Hey,

I am Awkward, A Rank 1 player who is Champion on all roles. And after coaching over 2000 players at Rank Up Academy, I've come to realize that one of the biggest game changers that contributes to our members ranking up is working on their timing.

On a previous post, I have explained that you want to surprise the enemies from positions that they are not looking at in order to maximize your potential of getting a kill, and minimize your likelihood of dying. The natural follow up question is - When do I go in to surprise them?

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS PICTURE

Most players mistake is engaging too hard too early.

Aggressive too early? Everyone looks at you, and you die.

Aggressive too late? Your team is on the brink of death, and the enemies can just turn around, deal with you, and then you die because your team is not a threat to them at that point.

Your level of aggression should be based on how busy the enemies are.

- When the enemies are busy, you are very aggressive.

- When the enemies are not busy (just poking, or setting up), you can't be very aggressive yet.

EXAMPLE 1: Your Doomfist punches in, THAT'S YOUR QUE! They are all looking at him - go in.

EXAMPLE 2: Your Tracer is engaging from behind, the enemies are looking at her. GO IN.

"What do I do when my team does not go in?"

Simple - You poke. The reason why your team isn't going in most of the time is because they lose more HP than the enemy team. If you are flanking constantly, your team always has one less person shooting.

You shoot the enemies (usually the tank) → They go back and your team goes forward (because they lose more HP) → Enemies are busy because your team made contact with them → You pop from your surprising position → WIN!

"I am the Tank, how am I supposed to go in when the enemies are busy when I supposed to make them busy?" - Good question.

As a Tank you want to grab the initial attention by just showing yourself but from a safe position.

Most players call it "Setup" or "Stage". You put yourself in a position that the enemies can't really ignore because you are close to them, but you aren't in an open space in front of their face, but applying pressure next to cover/corner.

YOU CAN'T LOSE A BIG CHUNK OF YOUR HP WHEN YOU ARE GRABBING THE ENEMIES ATTENTION.

You want shoot enemies from safety, and use your small cooldowns to force their big cooldowns, and then capitalize with your big cooldown after enough pressure is applied.

EXAMPLE: You play Junkerqueen and you are playing Kings Row 1st point attack. First you hug the initial corner in front of the bus, shoot the enemies by jiggling around the cover and throwing knives → Once the enemies will take damage, they will force cooldowns or go back → If you did enough damage, click SHOUT and capitalize on the fact they have no cooldowns → WIN!

Apply pressure and use small cooldowns to force big cooldowns. When the cooldowns are forced, capitalize with your big cooldown (JQ Shout, Sigma Rock, Rein Charge, Monkey Bubble, etc).

TL;DR:

- Most people mess up their timing by engaging hard too early.

- Time your hard engagements with how busy the enemies are. Very busy? You go in hard. Not busy? Poke until they are busy.

- The enemies will be busy when your team goes in. You help them go in by poking and shooting at the enemies. If your team loses less HP than the enemy team in the poking phase, they will go in.

- When someone on your team makes contact with the enemies, that's your queue to go in, because that's when the enemies are busy.

FULL VIDEO WITH EXAMPLES

I believe all 4 characters popped their ults in a similar timeframe, or potentially an echo got 2 in a single activations. This was way back when echo would clone tanks since her health didn't get reduced at all

I'd appreciate any pointers

I just got off from a game in comp where one teammate wasn't doing that well. The tank in my team started flaming them and the player who wasn't doing well apologized and said that their mom had died so they weren't exactly at 100%.

I don't know if that's actually true but you'll never know. There can be millions of reasons why someone isn't doing good in a specific match, they might be bad, they just might be having a bad day, just that particular match is challenging to them, could be any reason and we all have bad matches. Just accept the loss, let it go and move on.