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I would like to have a serious discussion about smurfing

nosafterburn··1 votes·487 views

Look. Before you look up to see how bad I am at this game know that I'm not the best. I understand that I'm Bronze. I understand that it might sound like I'm complaining about smurfs, but I'm not. I am just curious as to why people smurf. I mean some instances I understand (i.e. new different region, hacked account, banned), but other than that what are the reasons? To play with my friends in their elo? Well if I'm in a higher elo i can understand wanting to help them become better players, but then how can it be fun for you? Your skill level is FAR superior to everyone else in the game. Doesn't this kind of mindset bring upon the troll mindset (Hmm, let me see what i can do to screw around. Its not like we won't win with me on the team)? Or do you smurf to beat players by a exceptionally large margin to feel superior? Is it because you wish to help your fellow regions playerbase? If so, good on you. Don't stop. Positivity brings nothing but growth imo. I don't know. I'm just kinda curious as to what makes people think they need to smurf and their reasoning behind it (especially in solo que). Makes interesting data. (I'm weird like that.)

10 Comments

KirynDawn2 votes

I smurf to duo q with my friends. Is it fun? No it's actually pretty frustrating trying to do my best to carry just like any elo. But they get better with each passing game especially when they (my friend(s)) are the ones feeding.

nosafterburn1 votes

See? You are a good sempai. You let your friends feed and help them learn to not feed. Kudos to you.

Krigjer2 votes

I originally created my smurfs (alternate accounts) because I didn't want my friends spectating me when I was new to the game and still learning. So if everyone was online, I'd just log into one of my many accounts. I keep them now for the same reason; if I don't want to be bothered I just play a smurf. Also because they have neat usernames so I don't have to pay for a change on my main every time. They are currently level 10 (with one smurf at 20) and if I could have started them at level 30 to avoid brand new players I would have.

But I'm also silver, so my skill threshold isn't exactly high once you level past 5 (or 10 and at the latest 15). Merely explaining my reasoning.

I've heard of high ELO players making smurfs to avoid queue times on their main (challenger queue is hell) OR to have a challenge (if I start bronze how long will it take me to climb to diamond by playing nothing but Janna support). I've met the latter in my games, for example.

Some people DO make smurfs just to stomp new players, but I feel like that number is absurdly small.

nosafterburn1 votes

I also feel like the pubstompers are a small number as well. I've also met certain 1 champ 1 role players (heck one of my fav YT's has a bard only and urgot only account, and he's fantastic at them) so I can see why some people would have them. Especially if they stream (gotta entertain the fans).

Serevas2 votes

I feel like a lot of people have smurfs simply for the mental reset and the ability to dodge games, but keep playing.

You typically get a 5 minute timer for dodging games, and that's fine, but people often want to keep playing so they switch to a different account to do so.

As to the mental reset, when you're having a particularly tough day of solo queue, sometimes you start to tilt, and when you tilt, sometimes you just need wins to give you that reset to your mental state, a lower ranked smurf can be an easy way of accomplishing that.

Also high elo players, Challenger/master tier, will often make smurfs to get into a game in less than 15-30 minutes.

nosafterburn1 votes

That is a good call. I find that if I ever need a mental reset I myself just turn off league and walk away to something else, but that might not work for eveyone (I get it, really). My main question about your point is Why would you want to NOT play against people of the same (or better) skill? Do you have to play the game so badly that you cannot wait for players of equal or better skill (Isn't that the only way to improve)? Just curious. Thanks for the answer btw. (I thought it was a good answer ^-^)

Serevas2 votes

Well the situation that I recall quite a bit is that in Challenger queues, as I watch Valkrin quite a bit, you'll wait for close to half an hour. As you're in that half hour queue, the game decides, wow we really need to find this dude a match. So what it does it match you with a team of diamond players, then your opposing team is full of master tier players to compensate for the fact that you're a challenger player. So the mismatch becomes so horrific that it's basically a guaranteed loss of LP, and since it's a loss against people of lower rank than you, you lose a lot more LP.

So in short, you wait for a long time, to get a really bad match, to lose a large amount of LP in most cases. I've actually seen it a few times where he was challenger, his team ranged from D5-D2, then his opposing team was mid-high master tier.

Granted he is like top 15 challenger or something of that sort, so it's even more difficult for him to find matches, but you can see the issues.

nosafterburn1 votes

I can definately can see the issues there. Interesting point. Thanks for the info.

Serevas1 votes

No problem at all.

Sarutobi2 votes

I have a secondary account. I don't want to call it a smurf because I really only use the account to play bot games when I just want to relax and not care. I don't think anyone should have a smurf account with the intent of using it to abuse te system. I can't stand it when I play with someone who is far superior than me. It's unfair and not fun.

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