Whenever they’re on my team, they throw, suck, or play something stupidly underpowered like Mei.
Whenever they’re on the enemy, they’re playing like Top 500 PC players.
I wish you could report them for smurfing…but nope. Blizzard doesn’t care at all. The only thing you can do is the avoid as teammate feature, which you can only avoid 2 at a time (not enough, though).
How else is one supposed to learn new heros?
Play them on their main account?
SR is just a number.
Hey!!!
That is my main you are talking about 
ok, yeah, she is underpowered.
They really do ruin the game. =/ And it’s not just in competitive, either.
I recently bought my niece the game, but she’s afraid to play quickplay because when she does, she gets constantly killed by a smurf Genji or Widow. (I’ve spectated her games - there is literally a smurf in about 30% of them).)
It just kills the experience for new people. She feels helpless and like she can’t do anything, or that she’s not good enough because she keeps getting killed over and over.
So basically, yeah, it’s a form of bullying, imo. They’re either making lowbie players lose confidence, or terrorizing low SR games, making normal players lose SR.
Just a plague on the game, and I have nothing but disdain for people who do this.
Quickplay. Obviously trying, but it’s the best option.
People will use the excuse that QP isn’t good enough, but they can still play them in Competitive. SR is just a number.
Let me guess, Bronze?
It is FULL of smurfs. When I was down there, you could see the season high rank people had.
I went a week and played in games which had at least one plat+ in every single game.
It is a MASSIVE issue.
Blizzard could just ban anyone who has a season high of plat+ if they hit bronze (since, you know it isn’t just a couple of bad games which got them there, they have to WORK at it).
It would clean up so very much down there.
But they don’t.
Smurfing has been a noticeable issue since about S4 and not much has really been done about it now that I think about it.
smurfs are op pls nerf
I was lucky when I started, because since it was Christmas, there were tons of new players. My beginning experiences were pretty good.
However, I have since made a 2nd account(WiFi got me season banned in s5, got better WiFi and wanted to play comp, don’t use it much anymore.) When I was leveling the account, every. single. game. There was a smurf. Both sides. The entire team.
It ruins the experience of the game for new players. It’s honestly terrible. It’s even worse here on console because you can make infinite free accounts
Then you get yelled at for throwing. Omg I even got yelled at for learning soldier in deathmatch 4v4 today. (And I’m only silver.)
I learned Moira in Comp. Wasnt yelled at for throwing. Learned D.Va there. Wasn’t yelled at. I learned most of my Lucio skills there. Wasn’t yelled at.
I learn a lot of my hero basics or just learn a new hero entirely all in Comp. I have never once been called a thrower, so in my experience, that doesn’t happen.
lol well maybe you’re better at playing than me
Maybe. Or maybe I just have a gift. Which is weird, because if I did, I wouldn’t be hard-stuck in Platinum.
Sure, but part of the fun of this game is to see how high we can make the number.
Hard to learn a hero when you’re just way worse (on that hero) then everyone else in your game.
In the defense of the smurfs who create them to learn new heroes, ones you get to a certain sr the skill curve for learning a new hero increases MASSIVELY. It becomes so incredibly frustrating feeling helpless at every corner, even in quick play. Imagine bashing your head at a wall expecting to break through concrete, thats basically what it feels like when some heroes are so much lower than others. At that point if you do main specific heroes switching over to learn a new one (especially in comps!!!) becomes throwing. You simply cannot practice there, it isn’t a viable option.
I’m not saying i agree with smurfs who go out of their way to ruin games, but quite a lot of the time there is no malicious intent.
I don’t have to imagine this feeling, because this is the feeling I get when I’m trying to get better at the game and raise MY sr in comp and I have a smurf pick Torb, sit in spawn, and spam voice lines while the rest of the team struggles to 5 or 4v6.
Playing competitive at high level is a serious business, people are actually trying hard to win and it tasks the mind and body. Smurfing is some form a casual play for them as they can relax a bit and still win or climb without the hitting their max focus and “carry”.
There is a simple solution for them, play Arcade or even QP but for some strange reason they still want to feel in competition mode. I know a lot of Pro’s are playing FFA to warm up as it demands zero team play and feels good to just play a hero you want to practice.
Paying for a another OW account just to climb again and get to the same rank you had before is very interesting psychological phenomena; if players are willing to pay full price again for that privilege it means some form of new gameplay can be extracted, refined and scaled to the whole player base as a new mode.
The life of a toxic player must be so easy.
Like, literally blame all your problems on someone else.
I really do not understand how you can see if someone is a smurf. What, did you hack blizzard servers or something and able to connect separate accounts to real identities?
Because really, all I am seeing is “I got killed by someone. That is impossible. I should never die. They must be a smurf and be several ranks higher than me”