Smurf Discussion

Recently two friends at my school told me they wanted to start getting better at Dota. I was pretty excited because I've never really had people I know to play the game with. As is the case with every new Dota player, they're pretty bad. It's not a big deal and I'm patient, so we still have a lot of fun when we play. Well, we got tired of bot games pretty fast and wanted to play some actual games, but it was made clear pretty quickly that they couldn't really handle playing with people at my level. I'm not the best at Dota by any means, but I'm substantially better than they are, so they were playing with people way way better than them. To fix this, I figured I would just make a new Dota account at lvl 1 so that we could play with people closer to them, and I could help them out a little. It turns out that pretty much everyone down there is a smurf.

Now, I know that I can't be that critical of it since I was technically smurfing as well. But the difference, I feel, is that I'm trying to help my friends get better. I'm not playing because it's fun to pwn noobs (I could've made an account for that ages ago), and I'm not cheating for items or mmr recalibration. But it's very annoying when you play support for your lvl 3 friend who wants to practice carry and you can't even play because some tryhard smurf picked a Slark and got fed on the 1-2 actual new players in the game. And when I say pretty much everyone is a smurf, that isn't inaccurate. I've played about 5 games on that account and I've only seen about 5-10 players who I felt like they were truly new. The rest were people playing Pudge landing perfect hooks or Juggernaut with 12 minute scepters. Not exactly stuff that new players are capable of doing.

So what do you guys think about smurfing? Is it fine in any situation, or should they try to prevent it somehow?

It's necessary! Besides, new players don't suffer that much from smurfs. Volvo has smurf detection programs that immediately move those guys way up in terms of hidden MMR. They don't stay in scrub tier for more than 5-6 games and then they get moved to the higher levels.

Besides I think it's really necessary to allow people to recalibrate their MMR with smurfs because MMR moves up and down WAYYY too slowly.

Yeah, don't get me started on the changes that the current MMR system needs.. It's terrible.

I don't think it needs to be completely against the rules or anything, but maybe give a report option just so they can be moved up faster? It wouldn't be a normal low-priority report, it would just be like "hey, this guy is too good to be in this level." Maybe make that available pre-lvl 10? Idk.

I think the whole Smurf problem would be solved if your account had a certain number of times you could select to recalibrate.

When i made my account i checked the 'Ive never played a MOBA' option, and i was awful. I also went into doing my calibration at lvl 13. Now, over 500 games in, i have a party MMR which i am struggling to raise past 1400 (i know, right?) and i have 2 games left on my Solo calibration. I just don't see the point in finishing it. For some context, when i play with a friend who has 4kish MMR and i am put into the High or Very High skill bracket i can hold my own.

So i made a smurf. I have only played ~20 games, but i am now playing in the High skill bracket, and it is so much better! Most games i will look on Dotobuff at my opponent and they will have played a similar amount of games (or at least a lot less than required to be at that level). So i think Smurfing is kinda fine.

I have a friend who say's "You dont have to smurf, just work your way up!"... ... Let's say that my MMR comes out at 2.8k, just scraping into the High skill bracket, on my smurf. If that is my real MMR how long will it take to raise it from my current dross tier on my main?

Considering it is a team game and let me tell you, when i queue solo it is painful, it just isn't viable. So, in my opinion, a Smurf is necessary to my being able to enjoy the game if i want to play Solo queue.