The trend of “rank climbing challenges” seems to be gaining popularity again in the League of Legends community, and leading the charge in this movement recently is none other than TF Blade. Recently, he launched an event called “Climb from Unranked to Challenger with the highest win rate.”
This topic immediately attracted a lot of attention from the North American League of Legends community.
However, alongside the large viewership, there has been a wave of criticism directed at TF Blade, primarily regarding his alleged smurfing under the guise of this challenge, while Riot Games has remained silent on the matter.
A Reddit post criticizing TF Blade and Yassuo for “smurfing under disguise” by launching rank climbing challenges on stream attracted up to 2,600 comments, most of which were backlash aimed at this streamer, arguing that he is ruining matches for lower-elo players.
Specifically, this post criticizes the “Climbing from Unranked to Challenger” challenge by TF Blade, Yassuo, and several other streamers. The aforementioned gamer claims that players with high skill and elo choosing such content to gain views is a destructive act towards the experience of lower-ranked players, plainly stating that they are smurfing.
Everyone understands that when creating a new account, players must go through Bronze and Silver ranks, and with TF Blade’s skill level, climbing through these ranks is not particularly difficult.
However, this also means that his opponents will have to endure frustrating defeats when they face a competitor who is “unequally skilled” and have to accept being crushed.
Furthermore, what has made many gamers “angry” with TF Blade is not only his smurfing but also his relatively excessive reactions when his teammates make poor plays. Everyone understands that players in Silver and Bronze ranks cannot have high skills, but they do not deserve such criticism. On the contrary, many opinions suggest that TF Blade should reflect on the issue and himself, as he is the one who is “out of place” when he relies on his high skill to bully lower-ranked players.
“I watched 5 minutes of TF Blade’s stream and saw him react as if he was about to lose it because his teammates were quite useless. Truly a ‘weird type of person.’
>>> Imagine you drop to a lower elo to rank and yell at your teammates, ‘playing like low elo players’…
>>> He is truly toxic. From the early days of his streaming, he later toned it down a bit, but it went back to the same. It’s best to watch when he doesn’t have his cam or mic on, because at least you won’t have to hear him whining.
>>> What do you expect from a guy banned from the Korean server for yelling at his teammates?”
Yassuo is also one of the streamers participating in this challenge, but at least he does not yell at his teammates on stream, so luckily the “Best God” has not become the center of controversy in the community like TF Blade. However, this streamer has also been condemned for similar “smurfing” actions.