I will, and I mean will, report your group and the owner of the group to blizzard
Sometimes i go in a full group, say i need like 5 minutes and report the other players in the group as well, due to them knowing what they are about to do
Not only are you boosting everyone ypu meet up by a win or 2, you will also become the problem when down in bronze, where people dont belong and force bronze players to get stuck down there.
So this is sort of a PSA as well.
I RARELY, and I mean RARELY use LFG, but when i do, i make sure to report these deranking groups. Itâs extra scummy.
I get a message every couple of days from blizzard about the reports. The message that apears when you open the game
Good man. Keep doing your duty 
Because, i dont know if you remember, but some streamers got banned a while ago doing this challenge, before lfg. Intentional throwing to bronze
Its just really annoying, i think blizz should do a soft mmr reset every year
I just had a 3 stack of trolls throw my game, I do not know if they came from LFG or not but I reported them anyway
I really wish they would come down a lot harder on these throwers.
Ban all of their associated accounts. Hardware ban them.
If that means that Mr. Throwerâs little brother Timmy sharing the same computer also got his account banned, that too bad. He will have to settle that matter with his big brother who got their accounts banned.
Yikes
That sucks. Shame there isnt more avoid slots
âBronze is where people donât belongâ ⊠uh, thereâs plenty of people who are clumsy or just straight up unintelligent/low IQ, their first shooter, old, too young, bad vision, injury, etc.
SOMEONE has to belong there. The way way SOME people belong in GM.
Iâve done bronze to master on a half dozen accounts and the last time I didnât lose a single game until high plat (2800+). After that I had a ~80% win rate until low diamond, 60-70% until master and higher on certain heroâs. My point is that if youâre even within a tier and a half of where you belong you pretty much canât lose. I donât know why the player base is so narcissistic to acknowledge some people are just bad players. Thatâs fine, your worth in life isnât remotely determined by a video game, but thatâs the way it is.
The âroad to bronzeâ groups or whatever you want to call them are keeping throwers out of your team. It doesnât matter if Blizzard cracks down on these groups, people will always find a way to cheat, smurf, and throw, thatâs just how the world works. If people get banned because of these groups, theyâll just stop using them and throw the old fashioned way, i.e. soft throwing in a duo or three stack on YOUR team, and then tryhard when you avoid them. And I donât know about you guys, but soft throwing and ruining it for your team is a lot worse than doing it in a six stack. (If you guys have any counter arguments other than âthrowing is badâ then let me know, itâs not like I want to run around defending throwers). Yeah, it sucks, welcome to hell Overwatch.
You can tell if itâs a LFG group by the icons of what role they picked for that LFG group by pressing Tab during the match. Tank will show a shield, healer a plus sign, and I donât know what dps is.
True, but only if itâs a group that has role locks enforced.
I donât believe any role icons show up if they donât.
I really dont know what to think about that honestly. People who derank with others derankers are not poluting normal games. If they would start banning everyone who is there, these people will simply do it in solo q, damaging many more games. Its really not solution.
I would do something else instead. Create limitation maybe, just locking accounts at certain sr and make it impossible to go lower. For example if someone achieved 2500 sr and stayed there one season ± system would lock his sr at idk 1750 SR and it would not be possible to go lower.
I mean, since you asked. I donât usually bring it up because itâs a marginal mathematics thing. HoweverâŠ
The reason that throwers are said to, in the long run, actually be an advantage to you is simply that there are 6 possible throwers on the enemy team, and 5 possible throwers on your team. Assuming you are not a thrower and throwers are randomly distributed, that means ~54% of the thrower matches are a win for you.
Similarly, if smurfs who are try-harding are randomly distributed, and you are not a try-hard smurf⊠54% of smurf matches are a loss for you.
This balances perfectly so that smurfs donât affect your climb if they throw a game for every game they try-hard in. They are more likely against you than with you, but they are also giving you wins in alternation with losses.
6-stacking, however, breaks this. If smurfs derank in road-to-bronze 6-stacks and soloq when tryharding then they throw only 1/6th as many games as they carry, which means that overall the smurfs are now a disadvantage to the normal player. Worse still, for the soloq player the smurfs effectively almost never throw games because 6-stacks are almost always paired up against other groups, and usually against other 6-stacks.
If there is a smurf in 10% of your games then, that 10% of your games will be a 46% winrate for you. If youâre climbing (extremely slowly) at a 50.25% winrate then, the presence of smurfs will actually stop your climb by bringing it down to 49.825% winrate, or if youâre climbing slowly at a rate of 54% then the presence of smurfs brings it down to 53.2%.
Of course, the alternative we are considering isnât âno smurfsâ, but that smurfs throw a game for every game they carry. In which case we find that our 50.25% player is brought to 50.2% by having 10% smurfs carries and 10% smurf throws, and our 54% player is brought down to exactly the same 53.2% as when the smurfs are 6-stacked. For soloq players with higher winrates, they are actually better off if the smurfs 6-stack⊠10% of games at a 46% winrate is less harmful to their ânaturalâ winrate than having 20% of games at a 50% winrate.
Okay, once I put the numbers into the calculator that came out even more marginal than I expected.
Of course, this math is a bit idealized and ignores a bunch of considerations around both the matchmaker (esp. PBSR) and around real smurf behavior. However, I think it shows well enough that for soloq players with winrates between 50% and 54%, itâs better to have smurfs derank in soloq, but for 54% and up thatâs not the case anymore.
(Technically the threshold is 54.5454âŠ%, but I was using the 54% approximation, if anyone cares. Probably shouldâve rounded up, but anyway, not redoing it now.)
How OW works:
Bronze-Gold with the lack of MMR reset is nothing but an RNG mess.
Ugh, my phone rotated and I posted it early⊠Anyways letâs try this again.
A few things:
I think PBSR throws this off a bit. Because for someone to be an actual smurf, theyâd have to be significantly better than the other team to shift the balance of the match. So Iâm assuming PBSR would require them to lose 2 - 3 games for every win just to stay where they are. Iâm not really sure how PBSR works, but Iâm assuming that it can usually tell when someone is below their actual rank, even if they have a couple games where they get ârolledâ (throw) themselves, at least if they absolutely stomped the match they won.
Another thing, I think six stacking or using LFG is probably the best way to try and climb out of the metal ranks if you really worry about smurfs, throwers, ect. Iâm pretty sure people donât join regular LFG groups to throw (I mean, why would you? There are literally throwing groups to make it easier for you), so if you play in a six stack youâre only gonna get people throwing on the other team in a full six stack, with maybe the occasional smurf that decides to play LFG for some reason (and could be on your team or the enemy team).
vvv So basically this vvv
Also, I thought of another counter argument. Maybe the LFG throwing groups makes smurfing more, accessible? Sure, there will always be people smurfing, cheating, and throwing, but maybe LFG is bringing in more smurfs since the whole process is easier or âstreamlinedâ I guess.
Finally this is just a tip to anyone dealing with smurfs, try and be nice to them?
I think that real smurf behavior part is pretty important. When you rage at smurfs, call then pathetic, they canât win in their own rank, whatever:
Youâre probably just feeding a troll, thatâs what he wants, he wants to make you mad.
Youâre potentially making an enemy. Heâs probably going to end up focusing you, in-game i.e. killing you over and over and tbagging you, AND in the games after i.e. throwing on your team and tryharding on the enemy team.
Maybe if heâs âniceâ (and youâre nice to him) he might give you some helpful pointers. I mean, you might as well learn from them. They might even let you queue with them if you really want your SR back, who knows, not everyone acts the same.
Anyways, thanks for the post. 
What they should do is have a hard MMR reset for accounts that have been inactive.
I joined a throw group on my account because I was a diamond Mercy main, but when coming back to the game I wanted to play Ana and my aim is bad.
I decided to join deranking groups to get my SR right, and got bannedâŠ
So I got a new account, this one, and got placed low goldâŠ
I just wish that account had gotten an MMR reset.