Throwers to bronze most often go as 6 stacks, based on a number of factors:
- 6 stacks of throwers are guaranteed to lose
- Throwers convince themselves that throwing as a 6 stack “doesn’t hurt anyone”
- Throwing alone is too unpredictable. It would be very unlikely to work.
This is based on my many reports of thrower 6 stacks as they form in LFG. I often join their groups and tell them I’m reporting them before doing so. Some have come along to cuss at me after “friending” me to explain what a loser I am and to tell me bronze people are worthless, etc.
So, all that to say that the people that benefited from the 6 stack thrower groups are likely 6 stack groups themselves. I’ve even heard tell of 6 stack thrower groups having to work hard to out throw each other, which I think is the biggest justice of all. The majority of people don’t play in 6 stacks, so they’ll get no benefit from the SR gains of the throwers.
Not to mention, they’ll probably have crappy stats against the throwers, and not get very much SR from the thrower game.
Then there’s all the victims when the throwers stop using 6 stacks. Throwers down in low bronze absolutely destroy games. It’s completely random whether the thrower will be throwing, winning, etc. So, they might be interested in dragging the game out as long as possible by killing everyone, but letting them get the payload to the next point in overtime to extend the game.
Smurfs do nothing but damage to ranked play. There are no net benefits to smurfs. (smurfs are the ones who throw, not just alt accounts)
As I said before, there are no bell curve enforcements, no one rises automatically, they only get SR for winning, and lose SR for losing. No one changes rank automatically. No one is getting easier games because smurfs got involved (best case scenario is no impact). Even if someone did get a bump of 100 SR somehow, if they didn’t belong 100 SR higher, they’d slowly decline back to where they were.
Humans naturally tend to fit to a bell curve. It’s not perfect, and the ranking system does nothing to enforce a bell curve fit.