There are a few things that I see often with smurfs;
If their profile is open and they’ve lost a significant amount of SR in a repeated fashion (as in, being in silver but having highs of masters every season), or have suspicious pickrate/winrate trends. Things like half their time being played on Bastion with 5% winrate but the rest of the time is on a typical carry hero like Tracer with >85% winrate. But usually only the stupid ones leave their profiles open. Their choice of hero is also a small thing of note, as heroes like Tracer/Echo/Genji/Doom/Widow are extremely easy to smurf on compared to others, since they aren’t team reliant in low ranks and are very difficult for low-skilled players to punish.
If in a game, they’re obviously manipulating the overall match in some form with their play. Things like popping off on Tracer and then suddenly swapping to Mei and griefing their team so that they lose the round, or vice versa. In this scenario, you might also see “memeing” behavior like them emoting and letting you kill them, or trying to get kills with Torb’s hammer all game before swapping and rolling your team. It’s just another way that they can exercise their power fantasy, really.
Low level but not so low that they’re clearly just an alt that’s ranking up. A level 60-100 account sitting in Bronze with GM level play is never going to be an unlucky alt placement, its almost always intentional. The only other explanation is account sharing/boosting, which is also reportable and against the EULA.
Building off the above, game sense is actually a huge giveaway. Most lower ranks won’t know what it looks like, but the way that a smurf positions/moves, engages, or makes use of their abilities, is what makes it obvious to me that they’re not just having a pop-off game. A gold player that’s doing well in a game will still exhibit mostly gold game sense, but a smurf’s game sense will always be leagues above their peers in a game, unless they’re deranking. If you’ve ever seen an “unranked to GM” challenge, you’ll see that they almost never die and almost never get punished at low ranks because their game sense alone is that much better
Those are the typical behaviors that I see in smurfs. Simply playing very well isn’t enough of a red flag for it because I know that everyone can have games where they perform quite well. But if I notice that their SR history is manipulated, they’re going out of their way to pull a game in whatever direction they choose, or their play is dramatically better than the rest of the team’s, then its almost definitely a smurf or booster. Game sense disparity is hard to describe without writing an entire essay on it, so if you aren’t certain that you can discern between average and excellent game sense, then I wouldn’t place much weight on it if there isn’t any other evidence.
Some players do sadly get into a mindset of accusing everyone who’s better than them of being a smurf. But if you notice that something different than just a normally unbalanced game is going on, you should take a closer look. If you’re quite sure that its something more than just someone having a good game, then I think it warrants reporting.
but you gonna get them on your team too, the point was that youre not regularly getting multiple higher ranked players on the enemy team, not only just because theres not enough players but also because its just too hard to keep an account that low without hard throwing but strangely you dont see smurfs throwing only dominating
just because you see low levels on your team doesn’t mean they are smurf.
Smurfs can be any level bruh…
Anyway, maybe you are looking too deep into this and see low levels and think “well jeez I’m gonna lose” and when you lose the first fight to the enemy team you think “ugh they are smurfs and better than me” so it makes you play worse cause you’re focussing too much on that.
Trust me, I used to think the same and also the same when I saw 3+ people in a party prior to 2-2-2.
First 2 points - you report for sabotaging the match… not a sign of being a smurf.
All the other things are signs of someone deranking. So report for that. That deserves a ban
Account level is not a sign, and irrelevant.
Outside of that, all you are saying is look out for people playing better than me. Will do. And then I will just report half the players I play with/against.
Yes, whatever the total number is, roughly 46% of the time they’ll be on your team, 54% of the time on the enemy team. They are noticeably but not universally more often against you.
I’m in Bronze, not Gold, but I certainly see smurfs throwing all the time, e.g. high-skill players who as a duo or trio spawn-camp just a single enemy and have an allergy to the point, or the player who dominates all game but then in the last minute switches heroes and goes on a long walk around the map letting his team 5v6 until they lose, but the most certain cases are the ones who hard-throw one day and stomp their way through games another day.
If you build a six-stack so that you match into six-stacks you can also see a lot of shenanigans there.
In gold, it’s mostly going to look like you only see “throwers” and “smurfs” who are different people because very few players will throw to stay gold, they’ll throw down to Bronze, maybe to stay there or maybe to boost others up.
Of course there will be a small amount of smurfs who throw to stay around gold because they just want to play with friends, but most will be actively moving in one direction or the other.
If you kept an eye on it for long enough you might see the same players throwing down and climbing up, but Gold is a big enough player base that you don’t have the same reliability of seeing all the players at your rank that the ends of the ladder do.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s very easy to spot the smurf in Bronze. Half of them have open profiles, and the ones that don’t are singlehandedly carrying games(or carrying and then throwing). It’s an epidemic there.
You’re being purposefully obtuse just to disagree with people.
Move on. Don’t be toxic about it as you’ll just get banned yourself.
But I have seen a lot of bronze games recently (seems to be a trend on YouTube atm to review bronze games, and my friend sends me codes all the time)… Rarely are there smurfs. Usually just players doing weird things and not understanding why they are failing.
You need to watch some of my games in Bronze. I’ve played over 1000 games and it took awhile to even drop that low, so when I see a level 30 player own the map, the question becomes, if they are that skilled, why are they in bronze? The easiest answer is throwing down to smurf. I have a winrate of 55-60% and still lose more SR for a loss than I gain for a win, so obviously the game thinks I’m unskilled. Those will skill should not be in games with me at <700SR (absolute, not relative).
Usually you can tell if a dps is too good for their rank. Landing more headshots than not, near perfect tracking in the kill cam etc. Tanks and supports are a bit harder to tell, but a lot of the same rules apply. Especially with Lucio and Ana.
Also, some will just outright say they’re smurfing or on their ‘Alt account’. Dead ringer there.
You have to bait them into saying something reportable. Say something snarky like “imagine smurfing in a children’s party game that died 4 years ago”
If they reply, continue with “Let me guess, your main account got banned for the third time?”
If they admit getting banned before, report them for ban evasion, and tell your team to do the same.
Smurfs are always toxic, so they actively get personal without much encouragement. If the smurf is targeting your allies, you can keep egging them on for a more substantial report.
These keywords are effective in a report: “vulgar”, “sexist”, “singling out [player]”, and most of all “racist”. If you manage to convince the report handler that the smurf was being racist, it’s an instant ban.
But doesn’t this just fuel the people you think are “defending” them, because all you are doing is reporting someone for playing well.
They might just be having a good game.
I want smurfs banned, but I want proof before I report someone otherwise I am just no better than any other bitter, tilted player, blaming everyone else for me not playing well.
Ah, yes, the ‘learn through adversity’ approach. Have you ever seen a bunch of 12-year-olds play soccer against a team of professional soccer players? Why not, isn’t that how the kids are supposed to learn?