Ramblings of a madman
AGGRO AND TEMPO
Being aggressive at the right moment and timing it well can show great results.
Aggro is the idea that you should always be aggressive, but in the right areas. Your team is stuck in a choke with nowhere else to go? Be the first one to step forward and be the fall guy so that they get the idea to push. Results may vary but that’s the general gist
Tempo is matching what I like to call a ‘timing’ on when you should be pushing or when you should be rotating. A lot of it is touchy feely because you have to figure out the flow of the match first, which can take a few rounds. But if you figure it out, you can easily exploit things like how the enemy team rotates early at a specific point and keep constantly flanking them to get free kills until they look at and deal with you. Things like that
VALUE
Your inherent worth to the team, and no it doesn’t always mean getting kills. You can get value out of things that get you killed.
Enemy team rushing the site you’re on all at once? Don’t fall back immediately. Try to stay around for even a second or two to allow your team to rotate and get set up for the retake.
Or running interference with a high mobility or hard to kill character while on a flank to force your enemies into a tough situation. Where they have to deal with not only you, but also your team from now behind, and it takes the wind out of their sails.
In either scenario, kills are just a bonus. You’re just trying to slow down the enemy’s push and make them have tough choices that even in the worst case scenario and you died, so long as you didn’t fuck up the execution greatly, you’ve contributed enough to your team winning the round.
COMMUNICATION
While more intel is good, it’s the quality of it that makes the difference.
Please don’t spam useless garbage when you die like “HOW DID THAT NOT KILL HIM?!?!?!” and not give the exact damage numbers you did or the general amount of health they have left.
On top of this, pings exist for a reason. And while spam pinging in theory sounds worse than live communication through VC in discord, all that extra noise will get in the way of your buddies playing and maybe they’ll miss crucial sounds they need to hear.
In a ranked setting you can totally rely on just pings alone. In a proper competitive setting where there’s pride or money on the line, keep your comms short and to the point. Give out the relevant info upon death or where you’ve seen them with your own eyes or on the minimap.
But other than that. Please shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear your ramblings in a tense 2v4 situation. Thanks
TEAMMATES VS THE INDIVIDUAL
As you climb, it’s often not your teammates fault for supporting you. They can’t read your mind, and neither can you. The blame solely falls on you most of the time but you don’t realize it.
Even if your teammate’s with you when you’re going to push, don’t actually expect them to push with you. There is a time and a place to be selfish, as there is a time and a place to play with the team. You’ll never be on the same page and you have to work around that.
No one’s going to push with you when it's 5v5 and there’s no info. If you’re going to make that play, you should resign yourself and know that you’re going to have no backup. Expecting to have backup there is fundamentally flawed because it leads to a loss in man count, and means the enemy team has an easier time taking space.
Sometimes playing with the team will win you games. Go figure how that works huh?
WHEN TO PUSH AND MAN COUNT
If you get a kill that’s kinda closeish to where you killed them, and you have your teammates with you, you should be pushing. If the kill is too far away or you have no one with you, you shouldn’t be pushing, and expecting people to be pushing will only lead to the inverse happening where they’re a man up instead of you.
Good general rule of thumb otherwise is on two kills. That’s when you should be stepping on the gas pedal.
Man count matters always because it dictates what you can get away with. It’s much easier to push when there’s only four people on a team instead of five right? And it snowballs from there. Map also factors into this but generally you’ll be playing more passive the more even the player numbers are between teams.
One last note. Please push when you have an isolated enemy and you have the numbers advantage. Unless they’re just cracked, that’s a free kill always.
LIMITING LINE OF SIGHT AND PEEKING ETIQUETTE
Slice the pie always. Google it if you don’t know what that means.
More on that, being farther away from an angle can counterintuitively make you harder to hit, and sticking closer to a wall can also do the same. Just depends on how steep of an angle they’re holding. So a lot of this you’ll have to figure out as you go.
When peeking, please don’t at the same time, especially on the same ‘line’ where it’s one in front and back. Either time your peeks slightly or significantly off from one another, or take a much wider angle. Both are usually the best course of action.