Smurfs are beyond frustrating.

Wildebeast18·1/15/2018, 5:40:56 PM·4 votes·967 views

I'm just a normal player. I'm silver and trying to improve. But when most games I either have a Smurf who snowballs and makes it super easy to win or I get smashed by a Smurf it is difficult to learn and improve. I'm trying to learn from my mistakes but I think smurfs are a huge issue. I get it you're really good, but destroying players far worse than you is a pitiful plea for pats on the back. I don't know if there even is a way to stop it or crack down on it but I just want to play a game with people that are a similar skill level to me. I'm trying to "git gud" but I also realize I will never be diamond and play the game for fun. Sorry for the rant.

16 Comments

SciFi Scrivener1/15/2018, 5:45:00 PM3 votes

There is no reason smurfs should be allowed in ranked games. With the new "clash" event mode coming soon, Riot has said they are working on a way to exclude smurfs from participating. If they are successful I hope they apply their smurf blocking system to ALL ranked play.

hi ìm groot1/15/2018, 6:34:32 PM3 votes

Unless the smurf is trolling, which is bannable, they dont stay around an elo they're significantly higher than for very long. And you got to figure, even plat is only 5% of the playerbase. Its statistically impossible for smurfs to ruin a large margin of games.

XIVIVIX1/15/2018, 9:45:36 PM2 votes

Smurfs are only the issue if you're only occasionally running into them. If you were to be dropped down in Diamond ranks or even Challenger ranks, you'll learn the game and become a better player exponentially faster than you would working your way up from Silver to Diamond or Challenger. It's a proven fact in psychology that your growth is in part determined by your environment. If I were to stick you into a house of monkeys (no, not bronze and silver players, actual monkeys) and cut off your interaction with the outside world you'd end up more like the monkeys than the monkeys like you.

The only TRUE way to help people improve in this game is to make Normals completely random with matchmaking so you're exposed to talented players more often. This also holds true in Ranked play where the only true competitive environment we'll ever see is to hard-reset the MMR each and every season. You'll quickly see people in Bronze that normally go 0-15 with AP Tryndamere start playing like Platinum and Diamond players by the end of the season (depending on how often they actually play, that casual dude won't benefit as much as the hardcore 1600games a season guy).

Zed genius1/15/2018, 6:07:36 PM1 votes

Smurfing is not against the ToS. Anyone can have a smurf as long as they level it up by themselves. That said, there aren't many people that actually have smurfs, let alone high elo players that have smurfs in silver (which is again a lie, because all u need is to win 5 games in silver-gold mmr,which is a piece of cake for a plat+ player, and u get to gold on a new account) so the chances of you encountering a smurf every single game are less than 0.000001 %. If a higher elo player does have a smurf in silver and they are popping off every game as you say, they would climb really quickly by skipping divisions.