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An unbelievable number of smurfs / boosters...

ValyrianBlade··1 votes·825 views

I decided to actually put in games this year and see how far I could climb. After a few seasons of being low gold with around 75-100 games, I've put in over 200 so far this year with a 54% win rate and climbed to plat 3 (and lost promos to plat 2 once).

However, ever since that promo series, I've seen an unbelievable number of players who are either challenger/master smurfs, or are getting boosted.

No word of a lie, in my last 9 games in a row there has been a player currently ranked between gold 1 and gold 5, with a win rate of over 70% (some as high as 97%), with plat 2-3 MMR apparently. And that player has hard carried 8 of those 9 games. To the tune of making their lane opponent go 0/8 or worse. In mid plat elo.

They normally say if you're exactly as good as your elo, you'll win a little over 50% if you never AFK or troll because there's a 5/9 chance it will be on the enemy team instead.

Except now? It's more like "if you're not the challenger/master tier player, you'll win under 50% because there's a 5/9 chance that the challenger/master player is on the enemy team".

I always ignored all the complaints on these boards about smurfs because I figured they were rare enough that it wouldn't affect more than a handful of your games and ultimately wouldn't affect your ranking. Seriously though, my last 9 games in a row have had 1 or more players ranked in gold (3 of them had 2) who have insane win rates and played really well.

3 Comments

Relaxe1 votes

Are you under the impression that a gold player can't carry a plat game? You guys understand there's a fractional difference in skill level, right? You also understand, of course, that MMR isn't tied to your actual rank at all? It's entirely possible for me to dodge my promos over and over again, and stay at bronze V, but get into plat games? Your rank puts you literally within the top 10% of players, you're not that crazy different. It's yellow bronze versus blue silver, seriously. This is just classic whining about how you're not climbing quickly anymore because you're in higher MMR.

Don't pretend like smurfing is an issue when there is absolutely some mistakes you're making in game. You're making excuses because you don't understand why you aren't doing crazy well in your MMR.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

{quoted}

Are you under the impression that a gold player can't carry a plat game? You guys understand there's a fractional difference in skill level, right? You also understand, of course, that MMR isn't tied to your actual rank at all? It's entirely possible for me to dodge my promos over and over again, and stay at bronze V, but get into plat games? Your rank puts you literally within the top 10% of players, you're not that crazy different. It's yellow bronze versus blue silver, seriously. This is just classic whining about how you're not climbing quickly anymore because you're in higher MMR.

Don't pretend like smurfing is an issue when there is absolutely some mistakes you're making in game. You're making excuses because you don't understand why you aren't doing crazy well in your MMR.

You either didn't read the post, or don't understand how MMR works.

These players are currently ranked in gold because it's a new account. They have mid-high plat MMR because they are winning all of their games. They have 70-97% total win rates. 70-97% win rates. Do you understand that? A typical player who is doing well and climbing will have like 54-60% win rates. 70-97% is absurd. That's clearly a smurf or a boost. You don't win 70%+ (or 90%+ for 3 of them) of your games when you're one of ten players in the game. A few of them are getting that win rate on 12+ different champions. Like, I can understand the argument that it's legitimately a new player who is just a natural if they're only playing a few champions - but that doesn't work when someone is like level 40 and plays 20 different champions and stomps plat elo consistently.

Relaxe1 votes

{quoted}

You either didn't read the post, or don't understand how MMR works.

These players are currently ranked in gold because it's a new account. They have mid-high plat MMR because they are winning all of their games. They have 70-97% total win rates. 70-97% win rates. Do you understand that? A typical player who is doing well and climbing will have like 54-60% win rates. 70-97% is absurd. That's clearly a smurf or a boost. You don't win 70%+ (or 90%+ for 3 of them) of your games when you're one of ten players in the game. A few of them are getting that win rate on 12+ different champions. Like, I can understand the argument that it's legitimately a new player who is just a natural if they're only playing a few champions - but that doesn't work when someone is like level 40 and plays 20 different champions and stomps plat elo consistently.

It's just not that hard to get past plat, you just need to understand macro gameplay concepts. This is just whining about a problem that solves itself over time, because it's "ruining your ranked experience".

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