League of Legends (L.O.L) is an online-based strategy game. These types of games are classified as massive online battle arenas or M.O.B.A. in short. L.O.L. is based on the Defense of The Ancients (D.O.T.A) map of Warcraft 3.

Among the D.O.T.A. based M.O.B.A. games, L.O.L. is one of the most popular ones, in terms of both active users and viewership of streams and e-sports. In 2019, Riot Games, the parent company behind  L.O.L. announced it had more than 100 million active accounts. The average viewership for the L.O.L. World Champions is close to 48 million.

It suffices to say L.O.L. has a massive following. Professional players in L.O.L. enjoy a different level of respect. They usually have a massive following and a standard earning scheme. Making this online game more lucrative as a career.

To gain a career in L.O.L. you have to have an objective in mind and ready to do the hard work.  Smurfing is one of these tasks. In this article, we try to familiarize you with the concept of smurfing, how you can do it, and why you should do it.

What is Smurfing

In L.O.L. and M.O.B.A. lingo, smurfing is when a high elo player chooses to play in lower elos for various reasons. They can choose to create a new account for this purpose or use their main account. In most cases, players are using the first method, as in ranked games, one can’t simply switch to a lower rank. It raises some ethical questions for players.

Its no surprise that higher Elo players outsmart the low elo players – both in terms of skill and maneuvering champions across the map. Which disrupts the low elo player’s motivation. Sometimes these smurfing players will “hard carry” the game, creating an unjustified situation for the opponent. In many cases, smurfs are brought in by low elo players to help them level up.

For these reasons, there have been talks of banning smurfing. But for our context, the L.O.L. authority which is Riot, hasn’t quite banned smurfing. Rather, it tried to discourage it and even enable it in different game modes within L.O.L., to keep the central game experience to as mint a condition as possible. But, as it stands smurfing is allowed in L.O.L, and its users widely exploit the option.

While we are not encouraging smurfing to get a disproportionate advantage, we believe it has some uses for players if they want to improve their skills in the game. Without further ado, let’s discuss how you can smurf.

How can you smurf

In its definition, smurfing requires you to have a separate account from your main account for this process. In L.O.L. you can smurf with your main account in all pick mode. But it’s discouraged, as new players may lose morale for your smurfing. There are two proper ways for smurfing.

The first one involves buying L.O.L. accounts. You may ask- why should you buy them if you can build one for free? To answer your question simply- it’s a lot of hard work.

In L.O.L., the champions aren’t free for you to play. They have to be earned by playing and winning matches and by gathering enough shards to buy a champ. Or if you are willing to part with your money, then you can opt for buying Riot points with real-time cash to buy champs.

Getting 20 champs will unlock the ranked system for you. For someone already playing ranked, it’s a toiling process to go through all that. Which is why players buy league accounts with enough resources to start them off on a comfortable path. These accounts come equipped with enough champions and shards, especially if you want to start smurfing with them.

The other method is the hard way. Opening an account in a conventional way. You should be able to avoid the bot playing stages as you are already playing ranked. You can start by playing unranked all pick games.

The usual player elo level in unranked is pretty low. You should have a smooth leveling here. You can try to win the game with your skillset by doing hard carry, which will ensure more shards to buy champions. Occasionally you may face smurfing players like yourself, which will be a fun challenge for you.

Creating a smurf account by playing is an intricate process. Even though Riot officially hasn’t banned smurfing, it follows a policy of banning if found smurfing. If you show your surprisingly good skills in a low elo matchup and you keep doing that consistently you may catch their attention. Which is why you have to be very careful while building a smurf account.

Why you should smurf

Now let’s see how we can justify smurfing by answering the question- why should you do it. Let’s start by saying that smurfing provides an unfair advantage to a certain team – and it is not the right thing to do.

However, smurf has another, very important application for the skill development facet of a player.

First of all, it has its application in learning new champs. If you have a main champ that reaches a high-level rank position, it may not be feasible for you to experience new champs with that particular account. That’s because it could lead to rank relegation for your account. You may have to face lower elo with your main champ then.

To avoid such a situation, you should have a smurf account handy, where you can easily practice a new champ. And when you are good at it, you can start playing that particular champ in your main account too. And it’s necessary to have skills in more than one role, as matchups don’t always maintain role priority and you may get an uncomfortable role in a ranked match.

Next, you could choose to explore more aspects of your main champ by smurfing. Say you want to try out a radical build or a completely new set of rules on your champ and see how it plays out. If the experiment backfires, your main account could face rank demotion.

If you have a smurf account handy, you can always try out these experiments. Most of the pro players follow this system.

Another application could be, if you are having a bad streak or you are tilting hard for some reason, you could choose to take a break from your main account and go smurfing to regain a grip on your champ.

This is a pretty normal thing to happen to a player. As Riot keeps churning out new patches for L.O.L. without a miss, they keep buffing or nerfing the champions as per popular request or on their own accord. Newly released champs face these nerfing or buffing much more than the stable ones.

So, playing a new champion or getting acquainted with the adjustments made to the old one, you may choose to go smurfing, to get a better idea.

As it stands, smurfing for performance reasons is good for a player. It helps you build skills and unlock new potentials. While there are taboos regarding the practice in the gaming community, if you are committing the practice correctly for performance reasons, we would say you are smurfing right.