I’m an idiot, and even I was able to make it to Onyx in this game. But I see lots of people struggling to find a grip on the basics of how to rank up in this game. I think I can help people who are mediocre like me.
Ranked feels very grindy in this game because of a myriad of issues, both intentional and accidental. But it can feel a lot better and even rank up faster if people start doing a few things that make a real difference:
Use your mic if you can. People actually WANT to find people with mics in this game, because communication wins games. If you can’t use your mic, or just don’t feel like you know the callouts etc, then get the hang of using the PING system because that really does make a huge difference.
Don’t soar into fights so much without working as a team. Trying to run and solo an entire enemy team is suicidal and pointless. Even if you have a strong weapon and feel confident that you can handle multiple enemies, what you’ll more than likely do in the best case scenario is kill one or two and then die, giving the enemy the weapons and powerups you had and leaving your team a man down for the rest of the exchange. And if they’re not on the same page as you, that means they’re now at a disadvantage. Keep an eye on how many teammates are alive and where they’re fighting, and keep an eye on how many enemies are dying in the kill feed so you know what you’re running into.
Every game is a slayer game, objective games are just slayer matches with an extra objective. Get in the habit of killing everything before you dive in for oddball points or try to take a zone or flag. If you just mindlessly go for the objective all game, that puts your teammates into a situation where they’re fighting a 4v3, and that will rarely end well for the team. Kill first, score after. Of course sometimes you do have to make a sacrifice play to get those last few points or save the game in some way, but don’t make it a habit when a well executed teamshot would work better.
Memorize the spawns and how they work. Spawns in this game will seem random and annoying at first, but basically what’s going on is the spawns are being impacted by where you and your teammates are. If you’re all spread out everywhere, of COURSE people are going to “spawn on you” because they have nowhere else to spawn. It’s the same with objectives. They spawn on the one objective they own in strongholds for instance, so there’s rarely a good reason to capture all 3 zones or be too close to the third one, because it will mess up the spawn predictability.
Don’t be afraid to use other weapons. The BR should be your core strategy every match, and ideally your most used tool of destruction along with grenades and to some degree melees. But every weapon has value (besides the ravager, which is basically dead weight). Learn how things like the plasma pistol, pulse carbine, and disruptor work, and use them in tactical situations to help your team in some way. Don’t try to go for unnecessary kills with the guns themselves though, for instance, because they have less reliable kill potential than your BR. Use them in combos, to help get a fast beatdown, or as a way to assist a teammate in a fight. Get the hang of controlling the biggest weapons like rockets and snipers, and the other powerful game changing weapons like the bulldog, heatwave, shock rifle, stalker rifle, and mangler. Most importantly, if you have these weapons, don’t just rush the enemy and give them the weapon for free, that’s going to hurt the team as a whole. If anything, just keeping these weapons from being used at all by the enemy is a legitimate strategy, since most powerful weapons will not respawn as long as you have them.
6 Bonus Point: Shoot the enemy. Don’t watch someone in a fight and then clean up the kill after the fight is over, shoot the people that your teammates are shooting, and hope they’ll do you the same courtesy.
I hope this helps at least one person, thank you for taking the time to read it. Have a great night.
Some good points so I’ll bump it up for more people to have a little read through.
When OP is talking about sticking together, they mean covering each others sightlines. You don’t have to be next to your teammates but you have to be able to provide support from your position. This can also include covering entry and escape points for the enemy. If the teammates are flushing them out you can position yourself to clean them up when they are trying to get away. If you can see players approaching you can do some damage before they encounter your teammate or callout/ping them. One of the hardest skills to learn about this is how to do it without overextending into vulnerable positions and how to also manage your focus between that and on enemies that may be approaching you so you don’t get flanked. Having a better feel for everyone’s position on the map helps you make better decisions surrounding this, don’t worry even if you make a good play, it doesn’t always work out. Doesn’t mean you didn’t make the right call as 7/10 it would have worked.
Shooting enemies and backing down is a valid strategy, you don’t have to chase every kill. Even one shot on an enemy puts your teammates at the advantage against them. Similarly, playing yourself into areas where you are trapped in a 2v1 means you either have to escape or do as much damage as humanly possible before you die. If you’re gonna die you want to make the enemy waste time/focus on you or leave them in a weaker position. My general rule of thumb is if your teammates are there/pushing towards the area then fight, if they recently died and are on respawn, or poor sightlines then flight. Especially in games like Oddball it steals setup time from the enemy. No point in fighting them if they are going to get their shields back before your team encounter them.
You can infer a huge amount of information about enemy locations based on where your teammates and where any known enemies are. Once you pair this with a greater knowledge of the spawn system you can start accurately predicting enemy movement much more which helps your decision making.
Dynamo grenades are GOAT tier. They make a sound while they’re hurting an enemy so you can basically use them as a UAV. They are just very strong in general for their damage and range too.
Power weapons are key to controlling the flow of the game. Sometimes players don’t think about their respawn timer and don’t play around them. Securing the right weapon/power-up can help break a strong objective setup so they are worth pursuing even if it means losing a bit of objective time.
There’s a lot to learn but you can pick up a bunch if you keep practicing by playing with a view to improve, learning from things that aren’t working and watching the pro gameplay to see what their decision making and movement is like. What sightlines they use etc. When I really wanted to get better I posted a normal gameplay on a gaming forum and had some much better players tear apart my gameplay for me. It gave me a lot to work on and I improved a bunch right out the gate.
#1 is huge. I’m mediocre at best, and one of the few ranked games I actually was able to carry the team, I went 17 kills 1 death in a Strongholds game. Only one teammate was using mic, and his callouts were flawless and attributed to the majority of my kills.
The pinging is also very useful, and when I use it effectively, I feel like my teammates perform better.
I forgot to mention the sentinel beam and needler.
Both these weapons have tremendously powerful capabilities when used in their niche situations. The sentinel beam is extremely powerful at close range, whether as a beatdown weapon or just as a full tilt slaying weapon from even up to mid range if your aim holds true. Even a split second of fire from it can put someone one shot and easy to clean up from teammates or with a weapon you swap to. And unlike a plasma weapon it can finish off an unshielded opponent rather quickly. It’s not something you want to use inappropriately and get yourself killed, but it’s most definitely not a gun you want to underestimate either.
The Needler is just the Needler, it’s good when you can catch someone off guard to score a super combine, and not good for much else. It’s a decent counter for someone with overshields and a good weapon to pick up and use if you have camo since you can get the drop on people. The most important thing I can say about it is to not waste time and energy trying to use it in a teamshot, because it does low damage per shot by itself and you’re better served just helping your teammates BR.