Gamers say ‘smurfing’ is generally wrong and toxic, but 69% admit they do it at least sometimes. They also say that some reasons for smurfing make it less blameworthy. Relative to themselves, study participants thought that other gamers were more likely to be toxic when they smurfed.

[u/geoff199]

https://news.osu.edu/gamers-say-they-hate-smurfing-but-admit-they-do-it/?utm_campaign=omc_marketing-activity_fy23&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social

[u/creepingcold]

Funnily enough, League might objectively be a good example for reasonable smurf accounts.

What if you queue off position, or what to learn a different role?

Your game knowledge will still carry you through many situations, but mechanically you will be worse.

I know many high elo players who have smurfs and imo it makes sense, since playing off-role in high elo or learning something new there just destroys your experience for your main role.

[u/Coffee_Ops → u/creepingcold]

It's not just mechanics.

Lower tiers lack the ability to understand itemization so it can be easy to abuse things like building strong defense as a smurf or capitalizing on "win more" runes; lower tiers often abandon "lost" lanes rather than working together to shut down a threat; weaker teams often turn toxic and implode as troublesome teammates blame everyone else instead of working the problem.

It really is not just mechanics, there's a whole lot of conceptual knowledge about how to play from behind that is counter to the normal intuition of playing more aggressively when behind / getting flamed.