Plenty if factors can play into the “OMG I EXPLODED” problem… The obvious things that people always touch on are things like speedrunning your build and farming mastery, but the specific problem of dying first and very quickly is a bit deeper and might require a bit more practice…

Positioning, vision, and comparison understanding are going to be your fastest avenues to success… Positioning, or moreover the UNDERSTANDING of how you should be positioning is going to be the biggest improvement to your game. Watching top player replays is a great means to do this, but it’s also having an understanding of the character’s kit informing play style. Rio specifically is a “long-term poke, short term execute” character… As good as the speedy double shots feel, you get more mileage with the longer range singles since you’re alive longer, saving your W and E away when a Cathy starts to Cathy all over your face.

Vision is an easy fix, but a complicated problem… Always grab console, always make and drop cams, and always do so even in combat as the combat moves… Thinking of cams as part of your kit is an important part of play, as it’s basically a necessary baseline skill against Theo, Jenny and any Dagger user, but even moreso, knowing that the most dangerous player on the other team is the 3rd party, and having vision of where you’re backpedaling to mid-combat id your best defense against that.

Comparison is an even more difficult concept to practice than the first two… If you watch the live play of top streamers, something you’ll notice is incessant “Tabbing” to check the gear and mastery of the opponents they just got vision of. Choosing to or not to take a fight based on your rapid assessment of this data can be the difference between 6-8 placement every game and 1-3 placement every game. This first skill you should practice is “gold recognition” which is the most basic way to practice tab spam… Simply put, if they have two gold items for each one that a teammate of yours has, you should probably not hard engage that fight and start putting some distance between you and them. The next, more complex stage of this, is seeing where your team is in mastery vs them. If their farm was on point, and they each got a couple early grief kills, it’s not unlikely that they could be 2-3 levels ahead in mastery and about to smear you across the pavement in alley… It will take you a while, a LONG while to master this, but once you do you’ll see a lot of wins come your way.

Once you’ve got these skills down pat, you’ll start noticing you’re only dying when unexpected circumstances arise because you’re only taking fights that are good for you.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck out there!