Notes from practice

session1.md

Recoveries

When your car is going to hit the ground, hold powerslide.

• Just do it.
• Every time you land in a jerking stop that arrests your momentum and makes you recover, it is completely unnecessary.
• Seriously just hold powerslide when your car is near the ground.
• If you landed, are holding powerslide, and you aren’t pointing in the direction you want to move, then just keep holding powerslide, turn your wheels, and let your car spin until it is.
• Once your nose is pointing in the direction of your momentum, let go of powerslide.
• If you want to be really fancy and look like a pro, use a flip to reorient yourself and add even more momentum.
• Just make sure if you do that that you’re holding powerslide when you land the second time.
• Practice powerslide all the time, in freeplay, in games, in the dead time after a goal, etc. Being uncomfortable with powerslide is like being uncomfortable with the jump button. It is a core, basic control, you really want to be using it.

Wave dashes and half-flips are also pretty important, but if you aren’t successfully using powerslide to recover then focus on that first.

Dribbling

In terms of more active practice, focusing mechanical practice on dribbling/control for a little bit would get us the biggest improvement for the time spent. If you want to practice that there's a couple easy ways.

If you have trouble with any part of this or want some clarification I’m happy to help out and jump in game or on stream to give you specific pointers or make it clearer what I mean.

Try to do some kind of practice for at least 5-10 minutes per session, it’s not as fun as hopping straight into ranked but it really will pay off. I generally do at least 30 minutes of mechanical practice at the beginning of a session.

In freeplay:

1. Practice picking up the ball from the ground
2. Practice catching the ball in different places/orientations
   • The airdribble bakkesmod configuration is useful for practicing this, one of the d-pad arrows will toss the ball up and towards you. Practice driving around and having it throw the ball at you, see if you can catch it and control it with small touches.
   • I can look for or create a training pack for this too if you think that would be useful.
3. Once you can consistently pick the ball up/catch it, practice dribbling it around the field. Carry it on top of your car, try to move left/right, throw in some drifting on the turns and get a feel for how the movement of your car under the ball affects the direction and speed of the ball. Also throw in some right stick as you dribble, try to get used to looking around, and especially over the ball, as you dribble.
4. After you can hold the ball and move your car around under it, throw in some flicks, jumps, spins, pop-ups+wavedashes, etc. Basically you just keep adding more and getting fancier from here, just keep pushing and the earlier stuff will get easier and easier.

In Workshop:

1. The dribble map 2 overhaul (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1694288506) is incredible.
   • It is also incredibly hard and frustrating at first (and also for a long time after that)
   • To offset that frustration, I would put the map into timed mode (there’s a button to the right on the starting platform to toggle that on)
   • I would then keep trying until the number of minutes I was playing the map equalled the level I was on
     • ie, if I didn’t beat level 1 within 1 minute, I quit
     • If I was on level 5 and my total time reached 5 minutes, I quit
   • This minimized the frustration and didn’t take too much time away from doing more fun things in game, but provided a huge value
     • I practiced in this way consistently for probably ~6 months, and went from being hardstuck on level 5 to being able to complete all 30 levels in ~12 minutes

In game:

1. Obviously, 1s is the best playlist for practicing this, with 2s still being pretty good. It’s hard to work on dribbles in 3s because especially at a lower ranks even your teammates are just going to rush and slam the ball off your hood.
   • Look for situations where you have space, and use your dribbling skills to make it useful.
   • When you are holding the ball, you have so many options, so you want to keep that in mind and not panic.
   • By controlling the ball, you force your opponent to either commit or give you space, either one is a win for you.
2. If your opponent gives you space once you get control DO NOT DRIVE THE BALL STRAIGHT INTO THEM
   • This completely nullifies the advantage of having that space to work with
   • Things to do instead of driving the ball straight into the opponent: a. Nothing. If no one is challenging you or putting pressure on, you don’t have to do anything at all b. Turn around and take the ball to your corner, pick up boost, and reevaluate. Again, if you have possession of the ball, it means your opponent doesn’t. Especially if you’re up there’s no reason to risk that possession unnecessarily. c. Throw the ball as high as you can, ideally off the backboard. High balls are difficult to defend, and as long as you stay back a little, you are much better set up to handle them than someone who is trying to figure out if they need to save it.
3. If your opponent is just challenging immediately all the time that’s even better.
   • Do not keep the ball on your hood for long if you’ve got this kind of opponent.
   • Early challenge means they’re probably zooming to get it. Zooming == committing
   • All you need to do here is let the ball drop off your car. You want to make sure you drop it so that your car remains between the ball and the goal.
   • When the challenge comes in make a slight, single jump hop to put your car in the middle of the ball, this way it can’t pinch over/under you, just to the side (which is safe as long as you’re blocking the goal with your car)
   • Since you still have your flip from the single jump, a wavedash recovery here is super useful. Good to practice.
   • Now that you have weathered the challenge and your opponent has flown off the ball at a million miles an hour, pick it back up and score (1s) or make another play if needed.

If this isn’t working for you:

1. Save the replay where you went for a control play and it didn’t work and post it in the discord channel.
   • I can help figure out why it didn’t work and what you could have done differently to force a favorable outcome.
   • It will also be useful because something up there ^ could be wrong, so I can amend the advice if it led you down the wrong path.

Note:

This carry-dribble method is not the only or even necessarily best dribble (bounce dribbles are really nice and easier to score with consistently). What it will do is give you much finer control of your car, since it requires a pretty high level of precision of your speed and left stick movements. It also is the dribble that gives you the best setup for flicks, which are always good to work on.