Smurfs in low ELO is a massive problem stemming from ranked being badly designed

I'm not silver (as can be seen on my op.gg, but this acc was placed in silver 4 after my promotion games. And this is a problem.

Did the system really think I was silver? Probably not.

I'm just one person but this happens to a lot of people smurfing, they get placed very far from where they belong. This results in your average silver game getting stacked with people that are everything from low gold to masters+ (and then a few players that probably should have been placed in bronze/iron). This makes climbing in silver a nightmare and a roll of dice. "Did matchmaking favour you with more and better smurfs" becomes the question as you struggle to climb.

This is just an anecdote but winning in silver was much harder for me than winning games in plat/gold games has been so far on this account. I don't recall the exact number but I think I were stacking a low 53-54% win rate in silver because I was going up against so many smurfs that seemed to be diamond 1 or something, and they just snowballed like crazy in mid/top. Then when I got to plat game became much easier. And win rates went up to like 59-60%.

I think the "smurf problem" where smurfs can single-handedly decide a lot of games sucks for low ELO's trying to make an honest climb. I think the problem comes from how the ranked system insists on placing high ELO smurfs in ranks they CLEARLY don't belong to. If say an adc is packing 10 cs/min while dishing out most damage, don't place that person silver, if a player in normal's always get's matched with diamonds, don't place that player silver, because they are not silver - and you know it.

I also don't like how the system is making it so hard for smurfs to climb. Some days ago I saw a silver 2 player with like 90% winrate get matched against me on this acc. I stomped this player during a promotion, but was this really fair to them? To "prove" they deserved to go from silver 2 to silver 1 they had to beat a team of all plat. This person was clearly not silver and the ranked system knew it too, yet the system does all in its power to keep them silver for longer and make their climb super challenging by having their promos in silver be against plat.

The ranked system should IMO be nicer to smurf accounts and just let them climb faster/easier so they can stop making silver/gold/plat games such a dice roll