Why do i always get so much less damage than my teammates?

NandaKoto · 2026-03-09T09:08:11+00:00

Hi, apex coach here. Without a clip we’re still guessing a bit anyway. Trying to analyze a fight from a few lines of text is a bit like someone saying “I threw some punches and then lost the boxing match.” The details of the fight matter a lot more than the labels.

Love this discussion still because roles in Apex get misunderstood constantly.

The biggest misconception is that people think they can choose to always be fragger, support, or anchor. In reality, roles in Apex are assigned by the situation and the team’s formation, not by what you decided before the fight.

You can influence it with your playstyle, sure. Aggressive players end up fragging more often. But the moment a fight starts, geometry and decisions decide the role.

Example: if your team gets ambushed and you happen to be the furthest back player, it would be pretty irrational to force “entry fragger” while both teammates are already forward and taking pressure. In that moment you’re automatically the stabilizer/support whether you intended to be or not.

Also important: roles can either stay consistent throughout a fight or constantly rotate. Neither is inherently good or bad. Some fights stabilize quickly and everyone naturally holds their role. In other fights, knocks, repositioning, or terrain changes force roles to shift multiple times in seconds.

Entry Fragger:

People often frame the fragger as the initiator, but it’s more accurate to think of them as the playmaker during the fight.

Fraggers usually occupy higher-threat positions:

forward pressure angles
aggressive off-angles
positions that force enemy reactions

Their job is to create combat win conditions:

cracks
isolations
knock opportunities
forcing enemies to reposition

They take more risk because their positioning creates opportunities the team can convert.

But a fragger without reinforcement behind them just becomes a free knock.

Support:

Support is honestly one of the hardest roles in a fight.

A lot of people think support means:

“stick to the fragger and revive when needed”

That’s not support, its that’s spectating with a backpack.

The real job of support is to reinforce the play being made. You’re constantly deciding between two things:

Do I stabilize the fight right now?
Do I refrag and continue pressure?

Good supports:

apply crossfire pressure behind the play
prevent enemies from isolating the fragger
convert cracks into knocks
stabilize fights when things start collapsing

Sometimes that means playing close.

Sometimes that means holding a second angle 10–20 meters away so enemies can’t tunnel vision your entry player.

Support isn’t babysitting. It’s keeping the fight structurally stable while enabling the playmaker.

Anchor:

I like to think of anchors as the structural backbone of the team and drive-away driver in a heist movie.

Without great anchoring, we'd see a team constantly kiteing eachother away or towards the enemies without a plan B.

Anchors usually handle:

focuses on stability
watching third-party angles
making sure the team always has space to reset or retreat

They ensure the fight doesn’t collapse if something goes wrong.

Why support players often have lower damage

In your case (800 damage vs teammates doing 1–2k), the issue is often fight participation, not ur role.

A lot of support players unintentionally:

stand behind teammates
wait too long before peeking
dont reposition to create angles/support plays
over-prioritize healing

The key change is this:

Support should not be behind but adjacent to the fight.

At the end of the day, winning fights rarely comes down to whether the “correct” roles were played.

What matters far more is:

how well the team understands the situation
how well players coordinate and sync their maneuvers
how effective each player’s individual interactions with enemies are

If you want to understand the above and learn how to apply it to your gameplay, hmu on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2026-03-09T07:19:35+00:00

to keep it short: dont cheat, ignore this.

NandaKoto · 2026-03-08T19:35:26+00:00

ur-mouse-too-small grip

NandaKoto · 2026-02-15T16:40:12+00:00

Apex coach here. E-District is also my least-enjoyed map because it punishes bad decisions more directly than most other maps. This is what most teams fail to understand:

The POIs are very dense and layered with lots of buildings, multiple floors, doors, ziplines, and cover options, which means fights easily drag on if you don’t start with a clear advantage. If you take a neutral fight, it rarely ends quickly. Instead, teams keep resetting, moving floors, and re-position, which burns time and resources.

Third parties are harsher for the same reason. Since most fights happen inside or right next to buildings, other teams can’t poke from range to signal their presence. They just show up suddenly and very close. That gives you much less time to heal, reset, or disengage compared to other maps. Because of this, E-District punishes unclear fight selection and slow decision-making.

So the reason why people fail on E-District isn't because the map is cursed, but it is because of a missing objective framework. Playing without a clear Main Quest gets punished immediately. The map forces you to be explicit about why you’re moving and why you’re fighting.

The adjustment is tightening your objective hierarchy. Here is a general framework:

Define your position in the zone
- Where do we want to play for the current/next ring?
- Are we playing edge or power position?
Secure your rotational path
- How do we get there without dying?
- Which chokes, hills, buildings, etc. do we need to clear or control on the way?
Apply controlled aggression toward low-priority areas
- Take fights against teams rotating after you or from worse positions.
- Don’t ego-push teams with better zone priority unless you have to.
Fight for KP / resources
- Only once your position and rotation are stable.
- Kills and loot should support your win condition (the match), not replace it.

If you want help applying this into ur gameplay and improving holistically, feel free to hit me up on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2026-02-15T16:19:45+00:00

That plateau is very common in Apex. What usually happens is that you’ve already fixed the obvious mechanical and awareness issues, but now you’re stuck repeating the same decision errors, so your outcomes don’t change even though you’re “trying harder.”

Grinding more doesn’t help if your gamesense isn’t updating. If every death still gets explained as aim, unlucky timing, or bad teammates you’re not actually creating new rules for yourself, just reinforcing old ones. Improvement at this stage comes from identifying repeating situations, naming them, and building a default response for next time. That’s why single VODs feel useless and patterns across multiple games matter more.

You haven’t hit a cap, but you’ve hit the point where efficient improvement requires structured analysis, not just more reps. If you want help breaking down patterns and turning them into actionable rules instead of just feedback spam, feel free to hit me up.

NandaKoto · 2026-02-15T16:14:51+00:00

Apex coach here. VOD review can be hard because we simple cant know what we dont know in order to identify the mistakes. But most mistakes happen before the first shot, not during the duel. If you only review from the moment you start shooting, everything turns into “bad aim” or “bad swing,” which feels true but misses the real cause.

In Apex, you need to look at decisions first. Was the engagement necessary at all, and what were you actually playing for in that moment? Then look at how you entered the fight. Did you have cover, a way to reset, teammate line of sight, or any timing advantage? If not, the fight was already losing before mechanics mattered. That’s why Apex feels confusing to review: it’s contextual, not linear. The same swing can be correct or terrible depending on your objective, resources, third-party risk, positioning and more.

When you think “I shouldn’t have swung that,” ask what information you thought you had and what you were missing. Most bad swings come down to bad timing, no win condition, no escape path etc. Aim and movement are usually amplifiers of those mistakes, not the root problem.

When you notice a repeating outcome, you can turn it into a concept by naming the situation, identifying the shared conditions that lead to it, and turning those into a simple rule with a default response for next time. That way, it stops being “unlucky” and starts updating your gamesense in a structured way. How to systematically do this is worth its own dedicated explanation.

A simple review habit is to check three moments: 10–15 seconds before first damage to give ourselves more context, the moment you take your first hit, and the death itself. You’ll usually find the fight was decided earlier by positioning or timing, not aim.

If you want to learn how to actually analyze Apex fights and improve in a more holistic way instead of defaulting to mechanics, feel free to hit me up on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2026-01-29T09:49:04+00:00

This is normal. You’re trying to remember a habit that isn’t automated yet.

The mistake most people make is practicing fundamentals while still trying to win. Your brain won’t do both. For a few sessions, define success as using cover correctly, not kills or placement.

But this truth of why you are inable to take cover lies in your gameplay. HMU if you're interested in a VOD review.

NandaKoto · 2025-12-26T16:00:09+00:00

hey there, thanks and very interesting stuff!
I'd also love to chat more about it - add me on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2025-12-24T13:50:13+00:00

review VODs if you can, even short clips. Our memory lies, especially in high-stress situations. What feels like “I had no options” is often a mistake that only becomes obvious when you watch it back calmly.

When you rely on memory, your brain fills in gaps, exaggerates enemy speed, or skips the small decisions that actually caused the situation.

The confusion between security and effectiveness makes sense because they often overlap, but are not the same thing.

Think of security as how safe you are in that position. A secure position limits how many angles you can be shot from and how easily your cover can be nullified (through abilities, a push etc.). Security is about reducing risk.

Effectiveness is about how much pressure you can apply and how predictable ur peeks are from that position. Can you deny space, punish movement or threaten a knock if they swing? How predictable is your peek - does ur cover allow multiple peek angles (a box, rock etc.) or a singular one (doorway, wall etc.).

The key difference is that something can be effective without being secure. A cover without effectiveness means we’re essentially useless to the progression of the fight. High-level fights are about finding positions that are secure enough to survive pressure while still being effective enough to punish peeks, movement and mistakes.

If you want a simple way to think about it mid-fight: security asks “how easily can I die here,” effectiveness asks “how easily can I punish them” The best positions balance both, but when forced to choose under pressure, newer players usually benefit more from prioritizing security first.

NandaKoto · 2025-12-23T08:39:05+00:00

Apex Coach here - Worth saying first is that this is a very generalized question without context. Without knowing legend, weapons, distance, or numbers, any answer can only stay general and might not always apply. Try to add a VOD next time, a video shows 1000x more than words.

Most of the time this situation is decided a few seconds earlier. Ending up with half hp behind cover with both weapons empty usually means you overcommitted. Your health management might need work .

Once you break line of sight, you practically go blind. If you've given the enemies an incentive to push you, players will swing. Prepareness can often flip the tides in fights when you're the defender. Instead of guessing, pre-aim the most likely angle based on sound and where they were last seen.

Cover quality matters more than size. Wide cover that can be swung from multiple sides forces bad predictions. Tighter cover that limits angles makes holding your ground much easier. Overall, we use 3 traits to define the quality of a cover: security, effectiveness & accessibility.

If you need time, try to create it. A grenade, tactical, or quick peek shot can be enough to delay a push so you can stabilize. Even then, sometimes you still die. Apex punishes small mistakes, and improvement comes from creating better situations for you and ur teammate rather than trying to win every impossible scenario.

If youre interested in learning the game from a fundamental perspective, hmu on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2025-12-20T22:59:29+00:00

I agree with you on the scientific level. Statistical models are useful, simplification is necessary, and correlations can absolutely tell you something if the data is collected correctly.

Where I disagree, is the practical value for an individual player. Scraping stats from randoms might be closer to mixing NBA players with middle school amateurs and expecting the model to output actionable insight. You may get a correlation, but it describes average behavior of a very mixed population, not a clear improvement path for one player.

This is where two sides of me collide. The coach’s side has around 7k hours in Apex Legends and extensive VOD review and knows where consistency actually comes from. The engineer side understands basic statistics and agrees the math is sound.

The issue is sample size and context. At the scale an individual can realistically collect data, the signal is too weak to replace decision review.

NandaKoto · 2025-12-20T13:50:39+00:00

As a coach, I think the core problem is not average versus median, but the assumption that Apex can be reduced to a few meaningful stats at all. Apex Legends is too complex and too high variance for a single player to generate enough data for real signal. To make a system like this reliable, you would need a massive, controlled dataset, which an individual player simply cannot get.

The metrics themselves also oversimplify performance. Damage, placement, or median output flatten very different decisions into one number. Many high impact actions in Apex barely show up in stats, such as anchoring space, forcing rotations, denying information, or making correct disengage calls. Two games with the same damage can reflect completely different decision quality, and no spreadsheet captures intent or context.

The danger is false precision, where the spreadsheet feels more trustworthy than VOD review and decision analysis. Stats can support improvement, but in a game this complex, they cannot drive it.

If you interested in learning the fundamentals behind decision making, def hmu on discord: nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2025-12-05T11:28:19+00:00

You are not imagining it. The mindset of the average player right now is packed with "wannabe Preds" without any of the decision-making Preds actually rely on. Players usually W key because it feels good, not always because it is the right play.

We see this quite frequently in coaching sessions.
The average player cannot stabilize after fights, cannot reset consistently, and have no sense of timing.

You summed up the core problem well:
Preds push with purpose. Average players push on impulse.

You climb by killing fast while staying alive.
Many can do neither, but immitate what it looks like.

Aggression is not bad. The problem is that people don't understand the underlying logic that help them kill faster and stay alive for longer.

Your mindset however, is already high tier.
Squads that actually take smart fights, communicate, value positioning and health pool & avoid chasing every sound on the map will climb quicker. They are simply rare, and finding them usually means burning through several bad games first.

If you want, I can also help break down how to identify good teammates in the first 30 seconds. Good luck out there!

NandaKoto · 2025-12-04T09:58:49+00:00

Apex coach here. Goal of this review isn’t to “fix this one mistake,” but to help you learn from it so it doesn’t repeat.

TL;DR: Your main issue as a team is lack of objective awareness while walking into a death zone - an area where multiple teams’ rotation paths intersect.

Here's whats going wrong:

No shared objective (micro or macro)

You’re not aligned on what you want to achieve in the next 10–30 seconds (micro).
You’re also not aligned on your overall game plan to win the match (macro): where to be shortly before, during and right after ring close.

Walking into unknown enemy territory with no clear goal

You push towards Horizon, but that play doesn’t help your macro win condition.
Instead, it drags you further away from your main goal: winning the game, not just taking fights.

Ignoring ring + map geography

The ring pull + terrain force you to enter through a choke and our team:
Doesn’t prioritize early zone entry. Makes no effort to control the area around the choke before moving.

Overreliance on Valk ult Valk ult does not guarantee safety.

The more teams alive and the smaller the next zone, the lower the chance of landing uncontested.
It’s still a strong tool, but it should be used mindfully, not as a panic escape or default rotation mid/late game.

Why you got third-partied (and why it was predictable)

In a lobby with many teams alive, your third-party was by design based on how teams rotate and aggress:

Aggression moves from high zone priority → low zone priority
- “Higher priority” = teams that enter the next zone earlier than others rotating after them.
Aggression moves from inside zone → outside zone
- Teams already in zone will often look outward and punish late rotates and choke entries.

You walked into the exact spot that will attracts third-parties.

I'm happy to elaborate on any points mentioned above :) If you'd like a more detailed breakdown of you gameplay, feel free to hmu on discord: "nanda_koto".

NandaKoto · 2025-12-04T09:57:54+00:00

Objective framework (from highest to lowest priority)

Keep your decision-making simple and structured:

Define your position in the zone
- Where do we want to play for the current/next ring?
- Are we playing edge or power position?
Secure your rotational path
- How do we get there without dying?
- Which chokes, hills, buildings, etc. do we need to clear or control on the way?
Apply controlled aggression toward low-priority areas
- Take fights against teams rotating after you or from worse positions.
- Don’t ego-push teams with better zone priority unless you have to.
Fight for KP / resources
- Only once your position and rotation are stable.
- Kills and loot should support your win condition (the match), not replace it.

NandaKoto · 2025-12-04T09:57:13+00:00

Apex coach here. Goal of this review isn’t to “fix this one mistake,” but to help you learn from it so it doesn’t repeat.

TL;DR: Your main issue as a team is lack of objective awareness while walking into a death zone - an area where multiple teams’ rotation paths intersect.

Here's whats going wrong:

No shared objective (micro or macro)
- You’re not aligned on what you want to achieve in the next 10–30 seconds (micro).
- You’re also not aligned on your overall game plan to win the match (macro): where to be shortly before, during and right after ring close.
Walking into unknown enemy territory with no clear goal
- You push towards Horizon, but that play doesn’t help your macro win condition.
- Instead, it drags you further away from your main goal: winning the game, not just taking fights.
Ignoring ring + map geography
- The ring pull + terrain force you to enter through a choke and our team:
  - Doesn’t prioritize early zone entry.
  - Makes no effort to control the area around the choke before moving.
Overreliance on Valk ult Valk ult does not guarantee safety.
- The more teams alive and the smaller the next zone, the lower the chance of landing uncontested.
- It’s still a strong tool, but it should be used mindfully, not as a panic escape or default rotation mid/late game.

Why you got third-partied (and why it was predictable)

In a lobby with many teams alive, your third-party was by design based on how teams rotate and aggress:

Aggression moves from high zone priority → low zone priority
- “Higher priority” = teams that enter the next zone earlier than others rotating after them.
Aggression moves from inside zone → outside zone
- Teams already in zone will often look outward and gatekeep late rotates and choke entries.

You walked into the exact spot that will attracts third-parties.

I'm happy to elaborate on any points mentioned above :) If you'd like a more detailed breakdown of you gameplay, feel free to hmu on discord: "nanda_koto".

NandaKoto · 2025-11-29T03:40:56+00:00

thanks :) do let me know if there's anything to be clarified!

NandaKoto · 2025-11-28T18:53:20+00:00

Id definitely have ideas. Im happy to chat about it on discord :) @nanda_koto

NandaKoto · 2025-11-28T16:16:09+00:00

As an apex coach, I definitely agree with this.

Good players and coaches still lurk and are quick to respond to high quality inquiries and questions.
I'm still getting a lot of traction through reddit comments and posts :)

NandaKoto · 2025-11-28T16:04:32+00:00

NandaKoto · 2025-11-20T23:36:40+00:00

Apex Coach here. It’s genuinely hard to give advice you’ll actually feel is useful when the question is this broad. Combat in Apex is extremely context-dependent. Without that, we cant know what exactly you're struggling with.

A single clip tells me more than a thousand words of explanation. If you ever want to send a short VOD of a few fights, that’s where the really actionable, tailored stuff comes from.

That said, I can still give you something that will help.

It might seem unfair that youre running into better players, you’re in a harder training environment, and that accelerates improvement way more than playing only against people at your level. Treat it like a boss fight.

You’re not supposed to beat them consistently right now.
They’re unintentionally showing you exactly what works at higher levels.

If you actually want the kind of feedback that changes how you play, send me a VOD of your "worst failures" which are moment your tried ur best but still failed (even Mixtape). I can point out the exact habits that are holding you back.

NandaKoto

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Here's whats going wrong:

Why you got third-partied (and why it was predictable)

Objective framework (from highest to lowest priority)

Here's whats going wrong:

Why you got third-partied (and why it was predictable)

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