People here really don't talk about it but it's true. And before anyone says anything I have actually went up from C1 in s14 to C3 in currently, so back in s14 with my current skill I would easily be GC. I understand all of that, but still I see way more smurfs than back in s14. And it's easy for me to recognize too because I solo queue 2s and only play with irl friends who play less often in 3s so my 3s rank is much lower, and I see people with better skill than my C3 games in diamond 2 often.
I guess that could make me a "smurf" too, but really that's just where my team is stuck at. Really my buddies should be lower and I should be higher, but we don't care we just like to play games together. That's just the dynamic of 3s.
It's not a blatant level of smurfing, you probably couldn't tell the difference a lot of the time as I play chill games with the squad. But you'd be surprised at how many under the radar smurfs/fresh accounts I see in diamond playing with their buddies too. Super common but no one here ever likes to mention it and it gets downvoted. Frustrating sometimes.
I know they can't really fix it and I know people want to be able to play games with their less skilled friends, I get that casual sucks with the mathmaking and leavers, I get all of that aside from the blatant trolling. But what I don't get is everyone in this sub pretending like it's not common because it fucking is. Just call a spade a spade.
Well that's the end of my rant lmao. Good luck on the grind this season, game is still fun regardless of the smurfing anyways. I recommend just trying to learn from them if you can, save replays and all that. But it does get frustrating especially with the new increase in smurfs since s1 from the PC crowd. It's just easier for them than ever to make a new account and quickly grind to level 10. That's just the state of the game at the moment.
On the bright side, once you improve and climb out of diamond it gets much harder for smurfs to toy around with you without putting up a fight. That's why they all cluster around in diamond and below, because it's easy to solo carry any team up to mid/high diamond because of the skill gap. That's also why freestylers chill in diamond (those are smurfs too don't get it twisted). Then they hit a wall where everyone needs to be decent enough to progress into the champs because that's where team play really starts to matter so they just get stuck in diamond like I am.