How long do I have to play before smurfs stop ruining the game?

[Drusin]

What in the hell kind of necro is this...

lol one day I'm going to have to start looking at dates

[fetamin]

what are smurfs?

[ThatsOurEric]

what are smurfs?

Smurfs are the alt accounts of generally higher skill players. What makes them contentious among the
community (any online community really), is the fact that smurf accounts are made either to :

Practice on a character that they are less proficient with. The problem here is that rather than take
said character into other modes of play (such as Practice, Quick Play, or vs. AI modes), they bring these
characters in the Competitive/Ranked setting, which results in their poor performance, since after all,
they're practicing with the character. As such, they don't take losses seriously, since this isn't their
"main" account, and they basically are an automatic hindrance/handicap on their team because of it.
It isn't fair to the team they're on at all.

In other cases, a top player will make another account to help "boost" a friend's account. In doing so,
they have a significant advantage over the team they're facing. This is again, blatantly unfair, because
the skill gap shouldn't be that drastic between players in a given bracket.

There are those who seek to purposely "rank down" in order to go into the lowest brackets. Doing so
by throwing games, allowing them to derank (and unfortunately, affecting the teams they are on who
also derank as a result).

Overall, smurfing is a form of cheating, and it's pretty negative, so don't do it.

[Ravex]

what are smurfs?

Creepy little blue humanoids.

[CelloGW2]

Sadly smurf are in all game, not only overwatch..

[Speedlance]

smurfs are only a problem for me if they play tracer or genji since i usually play with 60-80 ms latency as dps. As tank its easier since you cant get 1 clipped by tracer and genji can be dealt with as zarya.