Boards›Player Behavior

Smurfing ruins peoples attempts at climbing

RazsaKorren·5/10/2019, 10:34:42 AM·7 votes·5,604 views

When i first completed my 8 game placement i went 4 for 4, going from facing plats to facing high silver, low gold. No problem i did decent in that relative elo, though maybe should of been placed a tad lower since i struggled against gold players. However following a lose streak i ended up facing off against multiple smurfs, finding my self on the youtube videos "i took my --- into bronze and this happened". It completely ruined the mmr i had and has landed me into horrible stats when im looked up. Its hard to counter play a duo smurfing jungle and top laner that dive you post 5 every time you respawn or to even farm when facing challenger or master smurfs. I personally find smurfing to be a slap in the face to the lower elo players trying to actually climb. im by no means great at this game, but i at least would like to leave bronze, but the high volume of smurfs in the lower elo doing it for shits and giggles makes wanting to even que up and play difficult.

wanted other peoples thoughts on this, am i the only one that feels like purposing having a smurf in low elo to ruin peoples games is fun?

inb4 "if you arent plat or higher you arent a real person" people start, most of you arent even out of iron, just stop embarrassing yourself.

18 Comments

LordBadToo5/10/2019, 11:36:29 AM5 votes

There are three things I think you really need to know about League of Legends.

The reason RIOT has never done anything about Smurfs is because this is a concept that is severely overstated by the player community. There really is very little evidence that Smurfing is some sort of epidemic. Yeah, some great players restart their accounts, others do it because they got perma banned on their main, but in general the chances of you running into a Smurf in game, a player that very obviously is way above everyone's level is slim to none. There really aren't that many Smurfs out there.

I know this because I get accused of being a Smurf constantly and I hear people accusing each other of being Smurfs all the time. I often take the time to investigate the age of a players account his record, his stats. In the better part of a decade I have been playing this game, I have never found anyone I thought was a Smurf that had the stats I would expect someone like that to be a Smurf.

You mentioned a specific player that you suspect is a Smurf, give me his account name, lets look him up and see if we can confirm that he really has those stats.

I challenge anyone on this forum to do that.

Tears of Unicorn5/11/2019, 11:31:39 PM3 votes

Hello, RazzsaKorren.

First and foremost, thank you for sharing your irritations and, or, frustrations.

Personally I understand how you feel. Having your games displayed on YouTube can be somewhat embarassing; however, I would like to assure you that it is about how you view it, instead of smurfing overall. If, in game, the people are highly toxic, then yes. That is a bad behavior, is reportable, and the player gets soft ban to chat or soft ban from future games. However, this said, there is a lot of valuable information you can and should learn from smurfs. While yes, they will mechanically outplay you most often than not, smurf do tend to get overconfident. The key is to learn their mentality and viewpoint. For example, you get dove under tower. Think in terms of "Why did this happen? How do I avoid it?" Rather than "Oh God. These guys r too good and pls rito ban smurf I can't climb because of them!" Review your game replay. See what they did right and think what did you do wrong? Did you tunnel vision? Did you place a bad ward? Did you not pay attention to the minimap? We're you merely slumped in your lane? What could you have done to better them and win? Mechanics? - go to practice tool. Map awareness? -play more and get into habit of watching the map and warding. Whatever it is, it's not the smurf why you lost but because you yourself made bad decisions, misplaced, we're careless, did bad shot calling, etc. Sooner or later you will climb and find yourself facing these same players be in gold, Plat, whatever. What will you do then? Game will flow differently and you won't be able to keep up. The higher you go, the easier it is to take advantage of players who make mistakes and are out of place in lower elos. And yet, I have seen diamond players being beaten by bronze at times. Again, it's about your attitude. Work on improving yourself and worry about what you can control - you; rather than worrying about what you can't control: your teammates individual game skills and, more importantly, smurf that may or may not even be smurf at times (though from what you described clearly they were).

If you need help learning, just ask the community. Quite a lot of peeps are willing to help.

Good luck on the rift!

LordBadToo5/10/2019, 12:34:34 PM2 votes

There is no doubt that experience and learning curve are huge defining components that no system will ever be able to account for that create this illusion of smurfing. Contrary to what the community expresses on these forums, it is not at all representative of how the community either behaves, thinks or plays.

People are constantly improving, trying to find new champions that work for them, new positions, new strategies, better approaches. In periods when they see large improvements, those "aha" moments they suddenly boost their performance and have uncharacteristic results.

I'm a pretty good example of that. 60 games ago I was in Iron IV with a winrate of about 39% which remained roughly unchanged over 30 games. I studied up, kept at it, learned and learned and learned. Suddenly I had a Eureka moment and I became super dominant in my games. My skill level caught up, but my MMR and Division spot where really without much warning completely below my skill level. I had 15 game winning streaks, my winrate shot up to 80% when looking at 10 most recent matches and my impact on games went from "the reason we lost" to "the reason we won" in every single match. When I would take a loss, it was most often due to catastrophic team failures elsewhere, but my movement through my division took me from Iron IV to Bronze II in 30 games.

I can totally understand that during those 30 games anyone who played with me might assume I was a Smurf as nothing about how I was playing was characteristic of a typical Iron IV player.

The Highest Noon5/10/2019, 12:38:23 PM2 votes

It doesn't. You'll play against a Smurf maybe once a week. Not only is that not an issue, it's actually fairly education. If you don't play against better players, you don't get better. And if you climb without improving, guess what? You're burdening everyone you've climbed to play alongside. I would rather everyone play against Smurfs every once in a while and learn from the losses than having to play with people who've climbed without learning basic win-conditions. That shit is frustrating.

La Belle Sauvage5/10/2019, 5:23:21 PM2 votes

I wish there was a way to prevent smurfing, but from a YouTube point of view, Smurfs who make those sort of videos are (shivers) beneficial to Riot aka free advertising.

That being said I hate Smurfs just in general.

But I suspect that I have faced very few based on how bad both teams play in my ranked games, this year in particular.

Saezio5/10/2019, 1:51:00 PM1 votes

How many games out of your last 100 have had a smurf in the enemy team? Real talk, no bulshit

Gofs5/10/2019, 11:33:12 AM1 votes

I have experienced this too. It really sucks, but it’s just too difficult an issue to deal with in a correct way unfortunately.

Garson2115/10/2019, 4:26:18 PM1 votes

Why there is still placements.Its fair to have diamond mmr and drop to low gold coz of "unlucky"placement and ruin games for ppls in lower elo.Im not enjoy it and tbh i want play with ppls on same skill level.There is no fun to play with them for me and for them

KirbyCake5/10/2019, 5:13:29 PM1 votes

I love the low elo excuses of how bad players drag you down but smurfs on the enemy team also drag you down.