46 replies to this topic

[razenWing]

I've been watching Proton's stream for a few days, and it really changes my thoughts on how some things are.

A lot of people like to post "hints" and "suggestions" on how you should start. But no one really talk about how you should finish. So, while planning on making a continuation of the famous Tactics 101, Advance Tactics 101, I decided to exchange some thoughts with you guys on what uber players are doing, that you are not.

Phenom #1: Timing

For casual fans watching b33f video, it's fast pace, exciting, and undoubtedly feels "jerky." So a question that often comes up is that, we are all doing the same thing, why does he do 500 damages, but we only do 150? The answer is timing.

When you slow down the frame and analyze, theb33f and other uber tier players, they don't start torso twist until their full burn is finished. I think in some sense, because most mechs are 90 kph and below, everyone can achieve proficient accuracy after a while. But timing is something totally different. Watching a lot of players on death cam, a lot of players will either twist too early for self preservation, or too late leaving the parts vulnerable. The timing window is extremely small, but it does make a huge different in output.

Phenom #2: Control

When you watch Krivven (sp) stutter step in his light, he's desyncing an aggressor with his moves. A LOT of players will hold down the fire button, especially on weapons with small cooldown. This is where Master Lights like Krivven pick you apart with the desync dance. He catches you miss the first shot, and time your firing rhythm. It's often painful to receive damage without launch a counter, so you try to fire as fast as possible... all blanks. Every shot they take is calculated. It's not just spam.

Phenom #3: Distance

Playing in Solaris, one of my biggest learning experience is the distance of the trigger. When I try to fire SRMs, I try to be close enough to make sure all my shots land. So I am not engaging at 270 m per se, but maybe 240, 220... 200, etc. For those Master players, they innate just know the speed of closing out, and fire at absolute max optimal to land the first hit. When I fight in head on engagement, often I would have to eat the first Alpha coming from 300 meters. Of course, as you are recovering, they are ready for the next Alpha... so you are always fighting from behind.

Phenom #4: Feel

This is where a lot of players sometimes feel like Master players are hacking. But they just have great feel to the game. Because they have fought so many pilots, they can comfortably predict when and where someone would navigate. When you are wedge behind a building, are you going left? Are you going right? They won't guess 100% correct, but there is a major tendency among populations and you can definitely find a trend. When you feel like you are being clever, you are really not.

Phenom#5: Insight

This is very obvious. And it's unfortunately probably not teachable. How to read cues around you and react with the best response? Notice uber players don't chase unless they know they can confirm without taking too much damages. How many times did you see on the Death Cam people throwing their lives away to finish off a cored mech? It's an awareness of the situation from minimap and/or other cues. Good players can read the battle fairly well, but an uber player has a transparent insight of the ebb and flow.


----------------------

Proton's pug team might lose, but they never lose without a fight. One uber player can make the difference because of the little things they do just add together. These come from hours of dedicated drops, and in no way innate.

I know people just think of PSR as glorified experience. But in this game, experience matters. PSR just fails at differentiating between best of T1 and worst of T1. Think of it this way, if you want to beat Proton, you must put in at least the same amount of games in practice. Except, he does a few thousands every month. How do you compete against that? You can't beat him just from effort alone, cause he's already outworking you.

So, share your insight on what separates uber players from regular elite/good players. Or if you are an uber player (and we will judge you), share your experience.

[Flak Kannon]

Hi Razen,

I fully agree with pretty much everything you posted. But you forgot one important thing, in my opinion.

Familiarity with your chosen mech. The more you play a certain mech, the more you just know those nanoseconds in the twisting, in the positioning, in the spacial aspect or the game.

Good players will always be good. Great players will be amazing in a mech they know inside and out. I myself, have a goal to master every single mech in this game, and I'm finally getting close, so I can speak to this well.

A Basic'ed Viper or Basic'ed Phoenix Hawk isn't nearly as good as a fully Mastered one for several reason. One is the mech unlocks, that's obvious, double basics, etc.. more modules, etc.. but a more unspoken aspect is how familiar a given pilot is in a given mech with a given, well known, often used, load out.

I have run many, many hundreds of matches in certain mechs thats I really enjoi. Com 3A, Ilya Muromets, and a few others......, and there are 200+ plus mechs I have only ever run 20-30 matches ever in because that's the duration it took to unlock it to Master... never to have run them again. Skill level is lowish or 'lower' in those mechs therefor.

And lastly, good players will always ( or usually ) gravitate to better mechs, and make no mistake certain mechs are better than others by design. So, strength is multipled by skill = success.

Those elite players can make Trial mechs deadly, yes,,, but wanted to throw out that last bit of intel, or my opinion.


Enjoi

[Valleric]

Spatial temporal reasoning as well. When there are a thousand things going on in the firefight and you can see it all without focusing on any of it, and still plan and attack using it. When I'm in the zen flow I'm just a hunter out for prey.

Nice post dude.

[Hit the Deck]

To start, have at least a decent gaming rig. It's crucial for shooting/FPS games.

I play from a potato laptop so I'm not following my own advice.

[Vxheous]

Hit the Deck, on 19 April 2017 - 04:07 PM, said:

To start, have at least a decent gaming rig. It's crucial for shooting/FPS games.

I play from a potato laptop so I'm not following my own advice.

Yeah, this is very important. When I play on my desktop, my fps is 100-120, while playing on my laptop is 40-60. I definitely perform worse on the laptop, most noticable when playing against other good players. My reaction time/time on target/twist time is significantly worse on the laptop, as well as my poptart gauss/ppc mechanics (this is using same mouse/mouse settings/mousepad)

[Agent1190]

razenWing, on 19 April 2017 - 01:57 PM, said:

So, share your insight on what separates uber players from regular elite/good players. Or if you are an uber player (and we will judge you), share your experience.

Phenom #6: Hacks

j/k

Excellent post. #3 also includes ballistics and leading targets. Some of the best players can hit you with an AC2, ERPPC or Gauss at max range every time. They know the relationship between projectile speed and distance with that weapon and can lead their targets perfectly.

[Deathlike]

The trick is that you need to do the fundamentals well. People often skip this part, but that's what causes performance gaps between matches.

People trying to copy Proton often don't even understand this, so they loosely copy the idea and do nowhere close to what Proton does (often blaming the team first instead of themselves).

[razenWing]

Agent1190, on 19 April 2017 - 04:19 PM, said:

Phenom #6: Hacks

j/k

Excellent post. #3 also includes ballistics and leading targets. Some of the best players can hit you with an AC2, ERPPC or Gauss at max range every time. They know the relationship between projectile speed and distance with that weapon and can lead their targets perfectly.

Proton's target lead is phenomenal. I watched him used a unskilled Panther with dual ppc (literally 2 shot overheat) to snipe down a brawl Victor from 78%, never letting him getting closer than 600m. I literally cried when I saw that. (ok, metaphorically, whatever)

[El Bandito]

I lowered my mouse sensitivity from 1800dpi to 1400 dpi and it is helping. Gonna lower it 100dpi per day until I can get perfect duration on a section from mid-long distance.

[Y E O N N E]

Flak Kannon, on 19 April 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

Hi Razen,

I fully agree with pretty much everything you posted. But you forgot one important thing, in my opinion.

Familiarity with your chosen mech. The more you play a certain mech, the more you just know those nanoseconds in the twisting, in the positioning, in the spacial aspect or the game.

So much this. I will wreck face all day, every day in Locusts, Blackjacks, and Marauders. Roughnecks? I'm having a really rough go of it.

Ugh...

[Davegt27]

http://www.churchofskill.com

[Agent1190]

Something else I thought of: know the tendency of your potatoes/opponents.

1. Many players poke, duck, then poke back again the same way. You can anticipate their movements.
2. Many maps have scout/attack lanes that players use over and over again the same way: once you know they are coming you can be ready.
3. Many players have a go to location on the map when they start a match, especially if they are PPC/Gauss/AC snipers. Know where to look for those players.

[Tarogato]

Flak Kannon, on 19 April 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

... you forgot one important thing, in my opinion.

Familiarity with your chosen mech. The more you play a certain mech, the more you just know those nanoseconds in the twisting, in the positioning, in the spacial aspect or the game.

Good players will always be good. Great players will be amazing in a mech they know inside and out. I myself, have a goal to master every single mech in this game, and I'm finally getting close, so I can speak to this well.

I disagree with this assessment. Once you've run the gamut of mechs (fast/medium/slow, short/medium/long, and the various weapon types), familiarity with your mech kinda comes naturally. If you have played 500 matches in medium mechs like Wolverines, Shadowhawks, Hunchbacks, Centurions... you should be instantly 95% familiar with an Enforcer in the very first match you play with it. Because you already know where the weapons are mounted, how fast it goes, whether it jumps, what weapons you have and how many heatsinks, and the only thing that's really left to figure out is how the hitboxes perform, ie., how you should go about spreading damage, whether it be twisting, shielding, jumping, even notjumping, and even facetanking is optimal in some mechs.

The only reason you shouldn't be instantly familiar with a new mech is if you literally don't think at all.

[Y E O N N E]

Tarogato, on 19 April 2017 - 08:51 PM, said:

The only reason you shouldn't be instantly familiar with a new mech is if you literally don't think at all.

Quirks muck it up.

[Carl Vickers]

Knowing the different types of game play and what suits you best helps as well. Knowing whether you are a great brawler, mid ranger or sniper.

Even if you are a natural mid range player, practicing the long range and brawling games can only help you.

[Shifty McSwift]

Hit the Deck, on 19 April 2017 - 04:07 PM, said:

To start, have at least a decent gaming rig. It's crucial for shooting/FPS games.

I play from a potato laptop so I'm not following my own advice.

This is more crucial than most seem to suggest, if you can get over 60 frames in 1920x1080 or higher, while streaming, it makes things a lot easier, a lot, lot, lot easier.

There's also the idea that they play with dependable team mates very frequently, actually knowing what a good percentage of your team is going to do in every moment, rather than guessing or hoping and often having them just watch you die, or leave you for dead.

By the way abusing lag shields and the like is closer to just straight up cheating by the way, he knows it is not an intended game mechanic, and he is knowingly using it against other players. In one sense it is just "being smart" to take advantage of such glitches, but his life isn't on the line here, he is doing it to try and look good, and screw over other players, which is doge.

[Tarogato]

Yeonne Greene, on 19 April 2017 - 08:56 PM, said:

Quirks muck it up.

Not really. There's nothing confounding about knowing that your AC5s fire 30% faster, or you have 14 extra points of structure on your mech. Only takes 30 seconds in training grounds to get a feel for how quirks perform.

[Y E O N N E]

Tarogato, on 19 April 2017 - 09:10 PM, said:

Not really. There's nothing confounding about knowing that your AC5s fire 30% faster, or you have 14 extra points of structure on your mech. Only takes 30 seconds in training grounds to get a feel for how quirks perform.

Knowing it is one part, it takes longer to get it embedded into muscle memory.

I guarantee that you are taking velocity quirks for granted.

[justcallme A S H]

Just in addition to Timing - a key point - If the mech you are firing at has MORE firepower than you are dumping on them, twist early, always.

You want to mitigate dmg coming in vs dmg going out. So sometimes twisting early is appropriate. That does come down to knowing the dmg output of the paperdoll you are looking at etc etc. So all that other stuff like just "knowing".

If I have more dmg to output than I'm taking, I ain't twisting until I need to - even less so if it's going to result in a kill shot.

[Tarogato]

Yeonne Greene, on 19 April 2017 - 09:16 PM, said:

Knowing it is one part, it takes longer to get it embedded into muscle memory.

I guarantee that you are taking velocity quirks for granted.

I mean, it only takes one shot, maybe two, to acclimate to a new TC or mech with different velocity quirks.