Why is Diamond 25% smurfs?

Competitive Discussion
1

Imagine that for every player Masters and above that decides to make an alternate account and play competitive at their level with it, a smurf gets added to Diamond. Crazy idea, right?

Well, what if I told you that’s the truth? Diamond is literally the smurf rank. Since there is no performance based SR and Diamond is the maximum rank you can achieve from your first placements, you will find much, MUCH, MUCH, M U C H more smurfs in Diamond then any other rank. This means that there is literally no deciding factors to matches in Diamond besides smurfs and what they do, since every match is guaranteed to have at least one.

I just played a match where there was four smurfs, and the two that were on my team decided to play healer, and the two that were on the other team decided to play Soldier: 76 and D.Va. Guess which team got curb stomped and had arguments for most of the match in voice?

OURS, because our smurfs were playing healer and not DPS. As I said before, literally every match’s outcome comes down to the presence of smurfs, and what they do.

Well, you may be asking yourself, “what can we do to fix this?” There are two solutions that would INSTANTLY make smurfs a simple annoyance, as opposed to the coinflip mechanic that decides if any player will reach Masters or not.

1. Increase the maximum rank from placements to Masters. The skill difference between Diamond and Masters is large, and putting smurf accounts into Masters instead would give them fair matches, since they will not have such a huge effect (am I the only smurf in the lobby? 100% winrate against hardstuck diamond noobs lololol) on the outcome of games.

2. Bring performance based SR back to Diamond. Guess which rank a smurf who was curb stomping every match would stay longer in? Plat, or Diamond? If that sounds like a difficult question, here’s a hint: in Plat, a hard carrying smurf would gain 40 SR per win. In Diamond, a hard carrying smurf would get 25 SR per win. Here’s the answer: Diamond. Now, if performance based was brought back to Diamond, which rank would the same smurf stay longer in? The answer is that they would be in Diamond nearly exactly as long as Plat, since they would be getting roughly 40 SR for EVERY WIN. In addition, this would discourage throwing, but throwing happens much, much less then smurfing, so that’s just a minor plus.

You might want to ask me, “how do you know this would work? You don’t even know the performance based SR system…” This DID work. Before performance based SR was taken out of Diamond, smurfs were only present in one in every 3 matches. Now? Literally every play session I’ve had in 2018 has involved smurfs.

ACKNOWLEDGE AND FIX THE SMURF PROBLEM. IT’S NOT THAT HARD.

tl;dr increasing the maximum rank you can get from your first placements to Masters or bringing back performance based SR to diamond would instantly solve the smurfing problem that ruins an entire rank.

4 Likes
2

You do know you can get masters via placements… and if not Then how did I place masters my first placements on a alt I used to have?(Used to have since it was on console, I play on PC now)

2 Likes
3

I understand your frustration trust me, but based on what your saying it doesn’t seem possible to be 20%. If the win comes down to a smurf so much then surely based on that logic a smurf would climb out of diamond only within a few days, making it 1 less smurf in diamond. Even if they let there account decay when they get master there mmr would stay at master level, meaning they would match againts other masters not diamonds.

If there playing/learning something new then its basically just like having a diamond on your team, sure there game knowledge might be better but they won’t be able to hard carry on something new because they just won’t be mechanically good enough on it yet. So going off that you can carry that person if your good enough.

Also i don’t know if you ever played in masters/grandmaster but there both filled with alt accounts aswell so its not like diamond is the rank of the smurfs. I can’t even count the number off alt accounts i come across daily. But there not just hard carrying because half off them are learning a new role/hero so its just the same as having a same level player on my team.

No disrespect at all but you just gotta get good enough to carry and try not to put so much time into looking at if someone is smurfing or not.

2 Likes
4

I think the biggest problem is the skill decay, any master+ who has an alt account the same rank and stops playing it for a while will be able to jump back on it with it being freshly deranked back into diamond, while I don’t think there is any more smurfs than any other rank, diamond is the best rank to smurf because the game deranks you for you without actually having to break any rules

Really the skill decay should just be changed to a rank expiration and after x amount of time you simple lose you rank and have to redo placements

5

Bronze is much worse, you don’t wanna go into the lowest Bronze, which is the pit of doom for you, smurfs, throwers, all that stuff. It’s not the same as Diamond, it’s much worse.

6

My solution to fix smurfs, while partially flying in the face of what a ladder system is, would be to do the following:

  • Keep the current SR grouping restrictions
  • Make the matchmaker look at MMR instead of SR

Two GM’s, one on their main and one on a plat smurf. They can’t group because of the SR restrictions, great, working as intended. They could, with this suggestion however, be matched into the same game because the matchmaker kinda knows where someone’s MMR is regardless of SR and goes, “lol this dude isn’t a plat, he’s a GM, have a GM game mate, good meme lol”
Additional scenario: Some GM goes on a holiday to Vanuatu for two weeks. Comes back and he’s diamond. Matchmaker puts him in GM games anyway. Problem solved.

QP currently has better matchmaking than comp now. What a meme.

They’ll never do it, though because less smurfs = less money. Comp is a literal joke atm.

7

Smurfs help up practice also we pay for new accounts.

1 Like
8

Decay changes the sr not mmr. A masters decayed to diamond will still be matched with other masters. They will just get extra sr per win until their sr matches their mmr.

9

Most smurfs in Diamond are actually Diamond players with alt accounts. Rest are mostly Master healer/tanks who wants to play some DPS without tanking their SR.

Think about it this way - if you cannot defeat Master players on their off-role on a regular basis, do you deserve being Master yourself?

2 Likes
10

In diamond the game is more team work than individual skill so I don’t think smurfing is that much of a problem. Unless it’s a smurf group queue.

11

Just played a game with 6 smurfs, and literally all of them were DPS.

We won, but still, it was just because there were 3 smurfs per team (and someone else on my team said they were a booster)

The absolute STATE of Diamond.

1 Like
12

Have I missed something?

What is the problem with smurfs in diamond? If you can hold your own you are doing alright, and if you wanted to get to master surely you need to be able to play at a master level so the master smurf isn’t an issue.

GM is a bit of a different story if they are intentionally throwing their matches, but apart from that it sounds like a pretty good place to be.

13

I think the amount of smurfs people see are overestimated.

I believe that quite a few of them are actually using aim hacks. You use the aim hacks to get the kills then shoot at walls in offtime to lower accuracy so as not to appear like it’s hacking.

Some people at work have bragged about hacking since comp came out and still haven’t been banned.