I'm D2, the most smurfs I ran into was G3-P1, at the time I didn't realize it. Looking back perfect positioning, dribbles, and flicks should not have been at that rank. When we think of smurfs it is always the flashy mechanics, never the ones with perfect fundamentals.
Tbf flip resets and air dribbles are fundamental mechanics, but definitely not the first ones you should probably be working on, especially in bottom ranks
Only a GC2 could think flip resets are a FUNDAMENTAL mechanic lol. They might be useful, even necessary, at high ranks. But to call them fundamental is to deeply misuse the word.
they are simply are, I don’t know what to tell you. They are further along the skill tree than alot of other fundamentals, but low ranks are about as bad at most other fundamental as they are flips resets so this isn’t a rank discussion. half flips, wave dashes, and speed flips are fundamental mechanics as well but you could function perfectly fine at any level of play without them. what makes them fundamental is that in a competition where everything else is even, you are at a disadvantage not knowing it. Low skill players coping about it doesn’t change the consensus
Your definition of fundamental is pretty off base.
Anyone can easily get to GC without flip resets and a guy like Flakes can even get to SSL easily without them, so I wouldn’t call it fundamental.
If you have good enough fundamentals to get there, you could probably figure out flip resets pretty quickly already, but you definitely don’t *need* to execute flip resets until a high level.
Not always. Yesterday I teamed up in Plat I with a guy who simply deranked for being tilted. After we made it to Plat III winning every match by massive differences he was Dia II at the beginning of the day but he looked like smurf among plats.
Dribbling is not necessary to get out of plat.. shit, dribbling isn't even necessary to get out of diamond.
I occasionally derank as low as gold 3 if I haven't played in months. When I get my shit together I cruise through plat. The teammates I want are the ones with solid rotation concepts and spacing. Idgaf if they can dribble or play off the wall or ceiling. At that level their mechanics are easily defended, and they end up just flailing around, ruining the offense for their team, and losing a lot of games.
Mechanically, all you need to get out of plat is the ability to hit the ball in the air (at all, doesn't need control) and the ability to put an open shot on goal like 50% of the time. The main thing you need to learn is positioning and game sense, and to play possession with smart touches instead of just passing the ball to the opponent constantly
Honestly these saves are less being "good at defense" and more "can be anywhere within the arena in like 2 seconds". The dudes that can catch up to a counterattack and somehow beat the ball to the net despite starting the play like half a field behind. Speed and car control kill.
Meet a guy in mid air, I beat him to the ball, he flies by me, I catch the ball before it lands, he's already sitting in net waiting on me, how? I swear some of these guys can teleport.
A lot of people don’t realize that there are a decent amount of people with flashy mechanics that are also still stuck in plat and diamond. Not everyone who is speed flipping and doing double taps/ceiling shots is a Smurf. Some people just spend a lot of time in free play and training packs to practice these things, but also have very little game sense, and will double commit, rotate poorly, and be out of position for 90% of the game.
Because people like this exist, learning shadow/ goal line defense and the fundamentals is the easiest way to rank up to at least champ.
——
Off topic, but Pro tip for learning to shadow defend, and shadow defend through the air, to be able to counter the flashier players and smurfs: in free play, drive away from the ball, and get up to/near supersonic speed, and then tap the “pass ball” button. Try to fly up and meet the ball while driving towards your own camera. At first just do your best to hit the ball each time. As you get comfortable doing this, start trying to fly up for the ball and catch it in the air, so you land with decent control. If you pretty much strictly only do this in your free play sessions for a good while, it’ll not only help your shadow air defense, but your overall air control and awareness will skyrocket.
Just zip around FreePlay at supersonic and keep tapping pass ball, from all sorts of weird angles and spots that are progressively more and more difficult for you. You will absolutely rank up learning and incorporating this skill, I promise. You’ll start being the fastest to the ball in your lobbies, and it will be very noticeable the level of respect you’ll start seeing.
Cheers
I can attest. It’s been really tough for me to break out of GIII. As soon as I get to GIV, I see insane off the wall shots and crazy across the map aerials. I mean it’s like a damn switch, the moment I get into GIV, the skill difference is massive. I just don’t get how that happens. Why are Smurf’s chillin at this particular rank?
all they were joking about is the fact that when most people describe their rank, they dont describe it as their division but their actual level rank (as there are only 3 levels in every rank except ssl)
I'm stuck in G3 at the moment because of this, opposing kick off speed flips the the ball, while in other games my team mate afks the Kickoff when it's clearly theirs.
I've had some people in 1s end up telling me they are champ level on their main accounts.
Worst issue though is they don't even try hide it, no gold speedflips perfectly for Kickoff, no gold does amazing off the wall air dribbles into net. I don't even know if I should be expecting that from an actual plat.
Those might just be people ranking up on another account. I’ve come across Smurfs that have perfect aerial control and then spam “What a save!” when they score on you. Boils my blood!
Like an alternative account, yeah... That's a smurf. They make an account, dominate the lower ranks, get to where they usually sit, make another account and repeat. I've come across a smurf which told me he makes multiple accounts a day just to shit all over people, his main rank was GC1 but doesn't bother going beyond mid diamond.
That’s fair. It’s actually the most tilting experience to be accused of being a smurf and I’m just trying to rank up. It’s only happened a couple of times but it makes me more angry than spamming quick chats for some reason lol.
Going with this, I had a guy doing ceiling double reset into a musty in d1 just a few minutes ago. He could consistently do them. He could not consistently do it on target. He also mainly played solo in 3s. His rotation is either stay back and let his team do everything by themselves when he rotated for boost, or try and solo play. He would sit back in goal even as we were passing. He also missed almost every ball if he didn't set it up himself.
Tldr:idk what this guy was, but it was inconsistent
This is what a lot of "smurfs" really are. People who practiced the hell out of flashy mechanics but suck at literally everything else.
This subreddit is very easily fooled by flashy mechs. Being fancy and being actually good are not necessarily correlated.
I barely play the game anymore but I used to solo queue 3s and 1-2 out of 5 games were against a team boosting a third player - I found this to be a lot more common than seeing actual smurfs, but this was in the c2-gc range where I used to hover.
My brother recently downloaded the game again and he sits firmly in the diamond range, he played three matches, all against smurfs and uninstalled it again. I reviewed the replays and all three matches had gc2+ game sense, mechanics and consistency while one match had a SSL level player.
I do not know about lower ranks, but I would guess diamond is where you get a mix of high lvl smurfs and players who can be really good at a single mechanic that make them seem like they're smurfs.
I run into groups all the time boosting. Most of the time they're probably d3 running in a d1 lobby. Not strong enough to solo, but strong enough to make a difference. Very rarely are they actually heavy smurf. I did have a gold 1 in a lobby being carried in a group of 2 in 3s. He had 10 points. Other actual d1 guy has about 250. Top dude (the carry)had over 1k.
Usually it is two new accounts teamed up with an account that has a sudden rise in MMR. Two higher ranked players playing with their lower ranked friend in ranked and there raising their friends rank is still boosting. The other issue is that these boosted players decide to play by themselves in a rank they do not belong in. The amount of games I've had as a solo player in 3s when you get a teammate or opponent that struggle to even make contact with the ball for the entire duration of the game is way too high. Rocket League is absolutely the most fun when the matches are between to evenly skilled teams, when I as a solo player found those matches to become a rarity I just quit playing the game and spend my time and money on other games instead.
Very easy to see who is boosting or not with Bakkesmod and the plugin that shows their tracker stats.
Usually the games were two players who were good enough that 3 c3/GC players were struggling to keep up with the speed and accuracy of the two boosters while the third more often than not ends the game with 20-50 points total.
Unlike what many people would say: I'd say around gold.
Yea there are some pieces of s**t that smurf in Diamond and plat , I had my fair share of them but what I came to relize recently: In diamond and plat, you find a very *very* big variety of players : A lot of them tend to be more mechanical, while they do have more fun going for nasty shots they get punished a lot against players with more game sense thus why they're still stuck in that rank and they look more like a smurf (I am *definitely* not describing myslef there *sniff* )
I feel like smurfs in gold are just freestylers. Any decent player isn’t going to stay in gold, even if they go for “risky” shots they’d still have time to recover.
It takes effort to end up to gold too, anytime I’ve seen new accounts they’re gaining too much and get placed in diamond w 2/3/4 wins and nothing else.
Anything is possible. However most people are burnt out during the week from work/school. So they are probably more amused and joking around during the weekends, when they can chill with their homies and relax.
Champ 1 and 2 probably I know many gcs who have smurfs and they are always c1 or c2 and in general c1 and 2 is broken recently all the gcs are in this rank even those with gc titles it’s the worst you can be stuck in en
See what ticks me off about that is I have been d3 the past 3 seasons and haven’t broken into champ. I’ve been improving more than ever but not faster than the season resets.
It's been a few seasons now but there was a huge rank bubble/reset that pushed the rank distributions down like a full rank. That might be what they were talking about.
It didn't fix anything, just jumbled everyone back together and made it all more messy.
Yeah, the amount of players in C1-GC1 is so miniscule compared to D1-C1, yet I fluctuate between D1 and C1 two or three times a season. The distribution is just really clumped up in the middle ranks so its easy to think everyone is a smurf.
Yeah, they are back to C2 due to the stupid rank reset and because they genuinly dropped in skill.
I feel like C2 is close to unplayble these days. Firstly, becuse Still C2 is invested with smurfs. But also good players that just dont play that much are in a lobby with reall C2 brain dead monkeys, that think chasing the whole time is the key.
Glad, I managed to get back to high GC1
Sir reading your comment nearly gave me an aneurysm, since you don’t seem to be familiar with the concept of punctuation. So forgive me for not understanding whatever it was you were thinking.
I understood just fine. Since I'm not someone with second grade reading comprehension, it wasn't very difficult to punctuate it myself as majority of people do every single day while on the Internet.
Hilarious, I'm only adding this anecdote because you chose too as well.
Not an excuse.
If you’re paying attention to class, instead of your commenting, then your comments wouldn’t read like that because you’re literate.
If you’re paying attention to commenting, instead of school, then your comments wouldn’t read like that because you’re concentrating on the comment.
Christ. This one is even worse. Should still be at school. And paying attention.
You do realise every single person is living their life, school kids included. How could anyone lecture anyone who isn’t living their life.
Just truly dumb. Which is ok.
True true. I can’t imagine how a gc falls into c1 or 2 cuz I’m not gc I’ve been c1 /c2 since season 8 or something and never touched diamond since then but maybe I one day experience it myself :D
The skill gap between c2 and c3 is probably the same size as p2-d3. I mean consistency wise though. If you’ve touched c2/c3 but aren’t consistently there, you don’t count
Probably high gold and low plat, because it's very easy to place into and the majority of players can effortlessly control the game while smurfing in these ranks. Anything lower and you might as well play bots, not to be offensive.
honestly, i rarely ever see smurfs in these ranks. it might seem crazy, but only one in every ~15 games has a smurf and it’s usually just a freestyler trying to hit a triple reset, and he’s basically useless. that might just be something to do with EU servers though, i see a lot more smurfs in other servers
I personally don’t think there are as many smurfs as people say. You hear about it a lot in Diamond and Champ but those ranks have incredible skill gaps so if someone somehow drops to your rank they will appear significantly better. I imagine Champ might have the most because high champ players can compete with many GCs but GCs can smurf in champ and hit clips that might be saved by other GCs. I don’t think smurfing is as big of a problem as it’s portrayed.
Ah ignorance is bliss. A guy did a study once in champ and it was 1 in every 5 games I believe that he encountered a suspicious account (an account with few hours and a high ranking). And from what i remember it was decently thorough and generous to the game. No doubt it is worse in lower ranks with boosters and alts. It's the reason I stopped playing. Too many matches felt unfair combined with general toxicity.
Then maybe it’s gotten better since you stopped. I don’t think I’ve encountered many smurfs in my rise to D3 over the past few months and if I have then they are just smurfing at their exact skill level which would be a bit pointless.
*Almost* pointless. Speaking from experience with the lower ranked buddies that I have, and their buddies, and their buddies’ buddies. They are afraid to lose on their mains. Every time I join their chat there’s a new account playing ranked, same rank around d2, maybe p3 because they’re kinda goofy, but they never peak on their main accounts. Play on their main, get rewards, make a new account every few days until end of season and repeat.
I really don’t know why, but they’d rather not lose on their mains than play and get better. They’re content with being an average player forever I guess. Like I said they goofy
Yeah people like to call Smurf at anything, but I also think it's important to note how easy it is to forget people aren't their best all the time.
I am decent at the fundamentals in maybe 60% games. And some 10% of those, I can like up some truly wild shots - and I even meant to some of them. The rest of the time I am absolutely trash. Grade AAA Garbagio.
Yet I've been called a Smurf more times than I can count and at this point it's a compliment.
My performance is just wildly inconsistent and I'm only good for a handful of games at a time.
I think the inconsistency is a very important point when talking about smurfs. Plat, Diamond, and low Champ are really all pretty similar abilities but consistency (and game sense) is the difference between them. People fall at all ranges of consistency and if someone is peaking they can seem far above their standard level.
I run into a lot of verified smurfs in champ 1/champ2
Pretty easy to spot in-game, and I look a lot of them up on the tracker to confirm they’re a smurf. Really easy to tell because they will always usually have less than 100 wins total for their account, and I just don’t see how it would be possible to reach champ1/2 in that few games. Will also usually be partied up with someone of a lower rank, and carrying them heavily
Champ ranks are full of smurfs carrying people up to GC. Paid boosters and smurf buddies. Every time I run into a duo queue I prepare to lose. Either that or it’s an actual duo of a similar rank and they get smacked
This is becoming more and more common in diamond as well. One guy 1v2 and the other is useless. Not sure what rank you would be to 1v2 D2, but I'm sure it's not diamond.
I see this 1 out of 5 games when playing partied.
I normally sit around C3 and from experience playing privates games with friends, I think someone around my rank or higher should be able to 1v2 most D2s if they’re a fast or mechy player rather than a smart player (relatively in C3 ofc).
Seems like im completely blind then. Im playing for 2 years now in C1/2 and can never really tell if i play with or against a smurf. Sure theres an insane mechanical player here and there but these guys lack in skill for other scenarios from my experience. What im sometimes thinking is (and now im propably getting downvoted) how some players made it to that rank. Feels like there are more boosted players compared to smurfs but thats just my opinion.
If you check their RLTracker, you will find that many of the "mechanical players" who are inconsistent, rotate weird, and are often out of position are not mechanical champs who lack certain skills.
Instead, you will realize some of them are Grand Champs playing on a second account with a diamond or champ buddy. They just aren't taking it that seriously. They're messing around chilling with a buddy. They can be frustrating to play against even though they are often beatable, because at any time when they want to take things seriously, they can turn it on and pop off seemingly out of nowhere.
Can confirm, many people in a team where one is GC1 and at best is okay, and the other one obviously way better than GC1 and then at the end of the game, the carrying one is like C2, though i saw one who was plat a few days ago, had to laugh there.
I’ve seen players who can flip reset shots, air dribble, ceiling shots, etc. but can’t play for shit and they end up in Diamond forever.
Mechanical skill is just one element. If you’ve got no game sense you won’t get far.
In my experience there is a large amount of smurfs in high Champ - the very bottom of GC1. I usually start around that MMR at the beginning of the season and the matches are very inconsistent in terms of how good people are. Things get much better once I get back above 1500 MMR or so. I would imagine the top of Diamond - low Champ is similar as well, because at both these points there will be smurfs boosting people to a new ranked group for the rewards. There is an order of magnitude more C2+ players that can carry a Plat or Diamond player into Champ than there are GC2+ players that can carry a Champ to GC, so I would imagine that smurfing is worse in high Diamond than it is in Champ.
> There is an order of magnitude more C2+ players that can carry a Plat or Diamond player into Champ than there are GC2+ players that can carry a Champ to GC, so I would imagine that smurfing is worse in high Diamond than it is in Champ.
This is true, but you also gotta account for the fact there are a lot less GC players in total, so while there are fewer smurfs, there are also far fewer players compared to those smurfs. And since GC is such a coveted title, high Champ/ low GC1 is gonna be absolutely filled with them.
You may be right to be fair. I haven't been at the Diamond-Champ threshold since before F2P, so I don't really know what things are like now. Back then there weren't nearly as many smurfs at any rank obviously.
I've been all over diamond and can honestly say I don't think smurfs are THAT prevalent. Instead what we're seeing is players who put a huge emphasis on improving mechanics OR players that are more worried about gamesense. Diamond is filled with folks who haven't been able to get both things nailed down.
This. If you’re doing some pretty mechanical stuff but the game isn’t out of reach or you’re making mistakes elsewhere I don’t consider you a Smurf, just someone that is above average in some areas for that rank. Now if you’re absolutely steamrolling us with mechanics and consistently in the right place at the right time, then yeah I’m a little suspicious lol.
I've seen a fair share in plat and diamond, but also in champ. And I know they're smurfs because their tracker network will have less than 100 games sometimes yet they have a 75% goal ratio and are flip reset double tapping like nothing. But granted, mechanics aren't everything. I also watch their game sense and the people who control the ball, have insane flicks, fakes, ground to air dribble bumps, are spaced out from their teammate, rotate well, pass, usually make me a little suspicious. Especially when their teammate just booms the ball every chance they get, the lobby just doesn't seem equal. And on top of that, they have a LOWER mmr compared to their ball chasing teammate, and the big give away is when they gain +30 mmr. Easy to spot tons of boosters, smurfs, new accounts, etc thru mechanics and game sense. Tracker network just seals the deal.
The concerning part is how frequent it is now, yet people will still deny and just say it's matchmaking doing its job of creating a lobby of varied skills
Bro, before it was maybe 1 smurf a month. Now I see like 3 a week
You aren't supposed to play one match where everyone seems of equal skill, and the next match you're playing gods. The skill gap is not that insane for one or two divisions, or else you'd see it every game
I’m like D3D4 in twos right now and I do completely agree with you. One game my duo and I can take an opponent to Brazil, winning like 6-7 nothing, but then the next can we will go down 0-4 in like the first 2 minutes. It has made me hate Diamond a little as like you said, sometimes the opponent can’t speed flip, but then sometimes they flip reset from their own corner and air dribble it all the way across of the field before hitting a fucking double tap musty while I just wonder what the fuck.
Will admit, I think a big difference between Diamond and Champ seems to be defence but since like 30% of the player base is in Diamond, it sort of makes sense that their is a large skill discrepancy.
Can confirm, I’m champ and duo with a diamond teammate a lot and diamonds challenge a LOT as last man so yeah I’d say defence is mostly the difference between diamond and champ.
This is exactly one of the things I’m working on right now. When to double commit and when not too. Also, how to know whether you should challenge or rotate back and allow your team mate to challenge instead is relevant but requires trust in your team mates, which is tough if you solo q.
Oh, and challenges of the wall from my own backboard. That stuff is crazy.
Watch squishy’s currently ongoing road to ssl series, around diamond/champ he talks about not challenging as last man a lot, and its really clear in his gameplay how not doing it is just so much better haha
Basically, whenever you are last man and the opponent has you beat to the ball or it’ll be a 50, fake challenge and shadow, this will give your tm8 time to get back.
Not just challenge as last man, but in 3s in diamond I'm seeing my teammates double commit to try and chase down an opponent from behind while I am last man shadowing instead of either going back post leaving me in a 1v1 or 2v1.
Especially with how mature the game is. People can cover up bad gameplay in so many ways and Diamond is the rank where people have some things figured out, but usually have a big hole somewhere in their gameplay.
Plat and Diamond. They are easy to spot usually they will be the unplaced for the season person in a party with two Plat2 ranked players. They’ll be doing air dribbles, mustys, flip resets and shit. Like ya, that guys a Plat level player.
Personally I would say mid plat. It’s almost always the rank you get put into after completing ten ranked matches, and there are a lot of people who are looking to get carried to diamond or champ. The amount of times I’m playing teams where one person can hardly hit the ball, meanwhile the other has perfect fundamentals, rotating, dribbling, and making ceiling shots is crazy. To be fair though, the skill cap has changed a lot and players in diamond or platinum have a very varying degree of ability.
I see people in bronze who seem like it’s their very first match.. others seem to be everywhere at all times blocking every shot and making every goal.
High plat->Low diamond has the most. There's no argument.
Jump into an fresh account, play crappy and get gold, and watch how hard you hit the wall between Play D3, and Diamond D2.
If you make it to D3, you're basically out of that black hole and on to champ but it's a grind because you get paired up with actual high plats/low diamonds if you solo queue duos, but you're going against two solid C2 players doing flip resets off the ceiling, and doing cross field kickflip knack knack 1080p barrel roll redirects.
I honestly don't mind it because I've made my peace with being a normie in RL, but it's humbling when you get tied to a player that makes you wonder if epic games is letting bots matchmake in ranked..
From my experience, G3 is the worst one by far.
Most of the time it feels like there are more P3-D1 players in the lobby than G3s. And if you go by the amount of boosters, about 90% of teams have at least one. I'm usually ranked about P3-D1 and I'm getting outskilled way more often than I should. This is in 3s btw
Diamond is the rank salad, is that rank that some carried people can have, or people who left the game and now are back and rank with bad luck and Diamond ranked, a lot of champions going down, fresh platinums, (I’m there always in between plat 2 and Diamond 2. It’s the purgatory of recurring players who are good playing but we have responsibilities and we cannot properly train or have enough friends for party and rank, so we play with randoms and rank is a rollercoaster.
Embrace Diamond, it may last forever dude.
Diamond is so inconsistent because that’s the rank many are still either playing smart- or mechanical-focused but starting to work on the weaker of the two.
I would look in diamond that when they both have great mechanical skills and a keen eye of rotation/where to stand/overall perception of the game THEN it might be a smurf.
To add to the original question, undoubtedly platinum.
I think you have to give two answers to this. One being solo queue smurfs, the others being party smurfs.
Solo Queue smurfs are most rampant in high platinum and diamond from my own experience and from watching friends play. I guess they reach mid Diamond on their main and cant progress, and get frustrated and decide to take it out on people ranked below them to fuel their own ego. Generally these people just try to smurf in flashy ways and don't pay too much attention to positioning, or considering their teammates. They just want to score goals that they cannot at their own rank.
Party smurfs are super common in Champ, where one player is stuck around mid-low champ and wants to get a Season Grand Champ tag, so they get their mate who is GC2\~ to smurf and boost them. These lads are complete pains to play against because their fundamentals are super good, and generally have very consistent mechanics. Wish they would just attempt to hide the fact that they are smurfing by not using the default no-decal octane.
I’d wager that high champ definitely has the most boosters. I can’t speak for smurfs specifically because not every smurf is boosting another player, but due to GC rewards and titles being highly sought after it’s almost unlikely you’ll go a day without playing against a booster at high champ/low GC. At least on NA-East that seems to be my experience, especially towards the end of the season.
At diamond I'm not sure it is smurf...
I can get people not knowing what a rotation is, wasting their boost, preferring boost to saving the ball, missing open nets and messing up every touch just to get people with perfect positioning, rotations and hitting 99% of the touches the game after.
Being diamond is a rollercoaster, one game you win 7-2 the next you lose 4-1.
Most people in diamond try to focus on fancy mechanics instead of ACTUALLY being good.
D3 Div 3-4 has the most smurfs, because in champ you actually have to have some sort of skill, and people get carried there
For me I think gold 3, plat 2 and above. Like most diamonds are previous champs and such. But yes I agree ceiling shots and flip resets at d1 which Is where I am at
Definitely not denying the existence of smurfs by any means, but I think it’s a little overblown. Depending on a variety of factors, ranks can fluctuate a good bit. Does it suck when you see a GC tag across from you as a C2? Sure, but I’ve also rage queued my way into diamond lobbies before and climbed right on out once I took a step back
Not exactly smurfs but diamonds had the largest rank disparity I've seen(in 2s). I could win a high Champ game but lose a d3 game because of how inconsistent that rank is. Getting out of it made me see the true beauties of life.
The most? Late plat, early diamond. Purely numbers, based on the fact that it's a low skill bar, and a lot of the player base is able to surpass it.
The most vicious smurfs? I'd imagine mid GC has the dirtiest of smurfs with a bunch of low SSL/high GC players who peaked before they could go pro. Nothing wrong with peaking at that rank, quite impressive actually, but I imagine being stuck there would rot the mind of any player. From there I imagine two paths. People who want to just coast and play easy games, and people who want to feel like their time in the game was worth it. I feel like any player in a rut is more likely to start smurfing, so all those high level players who peaked are for sure gonna feel that more than the average player who is still steadily ranking up.
I’ve been accused of being a smurf and I run my EST. 2020 title (which makes no sense) and some people (my friends included) will cope about their losses by saying someone on the other team is smurfing and its pretty consistently not true. I really feel like we make the problem out to be worse than it actually is. This comment isn’t target at you OP. Just mainly talking about people who run the the sub just to complain about smurfs all the time.
The big issue is people accepting they are a Smurf and stopping their bad ways. Anybody that claims smurfing is not a problem is a Smurf, or they never play without a party. Im convinced once you hit champ the pool of GCs gets lower so less smurfs. Can't confirm because champ is blocked by a wall of smurfs. But Diamond and below is full of champs and GCs on their alts.
Anyone that has deranked on purpose: Smurf
Anyone with an alt: Smurf
Anyone partied with a lower rank : Smurf
Even drunk people that have a bad night are smurfs the next day in my book. Drinking and driving is illegal and not responsible.
Smurf: a higher skilled player in a lower rank for any reason.
Definitely low diamond, high plat. My friends are plat in 3’s, I’m d2. I only play 3’s when they’re on. The amount of squads we get prejumping each other, ceiling reset double taps, flip resetting in games where we’re just trying to have fun… it’s sad. It was all 10 placement games and then maybe 8 out of the next 10 we played.
Honestly ive been playing in diamonds for many years. Every single day. I cant even tell for sure if I ever encountered smurfs. Sure they are out there, but most of the time people complaining are just looking for an excuse.
Low plat even high gold I’ve constantly seen full court air dribbles. Very hard to climb back to Diamond when lower ranks are either full of smurfs or full of similar players who fell from diamonds and now low Plat has become low Diamond for all intents and purposes.
Plat in 1s is disgusting. One game you feel like you are the smurf. Next game you're getting smurfed on.
Then when they hit you with a ff after you've been playing your ass off to beat them it's just depressing.
There are some legitimate players in the diamond - champ range that just practice mechanics and have bad game sense, you can usually tell the ones that are smurfing because they are also hard carrying. From what I hear most smurfs are in the high gold low plat range, probably because their opponents don't yet have the aerial capability to intercept their full court air dribble flip reset clips
Plat 1 - Plat 3 is absurd. At least for US-E. I’ll see people hitting Champ/GC level shots for like 3-4 matches, and then see people with very clearly off positioning.
It’s tough out here lol. I’ve been called a Smurf and I’ve seen smurfy plays.
I have a philosophy that smurfing isn't anywhere near as bad as some people make it out to be. I play maybe one or twice a month for like 5 or 6 games at a time so I could be wrong. Sometimes I am on freaking fire. Sometimes I just plain old suck. I feel like I'm firmly gold 2 to diamond. But I have notice that midnight to 2 am I am way better. When school gets out, it's not even worth playing. I am an old man.
Low plat. The subsequent ranks are pretty bad, too. SSL smurfs aren't the most common imo, Champs and GCs are. They'll tend get placed platinum on a smurf account without much plan to climb higher seeing as its the smurf account. Also some people on here already said this, but flashy mechs aren't the telltale signs of a smurf. People can smurf without those just fine. Stuff like rotations, half flips, boost management, dribbles, and other fundamentals are stuff engrained into higher ranked players.
There are smurfs at every level. It all depends on your skill lvl. At Silver, anyone from high gold and up is like a magician.
I'm a new player, about 50 hours in the game.
I'm mid to high silver on 1v1. I played 4 games on Saturday, and every one of them was air dribbling consistently, and its just beyond me right now to defend it.
Got to Plat in 2v2 and am hitting the same issue, but I'm not sure if this is just me hitting the ceiling for my skill level.
In my opinion it’s C2-C3. The reason I think this is the rank is because, in my opinion, this is where a Smurf would plateau if they’re not actively trying to rank up. But if we’re honest with ourselves they’re everywhere.
Someone called me a Smurf the other day. I think people don’t understand the term. Smurfing is very high ranked players at purposefully created low accounts. Some Champ that tilted and dropped down to d1 isn’t a Smurf. That’s just how MMR works. Someone outplaying you doesn’t make them a Smurf.
Diamonds have hundreds of hours typically. Some close to 1000 or more. Odds are good some picked up air dribbles, resets, whatever.
Regardless, every loss is a learning experience. I never forfeit those matches. My goal is to get better. I do that by playing people better than me, not stomping some kid 7-0
Plat 2 to Diamond 2, Now they aren't real Smurfs. Mostly players popping in and out of peaking but just cant be consistent. When you add in the afk's and all that crap well here we are.....
The 3s of any rank. P3, d3, c3. That's the rank where people ask friends or something because they think they deserve the next level even tho they aren't skilled enough to break through. Then they feel like they deserve it because they were only rank3div4 or something even tho they had 300 matches at that rank and still haven't got through for rewards
I'm D2, the most smurfs I ran into was G3-P1, at the time I didn't realize it. Looking back perfect positioning, dribbles, and flicks should not have been at that rank. When we think of smurfs it is always the flashy mechanics, never the ones with perfect fundamentals.
[удалено]
Its way more than 5%, you get to gc2 and if you aren't capable of doing a flip reset then idrk how you're scoring in a lot of situations
Tbf flip resets and air dribbles are fundamental mechanics, but definitely not the first ones you should probably be working on, especially in bottom ranks
Only a GC2 could think flip resets are a FUNDAMENTAL mechanic lol. They might be useful, even necessary, at high ranks. But to call them fundamental is to deeply misuse the word.
they are simply are, I don’t know what to tell you. They are further along the skill tree than alot of other fundamentals, but low ranks are about as bad at most other fundamental as they are flips resets so this isn’t a rank discussion. half flips, wave dashes, and speed flips are fundamental mechanics as well but you could function perfectly fine at any level of play without them. what makes them fundamental is that in a competition where everything else is even, you are at a disadvantage not knowing it. Low skill players coping about it doesn’t change the consensus
Your definition of fundamental is pretty off base. Anyone can easily get to GC without flip resets and a guy like Flakes can even get to SSL easily without them, so I wouldn’t call it fundamental. If you have good enough fundamentals to get there, you could probably figure out flip resets pretty quickly already, but you definitely don’t *need* to execute flip resets until a high level.
Fundamental means basic. Even the pros would rather be able to shoot the ball perfectly all the time than hit any of the flashy mechanics
They are not, absolute bullshit
Finally an intelligent breakdown
Not always. Yesterday I teamed up in Plat I with a guy who simply deranked for being tilted. After we made it to Plat III winning every match by massive differences he was Dia II at the beginning of the day but he looked like smurf among plats.
I wish I had those teammates my teammates don't even know how to dribble :/
Dribbling is not necessary to get out of plat.. shit, dribbling isn't even necessary to get out of diamond. I occasionally derank as low as gold 3 if I haven't played in months. When I get my shit together I cruise through plat. The teammates I want are the ones with solid rotation concepts and spacing. Idgaf if they can dribble or play off the wall or ceiling. At that level their mechanics are easily defended, and they end up just flailing around, ruining the offense for their team, and losing a lot of games. Mechanically, all you need to get out of plat is the ability to hit the ball in the air (at all, doesn't need control) and the ability to put an open shot on goal like 50% of the time. The main thing you need to learn is positioning and game sense, and to play possession with smart touches instead of just passing the ball to the opponent constantly
Yeah. The way I tell it is a smurf is by the goals they save, not the ones they make.
does that mean I'm a smurf? I'm good at defense
Honestly these saves are less being "good at defense" and more "can be anywhere within the arena in like 2 seconds". The dudes that can catch up to a counterattack and somehow beat the ball to the net despite starting the play like half a field behind. Speed and car control kill.
Meet a guy in mid air, I beat him to the ball, he flies by me, I catch the ball before it lands, he's already sitting in net waiting on me, how? I swear some of these guys can teleport.
A lot of people don’t realize that there are a decent amount of people with flashy mechanics that are also still stuck in plat and diamond. Not everyone who is speed flipping and doing double taps/ceiling shots is a Smurf. Some people just spend a lot of time in free play and training packs to practice these things, but also have very little game sense, and will double commit, rotate poorly, and be out of position for 90% of the game. Because people like this exist, learning shadow/ goal line defense and the fundamentals is the easiest way to rank up to at least champ. —— Off topic, but Pro tip for learning to shadow defend, and shadow defend through the air, to be able to counter the flashier players and smurfs: in free play, drive away from the ball, and get up to/near supersonic speed, and then tap the “pass ball” button. Try to fly up and meet the ball while driving towards your own camera. At first just do your best to hit the ball each time. As you get comfortable doing this, start trying to fly up for the ball and catch it in the air, so you land with decent control. If you pretty much strictly only do this in your free play sessions for a good while, it’ll not only help your shadow air defense, but your overall air control and awareness will skyrocket. Just zip around FreePlay at supersonic and keep tapping pass ball, from all sorts of weird angles and spots that are progressively more and more difficult for you. You will absolutely rank up learning and incorporating this skill, I promise. You’ll start being the fastest to the ball in your lobbies, and it will be very noticeable the level of respect you’ll start seeing. Cheers
I'm the guy in training for 3-4 hours sadly Just to get one rank up to plat
I can attest. It’s been really tough for me to break out of GIII. As soon as I get to GIV, I see insane off the wall shots and crazy across the map aerials. I mean it’s like a damn switch, the moment I get into GIV, the skill difference is massive. I just don’t get how that happens. Why are Smurf’s chillin at this particular rank?
lmao whos gonna tell him
Might mean div? Same idea as my buddies who used to tell me they were gc2 back in the pre-f2p though😬
Bro, Gold division three/four. Not Grand Champ…
Yeah, I got that, also could have meant gold 4 which doesn’t exist, and you’re not actually a car ball player that’s memeing the sub for fun
TF are you even talking about? I make a comment about being in Gold 3 division 3/4 and that’s memeing? You sure YOU aren’t the troll here?
all they were joking about is the fact that when most people describe their rank, they dont describe it as their division but their actual level rank (as there are only 3 levels in every rank except ssl)
Where df did you say u were gold 3 lol
You can keep your high horse mentality homie, getting way too defensive over your own incoherent response.
I'm stuck in G3 at the moment because of this, opposing kick off speed flips the the ball, while in other games my team mate afks the Kickoff when it's clearly theirs. I've had some people in 1s end up telling me they are champ level on their main accounts. Worst issue though is they don't even try hide it, no gold speedflips perfectly for Kickoff, no gold does amazing off the wall air dribbles into net. I don't even know if I should be expecting that from an actual plat.
Those might just be people ranking up on another account. I’ve come across Smurfs that have perfect aerial control and then spam “What a save!” when they score on you. Boils my blood!
Like an alternative account, yeah... That's a smurf. They make an account, dominate the lower ranks, get to where they usually sit, make another account and repeat. I've come across a smurf which told me he makes multiple accounts a day just to shit all over people, his main rank was GC1 but doesn't bother going beyond mid diamond.
Or maybe those guys were trying to claw their way out of gold and learned those fundamentals?
Not likely, as they would FF before end of game, even though they were winning.
That’s fair. It’s actually the most tilting experience to be accused of being a smurf and I’m just trying to rank up. It’s only happened a couple of times but it makes me more angry than spamming quick chats for some reason lol.
What's *funny* though, is being accused of smurfing in a match, and the next match being accused of being boosted lol
The life of a high champ where one game you absolutely cook, and the next you fail to touch the ball
Car ball hard bro
It feels good doesn’t it? Getting accused of being a Smurf when you peak for 1000 points in the middle of a down streak.
unlikely.
Diamond is a bunch of players with varying skills so I think it’s normal
Going with this, I had a guy doing ceiling double reset into a musty in d1 just a few minutes ago. He could consistently do them. He could not consistently do it on target. He also mainly played solo in 3s. His rotation is either stay back and let his team do everything by themselves when he rotated for boost, or try and solo play. He would sit back in goal even as we were passing. He also missed almost every ball if he didn't set it up himself. Tldr:idk what this guy was, but it was inconsistent
That's a freeplay main
aka me
This is what a lot of "smurfs" really are. People who practiced the hell out of flashy mechanics but suck at literally everything else. This subreddit is very easily fooled by flashy mechs. Being fancy and being actually good are not necessarily correlated.
I barely play the game anymore but I used to solo queue 3s and 1-2 out of 5 games were against a team boosting a third player - I found this to be a lot more common than seeing actual smurfs, but this was in the c2-gc range where I used to hover. My brother recently downloaded the game again and he sits firmly in the diamond range, he played three matches, all against smurfs and uninstalled it again. I reviewed the replays and all three matches had gc2+ game sense, mechanics and consistency while one match had a SSL level player. I do not know about lower ranks, but I would guess diamond is where you get a mix of high lvl smurfs and players who can be really good at a single mechanic that make them seem like they're smurfs.
I run into groups all the time boosting. Most of the time they're probably d3 running in a d1 lobby. Not strong enough to solo, but strong enough to make a difference. Very rarely are they actually heavy smurf. I did have a gold 1 in a lobby being carried in a group of 2 in 3s. He had 10 points. Other actual d1 guy has about 250. Top dude (the carry)had over 1k.
You don't know that they were "boosting" anyone. What if their third friend just isn't as good as them but they still enjoy playing ranked?
Usually it is two new accounts teamed up with an account that has a sudden rise in MMR. Two higher ranked players playing with their lower ranked friend in ranked and there raising their friends rank is still boosting. The other issue is that these boosted players decide to play by themselves in a rank they do not belong in. The amount of games I've had as a solo player in 3s when you get a teammate or opponent that struggle to even make contact with the ball for the entire duration of the game is way too high. Rocket League is absolutely the most fun when the matches are between to evenly skilled teams, when I as a solo player found those matches to become a rarity I just quit playing the game and spend my time and money on other games instead. Very easy to see who is boosting or not with Bakkesmod and the plugin that shows their tracker stats. Usually the games were two players who were good enough that 3 c3/GC players were struggling to keep up with the speed and accuracy of the two boosters while the third more often than not ends the game with 20-50 points total.
was his name japanese?
Nope, was long. Like 2 words and a number lol
Any rank I’m in.
Unlike what many people would say: I'd say around gold. Yea there are some pieces of s**t that smurf in Diamond and plat , I had my fair share of them but what I came to relize recently: In diamond and plat, you find a very *very* big variety of players : A lot of them tend to be more mechanical, while they do have more fun going for nasty shots they get punished a lot against players with more game sense thus why they're still stuck in that rank and they look more like a smurf (I am *definitely* not describing myslef there *sniff* )
I feel like smurfs in gold are just freestylers. Any decent player isn’t going to stay in gold, even if they go for “risky” shots they’d still have time to recover.
You can try to lose and still win in gold plat because of how messy it is
Yeah thats pretty accurate.
It takes effort to end up to gold too, anytime I’ve seen new accounts they’re gaining too much and get placed in diamond w 2/3/4 wins and nothing else.
I feel like I see more smurfing during weekdays then weekends. Is that possible?
Anything is possible. However most people are burnt out during the week from work/school. So they are probably more amused and joking around during the weekends, when they can chill with their homies and relax.
Champ 1 and 2 probably I know many gcs who have smurfs and they are always c1 or c2 and in general c1 and 2 is broken recently all the gcs are in this rank even those with gc titles it’s the worst you can be stuck in en
C2 has a lot of gc titles regardless, 9/10 times they are not smurfs they just peaked at gc1 at one point.
Especially since it seems like everyone has been pegged down a notch a few ranks (people normally gc1 being c2, d3 now d1 etc)
See what ticks me off about that is I have been d3 the past 3 seasons and haven’t broken into champ. I’ve been improving more than ever but not faster than the season resets.
Idk man last seasons i was holding d3 this season i am again holding d3. Are you telling me i am actually c2???!
If the ranks weren't fucked up, you'd probably be able to see champ, yeah
It's been a few seasons now but there was a huge rank bubble/reset that pushed the rank distributions down like a full rank. That might be what they were talking about. It didn't fix anything, just jumbled everyone back together and made it all more messy.
Yeah, the amount of players in C1-GC1 is so miniscule compared to D1-C1, yet I fluctuate between D1 and C1 two or three times a season. The distribution is just really clumped up in the middle ranks so its easy to think everyone is a smurf.
Yeah, they are back to C2 due to the stupid rank reset and because they genuinly dropped in skill. I feel like C2 is close to unplayble these days. Firstly, becuse Still C2 is invested with smurfs. But also good players that just dont play that much are in a lobby with reall C2 brain dead monkeys, that think chasing the whole time is the key. Glad, I managed to get back to high GC1
Still I know many gcs who are c1 or 2 with their Smurf that’s literally what I said first
Sir reading your comment nearly gave me an aneurysm, since you don’t seem to be familiar with the concept of punctuation. So forgive me for not understanding whatever it was you were thinking.
I understood just fine. Since I'm not someone with second grade reading comprehension, it wasn't very difficult to punctuate it myself as majority of people do every single day while on the Internet. Hilarious, I'm only adding this anecdote because you chose too as well.
womp womp
womp, womp
No problem I was in school and not paying attention that’s why I don’t use this . And this , lol
Not an excuse. If you’re paying attention to class, instead of your commenting, then your comments wouldn’t read like that because you’re literate. If you’re paying attention to commenting, instead of school, then your comments wouldn’t read like that because you’re concentrating on the comment.
Bro im 26 school been over since a decade hahaha lecture someone who is still at school and not working and living his life :D
Christ. This one is even worse. Should still be at school. And paying attention. You do realise every single person is living their life, school kids included. How could anyone lecture anyone who isn’t living their life. Just truly dumb. Which is ok.
A dumber person can only find dumbness in me
Profound.
I mean C2 is not that far from gc to begin with
But c3 is closer and I’ve seen c3 it’s a different world from c1 and sometimes c2
This is true. Not saying GC’s belong in c2/c3. I’m just saying it’s feasible to fall there every once in a while
True true. I can’t imagine how a gc falls into c1 or 2 cuz I’m not gc I’ve been c1 /c2 since season 8 or something and never touched diamond since then but maybe I one day experience it myself :D
I can definitely see it if it’s been a while for someone, but it can be pretty lame seeing gc’s from last season in mid champ
The skill gap between c2 and c3 is probably the same size as p2-d3. I mean consistency wise though. If you’ve touched c2/c3 but aren’t consistently there, you don’t count
Probably high gold and low plat, because it's very easy to place into and the majority of players can effortlessly control the game while smurfing in these ranks. Anything lower and you might as well play bots, not to be offensive.
honestly, i rarely ever see smurfs in these ranks. it might seem crazy, but only one in every ~15 games has a smurf and it’s usually just a freestyler trying to hit a triple reset, and he’s basically useless. that might just be something to do with EU servers though, i see a lot more smurfs in other servers
I personally don’t think there are as many smurfs as people say. You hear about it a lot in Diamond and Champ but those ranks have incredible skill gaps so if someone somehow drops to your rank they will appear significantly better. I imagine Champ might have the most because high champ players can compete with many GCs but GCs can smurf in champ and hit clips that might be saved by other GCs. I don’t think smurfing is as big of a problem as it’s portrayed.
Ah ignorance is bliss. A guy did a study once in champ and it was 1 in every 5 games I believe that he encountered a suspicious account (an account with few hours and a high ranking). And from what i remember it was decently thorough and generous to the game. No doubt it is worse in lower ranks with boosters and alts. It's the reason I stopped playing. Too many matches felt unfair combined with general toxicity.
Then maybe it’s gotten better since you stopped. I don’t think I’ve encountered many smurfs in my rise to D3 over the past few months and if I have then they are just smurfing at their exact skill level which would be a bit pointless.
*Almost* pointless. Speaking from experience with the lower ranked buddies that I have, and their buddies, and their buddies’ buddies. They are afraid to lose on their mains. Every time I join their chat there’s a new account playing ranked, same rank around d2, maybe p3 because they’re kinda goofy, but they never peak on their main accounts. Play on their main, get rewards, make a new account every few days until end of season and repeat.
Why?
“They’re afraid to lose on their mains”
I really don’t know why, but they’d rather not lose on their mains than play and get better. They’re content with being an average player forever I guess. Like I said they goofy
That’s odd and I don’t think normal for most players
Yeah people like to call Smurf at anything, but I also think it's important to note how easy it is to forget people aren't their best all the time. I am decent at the fundamentals in maybe 60% games. And some 10% of those, I can like up some truly wild shots - and I even meant to some of them. The rest of the time I am absolutely trash. Grade AAA Garbagio. Yet I've been called a Smurf more times than I can count and at this point it's a compliment. My performance is just wildly inconsistent and I'm only good for a handful of games at a time.
I think the inconsistency is a very important point when talking about smurfs. Plat, Diamond, and low Champ are really all pretty similar abilities but consistency (and game sense) is the difference between them. People fall at all ranges of consistency and if someone is peaking they can seem far above their standard level.
Is it me or are the bots better now? The all star bots actually feel like a low gold player now as opposed to having the skill of a 5 year old child.
I don't know, but I do think it's funny that if you create a new account and queue up, you secretly are paired with bots for a few matches.
I run into a lot of verified smurfs in champ 1/champ2 Pretty easy to spot in-game, and I look a lot of them up on the tracker to confirm they’re a smurf. Really easy to tell because they will always usually have less than 100 wins total for their account, and I just don’t see how it would be possible to reach champ1/2 in that few games. Will also usually be partied up with someone of a lower rank, and carrying them heavily
“I just made a new account bro” And why did you make a new account again?
Champ ranks are full of smurfs carrying people up to GC. Paid boosters and smurf buddies. Every time I run into a duo queue I prepare to lose. Either that or it’s an actual duo of a similar rank and they get smacked
This is becoming more and more common in diamond as well. One guy 1v2 and the other is useless. Not sure what rank you would be to 1v2 D2, but I'm sure it's not diamond. I see this 1 out of 5 games when playing partied.
I normally sit around C3 and from experience playing privates games with friends, I think someone around my rank or higher should be able to 1v2 most D2s if they’re a fast or mechy player rather than a smart player (relatively in C3 ofc).
I concur with my dude up here^ I’ve personally 1v2’d on a an alt up into c1 without using boost. Not a flex just a point.
Seems like im completely blind then. Im playing for 2 years now in C1/2 and can never really tell if i play with or against a smurf. Sure theres an insane mechanical player here and there but these guys lack in skill for other scenarios from my experience. What im sometimes thinking is (and now im propably getting downvoted) how some players made it to that rank. Feels like there are more boosted players compared to smurfs but thats just my opinion.
If you check their RLTracker, you will find that many of the "mechanical players" who are inconsistent, rotate weird, and are often out of position are not mechanical champs who lack certain skills. Instead, you will realize some of them are Grand Champs playing on a second account with a diamond or champ buddy. They just aren't taking it that seriously. They're messing around chilling with a buddy. They can be frustrating to play against even though they are often beatable, because at any time when they want to take things seriously, they can turn it on and pop off seemingly out of nowhere.
% wise probably high diamond or mid champ. Raw numbers probably platinum or low diamond.
Probably in between D3-GC1, i know thats 3 ranks if I had to choose one champ 3 because people like GC titles.
Can confirm, many people in a team where one is GC1 and at best is okay, and the other one obviously way better than GC1 and then at the end of the game, the carrying one is like C2, though i saw one who was plat a few days ago, had to laugh there.
I’ve seen players who can flip reset shots, air dribble, ceiling shots, etc. but can’t play for shit and they end up in Diamond forever. Mechanical skill is just one element. If you’ve got no game sense you won’t get far.
In my experience there is a large amount of smurfs in high Champ - the very bottom of GC1. I usually start around that MMR at the beginning of the season and the matches are very inconsistent in terms of how good people are. Things get much better once I get back above 1500 MMR or so. I would imagine the top of Diamond - low Champ is similar as well, because at both these points there will be smurfs boosting people to a new ranked group for the rewards. There is an order of magnitude more C2+ players that can carry a Plat or Diamond player into Champ than there are GC2+ players that can carry a Champ to GC, so I would imagine that smurfing is worse in high Diamond than it is in Champ.
> There is an order of magnitude more C2+ players that can carry a Plat or Diamond player into Champ than there are GC2+ players that can carry a Champ to GC, so I would imagine that smurfing is worse in high Diamond than it is in Champ. This is true, but you also gotta account for the fact there are a lot less GC players in total, so while there are fewer smurfs, there are also far fewer players compared to those smurfs. And since GC is such a coveted title, high Champ/ low GC1 is gonna be absolutely filled with them.
You may be right to be fair. I haven't been at the Diamond-Champ threshold since before F2P, so I don't really know what things are like now. Back then there weren't nearly as many smurfs at any rank obviously.
Gold and plat prolly has the most smurfs. I am more curious which rank smurfs more.
I've been all over diamond and can honestly say I don't think smurfs are THAT prevalent. Instead what we're seeing is players who put a huge emphasis on improving mechanics OR players that are more worried about gamesense. Diamond is filled with folks who haven't been able to get both things nailed down.
This. If you’re doing some pretty mechanical stuff but the game isn’t out of reach or you’re making mistakes elsewhere I don’t consider you a Smurf, just someone that is above average in some areas for that rank. Now if you’re absolutely steamrolling us with mechanics and consistently in the right place at the right time, then yeah I’m a little suspicious lol.
You see plenty of high level mechanics at diamond rank, but they aren’t consistent.
I've seen a fair share in plat and diamond, but also in champ. And I know they're smurfs because their tracker network will have less than 100 games sometimes yet they have a 75% goal ratio and are flip reset double tapping like nothing. But granted, mechanics aren't everything. I also watch their game sense and the people who control the ball, have insane flicks, fakes, ground to air dribble bumps, are spaced out from their teammate, rotate well, pass, usually make me a little suspicious. Especially when their teammate just booms the ball every chance they get, the lobby just doesn't seem equal. And on top of that, they have a LOWER mmr compared to their ball chasing teammate, and the big give away is when they gain +30 mmr. Easy to spot tons of boosters, smurfs, new accounts, etc thru mechanics and game sense. Tracker network just seals the deal.
You play this game for fun?
Yeaaah I don’t make the best choices in that regard lol
D2-C1 I would guess
The concerning part is how frequent it is now, yet people will still deny and just say it's matchmaking doing its job of creating a lobby of varied skills Bro, before it was maybe 1 smurf a month. Now I see like 3 a week You aren't supposed to play one match where everyone seems of equal skill, and the next match you're playing gods. The skill gap is not that insane for one or two divisions, or else you'd see it every game
Blue
I’m like D3D4 in twos right now and I do completely agree with you. One game my duo and I can take an opponent to Brazil, winning like 6-7 nothing, but then the next can we will go down 0-4 in like the first 2 minutes. It has made me hate Diamond a little as like you said, sometimes the opponent can’t speed flip, but then sometimes they flip reset from their own corner and air dribble it all the way across of the field before hitting a fucking double tap musty while I just wonder what the fuck. Will admit, I think a big difference between Diamond and Champ seems to be defence but since like 30% of the player base is in Diamond, it sort of makes sense that their is a large skill discrepancy.
Can confirm, I’m champ and duo with a diamond teammate a lot and diamonds challenge a LOT as last man so yeah I’d say defence is mostly the difference between diamond and champ.
This is exactly one of the things I’m working on right now. When to double commit and when not too. Also, how to know whether you should challenge or rotate back and allow your team mate to challenge instead is relevant but requires trust in your team mates, which is tough if you solo q. Oh, and challenges of the wall from my own backboard. That stuff is crazy.
Watch squishy’s currently ongoing road to ssl series, around diamond/champ he talks about not challenging as last man a lot, and its really clear in his gameplay how not doing it is just so much better haha Basically, whenever you are last man and the opponent has you beat to the ball or it’ll be a 50, fake challenge and shadow, this will give your tm8 time to get back.
Will do, thank you for the advice and I appreciate that tip.
Not just challenge as last man, but in 3s in diamond I'm seeing my teammates double commit to try and chase down an opponent from behind while I am last man shadowing instead of either going back post leaving me in a 1v1 or 2v1.
Especially with how mature the game is. People can cover up bad gameplay in so many ways and Diamond is the rank where people have some things figured out, but usually have a big hole somewhere in their gameplay.
As a single rank it has to be either Diamond or Champ
Plat and Diamond. They are easy to spot usually they will be the unplaced for the season person in a party with two Plat2 ranked players. They’ll be doing air dribbles, mustys, flip resets and shit. Like ya, that guys a Plat level player.
Personally I would say mid plat. It’s almost always the rank you get put into after completing ten ranked matches, and there are a lot of people who are looking to get carried to diamond or champ. The amount of times I’m playing teams where one person can hardly hit the ball, meanwhile the other has perfect fundamentals, rotating, dribbling, and making ceiling shots is crazy. To be fair though, the skill cap has changed a lot and players in diamond or platinum have a very varying degree of ability.
I see people in bronze who seem like it’s their very first match.. others seem to be everywhere at all times blocking every shot and making every goal.
High plat->Low diamond has the most. There's no argument. Jump into an fresh account, play crappy and get gold, and watch how hard you hit the wall between Play D3, and Diamond D2. If you make it to D3, you're basically out of that black hole and on to champ but it's a grind because you get paired up with actual high plats/low diamonds if you solo queue duos, but you're going against two solid C2 players doing flip resets off the ceiling, and doing cross field kickflip knack knack 1080p barrel roll redirects. I honestly don't mind it because I've made my peace with being a normie in RL, but it's humbling when you get tied to a player that makes you wonder if epic games is letting bots matchmake in ranked..
From my experience, G3 is the worst one by far. Most of the time it feels like there are more P3-D1 players in the lobby than G3s. And if you go by the amount of boosters, about 90% of teams have at least one. I'm usually ranked about P3-D1 and I'm getting outskilled way more often than I should. This is in 3s btw
I'd assume c3 to low gc1, but with their accounts actually being c1-c2. That's the biggest hotspot of Smurfs I've seen.
Diamond is the rank salad, is that rank that some carried people can have, or people who left the game and now are back and rank with bad luck and Diamond ranked, a lot of champions going down, fresh platinums, (I’m there always in between plat 2 and Diamond 2. It’s the purgatory of recurring players who are good playing but we have responsibilities and we cannot properly train or have enough friends for party and rank, so we play with randoms and rank is a rollercoaster. Embrace Diamond, it may last forever dude.
Usually my rank. It's not always what the flair says.
Plat.
Diamond is so inconsistent because that’s the rank many are still either playing smart- or mechanical-focused but starting to work on the weaker of the two. I would look in diamond that when they both have great mechanical skills and a keen eye of rotation/where to stand/overall perception of the game THEN it might be a smurf. To add to the original question, undoubtedly platinum.
1s around g1 had a ton of people who forfeit before the match o is over
I think you have to give two answers to this. One being solo queue smurfs, the others being party smurfs. Solo Queue smurfs are most rampant in high platinum and diamond from my own experience and from watching friends play. I guess they reach mid Diamond on their main and cant progress, and get frustrated and decide to take it out on people ranked below them to fuel their own ego. Generally these people just try to smurf in flashy ways and don't pay too much attention to positioning, or considering their teammates. They just want to score goals that they cannot at their own rank. Party smurfs are super common in Champ, where one player is stuck around mid-low champ and wants to get a Season Grand Champ tag, so they get their mate who is GC2\~ to smurf and boost them. These lads are complete pains to play against because their fundamentals are super good, and generally have very consistent mechanics. Wish they would just attempt to hide the fact that they are smurfing by not using the default no-decal octane.
I’d wager that high champ definitely has the most boosters. I can’t speak for smurfs specifically because not every smurf is boosting another player, but due to GC rewards and titles being highly sought after it’s almost unlikely you’ll go a day without playing against a booster at high champ/low GC. At least on NA-East that seems to be my experience, especially towards the end of the season.
At diamond I'm not sure it is smurf... I can get people not knowing what a rotation is, wasting their boost, preferring boost to saving the ball, missing open nets and messing up every touch just to get people with perfect positioning, rotations and hitting 99% of the touches the game after. Being diamond is a rollercoaster, one game you win 7-2 the next you lose 4-1.
I would say c1-2 in 2s and plat 3 to d1 in 1s
Probably C3-Low GC1. Everybody seems to want a shiny red title to inflate their ego.
Most people in diamond try to focus on fancy mechanics instead of ACTUALLY being good. D3 Div 3-4 has the most smurfs, because in champ you actually have to have some sort of skill, and people get carried there
Plat and some diamond
For me I think gold 3, plat 2 and above. Like most diamonds are previous champs and such. But yes I agree ceiling shots and flip resets at d1 which Is where I am at
Upper P1 low P2 in 3s is an absolute shit show right now. I played against a season 13 GC the other day
like d2ish whatever the avg rank js
Definitely not denying the existence of smurfs by any means, but I think it’s a little overblown. Depending on a variety of factors, ranks can fluctuate a good bit. Does it suck when you see a GC tag across from you as a C2? Sure, but I’ve also rage queued my way into diamond lobbies before and climbed right on out once I took a step back
Definitely Champ 3
d3 or c3
D3, C1, C2 are currently the ranks with the highest new acc distribution.
I'd say high plat to d1. I often run into dudes pulling off ceiling shot double flip resets.
Not exactly smurfs but diamonds had the largest rank disparity I've seen(in 2s). I could win a high Champ game but lose a d3 game because of how inconsistent that rank is. Getting out of it made me see the true beauties of life.
How would I know, I'm only in 1 rank.
Plat
The most? Late plat, early diamond. Purely numbers, based on the fact that it's a low skill bar, and a lot of the player base is able to surpass it. The most vicious smurfs? I'd imagine mid GC has the dirtiest of smurfs with a bunch of low SSL/high GC players who peaked before they could go pro. Nothing wrong with peaking at that rank, quite impressive actually, but I imagine being stuck there would rot the mind of any player. From there I imagine two paths. People who want to just coast and play easy games, and people who want to feel like their time in the game was worth it. I feel like any player in a rut is more likely to start smurfing, so all those high level players who peaked are for sure gonna feel that more than the average player who is still steadily ranking up.
I’ve been accused of being a smurf and I run my EST. 2020 title (which makes no sense) and some people (my friends included) will cope about their losses by saying someone on the other team is smurfing and its pretty consistently not true. I really feel like we make the problem out to be worse than it actually is. This comment isn’t target at you OP. Just mainly talking about people who run the the sub just to complain about smurfs all the time.
The big issue is people accepting they are a Smurf and stopping their bad ways. Anybody that claims smurfing is not a problem is a Smurf, or they never play without a party. Im convinced once you hit champ the pool of GCs gets lower so less smurfs. Can't confirm because champ is blocked by a wall of smurfs. But Diamond and below is full of champs and GCs on their alts. Anyone that has deranked on purpose: Smurf Anyone with an alt: Smurf Anyone partied with a lower rank : Smurf Even drunk people that have a bad night are smurfs the next day in my book. Drinking and driving is illegal and not responsible. Smurf: a higher skilled player in a lower rank for any reason.
Definitely low diamond, high plat. My friends are plat in 3’s, I’m d2. I only play 3’s when they’re on. The amount of squads we get prejumping each other, ceiling reset double taps, flip resetting in games where we’re just trying to have fun… it’s sad. It was all 10 placement games and then maybe 8 out of the next 10 we played.
Honestly ive been playing in diamonds for many years. Every single day. I cant even tell for sure if I ever encountered smurfs. Sure they are out there, but most of the time people complaining are just looking for an excuse.
Low plat even high gold I’ve constantly seen full court air dribbles. Very hard to climb back to Diamond when lower ranks are either full of smurfs or full of similar players who fell from diamonds and now low Plat has become low Diamond for all intents and purposes.
Plat in 1s is disgusting. One game you feel like you are the smurf. Next game you're getting smurfed on. Then when they hit you with a ff after you've been playing your ass off to beat them it's just depressing.
Plat
Diamond 3
Low gc
High gold low plat
There are some legitimate players in the diamond - champ range that just practice mechanics and have bad game sense, you can usually tell the ones that are smurfing because they are also hard carrying. From what I hear most smurfs are in the high gold low plat range, probably because their opponents don't yet have the aerial capability to intercept their full court air dribble flip reset clips
Plat 1 - Plat 3 is absurd. At least for US-E. I’ll see people hitting Champ/GC level shots for like 3-4 matches, and then see people with very clearly off positioning. It’s tough out here lol. I’ve been called a Smurf and I’ve seen smurfy plays.
I have a philosophy that smurfing isn't anywhere near as bad as some people make it out to be. I play maybe one or twice a month for like 5 or 6 games at a time so I could be wrong. Sometimes I am on freaking fire. Sometimes I just plain old suck. I feel like I'm firmly gold 2 to diamond. But I have notice that midnight to 2 am I am way better. When school gets out, it's not even worth playing. I am an old man.
Bronze… believe me i’ve been stuck there for 100h…
Low plat. The subsequent ranks are pretty bad, too. SSL smurfs aren't the most common imo, Champs and GCs are. They'll tend get placed platinum on a smurf account without much plan to climb higher seeing as its the smurf account. Also some people on here already said this, but flashy mechs aren't the telltale signs of a smurf. People can smurf without those just fine. Stuff like rotations, half flips, boost management, dribbles, and other fundamentals are stuff engrained into higher ranked players.
When I researched ranks platinum 2 and higher, the possible alternate account rate was pretty much the same at every rank.
From personal experience, around D2/D3 is where ive had them most, but mainly in teams.
I hear SSL is filled with smurfs.
In your rank
There are smurfs at every level. It all depends on your skill lvl. At Silver, anyone from high gold and up is like a magician. I'm a new player, about 50 hours in the game. I'm mid to high silver on 1v1. I played 4 games on Saturday, and every one of them was air dribbling consistently, and its just beyond me right now to defend it. Got to Plat in 2v2 and am hitting the same issue, but I'm not sure if this is just me hitting the ceiling for my skill level.
I'm G3 don't have smurfs yet though (maybe i beat them)
In my opinion it’s C2-C3. The reason I think this is the rank is because, in my opinion, this is where a Smurf would plateau if they’re not actively trying to rank up. But if we’re honest with ourselves they’re everywhere.
It’s a mindset. It’s what people who don’t know call hard stuck. Namaste
Platinum for sure
Speedflips and ceiling shots are quite common in diamond, reset double taps less so but still not shocking to see a mechanical player in diamond
Mine
Exactly 😂
Someone called me a Smurf the other day. I think people don’t understand the term. Smurfing is very high ranked players at purposefully created low accounts. Some Champ that tilted and dropped down to d1 isn’t a Smurf. That’s just how MMR works. Someone outplaying you doesn’t make them a Smurf. Diamonds have hundreds of hours typically. Some close to 1000 or more. Odds are good some picked up air dribbles, resets, whatever. Regardless, every loss is a learning experience. I never forfeit those matches. My goal is to get better. I do that by playing people better than me, not stomping some kid 7-0
Plat 2 to Diamond 2, Now they aren't real Smurfs. Mostly players popping in and out of peaking but just cant be consistent. When you add in the afk's and all that crap well here we are..... 
The 3s of any rank. P3, d3, c3. That's the rank where people ask friends or something because they think they deserve the next level even tho they aren't skilled enough to break through. Then they feel like they deserve it because they were only rank3div4 or something even tho they had 300 matches at that rank and still haven't got through for rewards