ML Ranks List – Learn How the Mobile Legends Ranking System Works
12 minutes
Last Updated: May 29, 2024
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is the most successful MOBA for mobile phones. This game looks like a clone of League of Legends and in many ways it is. But it still has enough distinctive elements to be its own thing.
If you’re new to the game, in this guide you will learn a bit more about MLBB and how the Mobile Legends ranking system works.
What Is MLBB
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang was launched in 2016, around 5 years ahead of Wild Rift, the mobile version of League of Legends. This mistake cost Riot Games billions of dollars because their primary game, LoL, has a player base of around 120 million.
All that was needed was for Riot to develop a mobile version of the game and advertise it. That would have killed all competition immediately. Instead, they waited and delayed the process for many years, until finally, they had no options left.
By the time Wild Rift was launched at the end of 2021, Mobile Legends had gathered a player base of 80 million.
At the moment, Wild Rift is played by 15-20 million people, but it still has a long way to go to reach MLBB’s level. And because of the strength and sheer size of MLBB’s community, it’s clear that this game can no longer be killed.
So, for anyone who’s interested in learning it, the endeavor is certainly without catastrophic risks. You won’t all of a sudden learn that Moonton, the developer of MLBB, has been ordered to shut down its operations.
Riot Games and Moonton were involved at some point in a legal battle, but that has nothing to do with the people who play MLBB and LoL.
How MLBB Is Played
In Mobile Legends, players compete as part of a team of five members. At the start of a game, each player gets to pick a character from a list of around 120 options.
This list is extended year after year and you cannot be a highly skilled player without understanding what each character does.
Because it’s a MOBA game, ML combines elements from RPG games and elements from RTS games. The result is both exciting to play and exciting to watch.
It might not be as thrilling as LoL or Dota 2, but it’s still a lot of fun and you only need to play the game for a short while to understand why millions are captivated by it.
Heroes
MLBB’s heroes are divided into multiple categories and each of them requires hundreds of games to master. Versatility is quite important in this game because the number of viable strategies is huge.
If you don’t have the right tool available for the right situation, you are likely to get outplayed.
Of course, you won’t be a complete player from day one, but you should aspire to become a complete player over the years. If your goal is to achieve a high ML rank, there’s simply no other way to do it.
You can climb the first ranks with ease by demonstrating pure skill in a narrow specialization. But to achieve the top ranks, you’ll need to develop your ability to play dozens of heroes and pick them in an appropriate way.
One of the biggest mistakes committed by novice players consists in picking what feels good or familiar. You should never do this.
Instead, master 10-20 heroes to the point where one doesn’t feel any more familiar than the rest and then ask yourself: what would really work well here?
If you can outdraft your opponents, you’re already in the top 5% of ML players.
Hero Specializations
There are six categories of heroes that you can play and all of them are fun in their own way. Some heroes excel at everything that involves defense, while others have impressive offensive capabilities.
It’s entirely up to you to decide what play style you enjoy the most.
Tanks are perfect for the frontline and will offer the rest of their team the opportunity to use their abilities while they tank all the damage.
Marksmen can deal high amounts of damage from afar. This naturally boosts their survivability during team fights and allows them to assist in a wide variety of tactics and maneuvers because they don’t need to be right next to the fight scene to intervene.
Assassins are perfect for those who love to search for solo kills and disrupt the enemy team with perfect map movements.
When you first start playing the game, this hero class will likely be the most appealing to you. A lot of players enjoy this way of making a difference.
Fighters are both Tanks and Assassins. They can be utilized in both roles but don’t excel at either. If you want to be more effective, you should pick a pure Tank or a pure Assassin in most cases. However, that will make you more vulnerable to counter-strategies.
When the enemy team can’t fully predict your movements, that’s when you’re the strongest.
Mages are great at casting spells and will deal lots of magical damage. They represent a different kind of marksman and can be of many subtypes.
The last hero category in MLBB is Support. If you play this role, your objective is to keep your core heroes safe and to help them farm as much as possible.
The Format of Each Game
Each ML game consists of a battle on a two-sided map. There are 3 lanes in total and the goal is to advance toward the enemy base. Fights will regularly take place for various objectives.
Sometimes, you will need to defend your structures. Other times, you will be the one who attacks and tries to destroy enemy buildings.
If your team’s heroes grow faster than the enemy team’s, your ability to win fights will increase by a lot. And that tends to have a snowball effect. The first few fights usually determine the fate of the match.
By the time the gold and experience difference has surpassed a certain limit, the team who needs to play from behind faces a huge challenge.
That challenge can still be overcome, but it takes an exceptional tactical ability to successfully comeback into the game.
ML Ranks
The Mobile Legends ranks are similar to those of other esports. As a beginner, you will need to start by playing unraked matches until you’ve leveled up your account enough to start playing ranked. Then the fun begins. Or the pain, depending on how good you are.
Usually, you will lose a lot in the beginning because you don’t understand the heroes well enough. Furthermore, you will be weak in every aspect of the game and improvements will come slowly.
Meanwhile, many of the players you will compete against have hundreds or even thousands of hours of experience.
This kind of disadvantage can only be compensated for with great tactical abilities. But those too will require time to develop. It doesn’t matter how talented you are at strategy.
If someone has 10 times more experience than you, the odds of winning are slim. But as you become more experienced yourself, you’ll start winning a lot more often.
Achieving a high rank in ML will take at least a few years but you can speed up the process by following several principles that will be detailed a bit later.
ML ranks work in two ways. The first one is based on stars and applies to the lower ranks. The second one is based on points and applies to the Mythic ranks.
In essence, once you’ve reached a certain level of skill, the matchmaking system treats you differently and you become a serious competitor.
In the lower divisions, being shown your exact number of points wouldn’t make much sense. Some MOBAs, such as Dota 2, do this, and treat every player exactly the same. But MLBB has a different policy.
The ML Rank List
The ML ranking system includes these ranks:
- Warrior: 0 – 3 stars
- Elite: 0 – 3 stars
- Master: 0 – 4 stars
- Grand Master: 0 – 4 stars
- Epic: 0 – 5 stars
- Legend: 0 – 5 stars
- Mythic: 1 – 599 points
- Mythical Glory: 600+ points
Each of these ranks has 3 – 4 divisions. To go from one rank to the next, you need to successfully go through all of your current rank’s divisions.
The highest rank in ML is Mythical Glory. Usually, this is the rank attained by professional players and aspiring professional players. Reaching that level is extremely difficult and will require complete mastery of the game.
Your win rate needs to be decent and your training regimen, if you reach that point, needs to be similar to that of any professional athlete. Without at least four hours of training per day, you cannot compete against the world’s best players.
In some parts of the world, the top players find ways to support themselves financially by coaching others or by streaming and then playing all day until they secure a long-term contract with a top team.
Ranking Up
To rank up in ML, you need to win matches. You get stars (or points) when you win and you lose stars when you lose. Gaining stars leads to promotions. Losing stars leads to being demoted.
Your rank shows you how skilled you are relative to how skilled other people are. This is one of the hardest concepts to grasp in esports.
It doesn’t matter how strong you are. If other players are significantly better than you, you’re still weak.
If you want to rank up, you need to improve your skills and your understanding of the game to the point where you are significantly better than the players who compete in your rank.
The matchmaking system seeks to create fair matches for everyone. This means that you will be asked to compete against players of similar rank and you will also be offered teammates whose skill level is similar to yours.
From time to time, you will feel like you’re much better than your teammates. Other times, even though you may not realize it, your teammates will be better than you and they will carry you to an otherwise undeserved victory.
On average, everyone gets the same amount of luck and bad luck in this game and the difference is made over time, by your own abilities.
If you win matches that you should have lost because you play much better than expected, you will rank up.
But if you simply win and lose matches without doing anything unusual for your rank, you will stay where you are. In most cases, you will neither rank up nor get demoted.
You’ll simply maintain your rank because your understanding of the game is not improving. Or if it does, the process happens slowly.
In martial arts, you don’t go from belt exam to belt exam. Instead, you spend at least a few years at every level and work on every aspect of your game until you’ve mastered all the basics. Something similar happens in esports like MLBB, except the process is a bit faster.
Since you’re playing a video game, you can dedicate a lot more than 4-6 hours per week to your development. And the more time you put in, the faster you’ll attain a high level of expertise.
But not everyone who plays a lot gets good. That’s because it’s not enough to play the game. You also need to know how to train properly.
How to Rank Up Faster in ML
If you want to climb the Mobile Legends ranks a bit faster, you will need to follow some very basic principles.
Specialize Early
At first, experiment with every aspect of the game and play each hero at least a few times. After that, start playing one or two roles and figure out which one you love the most.
And finally, after you’ve done experimenting and learning what each hero does, start specializing in a role and master 3-5 heroes.
In time, you’ll need to master a lot more than that. But as a beginner, it doesn’t really help to play a different hero in each game.
If you do things that way you won’t see the patterns and it will take you a long time to improve your skills. It’s much better to spam heroes and play them under a wide variety of circumstances.
That way, you’ll learn when they are strong and when they are weak. After you’ve developed enough versatility, you’ll be able to pick your heroes appropriately, based on the situation. And you will know in advance what you need to do to win the game.
Experiment with item builds and always ask yourself: what do I need in this particular situation to win the game?
Different situations require different measures. You can’t play the same each time and expect to do well. One of the goals of a Mythical player is to become unpredictable.
That way, your opponents will not know in advance what you’re going to do and therefore, they won’t know how they need to play to counter your strategies.
If an opponent knows in advance your item build, timings, map movements, and so on, it will be very easy for him to counterpick and outplay you at every turn.
Study the Best Players
It may sound intuitive but a lot of players never do this. When you want to master a hero, watch a pro player’s games and try to figure out why he plays that hero the way he does.
You can do this either live or by watching replays. The best tactics and moves can be learned. You don’t have to come up with every winning strategy yourself. You can simply copy the best practices from others.
While studying other players, make sure that you are taking notes. Don’t just try to memorize everything.
Note it down and review it later. If you build your knowledge and maintain it in written form, it will be easier for you to revise and improve it over time.
For every hero and every type of scenario, you can develop a deep understanding of every little aspect that goes into winning with that hero or in that particular scenario. The best way to do it is to think like an RTS player.
Your resources are your time and whatever your hero is capable of. The question is: how do you utilize those resources to win against an enemy who has his own resources?
What do you need to do to neutralize his advantage? How do you put yourself in a winning position?
Watch Your Own Replays & Correct Your Errors
A lot of players just play the game without thinking about what they’re doing. That’s the wrong approach.
If you just do the same thing over and over, you might develop bad habits, and then it will be difficult to unlearn them.
It’s much better to quickly analyze your games right after they’ve ended and learn a few lessons each time. Improve what you did well and correct what you did wrong.
