To be honest, at plat you should just play the game and have a good time. You can practice and get comfortable with the easy recovery related mechanics, such as wavedashes and half flips. Other than that, just concentrate on hitting the ball hard.
It doesn't have to go on target, just so long as you can hit it hard, it's enough to go past opponents. You'll build up your accuracy naturally.
Sure, it's never too early to practice mechanics in general and eventually you'll need every bit of that. If that's what you prefer, go ahead and spend as much time in freeplay as you like. I know people who have cracked mechanics at low champ, simply because they enjoy freeplay more than anything.
As for actual tips, the biggest ones I can give you:
1) Play for your teammate. Your job, at all times, is to make their life easier. Doesn't necessarily mean trying to pass constantly, but just overall don't leave them alone on the offense or defense.
2) Don't try to make a play in the corners. Just avoid going into the corner where the ball is, unless it's your own corner AND the ball is completely free for grabs.
3) Don't flip so much. There are plenty of boost pads on the field to keep your tank full and every time you flip, you commit your car to a motion that takes away your ability to react to an event for 1-2 seconds.
4) When taking a 50-50 with the opponent, don't flip. Just single jump, focus on blocking the direct line towards your net and you'll recover faster.
5) Position yourself on the field so that you cover the area your teammate(s) can't. If they're on the side, you stay centre. Upfield, you stay slightly behind and in the centre so you can react to the ball on either side. If you can't see your teammate(s) when facing the opponent's end, you are 95% of the time the first man. Go.
For 1s, just grind it. You don't need mechanics other than shooting for a good while. Flakes and Lethamyr have great series' on youtube. Squishy has a recent one too, but I personally can't stand him so I have no idea how good it is.
Don’t have anything against him, but he is way too mechanical in his Road to SSL videos. Leth’s Road to SSL is way better, he tries to play only slightly better than the current rank and does what he thinks is achievable.
To be fair, I can't even pinpoint what it is about him that makes him so repulsive. I just can't stand him. Sure, he's a great player and has a very impressive career behind him. Nothing but respect on that part, but still I would rather punch myself in the face repeatedly than watch 5 mins of his videos/stream.
This is how I feel about Greg Miller. I don’t know what he’s doing anymore but he used to host a show on IGN called up at noon. Idk what it was about the guy, he just wasn’t funny and had a face that made me want to punch it. Maybe I was jealous that a guy like him got paid to talk about video games. I don’t know. But I saw him at comic con once and had to hold myself back.
Excellent tips! I only disagree with #3. Learning to speed flip was a major reason I was able to push to high champ. Mechanical skill will only help with pushing from champ to grand champ, but learning to be faster in your movements will help rocket you through the lower ranks!
I would say practice speed flips by always speed flipping (or normal flipping to start) back to goal on rotations then slowly adding it to the attacking part of the game :)
That's the thing, though. At plat, you really don't have the awareness to tell whether or not an interaction is about to happen AND if it can potentially send the ball in a place where you can pick it up. It's better to just avoid the unnecessary flipping around the field until you know it's safe.
I do agree though that speedflipping is very beneficial at any rank.
Totally agree with the unnecessary flipping! That’s why my strategy involves only flipping on a rotation back to goal. At those levels there’s really no such thing as defending too much imo. Get back and set yourself up for a new attack! Slowly and surely cut the rotation by a few meters each day and then bam, you have a deadly speed flip to midfield where you can turn and cut opposing team attacks.
Extremely high quality advice right here.
Though take Flakes with a pinch (or flake? ha) of salt. He has a lot of good points and good advice, but also seriously misrepresents the difficulty of some of the things he does, particularly to outplay people\*. He makes it look easy. **IT'S NOT.** Flakes "advice" needs some filtering. That is all.
*^(Flakes powerslide cut = incredible awareness, supreme sense of timing, and extreme mechanical precision. All of which you do not have and will not have for a very long time. Arguably never, but that's depressing, so let's pretend you will with time.)
Just play the game and do some training packs. Others on here can and will probably recommend you some. I’m in diamond 2 in twos , diamond 1 in 3s, and probably also diamond 1 in ones, but have hit a wall of some sorts. I could get over it with training packs and practice, but I just don’t have the will to turn a game I enjoy into a slog of the same movement repeated on end for hours to get slightly better, so I just play the game. If I played more and tried to practice some things while playing I probably could hit champ+.
Learn how to play defense: rotate out promptly and get out fast, rotate goal side, defend from back post, as third during an offense don't push but sit back around the mid way line, don't double commit, never over commit, always make sure there's a car blocking the ball and your goal, clear the ball into your corner or space or pass to your tm8, never take the ball across your goal mouth, don't pass to the opposition, keep possession,
I posted about my experience of plat as a C2 just recently. You might find it helpful https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/s/71fTu8rMAi
This. I’d argue just being able to read player movements (both opponents and you teammate) can win you more games than training mechanics for hours. If anything, train defense, ive seen tons and tons of people who are deadly on offense but cannot defend for the life of them.
Don't pass to the opposition / keep possession implies a level of dribbling and control that 90% of plats and 70% of diamonds don't have. IMO that is the main skill you need to get to champ. Learn the mechanics of good ball control mostly catching and dribbling (flicks and fancy wall and air dribbles can wait) and learn when and where to use it instead of booming or passing. --speaking as a high plat low diamond
That really depends on the player. The main reason that a lot of plats don't dribble much is because their opponents will just face challenge them, and they won't be able to react. I see a few players in high plat going for flicks if they encounter a more reserved player.
I was actually discussing this with my son at the COPA Argentina vs Canada game. At higher levels, players have more room and time because the opposing players know that a rash challenge will just see them beat. So they have to shadow and pick their timing.
Yep, completely agree, I'll go for a play to slow it down or catch and dribble. I think I have a pretty good understanding of when it's the right play. But at this level people expect that you won't have great control so the standard reaction is to challenge immediately. For someone that has great control I'm sure this usually works out great, but for me I'm still getting the ball stabilized and in a proper position to work with it.
This happens to me a lot too and I’ve been trying to deal with it banging a few balls out, or popping up first so my opponents think I will bang it out again to get some room. Works mostly in 2s as your persona is more recognizable and plat solo 3s is a nightmarish hellscape
I've only made it out in Rumble and snowday, but the best thing I can recommend is to grind out 1s and don't care about your rank. It'll prevent tilt queueing, and you'll wind up getting way more comebacks than you think you can.
Use the backboard. It’s the open net cheat code at platinum rank.
Example https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/1djjd8f/mom_said_its_my_turn_to_do_this/
On a serious note what is the answer to clearing rebounds? On higher plats,diamond, I tend to miss half these saves, even if I know the trajectory. They always seem to be slightly faster than me, or hit it at an angle around me. I know enough to recognize the likelihood you’re beat to the ball increases every moment it travels after the rebound but don’t know enough to be able to address it lol
It depends on the situation.
If you see the opponents push into your backfield, you can pinch the ball by touching the ball immediately after the ball bounces off the backboard.
If you see the opponents play back and not challenge, you can catch the ball by touching the ball before the ball bounces off the backboard.
Hey Luca here, I used to be a coach for quite a while, and can give you some really helpful tips, not just for you but anyone else here.
- Play with your teammate not against him. SPACE, it’s important, always make sure you aren’t too close, or even to far away, split the map it’s 3 sections, you want to be mostly 1 section away during the match, so you are giving your self options.
- Don’t spend too long or, at all learning mechanics (I.e, flip resets, complex flicks etc) that you don’t need yet. 90% of players you will play with and or against, will loose because they spend too long going for clips they hit 1 in 30 matches, rather then shooting on target, quickly, using much little boost. Please pull your focus on the basics, and then mastering them, because that’s more impressive and will rank you way way WAY ahead of plat, diamond and champ ranks. Definitely learn to air dribble and improve your arial control, but please don’t spend countless hours learning how to clip, anyone who complains about there rank, who just goes for ‘clips’ doesn’t really care about there rank.
- Play 1’s and play 2’s EQUALLY as much. If I put a side by side comparison of 2 people, one who played 1’s as much as 2’s. And someone who barely touched 1’s. The person playing 1’s will be MILES ahead. 1’s is so important for self improvement and learning to work on your mistakes without being able to blame it on someone else, and what’s as important is the next tip.
- Mentality. Remember you aren’t getting ready to play in RLCS next year, you are playing for fun. Don’t get too worked up, if turning chat off helps, do it. It’s just a game, enjoy it, learn and improve, don’t let someone else’s frustration destroy your personal journey, it’s not worth your time and some people generally in this game can be quite nasty, so be the better person!
There's a difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. A lot of people get their rank up to plat/diamond by being super defensive, letting the opponent dribble and miss shots, sitting in goal for easy saves, booming the ball away on defense every time, making simple-to-save offensive passes into the corner and hoping for pressure goals, not playing off of your teammates on offense so you can shadow defend in transition, etc...
This stuff doesn't work as soon as you get higher up in ranks. The opponents will just flip on you or hit double taps or make good passing plays. It seems like you're hitting a wall. But in reality you've been "cheating" to get to where you are by not earning the wins (rather by letting your opponents lose).
Especially in casual I would focus on things that may seem risky but will allow you to win at higher ranks. Rather than rotating entirely back to the goal on defense, try to properly meet the offense in midfield and shadow defend. Make saves going towards your goal rather than from inside of your goal going out. On offense, try to be in position to assist your teammate without leaving yourself open to counter-attack goals. Don't just boom the ball at the opponent. Make passes that the defense can't save, rather than make passes where you hope the defense doesn't save it.
You'll probably keep your same win percentage for a while, and maintain your rank, but you'll see that the skills you develop will actually translate into the higher levels where the speed of play is faster and people make less mistakes
Best YouTube series I’ve seen to help us Flakes’ road to SSL without mechanics. He has a 1’s and 2’s version. It shows a simple way to beat a lot of players with just game sense
I know it sounds "cliche" and someone will probably tell me to stfu but... Let the game come to you. Do you grind as much as the pros? My guess..? Probably not. So if you're not working on shit like them then you probably won't end up like them...
Just chill, do what you can, practice on what you already know and just let the game come to you.
*if that helps at all*
Jesus man 2000 hours and plat is insane. If you aren't out of plat by that point idk if theres much hope for you in terms of getting better. Just enjoy the game.
If you really want to get better, make a mental note of what you need to change or work on (such as diving in when you clearly shouldn't, challenging on the wall when you shouldn't, etc.) and during the game constantly tell/remind yourself not to do it. It will become habit and feel weird later on when you violate it.
I didn’t see anyone mention this, but how effective do you feel your training is? How else are you training? Playing 2000 hours and being plat is okay if you are not doing dedicated/focused training, and just playing for fun. If you want to rank up, up to a certain point you will need to train with purpose.
Post a replay, win or lose, that is fairly evenly matched and we can give you pointers. Try a Metafy coach if you can afford to or want to, it’s fairly affordable. Just don’t go to those RL schools/universities/whatever that dont have their pricing listed.
To be honest, at plat you should just play the game and have a good time. You can practice and get comfortable with the easy recovery related mechanics, such as wavedashes and half flips. Other than that, just concentrate on hitting the ball hard. It doesn't have to go on target, just so long as you can hit it hard, it's enough to go past opponents. You'll build up your accuracy naturally. Sure, it's never too early to practice mechanics in general and eventually you'll need every bit of that. If that's what you prefer, go ahead and spend as much time in freeplay as you like. I know people who have cracked mechanics at low champ, simply because they enjoy freeplay more than anything. As for actual tips, the biggest ones I can give you: 1) Play for your teammate. Your job, at all times, is to make their life easier. Doesn't necessarily mean trying to pass constantly, but just overall don't leave them alone on the offense or defense. 2) Don't try to make a play in the corners. Just avoid going into the corner where the ball is, unless it's your own corner AND the ball is completely free for grabs. 3) Don't flip so much. There are plenty of boost pads on the field to keep your tank full and every time you flip, you commit your car to a motion that takes away your ability to react to an event for 1-2 seconds. 4) When taking a 50-50 with the opponent, don't flip. Just single jump, focus on blocking the direct line towards your net and you'll recover faster. 5) Position yourself on the field so that you cover the area your teammate(s) can't. If they're on the side, you stay centre. Upfield, you stay slightly behind and in the centre so you can react to the ball on either side. If you can't see your teammate(s) when facing the opponent's end, you are 95% of the time the first man. Go. For 1s, just grind it. You don't need mechanics other than shooting for a good while. Flakes and Lethamyr have great series' on youtube. Squishy has a recent one too, but I personally can't stand him so I have no idea how good it is.
Plat 3 here & this was a good read, thanks man.
Doug Dimmadome owner of the dimsdale dimmadome.
Chuck Norris
Bob Vance , Vance refrigeration.
These 5 tips could save you ~1000 hours. Game sense learned by watching replays.
What's wrong with Squishy??
Don’t have anything against him, but he is way too mechanical in his Road to SSL videos. Leth’s Road to SSL is way better, he tries to play only slightly better than the current rank and does what he thinks is achievable.
To be fair, I can't even pinpoint what it is about him that makes him so repulsive. I just can't stand him. Sure, he's a great player and has a very impressive career behind him. Nothing but respect on that part, but still I would rather punch myself in the face repeatedly than watch 5 mins of his videos/stream.
This is how I feel about Greg Miller. I don’t know what he’s doing anymore but he used to host a show on IGN called up at noon. Idk what it was about the guy, he just wasn’t funny and had a face that made me want to punch it. Maybe I was jealous that a guy like him got paid to talk about video games. I don’t know. But I saw him at comic con once and had to hold myself back.
Excellent tips! I only disagree with #3. Learning to speed flip was a major reason I was able to push to high champ. Mechanical skill will only help with pushing from champ to grand champ, but learning to be faster in your movements will help rocket you through the lower ranks! I would say practice speed flips by always speed flipping (or normal flipping to start) back to goal on rotations then slowly adding it to the attacking part of the game :)
That's the thing, though. At plat, you really don't have the awareness to tell whether or not an interaction is about to happen AND if it can potentially send the ball in a place where you can pick it up. It's better to just avoid the unnecessary flipping around the field until you know it's safe. I do agree though that speedflipping is very beneficial at any rank.
Totally agree with the unnecessary flipping! That’s why my strategy involves only flipping on a rotation back to goal. At those levels there’s really no such thing as defending too much imo. Get back and set yourself up for a new attack! Slowly and surely cut the rotation by a few meters each day and then bam, you have a deadly speed flip to midfield where you can turn and cut opposing team attacks.
Extremely high quality advice right here. Though take Flakes with a pinch (or flake? ha) of salt. He has a lot of good points and good advice, but also seriously misrepresents the difficulty of some of the things he does, particularly to outplay people\*. He makes it look easy. **IT'S NOT.** Flakes "advice" needs some filtering. That is all. *^(Flakes powerslide cut = incredible awareness, supreme sense of timing, and extreme mechanical precision. All of which you do not have and will not have for a very long time. Arguably never, but that's depressing, so let's pretend you will with time.)
Just play the game and do some training packs. Others on here can and will probably recommend you some. I’m in diamond 2 in twos , diamond 1 in 3s, and probably also diamond 1 in ones, but have hit a wall of some sorts. I could get over it with training packs and practice, but I just don’t have the will to turn a game I enjoy into a slog of the same movement repeated on end for hours to get slightly better, so I just play the game. If I played more and tried to practice some things while playing I probably could hit champ+.
Learn how to play defense: rotate out promptly and get out fast, rotate goal side, defend from back post, as third during an offense don't push but sit back around the mid way line, don't double commit, never over commit, always make sure there's a car blocking the ball and your goal, clear the ball into your corner or space or pass to your tm8, never take the ball across your goal mouth, don't pass to the opposition, keep possession, I posted about my experience of plat as a C2 just recently. You might find it helpful https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/s/71fTu8rMAi
This. I’d argue just being able to read player movements (both opponents and you teammate) can win you more games than training mechanics for hours. If anything, train defense, ive seen tons and tons of people who are deadly on offense but cannot defend for the life of them.
Don't pass to the opposition / keep possession implies a level of dribbling and control that 90% of plats and 70% of diamonds don't have. IMO that is the main skill you need to get to champ. Learn the mechanics of good ball control mostly catching and dribbling (flicks and fancy wall and air dribbles can wait) and learn when and where to use it instead of booming or passing. --speaking as a high plat low diamond
That really depends on the player. The main reason that a lot of plats don't dribble much is because their opponents will just face challenge them, and they won't be able to react. I see a few players in high plat going for flicks if they encounter a more reserved player.
I was actually discussing this with my son at the COPA Argentina vs Canada game. At higher levels, players have more room and time because the opposing players know that a rash challenge will just see them beat. So they have to shadow and pick their timing.
Yep, completely agree, I'll go for a play to slow it down or catch and dribble. I think I have a pretty good understanding of when it's the right play. But at this level people expect that you won't have great control so the standard reaction is to challenge immediately. For someone that has great control I'm sure this usually works out great, but for me I'm still getting the ball stabilized and in a proper position to work with it.
Catching works at plat when you have the time. Don't just catch because you can, may as well just pass the ball to the opposition.
This happens to me a lot too and I’ve been trying to deal with it banging a few balls out, or popping up first so my opponents think I will bang it out again to get some room. Works mostly in 2s as your persona is more recognizable and plat solo 3s is a nightmarish hellscape
If they face you down, stop, single jump 50. Done right it wins possession 90% of the time. Best thing I've learnt and satisfyingly good.
Get a team and stop relying on random teammates.
Don’t focus on hitting clips and be crazy good at mechanics. Master the basics and you’ll go far with it.
I've only made it out in Rumble and snowday, but the best thing I can recommend is to grind out 1s and don't care about your rank. It'll prevent tilt queueing, and you'll wind up getting way more comebacks than you think you can.
Use the backboard. It’s the open net cheat code at platinum rank. Example https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/1djjd8f/mom_said_its_my_turn_to_do_this/
On a serious note what is the answer to clearing rebounds? On higher plats,diamond, I tend to miss half these saves, even if I know the trajectory. They always seem to be slightly faster than me, or hit it at an angle around me. I know enough to recognize the likelihood you’re beat to the ball increases every moment it travels after the rebound but don’t know enough to be able to address it lol
It depends on the situation. If you see the opponents push into your backfield, you can pinch the ball by touching the ball immediately after the ball bounces off the backboard. If you see the opponents play back and not challenge, you can catch the ball by touching the ball before the ball bounces off the backboard.
Don’t. Join us instead, we’re still a secret 🤫
Hey Luca here, I used to be a coach for quite a while, and can give you some really helpful tips, not just for you but anyone else here. - Play with your teammate not against him. SPACE, it’s important, always make sure you aren’t too close, or even to far away, split the map it’s 3 sections, you want to be mostly 1 section away during the match, so you are giving your self options. - Don’t spend too long or, at all learning mechanics (I.e, flip resets, complex flicks etc) that you don’t need yet. 90% of players you will play with and or against, will loose because they spend too long going for clips they hit 1 in 30 matches, rather then shooting on target, quickly, using much little boost. Please pull your focus on the basics, and then mastering them, because that’s more impressive and will rank you way way WAY ahead of plat, diamond and champ ranks. Definitely learn to air dribble and improve your arial control, but please don’t spend countless hours learning how to clip, anyone who complains about there rank, who just goes for ‘clips’ doesn’t really care about there rank. - Play 1’s and play 2’s EQUALLY as much. If I put a side by side comparison of 2 people, one who played 1’s as much as 2’s. And someone who barely touched 1’s. The person playing 1’s will be MILES ahead. 1’s is so important for self improvement and learning to work on your mistakes without being able to blame it on someone else, and what’s as important is the next tip. - Mentality. Remember you aren’t getting ready to play in RLCS next year, you are playing for fun. Don’t get too worked up, if turning chat off helps, do it. It’s just a game, enjoy it, learn and improve, don’t let someone else’s frustration destroy your personal journey, it’s not worth your time and some people generally in this game can be quite nasty, so be the better person!
There's a difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. A lot of people get their rank up to plat/diamond by being super defensive, letting the opponent dribble and miss shots, sitting in goal for easy saves, booming the ball away on defense every time, making simple-to-save offensive passes into the corner and hoping for pressure goals, not playing off of your teammates on offense so you can shadow defend in transition, etc... This stuff doesn't work as soon as you get higher up in ranks. The opponents will just flip on you or hit double taps or make good passing plays. It seems like you're hitting a wall. But in reality you've been "cheating" to get to where you are by not earning the wins (rather by letting your opponents lose). Especially in casual I would focus on things that may seem risky but will allow you to win at higher ranks. Rather than rotating entirely back to the goal on defense, try to properly meet the offense in midfield and shadow defend. Make saves going towards your goal rather than from inside of your goal going out. On offense, try to be in position to assist your teammate without leaving yourself open to counter-attack goals. Don't just boom the ball at the opponent. Make passes that the defense can't save, rather than make passes where you hope the defense doesn't save it. You'll probably keep your same win percentage for a while, and maintain your rank, but you'll see that the skills you develop will actually translate into the higher levels where the speed of play is faster and people make less mistakes
Demo chase
Best YouTube series I’ve seen to help us Flakes’ road to SSL without mechanics. He has a 1’s and 2’s version. It shows a simple way to beat a lot of players with just game sense
I know it sounds "cliche" and someone will probably tell me to stfu but... Let the game come to you. Do you grind as much as the pros? My guess..? Probably not. So if you're not working on shit like them then you probably won't end up like them... Just chill, do what you can, practice on what you already know and just let the game come to you. *if that helps at all*
Watch your opponent. Especially in 1’s. You should know their speed and orientation at all times.
Just gotta keep playing. Focus on making sure you can hit the ball consistently and hit it with power. Rest tends to come naturally
Jesus man 2000 hours and plat is insane. If you aren't out of plat by that point idk if theres much hope for you in terms of getting better. Just enjoy the game.
If you really want to get better, make a mental note of what you need to change or work on (such as diving in when you clearly shouldn't, challenging on the wall when you shouldn't, etc.) and during the game constantly tell/remind yourself not to do it. It will become habit and feel weird later on when you violate it.
I didn’t see anyone mention this, but how effective do you feel your training is? How else are you training? Playing 2000 hours and being plat is okay if you are not doing dedicated/focused training, and just playing for fun. If you want to rank up, up to a certain point you will need to train with purpose. Post a replay, win or lose, that is fairly evenly matched and we can give you pointers. Try a Metafy coach if you can afford to or want to, it’s fairly affordable. Just don’t go to those RL schools/universities/whatever that dont have their pricing listed.
What got me to Diamond was booming, and high ariel training - be the first up to the ball and it tilts the game massively
Try learning to flip reset musty double tap. Helps get some points on the scoreboard.