoL low priority queue standing on a connection that’s already struggling.

Kill background apps. Torrents, cloud syncing (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox), Windows/Steam updates downloading in the background, Discord screen sharing to a friend. All of these eat bandwidth and can cause the micro-disconnects that trigger LeaverBuster. Close what you don’t need.

Use ethernet, not WiFi. WiFi is fine for browsing but inconsistent for gaming. A single WiFi dropout during a teamfight can flag you as AFK for 3+ minutes if you can’t reconnect fast enough. Ethernet cables cost $5 and solve 90% of connection-related LoL low priority queue issues. We have a whole guide on fixing League ethernet problems if you’re having trouble even on a wired connection.

If your PC crashes during games, fix the hardware problem. Overheating GPUs, failing RAM sticks, outdated drivers. These cause game crashes that LeaverBuster treats as leaves. Update your GPU drivers, monitor your temps with something like HWMonitor, and make sure your system meets the minimum LoL system requirements. Vanguard errors can also force crashes in certain setups, so check for those too.

If you feel the tilt rising, mute all and play it out. Most leaves aren’t from internet problems. They’re from tilt. Your bot lane is 0/7 at 10 minutes, jungle hasn’t ganked once, and your mid laner is flaming in all chat. I know the feeling. But ALT+F4 in that moment costs you way more than the 15 minutes of suffering through a lost game. Mute everyone with /mute all, put on some music, and farm it out. You can FF at 15 or 20 with a vote. Leaving early is never worth the LeaverBuster penalty.

When a Fresh Account Makes More Sense

Sometimes your penalty history is just too deep. If you’re sitting at Tier 6 or 7 with a week-long lockout plus 5 games of 15 minute delays ahead of you, and your ranked MMR is tanked from LP penalties on top of it, playing through all of that can feel pointless.

A fresh Level 30 account starts with zero LeaverBuster history, clean MMR, and no LP penalties. You can be in ranked placements the same day. If that sounds like a better path than grinding through a week of lockout on your main, you can grab a LoL smurf account and start clean.

But be honest with yourself first: if the reason your main is at Tier 7 is rage-quitting, a new account will end up there too. Fix the behavior or the connection issue first, then decide whether starting fresh makes sense.

FAQ: LoL Low Priority Queue

How long does the low priority queue last in League of Legends?

It lasts for 5 games at most tiers. Queue delays range from 1 minute at Tier 0 to 15 minutes at Tier 3 and above. Tiers 4 through 7 also add a queue lockout period lasting from 24 hours up to 14 days before you can start those 5 games.

Can I play ARAM or Co-op vs AI to clear the penalty faster?

ARAM counts toward clearing your penalty, but Co-op vs AI matches do not seem to reduce the number of games you need to complete. You need to play standard matchmade PvP games like Ranked, Draft Pick, or ARAM that last at least 10 minutes.

Does dodging champion select reset my LeaverBuster progress?

Yes. If you dodge champion select after your queue delay timer finishes, your delay resets and you do not get credit for that game. If another player dodges after your timer completes, your timer does not reset and you re-enter the queue immediately.

What triggers LeaverBuster in League of Legends?

LeaverBuster flags you if you are idle for more than 3 minutes during a matchmade game, disconnect from the match, or if your game is remade because of your inactivity. It applies to Ranked, Draft, Blind Pick, ARAM, Arena, Swift Play, and rotating modes. It does not apply to TFT, Clash, Custom, or Practice Tool games.

Do I lose LP for leaving a ranked game in LoL?

Yes. Leaving a ranked game counts as a loss and triggers an LP reduction penalty that affects your next several ranked games. Your LP gains are reduced on both wins and losses until the penalty clears. Repeated offenses increase the severity.

Is there a way to appeal or remove a LeaverBuster penalty?

No. Riot Games does not manually remove LeaverBuster penalties. The only way out is to complete the required number of games without leaving, going AFK, or dodging. Contacting Riot support will not result in the penalty being lifted.

Does low priority queue affect my MMR?

The low priority queue itself does not directly lower your MMR. However, the LP reduction penalty applied to ranked leavers can slow your climb and affect your visible rank. Repeated leaving and the resulting losses will indirectly damage your MMR over time.

Last updated: April 2026