I got to Diamond 3 in Season 29. What follows is a list of things I keep getting wrong and am trying to fix.
For a long time I played a lot and did not improve at all. Looking back the reason was simple. I made the same mistakes every game and never once looked at them.
Fixing mistakes instead of repeating them
Queueing again straight after dying is the easy thing to do and it is what I used to do. Repetition can improve several skills, but in my case it left important mistakes unchanged because I never identified them.
What works better for me is small and boring. After I die I try to say the actual reason in one sentence before I do anything else. Something like "I pushed into the open with two of them alive", which is a thing I could have done differently, rather than "I got beamed", which is not. Then in the next game I watch for that one thing.
One mistake at a time. When I try to fix five things at once I fix none of them, and I have tested that enough times to be sure of it.
Everything below is just the mistakes I have managed to name so far. Game sense is much bigger than this, and there is plenty of it I still have not worked out. The three that cost me the most are marked as warnings.
Before the fight
Where I stand
Chinese players call a good position 优势枪位, the advantageous gun position. Two players can be the same distance apart and still be nowhere near equal, which took me a long time to actually believe.
Three things seem to make a position good.
- Cover within one step. If breaking the sightline takes one strafe I can trade, reset and heal. If it takes five metres of running, everything I take on the way is free damage for them.
- An awkward approach for them. If they have to cross open ground, climb, or drop down into me, they pay something for the entry. One door or one ramp is worth a lot.
- A way out. A position with no exit gets me killed even when I win the trade, because their team just rotates and I have nowhere to go.
High ground is usually good but not always. High ground with no cover and no exit is worse than low ground with both.
In a 3v3 I have to check two more things. Whether my cover still works when a second enemy opens up from another angle, and whether I am close enough to my team that we can shoot for each other. When I am too far away I am playing alone.
How I move
I try to stay close to cover whenever the route allows it, even before a fight starts. Some crossings are unavoidable; then I want a destination and a plan for getting there.
The cost is a slightly longer path. The benefit is that a shot from an angle I didn't check takes shield instead of the game.
Before crossing anything I try to ask where I would go if I got shot right now. If I have no answer then I am probably not ready to cross.
Whether to take the fight
Fights are rarely between two teams for long.
Before committing I try to work out what a third party would cost. If I can hear another squad nearby then this is a plan to fight two squads, and sometimes that is still fine, but I want to have decided it rather than found out.
If I do take it, I try to stand where I can watch the direction a third party would come from.
Late in the game the ring does most of the deciding. Fewer teams means fewer places to stand, and squads get pushed along fairly predictable lines. Being inside is usually worth more than better ground outside, because then they have to come to me.
In the fight
The three of them
For each enemy I try to keep track of things like these.
- Where they were last. The one I haven't seen for a few seconds is usually the one about to appear somewhere bad for me.
- Which legend. What they can do to me, and how they get away.
- Which weapon. The range they want. If they have a rifle and I have a shotgun then closing the distance is my problem.
- How healthy they are. Two cracked enemies is a completely different fight from two full ones.
- Which abilities are gone. A tactical or an ultimate that just went off leaves a window.
I get into a duel with the one or two enemies I can see, commit to it completely, and stop tracking the third. That one is not standing around. While I am busy they are quietly moving to a spot with an easy shot at me, opening another sightline onto me. The first I hear about it is the damage.
The three of us
Two things cover most of this. Focus fire means concentrating damage on the same opponent. Trading means answering an enemy’s damage or knock quickly enough that they cannot reset for free. Covering is holding an angle so a teammate can reload, heal or move safely. Both are about where I stand more than how I aim.
If we are too spread out there is no 3v3 at all. It can become three separate 1v3 fights in succession, with each of us facing the squad alone.
Spread out means specific things.
- My angle cannot reach the side of whoever is shooting my teammate.
- I cannot cover anything while a teammate reloads or heals.
- When I am the one taking fire, neither of them can do anything about it.
The strongest squads I have faced coordinate this well. Sometimes they finish the fight in twenty to thirty seconds. Their angles let them punish whoever commits to shooting a teammate, while covering each other's movement. That timing is my observation, not a rule for every high-ranked team, and it does not guarantee that a third party stays away. Aim still matters; coordination helps turn it into a team advantage.
What I want is the opposite of getting split. Three of us against one of them, three times over.
Turning points
When their attention moves
Angles change. A position that is good for the enemy stops being good once I am shooting at the side of it.
The time to move is when they are looking at someone else. A teammate engaging them at mid range may create a chance to move, but it does not mean nobody is watching me. I still need to account for the other enemies and check the route before trying to flank.
The limit is the same as before. If I go far enough that my team can't help me then I have just started a 1v3 somewhere prettier.
After a knock
If all three of us are still up, knocking one enemy makes it 3v2, and this is where I throw rounds away.
I run straight at them while the advantage lasts and forget everything above on the way in. I stop hugging cover, I stop tracking the other two, and I get knocked in the open by the two people I stopped watching. Now it is 2v2 and I have given the advantage back.
The window does close, because they can pick their teammate back up, so there is real pressure to use it. The mistake is turning that pressure into a sprint. Holding a useful angle on the downed player can deny or punish a revive while keeping me near cover. It is not guaranteed: cover and abilities may still let them recover, so I need to keep watching the remaining players.
It is worth waiting for the same mistake from them. When a squad knocks one of us, some of them rush in immediately with no cover discipline at all, and that is a timing I can hold an angle for. Taking one there puts it back to 2v2.
What this leaves out
Quite a lot. Loot decisions, rotation timing, when to use abilities, comms, and everything specific to individual legends. Aim as well, which I am also still working on.
This is only the positioning and awareness part, and only the pieces of it I have been able to put into words.