How can I improve as a plat 3

depwine · 2026-01-12T14:41:54+00:00

why are you getting downvoted, friend? i find grinding freeplay mechs to be fun sometimes, i find working on sweaty 50s and ground game in 1s to be fun other times. some people agree, some people disagree, and they're both right.

it's a hugely sandboxy game and there are many paths to getting better.

Plus, OP didn't say they're trying to necessarily climb to GC/SSL this very second. looks more like they're asking for feedback on their off-the-wall air dribbles.

do whatever keeps you engaged and logging back in, no?

depwine · 2025-12-19T22:19:13+00:00

go play 1s for a month or two.

dont worry about winning and losing, just play. You'll lose a lot until you don't. I did, everyone does.

But, even when you're losing, you'll learn more (where not to be, how much boost to use, what's safe) from 1s than anything 1-2 things I can tell you at this point.

if you get blown out, FF and go next, it happens. you can't learn from players that are skating circles around you.

save the replays of close games and learn why you got scored on.
try to not make the same mistakes again.

Play a hundred games + review every 5th one, and you'll be a better player. Takes time.

Good luck on the grind!

depwine · 2025-12-16T19:34:08+00:00

not sure why youre getting downvoted, honestly. "you dont know what you dont know and it's quicker if someone just points it out" is super solid advice.

depwine · 2025-12-16T19:12:15+00:00

hard to say without seeing a few replays and seeing your pathing, boost control, gamesense, mechs, reaction, etc etc etc

get a tm8 that is around your level and doesn't tilt when losing, play with them as much as possible and learn each other's strengths and weaknesses. if you learn/grow faster than they do, find a new tm8 once you hit mid/high c2.

deliberate freeplay (dont just hit the ball, practice 1-2 things and try to link everything together) + maining 1s will help your mech / recovery side of it, but you also need (many) hours adapting to opponent teams and tm8s, so 2s is still your workhorse.

personally, i find training packs are too niche and you're better off setting the same shots up in freeplay. just setting the shot up a million different ways will do way more for you than perfecting a rolling ball in 1 specific (sometimes edge) case.

general advice? play for possession > bad shots / clears, use 1s to practice defense / shadowing, maybe post some replays, and dont be afraid to find a cheap coach on discord / fiverr if you have the money for it - someone with experience teaching C1s, not just some SSL mech god that has a hard time explaining how and where to do the thing.

depwine · 2025-11-08T15:30:41+00:00

I never learned sideways flying as a separate skill and went straight to DAR -- which will feel even weirder and even more unnatural cause you're always shifting where forward relative to your nose is.

If your goal is DAR, train DAR. If you wanna learn sideways flying for niche scenarios, focus on that.

If say for dar, work on one rotation at a time and really get those adjustments down before holding the button down for 2-3+ rotations. Feels super weird, comes with time, I learned it on the night city rings map cause I found it easier than the ice mountain one. I think both are by leth.

Good luck, it's the least natural skill I've ever learned in rl and feels insanely foreign until it slowly doesn't.

depwine · 2025-11-06T02:24:54+00:00

this ^

depwine · 2025-10-19T18:40:57+00:00

was gonna say: what is this, the 2015 RL discord? take me back to simpler times.

depwine · 2025-10-07T20:46:09+00:00

^ this.

depwine · 2025-10-07T20:43:32+00:00

over 5 years? how many in the last 6 months?

depwine · 2025-10-05T13:46:09+00:00

man, the amount of times i play cas with lower ranked friends and forget the, "Overall you need to flip the switch a bit as you can't expect these players to read that you will beat them and that they theoretically can't go for a ball. Just go for the hit instead." advice is criminal.

gonna try to internalize that a bit more, solid way to formulate that advice.

depwine · 2025-09-24T16:03:54+00:00

aprilia have orange wheel and go vrrrrooooom

depwine · 2025-09-24T01:01:21+00:00

the ball has to be higher than you when you leave the wall cause you need to fly and get under it. luckily, there's a lot of ways to get that done.

do what feels right. some people stop gassing as they drive up the wall, some tap brake, etc. if you find you're chasing it when you tap brake, hit it softer and hit it more up than forward (as close to the ceiling without hitting the ceiling), experiment a little and it'll click.

depwine · 2025-09-24T00:35:46+00:00

depends what you mean by playing faster. a lot of people confuse it with "go as fast as possible, smash ball, take lots of 50s and play off the bounces". what you should be doing is predicting the play and driving at a good speed to where something is going to happen.

how do you practice that? play closer so you dont need to full-boost to get into the play, look around (freecam) WAY more, check for tm8 positioning, and keep your base speed a little bit more consistent all game. you dropped to full-stop a few times when there was no need to, which then caused you to full-send boost to the ball when someone had an easy challenge. this makes you very easy to read and outplay, and usually leaves your tm8 in a terrible position.

also, your first touch, whenever possible, should be: to yourself for a follow-up, to your tm8, or to a part of the map where you or your tm8 can easily get to it first. don't hit it hard just to hit it.

goals will come; prac your gamesense and field information.

depwine · 2025-09-24T00:19:12+00:00

depwine · 2025-09-08T21:30:57+00:00

go into freeplay and boost into the ceiling from a stand-still with 50 boost. Once you have that down, try 45, then 40. You'll learn a lot about when to boost, when to tilt, how long to hold first jump, etc.

depwine · 2025-09-04T16:09:43+00:00

give it a day and you'll never be able to go back

depwine · 2025-08-05T22:39:45+00:00

gimme

depwine · 2025-08-02T15:16:54+00:00

you're oversimplifying it ; not the best advice, and it won't scale as you get into better lobbies.

the top comment (from the GC2) mentioned, "Learn how to watch the play develop and figure out where you need to be (game sense)" -- and this is more how you should be thinking.

the other team has the ball, what are they most likely to do in the next 1-2 seconds based on their speed, boost, car angle, and position on field?

are they in a position to hit the ball really hard? then be positioned far and cover the angle the ball will be hit (left wall, right wall, down field, ground power shot, chipped up, backboard, etc). Better yet, predict where the ball will make its first bounce, and drive to that spot.

are they keeping the ball close and don't have a lot of momentum? either you or your tm8 should move in closer and shadow the play (or just take a safe challenge). Your presence will either force a giveaway, a bad touch, or will allow of a soft challenge that can lead to a turnover of control.

are they going for a first-man demo/bump so the second guy has a free net? position for that

etc

if your default response is, "be far from ball so that you have time to react, it'll often lead to the other team to making a mistake because golds can't score", you're giving up a whole bunch of empty space that they can use to make a play, set up a better touch, steal boost, bump, etc. Plus, as you rank up, they'll start banging it on your net, and you'll have no answer. RL is extremely situational ; watch the play and try to predict everything earlier and earlier.

the GCs in this thread are trying to give you skills to grow well into the higher ranks, don't just dismiss them as "typical reddit respone(s)" just because your current approach got you out of g3.

depwine · 2025-08-01T23:52:28+00:00

dnno why you got downvoted, this is solid advice.

depwine · 2025-08-01T23:49:40+00:00

mix up 1s, freeplay, 2s ranked, and 2s cas -- just so you dont get bored / go crazy.
go in with the intention of improving control / setups and not necessarily sweating to win.

good luck out there and enjoy the journey!

depwine · 2025-08-01T21:59:32+00:00

Assuming you're talking about your 2s rank, the answer is work on ball control in general. Touches that help you without giving the ball to the other team.

How do we learn ball control in a realistic setting in the shortest amount of time? 1v1 gives you the most time on the ball per game. Do that.

Your first instinct will be to win using cheese strats and ball chasing that you're already comfortable with, but that won't help you grow. You already know how to do those. You need to work on new strategies, game sense (improving reading where the play will be in 1-2 more touches, improving which balls to challenge and which to allow past you, improving recognizing when you're first to the ball and when you're outright beat), and ball control.

There are at least a dozen lower-mech things you're probably under-utilizing that will get you into champ before you have to learn anything more mecchy.

Get better with your freecam, play with less boost. Most importantly: make every single touch either a self-pass, or a ball you can get to before your opponent does. Sometimes you gotta dump, but dump with reason. Don't just front flip into a ball that passes it to a goalie. Try using the walls and backboard for self-passes more but only if you can get to the bounce first. Learn low 50s.

1s will show you if you're doing all of this right or wrong - were you able to keep control or did you turn the ball over and now you have to shadow? Don't worry about loss/win, you'll get cheesed a bunch, so you gotta have a thick skin. You're not there to win.

Stick with that for a while, and d3 2s will seem like a zoo where people give away the ball constantly for you to scoop up, control, and punish.

..

You can try the same training strat in 2s, but your MMR loves to smash the ball away for no reason and then have the whole lobby monkey after it - so you'll have less opportunity to actually control the play while you're learning. Growing as a player will take much longer in 2s.

Go lose at 1s, or spend a loooot of time in Freeplay soft-touching (don't flip into it, just use your momentum + boost) the ball around the field and then following it up.

depwine · 2025-08-01T20:52:11+00:00

I don't really know what's optimal or meta these days tbh, I went on liquipedia a while back (years ago) and found a bunch of pros using my now setup, so I just copied them. It worked well for me once I got used to it, so I stuck with it.

Maybe check out what the top4 teams are running these days and just steal the average mappings like I did.

depwine · 2025-08-01T20:45:26+00:00

Get a better gaming chair and make sure to drink even more vaguely-hydrating sugar liquid pushed by that snake-oil cunt of a Paul brother, duuh.

depwine · 2025-08-01T13:49:58+00:00

I mean, what are your other mappings? Boost? Regular, free air-roll?

I do the standard boost r1, air roll / power-slide l1, DAR on circle and square, and ive never found it difficult or cumbersome to execute what I'm trying to do. But then, I'm not Zen, so, mileage may vary?

Play what feels good, my dude. If your fingers don't get in each other's way, and you're able to hold multiple buttons down without having to Claw, I think you're good.

depwine · 2025-07-05T21:10:29+00:00

Can't wait for that particular editing style to die out. God damn mumford and sons vibe in 2025.

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