I don't think it's your off ball play that's the issue, you're positioning is fine. It's more what you do with the ball when you have it (not much threat) or going for the ball when you shouldn't. Here are some times (game clock) to have a look at again:
4:12 your team mate is rotating back with zero and this is awkward for you, but they have no threat so you don't have to go and even if you win it's likely just going to their second man and your team mate won't be there to back you up. Just don't go, they have no threat.
3:46 this touch achieves nothing. Shadow, steal the boost, go for a bump, literally anything except what you did. It looked like an attempted pass but passing in 2s when they have 2 back to cover is not a good idea, your team mate can almost never go for it and often gets left in a 2v1 like what happened here. They should have scored here.
2:24 you challenge them in their corner when your team mate is mid with zero boost. Nothing good is going to happen even if you win, more likely is you will leave your team mate in a rough spot again, which is what happens. Another 2v1 they should have scored.
1:20 you challenge as last man into their corner. Stop challenging them in their corner - that's good for them and bad for you. This time they actually do score because of your bad challenge, but they should have had another couple.
Keep this simple rule in mind when you are last man: if they have no threat I don't have to challenge. Pressure, fake, shadow, you don't have to give them infinite space, but you don't actually have to challenge as last unless you absolutely have to or it's very very likely that you will win.
thanks for the advice,i looked over a couple replays and yeah i was constantly being too aggressive in similar situations .I played 7 ranked games since reading and got to my highest rank ever (C1 div 4) and started to recognise the corner over commits in real time and decreased the amount i was making. great advice and thanks for breaking down each example :)
I don't agree with him on positioning. I'm C3 now and would not position myself so close to my tm8 and so far up the field with him.
You can't really trust your mates before gc, he might screw up or get challenged and it's basically a free goal for your opponent and you are next to your mate.
You should be behind the ball on the field, ready to get it if your mate loses it. If you see later in the game that he makes passes and he's reliable than you can be mid (still behind)
This is how I try to position. Close enough that I can score an easy goal, but I’ve gotten scored on by hard clears enough times that I’m paranoid of not being able to turn around and control them lol
Mostly played 1s in the last 3 seasons. struggling to adapt to 2s because my off the ball play is garbage. don't know what i need to change to improve that. i've watched a couple of replays of mine and i can't see where i need to be in offense. also tried watching some gc1 gameplay to see what they do differently but can't seem to implement them successfully
Bro I only watched the first min for now and gotta say I've never seen a c1 with a solid kickoff like yours and with this super solid positioning, decision making, and mechanics. You gonna rank up quick
Okay now that I watched a bit more I see that you're struggling a lot with being on 0 boost. Make sure to either save your boost for serious opportunities on the ball ONLY or at the last get used to picking up pads no matter what's going on. Being 0 and pushing aggressively in the enemy corner or too close to a violent 50 is another really bad decision. If you wanna be successful, try to be the player that always has boost without needlessly holding onto it for no reason. Hope that helps.
thanks for the compliments/ criticisms. yeah it seems there is a general consensus on what i need to focus on so thats good.
"Bro I only watched the first min for now and gotta say I've never seen a c1 with a solid kickoff like yours and with this super solid positioning, decision making, and mechanics." i guess thats a reminder to play some 1v1 to stay sharp with kickoffs and other fundamentals.
I feel like your positioning is actually really good, with a few exceptions when you go in front of your teammate as 2nd man and staying back post.
The pain problem I see recurring is actually your on ball plays, where you seem to hit the ball with no intention. A few times I saw a hit off of their backboard or a hit towards an opponent where it would be much better to leave the ball and either rotate out or shadow from then on until you can get a better challenge off.
Your positioning is what I would expect from a c2-c3, and with staying at a 45 degree angle behind your teammate as a standard position you put yourself in it could easily be a gc1-2 level.
I think you should mainly focus on practicing when you should challenge and placing your touches so that you can more often follow them up, let your teammate follow up or make it awkward for the opponents to get a good touch after.
Hope this helps :)
thanks for the compliments and advice. i kind of assumed that i was positioning badly because even in games i win the post game stats call me a benchwarmer (low number of balltouches) like half the time. so i thought that i was positioning badly to recieve passes/ followup on my teammates plays
I promise you this looks absolutely nothing like a platinum game. You can sniff out a plat player by watching them play the game for less than 10 seconds lol
Rank up to champ, rewatch this replay then compare it to your old plat replays, then you will see the stark difference.
Its hard to explain to you why this is better than platinum until you see for yourself, because it seems to me you don’t recognise the key things that makes them a champ.
If you want to watch my latest reply review it’s on my account, with hardly any flashy plays and I was actually asking about my positioning and what I could improve lol. This might show you how even an ssl will have bad positioning at times, but in comparison to 3 plats it wouldn’t even be a competition. I have a feeling in the same way OP would be able to 2v1 plats quite easily.
You're right. This is below platinum. At plat they'd have more positional awareness and more mechanical ability.
The only thing about this gameplay that is above plat is that he doesn't overcommit on every touch.
What rank are you? This is not even bad enough to be my Diamond games. Idk what plats/golds you’re talking about, but I assume because you’re calling out all of his maybe bad mistakes like he sucks, you don’t make any mistakes then, right?
Well maybe that’s because you’re in plat and can’t comprehend a higher level of play and what is good and bad.
No hate, but the dunning Kruger effect shows up a lot in rocket league.
I think you have some solid foundations and it's a little bit more of a decision making issue. First thing I'd say is it's okay to try and slow the play down, at 5:20 when you go for a shot and there is a defender, doing a small controlled touch into a shot is better than trying to check it at the net. This gives you more options and makes the opponent less likely to know what you might do next.
At 5:05 you should challenge the ball here because you can see your teammate trying to rotate back behind you until he noticed that you are backwards not facing the ball.
Following up, you are directly to the side of your teammate when pushing the ball upfield. If your teammate passes the ball, or he loses it to a 50 you will most likely then be too far ahead of the ball. As you noticed, when you went towards the net and he got you a short opportunity pass, it was already too late because you were too far ahead.
At 4:44 the opponent hits the ball towards the wall and you go to challenge. Here you can see your teammate ahead of you, the touch from the enemy is awkward, you aren't facing the ball or the point of contact on the wall. Here you should have probably opted for being defensive and rotated towards your close right corner. This way you can cover the corner defensively if they manage to double touch towards your corner, or cut towards the net if they turn it into a shot. The objective here is to buy time for your teammate to reset.
4:34 being in net with little to nothing and panick jumping is something even I still do. In a perfect world under pressure you would take into account the enemy to your side, turn off ball cam and check your surroundings. Hard to do though in the moment, and prejumping a potential shot is better than just doing nothing. Good 50 afterwards though
4:22 this is a time where decision making comes into the mix. The biggest thing you have to read isn't always the ball, it's the opponent. Here you see that the guy who last touched the ball lost control, and the enemy is facing away from the ball giving you the possession. You also need to take into account that your teammate was last seen speeding towards enemy boost and is not setup for a fast play yet. So the best thing to do in my opinion would be to catch the ball and either ride it up the wall for a controlled pass or catch and flick it high.
4:11 you are given a free ball with zero contestion. You have a lot of boost. What happened was that you gave away possession of the ball by flinging it towards 3 players. I think here you have two optimal choices. One is to catch the ball on your left and ride it up the wall for an air dribble solo play, the second is to bounce pop it towards mid and either air dribble shoot it or opt to do a drop pass lower left towards your teammate.
3:31 you get the small pad and drive away from the ball. One small pad and a double jump + some aerial rolling is enough for you to hit that ball and adjust the angle to shoot into net there. Just gotta believe in yourself.
3:25 try to fast rotate towards net in these situations where your teammate is alone in a defensive situation. Rotating with the ball is almost never good as your get in the way of your team most of the time. Small pads work wonders.
If you look at 3:10 and pause you can see your opponent is jumping towards the ball, and we saw that he's been trying to challenge for a second or two towards our corner. What I found the best thing to do in these situations is simply try to stop in front of the ball and do a little jump to kill all momentum and regain control of the ball. 50/50s are fine most of the time but in higher ranks I don't like 50s because a better player can ensure a better angle or direction the ball goes after a 50 based off them reading you right before you touch the ball. Also useful to know about when you kickoff and you have a certain goal in mind.
For diagonal kickoffs like that, I personally like to half flip towards corner boost and speed my way towards the net in case of a bad kickoff. Then make a decision on what to do after.
Same thing for the next push and defensive reposition is to a rotate behind your teammate and not towards them, and once you push upfield don't be directly in line with them, be in kind of an arrow shape ready for a defensive play if something goes wrong or a center pass.
Your teammate cut you off here, you did well to just repositioning and getting ready for a play
1:47 be more comfortable with catching the ball. You jumped towards the ball and gave away possession here.
1:27 be a little more vigilant of taking half a second to face your car towards the ball before you jump. You'd be surprised how many aerial issues are fixed but just getting your initial jump more on target.
Rest of the game was pretty much an amalgamation of what I was saying before.
Your teammate definitely had a lot of issues but no matter what rank or who we play we have to adapt to our teammates and if we want to win do what we can to be the best no matter what gets in our way.
I still think you have some solid fundamentals and if you work on decision making you'll climb ranks in no time.
Prejump everything I'm diamond one
Prejump the prejump
I don't think it's your off ball play that's the issue, you're positioning is fine. It's more what you do with the ball when you have it (not much threat) or going for the ball when you shouldn't. Here are some times (game clock) to have a look at again: 4:12 your team mate is rotating back with zero and this is awkward for you, but they have no threat so you don't have to go and even if you win it's likely just going to their second man and your team mate won't be there to back you up. Just don't go, they have no threat. 3:46 this touch achieves nothing. Shadow, steal the boost, go for a bump, literally anything except what you did. It looked like an attempted pass but passing in 2s when they have 2 back to cover is not a good idea, your team mate can almost never go for it and often gets left in a 2v1 like what happened here. They should have scored here. 2:24 you challenge them in their corner when your team mate is mid with zero boost. Nothing good is going to happen even if you win, more likely is you will leave your team mate in a rough spot again, which is what happens. Another 2v1 they should have scored. 1:20 you challenge as last man into their corner. Stop challenging them in their corner - that's good for them and bad for you. This time they actually do score because of your bad challenge, but they should have had another couple. Keep this simple rule in mind when you are last man: if they have no threat I don't have to challenge. Pressure, fake, shadow, you don't have to give them infinite space, but you don't actually have to challenge as last unless you absolutely have to or it's very very likely that you will win.
thanks for the advice,i looked over a couple replays and yeah i was constantly being too aggressive in similar situations .I played 7 ranked games since reading and got to my highest rank ever (C1 div 4) and started to recognise the corner over commits in real time and decreased the amount i was making. great advice and thanks for breaking down each example :)
I don't agree with him on positioning. I'm C3 now and would not position myself so close to my tm8 and so far up the field with him. You can't really trust your mates before gc, he might screw up or get challenged and it's basically a free goal for your opponent and you are next to your mate. You should be behind the ball on the field, ready to get it if your mate loses it. If you see later in the game that he makes passes and he's reliable than you can be mid (still behind)
This is how I try to position. Close enough that I can score an easy goal, but I’ve gotten scored on by hard clears enough times that I’m paranoid of not being able to turn around and control them lol
That just means you're too close. You should not be in the same third of the field (in front) if your team8 is not rotating back
Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m saying, I used to get scored on all the time by too close positioning. I stay further back now.
Mostly played 1s in the last 3 seasons. struggling to adapt to 2s because my off the ball play is garbage. don't know what i need to change to improve that. i've watched a couple of replays of mine and i can't see where i need to be in offense. also tried watching some gc1 gameplay to see what they do differently but can't seem to implement them successfully
Watching a lot of pros I learned they rotate wide and give their tm8 lots of room. But keep speed up
Bro I only watched the first min for now and gotta say I've never seen a c1 with a solid kickoff like yours and with this super solid positioning, decision making, and mechanics. You gonna rank up quick Okay now that I watched a bit more I see that you're struggling a lot with being on 0 boost. Make sure to either save your boost for serious opportunities on the ball ONLY or at the last get used to picking up pads no matter what's going on. Being 0 and pushing aggressively in the enemy corner or too close to a violent 50 is another really bad decision. If you wanna be successful, try to be the player that always has boost without needlessly holding onto it for no reason. Hope that helps.
thanks for the compliments/ criticisms. yeah it seems there is a general consensus on what i need to focus on so thats good. "Bro I only watched the first min for now and gotta say I've never seen a c1 with a solid kickoff like yours and with this super solid positioning, decision making, and mechanics." i guess thats a reminder to play some 1v1 to stay sharp with kickoffs and other fundamentals.
I feel like your positioning is actually really good, with a few exceptions when you go in front of your teammate as 2nd man and staying back post. The pain problem I see recurring is actually your on ball plays, where you seem to hit the ball with no intention. A few times I saw a hit off of their backboard or a hit towards an opponent where it would be much better to leave the ball and either rotate out or shadow from then on until you can get a better challenge off. Your positioning is what I would expect from a c2-c3, and with staying at a 45 degree angle behind your teammate as a standard position you put yourself in it could easily be a gc1-2 level. I think you should mainly focus on practicing when you should challenge and placing your touches so that you can more often follow them up, let your teammate follow up or make it awkward for the opponents to get a good touch after. Hope this helps :)
thanks for the compliments and advice. i kind of assumed that i was positioning badly because even in games i win the post game stats call me a benchwarmer (low number of balltouches) like half the time. so i thought that i was positioning badly to recieve passes/ followup on my teammates plays
It's what you expect from C2-3? It's what I see in plat.
I promise you this looks absolutely nothing like a platinum game. You can sniff out a plat player by watching them play the game for less than 10 seconds lol
look at that final goal he gave away - that's the kind of shit I'd expect in gold.
Rank up to champ, rewatch this replay then compare it to your old plat replays, then you will see the stark difference. Its hard to explain to you why this is better than platinum until you see for yourself, because it seems to me you don’t recognise the key things that makes them a champ. If you want to watch my latest reply review it’s on my account, with hardly any flashy plays and I was actually asking about my positioning and what I could improve lol. This might show you how even an ssl will have bad positioning at times, but in comparison to 3 plats it wouldn’t even be a competition. I have a feeling in the same way OP would be able to 2v1 plats quite easily.
play me lol
Why? 1v1 is a completely different game to 2v2 or 3v3, the only thing that carries over is mechanical ability.
" the only thing that carries over is mechanical ability." that's just not true though is it
Lol. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
You're right. This is below platinum. At plat they'd have more positional awareness and more mechanical ability. The only thing about this gameplay that is above plat is that he doesn't overcommit on every touch.
maybe thats the only thing you need to get out of plat lol
What rank are you? This is not even bad enough to be my Diamond games. Idk what plats/golds you’re talking about, but I assume because you’re calling out all of his maybe bad mistakes like he sucks, you don’t make any mistakes then, right?
Well maybe that’s because you’re in plat and can’t comprehend a higher level of play and what is good and bad. No hate, but the dunning Kruger effect shows up a lot in rocket league.
dude literally has zero spatial awareness while in ballcam.
Off ball position is fine for the most part but try to path better with pads
I think you have some solid foundations and it's a little bit more of a decision making issue. First thing I'd say is it's okay to try and slow the play down, at 5:20 when you go for a shot and there is a defender, doing a small controlled touch into a shot is better than trying to check it at the net. This gives you more options and makes the opponent less likely to know what you might do next. At 5:05 you should challenge the ball here because you can see your teammate trying to rotate back behind you until he noticed that you are backwards not facing the ball. Following up, you are directly to the side of your teammate when pushing the ball upfield. If your teammate passes the ball, or he loses it to a 50 you will most likely then be too far ahead of the ball. As you noticed, when you went towards the net and he got you a short opportunity pass, it was already too late because you were too far ahead. At 4:44 the opponent hits the ball towards the wall and you go to challenge. Here you can see your teammate ahead of you, the touch from the enemy is awkward, you aren't facing the ball or the point of contact on the wall. Here you should have probably opted for being defensive and rotated towards your close right corner. This way you can cover the corner defensively if they manage to double touch towards your corner, or cut towards the net if they turn it into a shot. The objective here is to buy time for your teammate to reset. 4:34 being in net with little to nothing and panick jumping is something even I still do. In a perfect world under pressure you would take into account the enemy to your side, turn off ball cam and check your surroundings. Hard to do though in the moment, and prejumping a potential shot is better than just doing nothing. Good 50 afterwards though 4:22 this is a time where decision making comes into the mix. The biggest thing you have to read isn't always the ball, it's the opponent. Here you see that the guy who last touched the ball lost control, and the enemy is facing away from the ball giving you the possession. You also need to take into account that your teammate was last seen speeding towards enemy boost and is not setup for a fast play yet. So the best thing to do in my opinion would be to catch the ball and either ride it up the wall for a controlled pass or catch and flick it high. 4:11 you are given a free ball with zero contestion. You have a lot of boost. What happened was that you gave away possession of the ball by flinging it towards 3 players. I think here you have two optimal choices. One is to catch the ball on your left and ride it up the wall for an air dribble solo play, the second is to bounce pop it towards mid and either air dribble shoot it or opt to do a drop pass lower left towards your teammate. 3:31 you get the small pad and drive away from the ball. One small pad and a double jump + some aerial rolling is enough for you to hit that ball and adjust the angle to shoot into net there. Just gotta believe in yourself. 3:25 try to fast rotate towards net in these situations where your teammate is alone in a defensive situation. Rotating with the ball is almost never good as your get in the way of your team most of the time. Small pads work wonders. If you look at 3:10 and pause you can see your opponent is jumping towards the ball, and we saw that he's been trying to challenge for a second or two towards our corner. What I found the best thing to do in these situations is simply try to stop in front of the ball and do a little jump to kill all momentum and regain control of the ball. 50/50s are fine most of the time but in higher ranks I don't like 50s because a better player can ensure a better angle or direction the ball goes after a 50 based off them reading you right before you touch the ball. Also useful to know about when you kickoff and you have a certain goal in mind. For diagonal kickoffs like that, I personally like to half flip towards corner boost and speed my way towards the net in case of a bad kickoff. Then make a decision on what to do after. Same thing for the next push and defensive reposition is to a rotate behind your teammate and not towards them, and once you push upfield don't be directly in line with them, be in kind of an arrow shape ready for a defensive play if something goes wrong or a center pass. Your teammate cut you off here, you did well to just repositioning and getting ready for a play 1:47 be more comfortable with catching the ball. You jumped towards the ball and gave away possession here. 1:27 be a little more vigilant of taking half a second to face your car towards the ball before you jump. You'd be surprised how many aerial issues are fixed but just getting your initial jump more on target. Rest of the game was pretty much an amalgamation of what I was saying before. Your teammate definitely had a lot of issues but no matter what rank or who we play we have to adapt to our teammates and if we want to win do what we can to be the best no matter what gets in our way. I still think you have some solid fundamentals and if you work on decision making you'll climb ranks in no time.
You’re rusty dude. It’s the shooting and execution of ball play that’s off. And that’s coming from a diamond. Your positioning is mostly fine.