Smurfing: When is it too much?

TL;DR: Don't be a smurf. It's rude.

I understand and, to an extent, appreciate smurfing. Usually, smurfs come down to the lower elos and they'll play a support position or a carry position to teach something. In reality, smurfing should be outright banned but there's no way to monitor how many accounts one person has. So this is more of an ethics post. Anyone who smurfs, take notes because you're only hurting people who are trying to get better and move up.

I just finished a game where I played Sivir/Voli against Jinx/Tahm. Jinx played fantasticly. She was able to predict my skills, bully the crap out of me, and won the lane decisively by the 10 minute mark (it should be noted that I'm only a casual B3). The issue was, I noticed the movements. High level stuff. Predicting skills simply by movement before I'd even tapped Q, snowballing through brilliant itemization. Really high level stuff.

Now, this could've been Jinx just taunting us but when we asked if she was smurfing, she claimed P3. The skills definitely spoke to it. So, after the game, I laid into her. This game is supposed to be fun, even in ranked. Sure, I'll be told to "git gud" and "uninstall" but seriously think about it.

The entire point of ranked is to play against better and better opponents as you move up the ladder. This ensures that, as you reach higher elos and tiers, your skills rise as well, leading to better mechanical play and more in depth analysis. Smurfing completely circumvents this. It's the reverse side of placing higher than you should have been (last season I was placed at S5 to start so I should know). A smurf has simply said, "I'm tired of losing, let's go crush some weaklings." If you really want to do that, go play ARAM or Draft but leave the lower elos alone. All you do is force us to use unconvential methods to even attempt to beat you which screws up the mechanics we've been trying to learn.

Now the other side of smurfing is multiple accounts. Having been a gamer for awhile, I understand the appeal of multiple accounts and use several across other games. That said, Riot near perfectly deflected the largest issue with multiple accounts with the Ranked Placing mechanic where you are placed in the tier that is best represented by your skill level across ten ranked games without a rank. What does that mean?

It means that a Challenger level player with a second account would have to intentionally get wrecked in all ten games to even begin to think about being placed in a bronze elo where s/he would then annihilate any and all players in his/her way. It's all intentional. To be honest, all it does is make you look like an unpopular senior in high school who hangs out with the freshmen thinking they'll worship him. Don't get me wrong, I'd lose my s*** if Bjergsen joined my game but I also wouldn't have fun because I know I'd have absolutely no chance in hell of beating him.

So the ethics point: If you're thinking about making another account, don't smurf it. And if you do, at least have the decency to play support roles and teach lower elo players how to improve their mechanics.

And to Riot: I think it would be awesome if you could implement some kind of mechanic that would monitor a players play style post placement to determine if they're just having an amazing win streak or if they're smurfing.

Thanks everyone!