What is a Smurf in League of Legends?

Question

I understand that a Smurf account is a less-used account owned by a player with a much better account, but I don't understand why you'd want to have one in League of Legends... It's not like other games where you can use a Smurf as a Mule to hold your less-important items. What is the point of an accomplished 1400~ elo player having a Smurf account?

Asked by Aceofgods

Answer

High-ranked players will use smurf accounts for a few different reasons, some reasonable, others less-so:

• Playing with less-skilled friends, or with friends who are new to the game. The high elo player doesn't want to instantly drag that person up against the type of opponents that they typically face, so they create a new account and play at a lower level.

• Spending time with a new champion (or champions). This is less-true of very high elo players, but some players do want to spend time learning how a different kind of champion works. They will create a smurf account and exclusively play a single champion in a low-pressure environment. This is far less popular now, of course, with the Coop vs. AI games being available.

• Pub-stomping is also, unfortunately, a reason someone might want a smurf. Some people like the utter domination that comes with being so much more skilled at the game. This practice is often frowned upon, but does still happen.

• Pro players sometimes create smurfs to mask their identity. If you watch their streams, you'll notice they're constantly receiving friend requests, etc. And sometimes they just don't want to deal with it. This reprieve is usually short-lived.

There are other potential reasons (that should just be edited into this answer), but those are the primary causes for smurfing in League of Legends.

Answered by Deotronic

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