Tips & Gamesense

Emphasis mine.
icarax750 1y ago Grand Champion I 

Rank? Imo game sense is something that you can pick up way faster than mechs as you watch someone else. Watch RLCS or preferably 1v1 showmatches. Over time with the commentary you figure out why they do what they do. Of course, there are many tricks or mannerisms that pros do that you won't pick up on + obviously they do mechy stuff, but the decision-making is usually clear. There's many vids on what to improve at each rank as well. I think depending on your rank your gamesense may not be the real issue but ofc you know better.

In terms of my own specific advice, apart from grinding 1s and seeing kind of what works and what doesn't, when to go or when I could get beat etc etc, I figured some things out when I stopped thinking of RL as a chaotic game, but rather an organised, controlled possession game. Basically, soccer. This instantly gives you (if you know about the sport) basically all the gamesense necessary in this game (with the added dimensions boost and bumps).

For example. Below a certain rank, maybe even a decent rank, it may work for you to just have really good booming clears and shots. This is hard to deal with even for champs. But above that, just like in football, you shouldn't boom every ball to the opponent since its just a lost possession. (Shooting hard at the backboard sequentially is different since its supposed to boost starve opponents). Soccer teaches us that possession game, incisive passes and well-chosen moments to shoot make for a more consistently successful team than any other tactic, such as counterattacks (in RL boost makes this non-viable anyway) or long ball (basically boom ball to the strikers). And it makes sense: if you're good enough to keep the ball and choose your moment, you reduce volatility, you maximise the probability of scoring. Easier said than done though, this is also why I asked your rank, because imo until like P3 In 1s you don't need to be amazing at dribbling to rank up. Above that, you need a strong weapon to score on them, which is why I was asking if you're sure its a gamesense issue.

==Another thing soccer teaches us is that fully committing ==e.g. doing a hard tackle on the opponent puts you out of the play. In RL this is even more the case since things move so fast and there's more momentum - if you get hard beat, you don't really bank on being able to recover in time so in higher ranks in 1v1 you get used to conceding A LOT, basically every time you commit to a play too much and fail. So in both RL and soccer, (taking teammates out of the equation since its 1v1), one would only go for a challenge if he knows he has a good chance of getting the ball. E.g. waiting for a mistouch. Otherwise, stay shadowing, or fake challenge. Of course, since youre defending a goal, if your opponent's control is good and gets close to your goal you have to challenge regardless. The distance at which you should do this differs at every rank (e.g. in plat I wouldn't expect a 90mph flick from midfield) and you learn with experience. Now, the last important piece of knowledge is how to challenge, rather than when. Honestly imo this is something that's more mech than gamesense and needs practice, I suggest watching a video on shadow defense and doing custom training packs named similarly.

These are the main key concepts I can think of right now. Aside from specifics of and training the aforementioned skills, there is much more to the game, such as recoveries, boost management and pathing, fakes, low 50s, bumps and probably many more. But with some experience with the key insights above + some more mechanical comfortability I am pretty sure you could push into diamond which is fairly above average in 1s. Anything above that requires more advanced mech ability than people want to admit.

Hungry_Freaks_Daddy 1y ago Grand Champion I 

To go or not to go, that is the question.

For me, my biggest improvement maybe came when I stopped challenging EVERY ball and stopped going for every 50