Opinion about smurfing?

[Stickly]

What's your opinion on smurfing?

- I honestly think it's annoying, and it doesn't give new players a chance to have fun. At the same time though, if you're stuck in "Elo hell" it's nice to have a fresh start.

 

[Tgump]

There is no elo hell.

Anyways, smurfing destroys confidence in lower skill brackets. If just 10% of low level players are smurfs, that's statistically 1 smurf per game - all it takes is one player to ruin the game for both sides.

Now, I do emphasize with Challengers making an armada of smurfs (a la RobertxLEE) because queue times often run in excess of 10 minutes between games. That's ~1/3 the length of your average game. That's a lot of time spent staring at the launcher, so I can condone their smurfing until Riot figures out a way to reduce their queue times.

 

[Stickly]

There is no elo hell.

Anyways, smurfing destroys confidence in lower skill brackets. If just 10% of low level players are smurfs, that's statistically 1 smurf per game - all it takes is one player to ruin the game for both sides.

Now, I do emphasize with Challengers making an armada of smurfs (a la RobertxLEE) because queue times often run in excess of 10 minutes between games. That's ~1/3 the length of your average game. That's a lot of time spent staring at the launcher, so I can condone their smurfing until Riot figures out a way to reduce their queue times.

Elo hell exists. I've been in it for a long while.
__________________________________________

I play with a irl friend who's around level 12..
So I get paired with level 20-24's usually. And to me it's like I'm smurfing and I feel bad.

 

[KerokeroCola]

Tgump's right, and he's also wrong.

There is ELO hell because of the smurfs. I played in Bronze/Silver for a few weeks and noticed that basically EVERY game there was a player who was always 5-10 kills ahead of everybody else. Most of these guys would have 5 kills before 10 minutes into the game. Wonder why? They are the smurf accounts.

Those players basically make it so that, no matter the coordination and effort of the 9 other newbie players, it's still very unlikely that you can individually influence the game. Smurfers get somewhere between 80% and 100% winrate (and a lot of these games are against people who are much better than you are, no offense...), so really there's not much you can do individually to stop it. Unless you are as good of a get-really-fed-by-constantly-killing-your-lane, then it's hard for you to counteract the smurfs. What I found was to look up the opponents' records during the load time and try and lane-swap with my teammates to help stop the smurf from feasting. It helps, but at the same time his skill level is so high that he can carry the game once the laning phase ends. Oh well, that's league for you.

I've been told that my "support" role is platinum-diamond level, but that doesn't mean anything to me. It sure as hell didn't mean anything to my 55-60% winrate, which still kept me locked into the silver II area for about 30 games until I finally gave up trying to climb their broken system. Riot only supports wins for advancing leagues; they don't care about anything else you did in a game. Other MOBAs have tried adding in gold/minute, kills, deaths, assists, and objective control to ELO, and frankly I've had a lot more success finding balanced games with those MOBAs.

 

[Tgump]

Tgump's right, and he's also wrong.

<words>

I just had a conversation with Stickly about this same topic and he's come over to my side.

To respond with a wall of text:

First, you are severely overexaggerating the prevalence of smurfs in ranked. You're citing anecdote with no statistical basis; and in my 3 years of playing League I've never seen the smurf problem that bad.

If you're 'locked' in Silver 2, it's your fault. Have you noticed a trend in people that complain of elo hell? Most are 'stuck' around high Silver. (We'll ignore the ones in Bronze III+, because they're just bad and refuse to improve if they're stuck there.)

So, being plat MMR myself (and I encourage other Diamonds and Plats like Sypherz to ruthlessly exploit anything I say that is incorrect) I can tell you that around the time you progress into Gold, the way people play the game changes. More or less, players win in Bronze and Silver by dominating their lane. You get 5 kills and a turret, and the enemy team doesn't react properly to contain you. You snowball way out of control, the rest of your team gets inadvertently fed by you rampaging across the map, and the game's over.

However, this starts to fundamentally change in Gold and becomes more pervasive the higher you get. Instead of just concentrating on the laning phase, players are actively attempting to create advantages across the entire team. No longer do they scream and complain about their Lee feeding 10 kills to Zed. Ever watched a respectable Challenger's stream? They go 1-4 in lane sometimes, but they don't give up on the game. They react intelligently to their position, constantly trying to create plays where the enemy doesn't, taking advantage of their missteps. They react defensively, avoid objectives they can't safely take, and wait for the enemy team to make a mistake that they can ruthlessly capitalize on. Anything can happen in solo queue, especially when teams are massively ahead and start throwing. That Zed and Riven that have 20 of the team's 22 kills suicide into tower for a kill worth 30g? Your 4 now have more combined gold than the 3 remaining players who spent all their time giving kills away, and you quickly ace them, grabbing Baron, a couple of turrets, and map control via wards. Suddenly, there's a ~7k swing in gold value. Those 800g bounties on Zed and Riven went to your AD carry and he just got a free Last Whisper. Your team itemizes against them, overpowers them via an effective 5v2, and you take the game. In Bronze, the teams don't bother. They just scream and rage that THEY deserve to win because THEY went 8-0 in lane. They don't realize that they lose more games than they win because the enemy team is exploiting their mistakes while they make no effort to exploit theirs.

And what if you're ahead in lane? Again, in Bronze, the teams don't bother. For example, Jim goes 9-0 in lane against Tom. Jim keeps pushing their lane and perhaps takes an inner turret. Meanwhile the rest of their team gets steamrolled by a more coordinated enemy, and they lose swiftly. Final score 9-2-0, defeat. Repeat. That same game in Plat will likely be played very differently. Jim wins his lane. He doesn't go 9-0, because Tom realized the lane was lost after a few deaths, and plays passively, taking whatever CS he can get. Jim still focuses on trying to kill Tom, but Tom manages to stay alive and continues farming until he loses his turret. While Jim is farming without vision, Tom recalls to base and runs Mid, scoring a doublekill and tower off of a counter-gank. Meanwhile, a couple members of your team ganked Tom, who was overextended without wards. Your ADC just collected his 600g bounty and are that much closer to endgame. By the time 20 minutes rolls around, Tom is 1-4-7 with 150CS and Jim is 4-1-0 with 40CS. Tom is ahead in gold despite losing lane because he contributed more to his team than Jim.

Decent enough example? There is no elo hell. Progressing past Silver is determined by your ability to make plays, create advantages, and exploit the enemy's mistakes. Of course, everyone has completely unwinnable games. Shit happens. If you're truly better than your rank, the number of steamroll games will outnumber the unwinnable games and your elo will go up despite those wrinkles.

If smurfs truly were responsible for an ELO hell, wouldn't it exist in every rung of the ladder? Yet it doesn't. I don't hear many Gold or Plat players complain about being stuck there because of their teammates. They recognize what they need to do to win games, and now they play to improve themselves, because they recognize they are responsible for their own performance.

 

[Stickly]

Two walls of text and gotta reply on my iPod.. I do believe smurfs do damage to people in ranked. They can carry a game easily. But you're aren't gonna get a very good smurf in every game. Learn from them, watch the game see how they play and learn from it. Tgump told me things of what to do, try to lead the team, not try to only carry yourself. If you can communicate and still play good by yourself, you should be able to win. Just outplay, out strategize the other team.

 

[S]

Smurfs are literally not a prevalent issue at all, in regards to people being stuck at a low tier/or perceiving themselves as being in 'elo hell'.

 

[Stickly]

Smurfs are literally not a prevalent issue at all, in regards to people being stuck at a low tier/or perceiving themselves as being in 'elo hell'.

Then what is a prevalent issue dealing with smurfs?

 

[S]

Then what is a prevalent issue dealing with smurfs?

Smurfs aren't an issue - which is my point.

 

[atlbraves341]

Only time I really have a problem with smurfs is when they flame people that are actually new to the game.