Learning Soldier
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Now honestly when I say this I mean getting DM and movement down. One thing you won’t hear people say is that a Roamer really needs to have better DM then the pocket. The pocket has a shotgun and a medic, you don’t. You have 4 rockets and essentially a shield (gunboats) that if used correctly can be used to reduce splash damage from an enemy soldier and demo. You also got a few options for melee, but I will get into that later.
So most of you I assume know that you have a few options for practice, MGE, DM and Ultiduo. I’m not gunna bring up pugs and lobs because you need to get comfortable with your soldier first.
I guess to start we can begin with MGE. You need to learn to fight with 3 rockets and have 1 on reserve. You also need to learn to fight without gunboats or shotgun. I want you guys to bypass the meta. See, essentially a pocket needs to be better at jumping then the roamer because they do not have boats, they need to jump correctly to save on health more then anything. However we are focusing on roamer and if you want to get far you sometimes need to blast past the community skill ceilings.
While playing mge you want to practice with only three rockets and no shotgun or boats. Play scouts and soldiers, you need to be able to
kill them with three rockets, however sometimes this can be wicked hard to achieve due to both of you having overheal. To compensate I would suggest playing with a blackbox, get used to the idea that you got only three rockets in the chamber. Get really good with those three rockets, because if you can kill any scout or soldier with three rockets and no secondary you are gunna be a mean son of a gun with 4 rockets and boats.
Practice that hardcore, but also remember to take breaks, sleep well and eat healthy. You gotta treat yourself and our mind like an athlete. This is important with everything in this thread and with just about every class.
So now you’ve been playing MGE for a while, but have you been doing it correctly still? I big problem is people don’t play outside of their comfort zones against more skilled and armed players. You need to constantly put yourself in rough situations if you wanna get better. One of my favorite quotes is from Young Guns when Billy talks about testing yourself and how you gotta be doing it everyday or you will loose that edge. And don’t worry about your ELO. It doesn’t mean jack in the real game and it’s a pride crutch for players.
So now let’s say you are feeling pretty good. You’ve been practicing with the same sense, mouse and setup and you are doing really well consistently. You are getting directs like it’s 2nd nature and you are able to line up big and small airshots on both scouts and soldiers. Scouts are SUPER important in regards to making those 100 damage shots, you gotta take care of a scout as fast as possible or they are gunna mess you up with lots of chip damage or wait for you to reload and go in for the meat shots.
So now let’s move you into DM; you can continue to push yourself by playing with no secondary, but I would advise you to start using that stock. You are gunna be playing against multiple people and they love playing off of each other’s damage to kill you fast and control the health kits, some players can even be evil as heck and camp the spawns.
This mixed with some heavy pubbing will help you learn maps and health kit spots. You will overtime get better playing with multiple people, start baiting, pushing health kits and denying them from the other team, finding hiding spots and learning the best spam points on the flank and of course a working together with your team and playing on their damage and helping them do the same with yours.
Now of course you should also be taking breaks and sometimes it’s not too bad and you wanna keep playing. This is the best time to cool off and switch to jump maps and work on your movement. If you can push past the meta and be a well rounded soldier dm and movement wise you will be much more reliable and confident.