Valorant should be a fun and exciting game. However, when you have an enemy that is smurfing, then you might not enjoy the game. But, what is the main reason why Valorant players smurf? Let’s find out!
Why do Valorant players smurf? The reason why Valorant players smurf is to play with their friends that are in low ranks. Aside from that, Valorant players smurf because they are warming up before they play competitive mode on their original Valorant account.
Let’s dive deeper into this article so that you can understand what a smurf is in Valorant and how you can identify a smurf in-game. Let’s go!
What Does Smurfing Means In Valorant?
Even though there are smurfs in other competitive games like CS: GO, League of Legends, and Defense of the Ancients 2, the situation with smurfing in Valorant is a little bit different.
Most of the games listed above have a wide range of skills, and there are more differences between each rank tier. This makes the gaps between the ranks even bigger.
But in Valorant, the rank tiers are all the same distance apart, and the player’s skill ceiling doesn’t go up until they reach the Immortal rank or pass that barrier to reach the Radiant rank.
So, most of the smurfs in Valorant are between the Platinum and Diamond ranks, and most of them can’t cross or reach that barrier while trying to start over.
In most competitive games, people smurf to see how good they are against lower-level players and to give themselves a false sense of accomplishment. But in Valorant, most smurfs tend to try out their strength right from the start to level up.
Also, Riot Games has done a great job of fixing the problem and keeping the competitive ecosystem alive.
Are Smurfs Common In Valorant?
Smurfs in Valorant are very common! There are lots of smurfs in Iron, Bronze, and Silver elo. Some smurfs also love to play on Gold and Platinum elo.
In Iron, Bronze, and Silver elo, the rank of smurfs is around Platinum or Diamond. In Platinum and Gold, the rank of smurfs is usually Immortal or Radiant.
Is Valorant’s Smurf Detection Working?
Riot Games is doing a lot to cut down on smurf accounts in Valorant. When a higher-ranked player uses a lower-ranked account to stomp easier lobbies, this is called “smurfing.” This hurts the fairness and integrity of competition.
After putting out an automated system to find smurfs earlier this year, the developer is now ready to share the results of its new, stricter measures to stop smurfs.
The goal was to change the MMR of smurf accounts so that they reach their real rank faster, which seems to be working. Riot said that the number of smurfs is 17 percent lower than it was earlier in the year, and that new smurf accounts are reaching their correct MMR two to three times faster.
With automated smurf detection, Riot uses data to place smurf accounts as quickly as possible in the right MMR. This greatly reduces the number of games where players face unfair opponents.
The team held a test in North America on patch 5.01 to see if the system could correctly find smurfs and adjust their MMR so that it was as close as possible to their main account.
It started by counting the number of “stomps,” or matches where one team wins by eight rounds or more. Before the changes, smurfs beat their opponents one out of every three games, or 32% of the time.
The team tried out the new system on half of the smurfs they found. The other half were left alone as a control group. The smurfs in the test group eventually got within 1% of Riot’s target stomp rate, while the control group was still stomping in 25% of matches.
For the last experiment, the test was done all over the world, and the same improvements were seen again.
In fact, the system worked so well that smurfs were put in their real MMR after as few as four games. On the other hand, even after playing 10 games, smurfs in the control group were still about three divisions away from their correct MMR.
Riot wants to make sure that no smurfs fall through the cracks in the future. This means that it needs to improve the ways it finds smurfs and try out more aggressive MMR adjustments to get smurfs to their right rank even faster.
At the same time, the developer is trying to figure out why people make smurf accounts. One of the most common reasons is that players want to team up with friends of different ranks. Riot made it possible to 5-stack regardless of rank difference in patch 3.10.
Still, the work is far from done when it comes to smurf detection, and the developer says that there will be more changes in the future.
How To Know If You Are Playing Against Smurfs In Valorant?
My general rule of thumb is that they’re probably smurfing if they’re always using advanced techniques that I barely use or only know a little bit about.
If someone from bronze to gold is constantly counter strafing, especially to peek, and still getting a lot of clean headshots, they are probably a smurf.
Because of how it looks from the other side, low ranks often mistake counter strafing for “wow, he hit me while I was moving, wtf rng.”
Aside from that, if you can sense that the enemy is rotating quickly and know where your position is, it is probably smurfing.
Higher ranks have good game sense and they love pre-firing from different angles. So, if you think that the player knows where to shoot, it is probably smurfing. But it might also be cheating so try reporting it.
Smurfs are like cheaters in Valorant. The reason why is because they are very good in the game! They have good game sense, good aim, and they know where to point their crosshairs.
Final Words
Players in Valorant smurf so they can play with their friends in lower ranks. Aside from that, Valorant players smurf to get ready to play competitive mode on their main Valorant account. Playing against smurfs is inevitable. The only thing that you can do to defeat smurfs in Valorant is to get good and improve your skills.
