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bravocompany63 · 4 years

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Survival: Freelance

I thought I'd share some tips on playing the Survival: Freelance playlist. I (braddadocio/PSN) am not that great at PvP, but I was able to reach Legend rank this week and have learned some lessons in the process.

Remember that it's freelance, but you are still on a team. Stay near at least one of them and try to team-shoot. This can also surprise the other team... if you are close to a teammate, it's hard for them to distinguish between one and two people by looking at the radar.

Give your sniper(s) safe angles. If your team has a sniper, try to scout a little ahead of them to give them room and range to work.

Suros Regime is no joke. Learn to spin up (even pre-firing into a wall) for the higher-damage bottom half of the mag. I'll often pre-fire into a room near a corner where I see red ahead of me and the guy will just walk right into the spray.

Always have an exit route ready, and take it if you feel your life is at risk. If you've done some damage, that's good enough; maybe your teammate will finish the kill, but at least you saved your own life.

Stick to one class/sub-class that's working for you to gain depth of experience. You can focus on a different class/sub-class next season or non-competitive play.

Don't vary weapons too much. I mostly stuck to Suros/Mindbenders (talking about season 10 here, where auto-rifles are strong). Every now and then, I'd try something else if a match wasn't working well, but always went back to the default loadout for a new match.

Know who the team leader is. The first round of a match is always interesting, and you can usually tell if your team has a leader or not. Sometimes it's you! If it isn't, and your third is struggling, maybe shadow them to safeguard them while the leader player takes care of themselves. If you are at the bottom of roster on kills, play for your life first, and team-shoot with the guy at the top of the roster.

Try to keep the surprise element at all times. If your opponent doesn't know where you are, then you are at an advantage. But, once you shoot your weapon or throw a grenade, you're sure to be on their radar, so unless you're about to get a pick or in a situation where you are three fighting one or two, retreat and approach from a different place. I find a lot of success from getting one kill, then immediately retreating and getting cover to angle for the next attack. It's rare to get 2-3 kills all from one spot, unless you're using a super or a power weapon, so don't outstay your welcome.

Be mindful of lives remaining. For Survival, this is key for both your team and the opposing team. If the round timer runs out and the lives counter isn't equal for both sides, the round is given to the side with the most remaining lives ("Life Advantage" rule). A team can be taken off guard by this; I see it happen often in 2v3 games. If your team is up by 2+ lives and there's only a minute remaining, you're better off playing passively for that last minute since the pressure is on the opposing team to bridge the gap. But if the other team has a life advantage, press for eliminating it before the timer gets you.

Don't get outnumbered. If you're flanking and on your own, wait for an opportunity to get a pick, and ideally only engage with a single player. Team shots can take you out quickly.

Keep mental notes on player positions. This is difficult, but important. Use your radar to help if you don't have visuals on the enemy (and your team is clearly indicated on the radar, or the HUD). You're tracking where 2+ players are and where the single player is. If you can position yourself to take out the single player (ideally with a team mate), your odds are better than taking on two players by yourself. Whenever you find yourself outnumbered, retreat to safety and engage from another position.

Listen for kill audio cues. Enemy kills are crucial to Survival progress. Taking out a player makes it easier to push forward and clean up. One kill can become two or three very quickly. But this goes both ways. If a team mate falls, and you were their backup, better to retreat and seek another team mate than to engage further.

Don't play too passively. If your team mates are being aggressive, you probably should too. They are putting themselves at risk, and moreso if you aren't there to help decrease that risk. Don't spend half the round crouch-walking to position yourself if your team's life counter is draining.

Wait for team mates. If you are killed and respawn, don't rush back into another fight until you have company. So many times I play with blueberries that do this: they die and respawn, then I die and respawn shortly after. Instead of them waiting for me, they rush off to die again. If two or more on your team die, just take a breath and regroup before rushing back into battle.

Keep a log of your progress. I kept weekly and daily progress notes. For a given day of play, I'd track each match result in terms of win/loss and points gained/lost. At the end of the day, I'd summarize those in terms of total games played, total games won, total games lost, and number of Glory points gained or lost. It was helpful to review and see my progress. You can also use this log to monitor how many points you can "gamble" by playing another match. If you've had good progress and met a goal you have for that day (also a good practice), then maybe it'd be better to stop and not risk losing points. If you haven't met your goal, then you can keep going unless you're feeling burnt out. Your progress log can help you make those decisions.

Review your mistakes. If you lose a game, take some time to think about how you could have played better. What did the other team do that made them more effective? Try to focus on how you could have turned it in to a win versus blaming the other players you were matched with. You can also save the video and review it. At the very least, this bit of reflection gives you time to cool before you try another match.

Review your best moments. Some games will be amazing-- you'll make all the right moves. Save those videos and post them to YouTube or Twitch. Share them with your clan. It's encouraging to re-watch those shining moments, especially after a losing streak.

Keep your momentum going. If you've been working on rank score, be sure to play the minimum 3 games per week to not decline in score (at least, once you reach Mythic, rank can decay). And you'll get a bit of extra Glory rank (until you hit Mythic) at reset for your trouble.

And here's a few "don'ts":

Don't leave a match. Even if you are losing 0-3, don't ever leave a match. Even if someone else has left your team, don't leave. (I have actually won a match or two where it became a 2v3 game, and the other player and I were at an avantage because the player that left was draining our life pool so quickly and so we had more lives to spare after they left.)

Don't ever suicide intentionally. I've been in a couple of games where the skill gap between teams was enough that it caused someone on the losing side to think: "well, we aren't going to win, so I might as well make this loss go faster" and they started jumping off the map as much as they could. That is horrible, and there should be temporary ban penalties applied to players who throw a match like that.

Don't die with your super. Do your best to use your super before you can't at all. Personally, I let this happen too often since I run bubble Titan and tend to save the bubble for a capture flag situation, but when you're at round 3 and the enemy has no lives left, it's time to go on offense.

I don't consider myself better than average for PvP... my survival K/D is 0.95 or something, which is decent but not amazing. But with some smarts, you can still play well and get your match win rate high enough to keep your progress going. You can find some of my survival videos on my Crucible playlist on YouTube. It's been a fun season and I'm looking forward to doing it again in season 11!

Good luck!

#crucible

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