u/Either_Selection7764

Every season at the end I’ll work on mechs once it’s clear I’m not going to finally hit c3, and inevitably my rank drops.

It always takes me a bit of time to climb back out of diamond the next season, and it doesn’t always feel like it’s the same thing that helps me climb back out.

This season in particular, it felt like everyone in my diamond lobbies were “chasier” than normal.

That said, the advice I have to offer that helped me climb back out this time:

1. Help create space for your tm8 rather than always trying to take the ball. Bump the opponent to prevent your tm8 from being instachallenged, boost starve the opponents, block for him like American football, etc. it prevents excessive double commits, and it helps your tm8 put more threatening shots on target, forcing opponents to scramble and giving yourself a better chance of a follow up shot.

2. boost pads - use them. About half my tm8s do some dumb crap with the ball then drive all the way back to one of our corners and sit on a big pad waiting for it to respawn. You can literally grab 48 to 60 boost if you just learn to rotate correctly across the small pads. I don’t care about them doing dumb crap. I do care about being in a 1v2 while they are trying to hatch eggs in the corners.

3. just shoot the ball. If you have space and the net is open, happy Gilmore that shit and tap it in. Even at the end of the season when I’m practicing mechs, if there’s an open net I just shoot the ball.

I like watching high level 2s SSL games via streamers like appjack.

It’d be cool if some streamers started playing 3v3 - it would be cool to see if you lock a bunch of solo queued alpha RL players in a lobby if it would be as chaotic with chasing or if they could actually coordinate.

Bots effect a very small percentage of games, but they make their way to higher ranks. This causes all the RL streamers and personalities to cast a light on their prevalence, but it really serves as confirmation bias.

Smurfing impacts a much larger percentage of the player base, yet other than a sporadic lip service comment here or there, Epic is essentially mute and doesn’t care.

As the player base stagnates, smurfing gets worse as trolls try to find new ways to have fun.

Right now I’m high c1 - in the past two days I’ve had numerous games where I’m the only person in the server not using an alt.

I don’t even mind smurfing that much, but I’ve noticed as a solo queuer more times than not I get a smurf on my team that ends up throwing and trolling, while I usually have to play against partied up Smurfs going for clips and trying.

I would care a whole lot less if I didn’t have to deal with the Smurfs intentionally throwing to rank down.

💯 just dropped like 15 games in 2 days from players throwing. The real nut punch? Most of the losses were from the same two people, one during each session, getting randomly queued with me multiple games in a row. I’m back down in low d3 rn because of tm8s refusing to play.

I might’ve won a game or two in there somewhere, but fr half my games or more (including easy wins when the opponents had someone throwing) had someone throwing for about a week now.

I’m in an active region with rounds queuing in like 30 seconds. I’d rather wait 32 seconds and not play against the same people game after game, even if the game is competitive. That’s what casual is for.

Competitive should have an option at c3 and below to wait longer for new players in a lobby.

I don’t care about my rank. Id be happy losing every game all the way down to gold if they were actually competitive and im not losing because a 12 year old wants to call me racial slurs for 5 minutes.

1. it feels like around season 20 I started getting this weird lag periodically. My ping will be fine, but everything is rubber banding and delayed even with a 20 msec ping. I’ve notice more folks in my lobbies complaining about the same.

2. seeing players in diamond lobbies with somewhat recent GC titles. I say this as someone that gets close to c3 every season but can’t quite make it, and is normally c1. That would be like me falling all the way through Diamond and into plat. I don’t think I deserve higher than c2 - c3 is clearly above me. So not so much a gripe as bewilderment at the number of players I’ll see with GC titles in Diamond when I’m having a bad week and fall down there. I just don’t understand.

3. getting terrible tm8s multiple games in a row. Not a “my tm8s all suck and I’m great” comment. But getting the kinda tm8s that everyone hates 2-3 times in a row. Bonus hate if it’s actually just the same tm8. At least once a month I permanently quit playing because I get tired of dealing with the ball chasing on zero boost or ramming me every play tm8.

Alright, I’m going to go yell at some clouds.