This isnt an RPG where you get XP no matter the outcome. Sometimes getting crushed doesnt help you learn anything meaningful other than not to play against cheaters.
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Itâs not cheating. Itâs just being better at the game. Also, you might not get those visual shiny xp procs but youâre actually gaining experience through playing if youâre smart about it and your goal is getting better at the game.
Exploiting the ladder to get easier games is absolutely cheating. Even Blizzardâs official stance is that its cheating.
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smurfing is the most fun part of this game, dont take it from me
It may be a flaw in the ranked system but itâs not cheating by any means.
I mean, its deliberately breaking the rules to gain advantage. That sounds like cheating to me.
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All they have to do is implement queue dodging checks. Like they have in heros of the storm, which is the same game engine.
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I disagree. People who get good at the game get matched with players of higher and higher skill. Smurfs do the exact contrary. Itâs easy to look good when facing only players of lesser skill. And itâs easy to freelose even from a skill as low as a silver league users : just leave some games, and youâll be matched against lesser opponents.
Truth be told, most users Iâve seen advocate for smurfing as an altruist learning opportunity were smurfs themselves. Which always forgot that :
- most of their opponents do not know they are facing a smurf at the start of the game. Which means the smurfs isnât here to teach nor to learn, but to reap a win whatever the merit of it.
- that being overwhelmed by a superior multitask in the first seconds of a game will only lead to a short game, and to a ânot enough APMâ conclusion, which you canât do anything about directly.
- that about 50% of the smurfs, as they were fed up dealing with the hate their behavior created, have deactivated the chat with people not on their friendlist. Good luck having a healthy learning session after a game with 50% people not even answering to anything you do say, and a good chunk of the other half just trying to taunt you as badly as possible.
SC2 is a game where players do have to deal with many forms of toxicity, including insults or hacking. Smurfing is simply another presentation of that toxicity, more insidious than insults, and less treacherous than hacking ; where players unable to deal with their own frustration deliberately bypass the matchmaking system in order to feel like getting good again. 
There are many, many things they could easily implement to counter freelosing smurfs, one of the most efficient ones being to multiply the waiting-queue time by a factor proportional to the amount of freeloses detected. This would work regardless of the amount of accounts created, would cost almost no resources, and the scripts could be written even by modders. So it would be a piece of cake for professional developers.
Yet they have never done anything about it, even when they had the means to, even when their attention where brought upon it. From that we can deduce there was no will from SC2 team to ever fight smurfing ; and so itâs quite unlikely thereâll ever be from Vicarious legacy team.
Conclusion : smurfing is a toxicity we have to deal with by ourselves. 
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sure, ban all pro players from the ladder.
lol cry babies
As far as I know, most pro players do not freelose. Think about it, theyâre trying to improve, what would be the point of playing users whoâre no match to them ? And so thereâs a fundamental difference between a simple smurf account (which the pro use abundantly), and freelosing smurfs (which are mostly decadent amateurs).
There were few exceptions to that, the most widely known being Byun (which was spotted doing lose streaks prior to streaming sessions in order to appear unbeatable to viewers) ; and BeastyQT (who also was declining as a pro player, and thus tried to draw the attention by using challenges which could only have been won against lesser users).
Anyway, I find funny to have players refusing to play some match-ups or even evenly match opponents to accuse the regular ones of a cowardly behavior. Thatâs the other way around in fact. 
Alot of broadcasters and pros have alt accounts specifically to play lower ranked games, in order to do videos on bronze to master, and other stuff as well.
Some have those accounts indeed. Yet
- They are way, way, less many Bronze to Masters streamers than freelosing smurfs. To give you an idea, over the 183 smurfs I screened in 2020, there was only one alleged streamer. And the real proportion is probably much lower.
- Those tend to freelose all in one go (amount of which could be lessened if using a new account). Freelosing smurfs do this repeatedly. So that means Bronze to Masters series would become more tedious to set-up, but impossible, and at the very least not as punishing as it would be to regular smurfs. And this supposing the Bronze to Masters series are not already long done.
- if you have a GM or more execution, you will win often against players several leagues under your level, even using silly strategies (Crank for example won against a platinum player using a mass probes). And so the legitimacy of doing Bronze to Masters series to prove the efficiency of some builds is more than questionable.
- If pros could use smurfs accounts the way they are intended to, and regular players could have the matchmaking work the way it is intended to, this would be greatly beneficial for the enjoyment of play of regular players.
Overall the game is mainly aimed at players, so even if not that relevant Bronze to Masters series had to be sacrificed in order to get a more enjoyable game for most, then itâd still be a quite beneficial trade overall. 
Anyway, I already said the devs wonât do a thing against smurfing. Why are we even arguing about possibilities that wonât be ? Fret not, toxicity is here to stay. 
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Exactly this. Blizzard had the means to combat smurfing even during the peak of its popularity. The fix is so easy. What do they do instead?
They implement unranked!!!
A feature which encourages more smurfing!!
To add onto your conclusion - SC2 encourages smurfing. That is why the solution to smurfing will never be implemented.
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So Iâm curious, what about players who utterly refuse to play mirror matches such as myself? I canât STAND TvT or PvP games so I just leave whenever I see this matchup, does that make me a smurf for doing so?
Innocent cry baby, even serral does it. The freeloose is not even a factor, the fact u r playin a much better opponent with no chance of winning, isnt that what u r crying about? The difference between a GM and a pro is the same as a silver and a master, sometimes even bigger difference. Dont even need to freeloose, they just create a new tag, go check the Korean ladder full of barcodes.
u also need to stop sayin that for some is âokâ but for others is ânot okâ. Doesnt matter the reasons behind it, they r doin the same.
As above so bellow. u will have this problem in silver and in GM.
Well, does your MMR also decreases when you leave your mirror games ? If yes, then unless your winrate in those MU was 0%, itâll inevitably skew your MMR. And so youâll get matched below your real level.
I used to call those « Match-up smurfs ». The mismatch between your real skill and your MMR wonât be as pronounced as regular smurfs, but will be proportioned to the amount of players you face in the freelost matchups. I had a D1/M1 protoss who hated PvZ in my community ; yet at those times there were a majority of zerg around that MMR. So he ended up losing two divisions. Usually itâs more around one division below real level.
English please. This is a forum, not a phone.
On the contrary, freeloses are the main difference between professionalâs smurfs accounts and freelosing smurfs. This because the aim of the former is anonymity, while the objective of the latter is to play weaker opponents.
And the consequences are as well, as mathematically, the MMR of the freelosing ones will inevitably decrease more than they if they didnât. Nothing convoluted here, Itâs pure subtractions and additions. You can do those, right ?
If you still donât get the difference, find us footage of Serral freelosing .
And where exactly do you see crying ? Iâm explaining that smurfing is a problem we have to deal with ourselves. Real men deal with trouble by themselves, isnât it ? So stop your endless babbling about crying, you sound like a broken record.
Besides, what even is the aim of your blabbering ? Being a smurf, you donât even have the courage of facing evenly matched opponents. What do you want, a medal ? A small pee-pee award ? A no-fair-play certification ?
If not, just shut up ; youâre not qualified to criticize players who play opponents equal or above what theyâre supposed to.
None of the pro players waste their time smurfing. They use alt accounts so that opponents donât know their identity. There is a clear difference.
I take that back. A few of them do. Harstem beats low GM players with stupid things on his alt account. But thatâs not for practice. Thatâs for generating content (I donât support it).
Pros like Serral or most others. When they use alt accounts, itâs not for smurfing like 95% of other smurfs on ladder. They use them to practice without bias.
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u can call what u want, in the end they r doin the same.
lol all over ur âsmuf is really bad threadsâ, sorry is not that big of an issue and all pros do it, justify it how ever u want. And no, I dont do it, u think u got me? lol. Im not like u cry babies, I have fun playing with much better oponnents, bring it.
It is not smurfing. They do not intentionally lose to tank their MMR. They do not use silly strategies to beat their opponents. They play just like they would any other tournament. They may try out new strategies, but it is with the full intent of winning. You will not see Serral wasting his time in low GM, or Clem, or Dark, or whoever other top players from any other region. Lastly, they always punch as high as possible. The pros will take whoeverâs at the top at any given day for the best practice possible.
It is very much not the same, and if you think otherwise, youâre welcome to bring up examples or facts that say so.
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They get placed with much lower rank players and beat them, some even create a new account every day to warm up in the build up. ur argument is like saying murderin a stranger in the streets is different than murderin ur girl for f ing someone. Sure the motivations are different, but is murder nonetheless.