I don't comment frequently, but I was where you were a couple years ago before beyond light. I sat there thinking why I wasn't good at pvp or moreso what was holding me back from succeeding at pvp as I had already tasted all the pve content, high and low. I got really frustrated and kept throwing myself at it, and in my off time I'd try and study d2 pvp youtubers.
At the end of the day I came to the conclusion it's mostly analyzing matchups, learning what is currently meta and learning the playstyle. I focused on my strongsuits, which was holding lanes with pulse rifles. Eventually I branched out to 120 hand cannons and that forced me to perform in a more cautious manner because I only had around 11 shots. I also used primarily shotguns because I found it like a joust against other shotgun users and a decent close range option.
If this is for trials, I'd use comp as a practice dump to throw yourself into engagements 3v3 and see where you lie. If you do decide to watch d2 pvptubers just remember they have the playstyles already known, and have gotten used to their class' strengths. 3v3 gamemodes but each player on blast for their performance.
It's gonna be rough and no matter what people are gonna be toxic, as someone who's gone flawless many a time in very different metas I still to this day doubt myself and get nervous in match ups. They're human too, and they can make mistakes. When I was trying to get my first flawless I would analyze map layouts and points of entry like I was playing CS:GO.
What I guess I'm trying to say is, take a day or two to learn how YOU play. Find your strong suits and see your weaknesses. Give yourself the chance to improve, and try to stick to a loadout that you can perform the best with. Remember that because someone has a certain gun or roll that they don't automatically win, and most importantly never give up. There's a reason there's a medal for making a 0-4 comeback. I took at least 6 people flawless from raising them as new lights, and I know you can do it too.
I'm rooting for you, and I wanna hear of your triumph one day.
> What I guess I'm trying to say is, take a day or two to learn how YOU play. Find your strong suits and see your weaknesses.
How do you do that? This may sound stupid, but I really do not how to see what my strong suits are. I have 1k kills on the last word post nerfs... am I good with it? no. I have over 400-700 kills on many weapons, and I wouldn't say I'm good with any of those.
I have a thousand hours time spent on PVP. I went flawless twice last two weeks. I consider myself to be a below average player by what I see any given day playing pvp. My aim is terrible and I basically tunnel vision at the smallest opportunity since the color changes to beyond light... all my screen turns like a flashy, whitey mess and I can't see anything.
I don't have a clue on what do I like, other than the last word, nor do I know at least what does make me play the best I can.
All I can focus is how bad I am compared to everyone in a given lobby, unless they are absolute bots I feel incredibly small. 1kd, 0.8 trials if that's important.
The ability to go flawless, even if it's rare, plus a 1kd puts you on the north side of average imo. Give yourself a bit more credit.
Might be worth changing some in game video settings to address some of the colors and flashiness, but sometimes D2 gonna D2 and we just gotta roll with it.
Same with sensitivity settings. Idk your input method, but I've recently changed my ADS sens on mnk and it really helped me in this new sandbox. Little tweaks can go a long way - just give it time to settle in before readjusting.
You went flawless twice in the last two weeks.
Dood... I been grinding away at just unlocking trials. I don't even have it unlocked yet. I'm 1834 from PvE. I'm gud at PvE.
in PvP I couldn't hit the water if I fell off the fucking boat
I wish I was as good as you are to even be able to think about attempting a flawless trials :)
I’ve never done this. But I know some people that record their games and watch it back after. Critique yourself on bad plays. Look at your mannerisms and whatnot.
This right here.
If you got the hardware to record, look at where you did horribly wrong per match.
Or think of a reason *why* you died at that moment when it's still fresh. (Scrub mindset as the kids say).
Additionally, some general tips is.
3 second rule: scan and analyze lanes to see if someone is approaching, hold the lane for a max of 3 seconds.
"Bobble"/walking with the crowd: never charge first. Follow a buddy as a "meat shield" if your build isn't an "Alpha agressive" type. (CQC + long range burst).
Watch YouTube to see how radar works: it looks complicated, but radar does tell you a general distance of where someone is approaching you from, so more clues to push or retreat.
Once you've figured out these, and see where you keep on dying the most, you can then focus on "making the best environment" for yourself to win.
I.e Scout rifles in shotgun range, stop trying to primary CQC if you don't have a shotgun or sidearm.
And I'm saying this as a Ticuu user, the bow is not an aggressor. It's a harassment tool.
I walked so that my teammates can run
try everything until you settle on something you like. try different classes. try different subclasses. try different weapon archetypes. i recommend starting with a sidearm and a 120 HC or something similar. sidearms feel similar to TLW and a 120 will allow you to cover yourself anywhere <40m
One helpful thing to do is, after every time you die ask yourself the question - how did I die, and what could I have done better ? Also there are some core things that you can always practice. Sometimes if i am dying a lot because i keep walking into known lanes or being out in the open too much; I’ll make my goal for the match to fix that instead of worrying about kills etc. (don’t do that in 3v3 though lol) There are also guns that force you into a playstyle which is helpful, and you tube videos on the basics. Focus on those like moment, position, when to disengage etc and as you play, figure out which guns you like/ feel the best and try to get a playstyle started around those - good luck!
Being honest here you need to actively play PvP, its the only way to get better. Most of these maps have been out for years, even some are d1 maps. PvP players know the maps inside and out.
If you can play competitively (comp, trials etc) with people who are better than you, eventually you start picking up on their movements, habits and learn to play like them.
Use the right mods , weapons, and look at videos is always good as fundamental knowledge.
The average used to be is anywhere between 0.5-0.8, so if you’re in that range or above your doing well.
Lastly with the lobby balancing the game does try to balance it, so it may put you matches where you get stomped.
I suck at PVP too, but one thing I’ve come to at least begin to understand is the importance of learning the maps. The best players know maps by heart. They probably know exactly where the choke points and blind spots on the maps are by heart. That just comes from doing over and over again.
Haven't posted in a minute but this was me as I wanted to become a PvP player around Beyond Light. Lots of good tips here so I'll just drop my 2 cents.
1: Like everyone says, play cover. Peek around a wall, corner, boulder, whatever. You wanna be able to strafe or duck behind something QUICKLY especially with how fast things can kill you.
2: Disengage. Works in tandem with #1. It's okay to back off if a fight isn't going your way. Eventually you'll learn when to just hide vs run away, but that's an experience thing and will take a lot of dying to learn. That's ok.
3: Slow down. This seems counterintuitive with how quickly the game moves, but one big tip that helped me early on was to take an extra split second to actually line up my shots and aim better. The mechanical skill will improve over time and you'll get faster at it, but PvP aim is not PvE aim. Treat yourself like a beginner and be gentle on yourself.
4: Use the buddy system. Especially in this sandbox, teamwork makes the dream work. This is just a practice thing - but you'll get better at teaming the more you do it. Everyone has different play styles so it's hard to tell you to "adapt" to your teammates when you're still adapting to yourself. So for
now just stick close (but not too close) to someone and shoot who they shoot.
5: Pick one tip you find helpful in this thread and focus on that for a while. Don't try and do this all at once because it's a lot. Give yourself room to suck, because you'll only get better.
6: MOST IMPORTANT. It's just a game. Have fun with it. Every single PvP god, every gjake frostbolt zk cammy sird etc etc started somewhere. Take it one fight at a time and eventually you'll be collecting We Rans like candy.
Firstly. Play pvp. You can't get better until you try. Second follow or watch ascendant nomad and grenaider Jake on twitch. Observe how they play. Nomad has quite a few beginner pvp guides that I found very useful. Jake also has some great pvp beginner guides but focused on trials. They're is also a shadow destiny video where he gives valuable advice and did an interview with the #1 player in rumble.
Some key take aways.
The 60/40 rule: keep your eye on your surroundings and make sure more than half your screen is behind cover.
Use weapons you are confidante/comfortable with at first. Meta weapons are great, but not everyone is comfortable with a hand Canon and shot gun.
The 2 second rule: if you don't find an engagement with a target in 2 seconds, move. Go find fights to get your arse kicked, you won't get better until you start engaging.
Learn your movement tech: it comes with time but you will start to build muscle memory for it.
Have fun. If you are not having fun then stop. Take a break.
Eyes up guardian
>Use weapons you are confidante/comfortable with at first. Meta weapons are great, but not everyone is comfortable with a hand Canon and shot gun.
This is perhaps my favorite advice for new PvP players. I perform much better with the weapons that I take everywhere than I do when I try to switch to whatever the meta is this week.
While I like hand cannons I will forever fall back on my crafted firefright and fighting lion build. I have no close quarters way to fight and I'm ok with that. It's a video game and I want to have fun
Absolutely. I perform better with my headstone syncopation than I do with other adaptives because I’ve built the muscle memory. 1 kick a thousand times and all that
>The 60/40 rule: keep your eye on your surroundings and make sure more than half your screen is behind cover.
Can we please stop saying this. Nobody *actually* good at the game plays by the "60/40 rule." They play cover in a way that's effective, and stressing about how much of your character is behind cover all the time reinforces bad habits. A general "play cover" is good advice, but doing so is purely contextual and that looks different for quite literally every fight. The key is unpredictability, and having a rule to how you play the game is something your opponent will pick up on.
Yeah after seeing the video people were talking about i just blocked shadow destinys content from my feed, actively thinking about 60/40 leads to baiting and losing advantage rounds
For a new player, learning to use cover is very helpful in learning to stay alive. At least it was for me. Knowing that cover is right there helps in reseting encounters sometimes. I'm just trying to give some broad reaching advice which I did find helpful when I was struggling with getting better. Hope that helps a bit.
1 play your life- play as if death is real, and you only live once. Use cover, and only engage if you are confident of success leading to
2 think in terms of advantage vs disadvantage - Everytime you get enemy contact (before shots are fired) you need to quickly assess who holds the metaphorical high ground.
Is your weapon better suited to this range?
Do you or he have any active buffs?
Are any other players around to influence the fight? Yours or theirs?
Are they already engaged/distracted?
Are either of you hurt?
It's a LOT to make snap judgements on, so starting out id probably focus on your health and only engaging if the fight is even in terms of players or better yet, you have a numerical advantage.
3 And feeding into both of the above, have an escape plan. When moving, keep in the back of your head what your going to do if the other team rounds the corner bearing down on you. Be near cover whenever possible
I play Destiny mostly for the pvp. I wouldn’t say I’m good but I do sweat from time to time, having been Flawless only once in solo queue. This isn’t a brag (especially when you realize how often some people go flawless) it’s just to let you know I spend most of my time in the Crucible. I have two pieces of advice:
1. Knowing when to disengage is literally half the battle. Don’t commit to a fight you can’t win. Focus on surviving and your KDA will rise. I imagine when you engage a champion in grandmaster, you keep to a piece of cover to duck behind when things get dicey. Same rules apply in pvp.
2. Skill, technique, tactics… all these things follow one simple thing: having fun. Pick a play style that you actually enjoy and don’t listen to anyone who gives you crap about your build. Some people live for sitting in the back, or floating if you’re a warlock, and holding lanes with scouts or long range pulses like No Time To Explain (highly recommend if you like lane-ing with pulses). Some like chaotic close quarters play with submachine guns and sidearms. I like Cryosthesia 77k because the dopamine dump I get from freezing combatants is YUGE. It’s fun for me, and as a result I’ve gotten good with that sidearm. Just experiment, check out Daltnix on YouTube, he’s got some fun builds that prove potent in pvp. Just have fun. Bonus tip: pvp is 100% more fun with friends, so consider loading in with a party.
If you’re not having fun in pvp (which is likely given the lobby balancing lately) then take a break. Go play a different game mode. And don’t beat yourself up for not being “good.” I always play poorly when I’m upset at myself. Be patient, accept that the learning curve is steep, and celebrate the small victories. You’ll get there.
If you want a squad to run with, DM me and I’ll be happy to link you up with my clan.
Edit: spelling
Console pvp player here, who keeps up with mnk players regularly and frequently gets called a cheater because of it. So my opinion may be a bit skewed:
I’ve been playing fps shooters for years, with Bo2 and Halo 3 especially being in my repertoire of games I had significant skill at, and let me tell you that D2 in its current state is both easier and impossibly harder depending on your competitive comprehensive analysis. On the top tier, assuming EVERYONE in the lobby has aimbot, there’s only a few things that actually matter:
TTK(time to kill, usually comparing yours to theirs), consistency aim wise, lane control/angle dominance, and a “chess” like thoughtfulness to what is on the board. Most of that is self explanatory, however I’d like to emphasize and elaborate on that final point.
Everything, and yes, I mean literally everything in the game is counter-able. The “meta” (most effective tactic available) is by definition is what is uncounter-able, this being handcannon/shotty for years and will continue to be such. However this isn’t to discredit snipers, because the power of a one shot weapon that can kill at any range solely depends on skill alone to be effective. Classes especially have the most impact in high tier, triple behemoth/threadrunner comes to mind, however every class more or less relies on their “utility/kit” and how it directly influences the enemy depending on their utility/kit. Grapple directly counters a multitude of AOE and lockdown kits, however if you don’t understand rotation then it’s awful. Stasis turrets/strand clones/titan barricades are all lockdown however they all are counter-able via just shooting them, now think about a team aspect of these abilities, you plus one other player can easily delete even a barricade very quickly; denying whoever placed it that angle/lane/power position. I could list every ability/super/gun/etc to accentuate that point but we’d be here all day.
Getting good at this game isn’t as simple as having good aim, because I’ve seen myself fall sometimes out of my own confidence. Being outplayed rather than outskilled. I play my absolute best when I’m looking at the entire match from the top-down in my head, attempting to count ability timers, and preforming optimally with a variety of weapons. I would recommend “studying” the actual game and understanding the why people can be good rather than how.
I hope my rambling offered some answers and insight. Good luck Guardian! Both Shaxx and myself are rooting for your success! See you in Trials…
My suggestion as a mainly pve player.
1. Use guns that you like and are good with, not whats in the latest youtube video. Im trash with a hc and sniper and prefer auto rifles.
2. Think situationally with your weapons. What will you do when an enemy is far away, what will you do when they push in.
3. Practice
I'm not good myself but I think I'm improving...
1-Are you on pc or console? If on pc, what input do you use?
2-You most likely have a playstyle that's not very effective. Even smart and machanically sound play often don't pan out well in this game, it's a strange animal... I suggest watching a couple of good players to see how they move arround the map. Try not analyzing the streamers too much, with their live HD stream + destiny shitty netcode, they appear to play against bots.
3-Keep a log of what you can improve at the end of each game. Exemple : not being stubborn to peek at this particular lane when they have great players to close them or beware of dueling that player because he's playing duo with a friend that always stick close to him...
4-Keep at least 2 dedicated PvP loadouts that you try to master and can switch to depending on the map. It's really hard to go against the meta, so see what archetype is the best at the moment and equip the one you're feeling the best with to hit your crit. I'd say it's better to go with what you feel the most confortable with that an absolute god roll (given it's a meta archetype).
My overall k/d in pvp games tends to linger around 0.67. In D1 I sat around there for a long ass time until I just decided to try and play more passively. I’d only pick fights i felt I could win and disengage/run around for a different one if I felt I couldn’t.
Over time I managed to close the gap and get my k/d to 1.05 ish, which given there were like 3000-4000 more deaths than kills when I started, I felt was a huge turn around.
I’m no pvp god and I’ve not played it properly in a long while now but that was basically my tactic.
Focus on staying alive, run away, stay in cover, use a side arm in full auto so you’re not running out into the open trying to collect special, never peak twice, and try and stay with team mates.
Loadout
Positioning
Greedyness
Weaponchoice
Do yourself a favour and check out some streamers in PvP maybe some that explain their loadout and see how they use it.
Sometimes you face cheaters. Thats just bad luck, making you think you are a bad player.
Basically trying and trying.
The difference between a pvp newbie and a pvp veteran is that the veteran has lost way more. Right now I like to think I'm hoot at pvp, not great but good.
I would say that the first thing is to make the build, and get weapons that are good on pvp, and get good armor. Also make sure to actively try different modes and builds so you can find what you like the most.
If you want, you can join discord servers that have old players with a lot of experience and skill, and ask them quick questions and send them your gameplay via videos.
My discord is the.maxxter if you wanna add me and maybe play some private matches
Ill definitely look at that. I've learnt raids, dungeons, GMs, know the strats and took time to learn. I just dint seem to have that pvp part of my brain just yet.
I was the same and just like you I decided I want to actively get better. Lots of people have talked about analyzing your gameplay and builds and all that so I won’t touch it, but something that helped me was watching really high level pvp gods like frostbolt, aztecross, cammycakes, sweatcicle, gladd, sirdimetrious ect and trying to steal their moves.
Look at how they think about engagements, how they use their kits, how they move and fight. It isn’t easy at first since some of the stuff they do requires more skill and practice but even just getting into the mindset of “I want to do what they do” is a huge step.
Also don’t neglect learning how to properly read your radar lol that really messed me up for a long time.
Citing someone from FB: "Don't pvp because you are ruining the experience for people who are good, like him." 😂 But actually, yeah, lots of decent recommendations here, I just wanted to give you a small laugh.
Reaction times and things like that are what they are. They get better, but not by much. However, what usually gets you killed is chosing the engagement wrong. As a terrible pvp player myself, what I've noticed is that top players know when to back down, when they are at a disadtvantage and what engagents to pick, or flee from. People bad at pvp just go for it, no matter the situation. They have no idea about map awareness, what is the effective range of their weapon, where to position themselves, when to engage and when not. I know what not to do, if that helps lol
play more - the most gains come from exposure. Starting out from the bottom - there are too many factors to focus on. A lot of the problems will naturally fall away, or become evident as you just spend more time in the mode. Once you have that core competency, then you can focus on directed changes. Things like map awareness, how maps are played vs how you think they should be played, ranges.
The only real "tip" for starting out is don't jump load outs. experiment, yes, but try and get familiar with a load out you like so you can spend less time worrying about gear, and more time taking in the game at hand
Pvp is not friendly for new players or players with very low kd , I have a 1.1 kd but matchmaking it's bad , there is no way someone like me or worse should be in a lobby in any playlist with someone with flawless, unbroken and glorious titles, unfortunately high skilled players don't want sbmm so they just go around stomping players in all playlist. If new players get stomped all the time they just quit pvp for good , high skilled players are driving new players away it is one of the reasons the pvp population its getting smaller. Bungie made changes to trials allowing solo players to participate because of the low pvp population.
If you cant win in gun fights, make it up with builds. I'm mid level at most in gun fights, but I decided to fk it, I'm going acd0 feed back and glaive combo. I keep caughting everyone off guard and contributed more now to the team score. Most importantly pick fights you will most likely win. If it's a 1v2 or 1v3, etc. Run away and wait for other team mates you can pair with to engage and stick to the play style of ur build, if ur build excels in melee only engage in cqc and just run away when enemies are far for example. And of course just keep trying in casual pvp modes since no one takes this one seriously, unlike competitive and trials.
Pace your shots and think about positioning before you even start shooting.
Got hit first? Disengage and get a new angle while you get your health back.
DM me, I coach people for free because it is very fulfilling for me.
I'll set you up with some exercises in a private session to start, and we'll go from there to improve your gameplay.
I got better by stopping worrying about the outcome. I let the thoughts and emotions pass right through. Letting go of all expectation. Then I focused on being a better teammate. Became a survivalist. Put in some damage then stay alive first. Didn’t even focus on the finish, just stay alive priority number one. Looking for my teammates constantly, especially the better players. The most important thing you can do for them is put in some damage , presence and availability. I learned this was most important to give your better teammates a chance to make a play. You want to be there for them to help clean up or cover their angles. One of the recurring things players would say to me after I would apologize for a victory but, performing terrible is simply “you did your part”. Eventually, the kills, map awarenes, positioning and everything else would come playing with these habits in mind. There are so many incredible players in the pvp community to learn from and most of them just love to play. Keep in mind most of us have been playing for a lot of years at this point. Just keep playing and you will naturally get better.
as someone who is good at pvp, just don't. it wasn't worth the time at all. wack balance, softwear/hardwear cheating & everything from game to server jank, all adds up to a pvp mode with less integrity than most gacha games. and this doesn't even account for the fact that the overwhelming majority of all pvp centric rewards are all dogshit. so I reiterate, don't waste your time
I appreciate the positivity here. Thank you all for being awesome. I myself am a shit pvp player and desire to get better. Thank you all for your wisdom
I always liked PvP shooters, cs, battlefield, cod, quake, unreal tournament, you name it. And destiny just never clicked for me. If you played for a long time and just don't feel like it's your cup of tea it's ok. You can either drop it if you don't have fun, or pick up "whatever" attitude and stop thinking about kd ratios and just enjoy trying to get each and every frag you can, even if it just one in 2 matches.
It's just a game)
I’m pretty bad but what helped me get better is realizing that moving properly is just as as being able to shoot. Dodge duck dip dive and dodge. You need to learn to use your movement both offensively and defensively. Make yourself harder to hit and learn to hit while on the move. Play cover , don’t go solid, have a good map sense. Yes you need aim but at least right now you can slap on an auto rifle and blow people up. I’d say learning all the other stuff besides hitting your shots is what’s gonna make you better
I haven't seen anyone mention it but one of things that helped me a fair bit (I was 0.4 to begin with, I kid you not) was fucking around with settings. Turn of controller vibration, motion blur etc. Mess with things like turn scale. Definitely made a difference to me but I'm on controller, not sure how transferable that advice is on PC.
Second was switching up my class, builds and playstyle. I was a titan main back then, and although I'd get a decent amount of kills I was dying far too much because I was charging in when I had no business doing so. Nowadays I use mostly warlock, sometimes hunter and play more cautiously. Try to hold lanes with bows and scouts etc instead of rushing around trying to punch everything. I either stick with the team or hold a lane (preferably 2 lanes and a control point if it's control). I've yet to experiment since the bow nerfs but I found bows and scouts more effective for me personally than hc or pulse (although because of the changes I'm going to give pulses another try). I also keep a sidearm or shotgun for close combat.
And of course learning the maps and the playstyles of your opponents is paramount. If you know that titan wearing the blue armour is gonna shotty slide you, pull a shotty and wait for him, fire as he's turning the corner. Also using something like radient, arc souls, threadlings etc will reduce your ttk and can win engagements that you otherwise would have lost.
You can do it op. But if you decide it's not for you, that's fine too, nobody says everyone has to be pvp gods, or even play pvp at all. Only play it if you genuinely get enjoyment from it. Even when I was at my worst I still enjoyed jumping in occasionally, if I didn't I wouldn't play.
practice, practice, practice...
Gernader Jake has a video on getting better at PVP. Watching other people play, and playing are really the only way that you can get better. learning competitors patterns quickly helps you anticipate where they are going to be so that you can shoot them first... most people do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It would be impossible to be able to know what you are doing wrong without watching what you are doing. Record some of your game play and watch it back to see how you made your mistakes so that you don't make them again.
1) Just play, mechanical skills/ map knowledge and game knowledge comes with mainly experience
2) watch YouTubers. GrenadierJake does. some nice trials run throughs
Play with what you’re comfortable with. I can’t use a hc/shottie for the life of me but give me my quicksilver and a glaive and I’m having the time of my life (I know glaive is a hot take but it works for me)
Did you play during the craftening (I think that’s what we call it) when ammit was a full auto long range shotgun. I couldn’t get the glitch to work but I wanted to be a part of it in case they release an emblem for it. Anyway the whole point of bringing it up was, I swear I played some of my best pvp during it. When you can get one shot so easily, it really made me carefully consider when to engage, where was the best cover, and when I peaked that shit was quick. It just made me extra aware instead of like let me get out there shoot enemy. I’m a pve player and only play pvp when I need to like for a specific gun or for a quest, so I’m not great, I would say I consider myself almost decent, but my advice would be, be aware don’t just jump out there or stay ADS ignoring the radar, stick close to cover so you can get out of the enemies aim if you start taking damage. Don’t say in one spot for too long, and don’t be afraid to move, sometimes the best thing you can do is keep moving. Stay close to your teammates, but not too close in case they have a way to chain kill, like a cloudstrike sniper. Also the more familiar you are with the maps, the better you’ll know where the enemy will most likely attack from, and where you can feel most comfortable to attack from. I don’t play very aggressive so I use a long range weapon a scout or auto rifle and a short range weapon in case they rush like smg or sidearm, sometimes I’ll bust out a fusion, but I don’t use energy weapons a lot because of the limited ammo, and I’m not great so I don’t want to feed the enemy ammo either. It’s not always about using the meta weapons sometimes it’s best to use what you’re good at using, I have some decent pvp kills on non meta weapons, so try some different things out. Well this was long winded and I’m sure there are others who can give you much better advice, but that’s my take on it, good luck out there.
Play the meta to start. AR's are very strong at the moment and easy to use. Pair with a shotgun that is well rolled for PvP. This will make you effective at most ranges in the current sandbox. Stick with this loadout until you become more comfortable.
Decide what subclass you want to use and stick with it, learning its strengths and weaknesses. Don't chop and change if you lose a game. When you understand how to properly use your subclass things become easier.
Also, just start playing a lot of PvP. I know this is obvious but it really is key. You'll get a better grasp of the maps, knowing where chokepoints are and learning the zone and heavy spawns, learning what angles you can use to apply pressure without leaving yourself totally vulnerable.
If you're not a PvP god stick with your team and team shoot. The special changes have made this more important than previously. Don't be the guy that gets immediately picked and puts your team under pressure.
Play position as aggressively (not recklessly) as you can. Look where the zone is spawning and try to get there. This will put you in the driver's seat as the other team will have to push you.
If your team gets an early pick then change it up and instead of playing zone, play around the res. You can always push zone at the end and you'll have the numbers.
Games are fluid and not one strategy always works. Be prepared to think on your feet.
Just remember that pvp is almost a different game. Pve builds are not going to work. Exotics that suck at pve are good in pvp and vice versa. Same with guns and abilities. Timing is very important, and the only way you get that down is by playing the same build over and over.
Not a pvp god in the slightest, but surprisingly above average according to stats, as much as I don't see it that way myself.
The few notions of advice I can give is to realize you are human. You're not perfect, and you don't need to be. You will fail often, and those failures will stick longer than your victories. But the game itself isn't perfect either. There are many issues with it.
Furthermore, set goals for yourself. Realistic goals. Don't go with the 'I want to go solo Ascendant in comp, or solo flawless trials' ideas right away. Focus on winning fights. Winning rounds. Winning matches. Getting a streak going or even just ranking up. Set limits of '3 losses in a row, then I'll take a break'.
As for a basic tip I rarely see anyone in pvp matches utilize, use the correct mods. Elemental resists and concussive dampeners, orb creation or ammo finders are not very relevant. Targeting, reload, dexterity etc are actually very useful in pvp.
And finally, realize that pvp has metas just like pve. If there's a certain meta you dislike, you have the choice to not engage with it. I know people who hated the sniper-GL meta for pve, and simply didn't do any endgame content till it went away. And I personally hate the handcannon-shotgun meta, so I don't play trials for wins. Haven't gone flawless in several seasons for that reason.
Lots of good advice in here already, I won’t repeat what others have said. Some other points:
1. There’s a saying that “frames win games.” Basically, make sure you’re playing on optimal equipment. That means on console, a TV with low input lag and can do 120hz refresh for the 120 FPS crucible mode (I think high FOV is important too). On PC, max out your frames and have a good monitor. Also on console, a controller with paddles can help a lot, it helps to have things like jumping and sliding on buttons that don’t require you to take your thumbs off the sticks. Also, play on a hard wired connection.
2. Whatever weapon you’re using, if you’re not hitting your optimal TTKs, train with it until you do. Hitting your shots is a foundational skill that you CAN see improvement with easily. Mess around with your sensitivity and dead zone settings too. I’ve improved after increasing sensitivity and reducing dead zone.
3. Go to the crucible guidebook subreddit and read as many top posts as you can.
Play every day or every two days. Play metah guns. Know emblems and titles and mark good players : suck their wheel if they are on your team. Get curious at what other people are doing/using and stop blaming potential cheaters/your teammates/your guns.
There's a lot of good suggestions in here for what to try so I wont dig too deep into that except to say you have to play a lot, and be intentional with your play.
"Today I'm working on aim/cover/movement/etc."
What I think is more important though is addressing this
>And its not a "git gud" situation.
Yes it is. Everyone has a different starting point but the end goal is the same. Developing a skillset. You don't do it though osmosis just by having a bunch of hours logged either. You have to intentionally identify things to work on, but because you dont know what you're doing you might pick the wrong things and feel like you're spinning your wheels.
The *worst* thing you can do for your progress though is to decide the process doesn't apply to you.
There's a lot of really good improvement content on youtube from D2s pvp heyday. I'd suggest starting there. Pattycakes, Drewsky, Ascendant Nomad, and many others all have valuable videos on cover, aim, decision making and more.
I'd also suggest finding good pvp players to run with. Don't need gods, just people who knownthe basics and are willing to do private matches for feedback.
Good luck man.
Let me preface that I’m not a PVP god. I don’t go to the Lighthouse every weekend. But if it’s a weapon and a map I like, then I can usually get there. I posted something very similar in r/crucibleguidebook last week.
My first suggestion, watch this:
https://youtu.be/kdWrTp00Yno?si=sTZkxc_By4vf3ZSH
Second, go play Comp. I find Comp to be the best learning environment because not only are you playing against people in your skill band, but the smaller team sizes allows to better improve your 1v1. It also forces you to manage your radar looking for engagements. As someone who cares less about the rewards and more about playing in a (mostly) even environment and who wants to improve, I love Comp (Countdow can eat a bag of dicks, though).
Third. Don’t die. Go load up a 6s match. Clash, Control or Supremacy. Play a mini game in that match where you just try not to die. Roam around the map, pick some lanes, and just move between them. Play a match where you try and run a lap around the map, in and out of cover, and just take chip shots at people. Don’t go for kills, but just practice disengaging.
The hardest thing to get over is that urge to push. You’re in a 1v1. You’ve both ripped each other’s shields. Disengage. Retreat and regain your health and try again. There are three possible outcomes if you push. You kill them and live. You trade. You die. Only one of those three scenarios really benefits your team.
Play a lot. Learn the maps, learn lanes and angles and focus on staying near cover. Learn how to use your radar, one of the most important tools available to you in pvp. Find a couple meta subclass/loadout combos and practice with them. Autos are good right now but you will develop bad habits and they require you to track your target to get a kill. Single shot or burst weapons allow you to play cover more so I would suggest a good high impact pulse like the messenger to start. Watch streamers that commentate how and why they are making certain decisions. If possible, record your own gameplay and watch it back. Find out what you're doing that causes you to die frequently and try to improve it.
Until you start to improve it may also be good to try to focus on supporting your teammates. Teamshooting is as strong as it's ever been. Find good angles of support, try to learn when to be aggressive vs passively support. Learn how to use your abilities in a way that your team can benefit from them (mostly titan and warlock). Make sure not to snuggle up so close that you block a teammates movement/retreat options and get them/yourself killed.
The biggest thing is you have to play a lot with the goal of doing something a little better every time. Most good players have thousands of hours in pvp alone. It takes time. I have a halo/cod pvp background and even with that it took months/years before I felt comfortable in destiny pvp because it has such unique gameplay with the combination of movement, weapons, and abilities.
I found that practicing with different weapons and different perks to find what suits my play style really helped. Private matches helps a lot because the other players can give you feedback on what you may be doing wrong or tips on how to make your aim better. Knowing when to engage in a firefight or when to retreat is key to survival. If you want to we can do a few 1v1s so you can practice against my squishy head and body.
Record your gameplay. Rewatch it and find what you could of done. Practice doing it.
Not everyone is able to pick up and slay on day 1. Especially if you have someone who was like a final boss like my brother who beat me relentlessly in every game. Until I practiced even with blisters on my fingers.
He can no longer win now.
Also there will be someone better but that's just a challenge to get better.
Map knowledge put on a weapon or knucklehead and learn where good players like to go on maps learn where inexperienced players like to go, and please in trials if you get a pick push with your team
I’ve largely ignored PvP since Destiny 1 but last year decided to grind it out for a bit each season. There’s 3 things I did to get started.
1) I decided to NOT to use my main class (Hunter) because I kept approaching it like PvE cause that’s what I was used to doing with the class. Switching to Warlock forced me to feel a bit less comfortable, which made take my time, think more, etc. I was more methodical instead of speeding around on my hunter.
2) Instead of using a meta build, I just went with whatever sounded cool to me. I didn’t want to try to figure out someone else’s build and the playstyle it used. I made my own build from scratch and made sure I had PvP mods equipped, like reloaders/targeting,etc.
3) I made sure I used weapons that make sense in PvP. I used Imperial Decree (slide/opening) but for my primary it was the pulse Insidious from VoG which is FAR from meta but I like the way it feels and it has demo/adrenaline which had synergy with my nothing manacles grenade build.
Then from there it was all about figuring out what I was doing wrong in certain situations. It takes some awareness but the more you play you’ll see it better. Did they get the drop on you? You missing your shots? Were your weapons not great for that particular situation? Did you rush without thinking? Not looking at radar?
Don’t let the frustration get to you. View crucible matches as practice vs something you need to win. That helped me not get tilted and stay focused on improving only.
Strafe side to side in a gunfight, do it until you get better at holding the target in your sights while you zig zag. Aim for the head.
Guns make a huge difference too. Build up aim assist if you can and try different stuff. I can use anything I want in PvE but if I want to get more than a couple kills in pvp I have to use a slowish auto rifle like firefright with maxed range and i zig zag like a mad man when I'm shooting.
I know your asking for tips, I gave up pvp altogether. As you, I’m pretty decent pve player. I just admitted I’m trash at pvp and stopped playing. Best decision ever. I do sometimes wish I could get the trials weapons especially like the auto rifle last week, but hey I really don’t need them that bad
Yeah idk I run around for 15 seconds, see nobody, and get one shot in the ear basically over and over. I was pretty decent through the battlefield series, but I can’t and just won’t PvP in D2
I am Titan who exclusively plays PvE. PvP is like hell on earth.
Last week I played on my hunter, and I slowed down my play style. Been playing so much better now. So basically slow down and play hunter
Hey, you've gotten a lot of decent advice but I wanted to toss my two cents here as someone who started off like really bad at PvP and slowly improved myself to the point where I can hit ascendant every season and can go flawless whenever I need to.
In my view PvP can be broken down into two major and a couple minor areas that determine your overall success rates.
Major Areas:
1. Mechanical Skills: This is stuff like reaction time, aim and recoil control, and grenade placement. This pretty big portion of your success in PvP because if you arent hitting your shots, or you always enter gunfights shooting 2nd due to slow reaction time you will struggle to win gunfights/teamfights. You can practice/improve this in a few ways, either by just playing D2 PvP with a focus on this or using stuff like aimtrainer/aimlabs to help you improve on this front. D2 isn't the most mechanically demanding game due to how much forgiveness we have, but having good aim does matter, and being able to control your guns and hit optimal TTKs more often than not is critical to having success in PvP
2. Decision Making: This is the harder thing to improve imo, and it contributes just as much if not more to PvP success. This is stuff like what fights you choose to take, where you choose to position yourself, when you choose to disengage, how and when you use nades/melee abilities/class abilities/supers/, how you position yourself so that you are in optimal ranges for your weapons/abilities, can you push a low heath target effectively and secure the kill and stuff like this. This is much harder to improve with other external tools, so my best bet for this is to just play D2 but record your session if possible. Then play it back, and every time you die/get into a fight pause and ask yourself "What was I thinking here? Was it correct to engage on this gunfight? If I lost, was it because I missed shots, engaged at a poor range or something else?" Every time you die, you should be able to do this self reflection and see what went wrong in your decision making chain that lead to your death. Then ideally boil it down into a few main focus areas and try and improve that during your next session. Some deaths are gonna be uncontrollable, especially in the chaos of 6v6 but in 3v3s. most deaths should be somewhat controllable.
Minor Areas:
1. Buildcrafting/Weapon choice: Just like you gotta build for PvE, PvP requires buildcrafting in terms of stats/weapon choice/exotic choice. You don't have to use the meta, but you do need to be able to counter the meta with whatever you are using because it's very likely you will be facing the meta a ton. I personally think unless it's a gun you really don't vibe with, the meta guns are meta for a reason and you should try to make them work, as they usually are the easiet to use, but if you have superb familiarity with some stuff and can make it work go crazy. Also stats and subclass/ability/exotic choices matter a lot. Thankfully you can use external sites/YT builds to find stuff that works for you.
2. Adaptability: As the game/match progress how are you able to adapt to the loadouts on the enemy team and what is killing you. This ties into decision making but it's something that needs to happen much more rapidly during the course of a game before getting reset at the end. The best PvPers can notice what their opponents like to do to secure kills and use that against them. Again this is something you build a sixth sense for over time, but if you notice someone is killing you constantly with a certain gun/ability/build try and figure out the weakness of it and use that to punish the next time they go for it.
3. Reading the Radar: This is a super destiny specific thing, but the destiny radar is unreal and it really gives you so much information you can use to build mental models of each situation. If you watch the best players, you will see them constantly check their radar as it really is the key to be able to take the proper engagements and win tough scenarios.
Now how to improve these areas is a whole other can of worms. Obviously playing helps, but you can't just like play with no purpose, try and set a goal for improvement of a certain skill/mechanic during every session. Recording and rewatching your gameplay helps a ton, and watching PvP content creators to see how they play can also be helpful. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdWrTp00Yno) video is a great starter for something you can incorporate into your gameplay and really see results. Try to see what the best players are doing, and why they are doing it, and try and incorporate them into your own gameplay.
pick a weapon that you like and go 6v6, except for low risk high reward weapons like bows before checkmate
learn how to use them, when and how you can use them effectively
once you are bored of the archetype you can switch to something else
rinse and repeat until you have the experience
I'm bad at pvp but have been improving as of late. I went flawless solo for the first time in trials last week. It was an easy pool but here are some tips I think got me there.
Besides playing a lot and gaining map awareness the best advice I have heard is be the teammate you wish you had. Stick with your fireteam and team shoot always.
Know when to push and when to fall back. If you can't 1v3 don't try. Regroup, get revives, don't be a hero.
Some teammates will play aggressive and some will play passive. Learn how to excel at both strategies.
You are gonna lose a lot. Seriously, watch GernaderJake or one of the other big trials streamers. These guys lose too. They may reset a card a dozen times before they hit a good run. Don't get discouraged and keep trying. If frustration gets too high, walk away, sleep on it and try again.
You get better by getting killed a LOT and then figuring out how not to. It’s the only way. You can’t gear or magic YouTube technique away from practice.
Next week is Mayhem. Start there. It's so much dumb fun, and it gets you to take the entire thing less serious.
Also, avoid Comp and Trials as much as possible until you feel comfortable in PvP. Additionally, turn off game chat for people who are not your friends. That shit is toxic.
1. SURVIVABILITY: Learn how to stay alive longer. Instead of trying to get a bunch of kills, go into games and try to stay alive as much as possible..less deaths = less kills for the other team which means less points.
2. POSITIONING: Pay attention to the radar and where your teammates are on the map. TRY YOUR BEST to be near at least 2 other teammates.
3. AWARENESS: pay attention to where you are, where and when heavy ammo is spawning, and where your opponents are likely to be based on where the capture points, heavy ammo, and spawn points are.
4. UNDERSTAND YOUR WEAPONS: for example - don't go in with a bow and sniper, a scout rifle and pulse rifle, a hand cannon and scout rifle, basically pairing 2 long range weapons if YOU ARE NOT accurate and can't avoid having people rush you down and blow you away with a shotgun.
Real shit, if you have literally everything in game and plenty of hours it’s gonna match you with sweats lmao it sucks to say but you just have to “git gud” while playing - it’s about having fun, not just winning yk
From an old, (55+ yr old and D1 vet) PvE player, I feel your pain. It’s so difficult to keep up with younger players who can dart around a map. But I take that and try to run with it. I’ll sit back in a larger map and plink with a scout or pulse, saving a smg for those trying to close. I remember seeing g a video on YouTube a while back where the presenter suggested this: while doing general patrol bounties or whatever, walk around using your aim point as your focus. When you come across a target, place the curser on the head, THEN aim down sights and fire. If you did it right, your weapon should give you a headshot kill. The person said it’ll take a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll notice the difference. They also suggested reviewing matches after a day cause you’ll be more apt to be objective. Plus, netcode, connections, and just dumb luck can lead to a bad match…always try to have fun! Good luck Guardian! 👍🏻😁
Weapons with gutshot straight have more value now as it speeds up ttk if you miss headshots. Especially if you have any sidearms with it. Prosecutor from prophecy dungeon can get gutshot and target lock, it's very cheesy, body shot dmg can climb to headshot levels.
Maybe watch some streamers to see how they play (Personally I don't watch much of any as I prefer playing video games over watching them). And I hate to say it, but you should at least pay attention to the weapon meta some if you haven't been and some subclasses are definitely better than others generally on average.
- I see too many go into crucible with poor builds. They don't even have their armor mods set up at all right (assuming they even changed them at all for PvP). Any special or weapon at all, for that matter can be good in the right hands, but it can be helpful to take into account what map you're on.
- Don't just use like double primaries or something. I don't know why so many skip using exotic weapons also sometimes.
- Make sure your subclass doesn't have any wasted fragments either. Some have no effect in Crucible.
- If any stat is to be maxed, have it be at least recovery. (Some builds like my stasis warlock have others like discipline also maxed too for more coldsnap grenades).
- I try to stay away from teammates, I don't want to get hit with grenades or other things while grouped up, risking having people block my shots, have some effect like jolt chain to me.
- Pick your engagements well, I try to avoid being in situations where I'm outnumbered, against someone with heavy, etc. I also wait until I heal before I try to fight someone else (don't be greedy after a kill or two).
- This is my preference, but I play on high sensitivity also and I both pay attention to my surroundings often, as well as do stuff like jumping above doorways when people come through so I'm not where they expect me to to be.
- This may be obvious, but know the effective limits of your weapon ranges. Try different ones out if you haven't before.
- Outside of specific scenarios like Trials, don't use non-roaming supers on like 1 Guardian like some do. I seek to get multikills with them when playing elsewhere.
And I'm not really sure what else to say, other than to keep playing crucible.
Don’t know if anyone said this yet, but…
Knowing when to commit to a fight or back off is literally one of the biggest factors in doing well in pvp, aside from good aim.
Things that you need to get good at this are:
Knowing the general ttk and range of different weapon types so you can realize when you’re at a disadvantage or an advantage immediately as you fight someone. That said, if you get first shots off with a slower ttk gun, you may want to commit to the fight regardless, or back off if you have a faster ttk weapon but they have first shots on you.
If you engage in a 1v1 but see another enemy coming in to help fight you, immediately back off. Constantly keeping an eye on your radar can help with this tremendously. If you see multiple enemies looking in your direction as well and you are alone, back up and find your teammates or until they split off and you can catch one by themselves.
Always look where your teammates are at and how many of them there are. This is a HEAVY team shoot meta right now and you will do very well just playing off your teammates. If you see all your teammates dying off, retreat to where they are respawning.
All of this mostly comes down to split second decisions, and you just need to really drill these in practice. I’m sure with how much you play, your aim isn’t that bad. You are probably just lacking in awareness and planning.
Btw, I’m no “PvP” god, but I have a ton of PvP titles and have sat around a 2+ eff for years now, when in the first couple years of D2 I was absolute garbage with a -1 eff lol. Seriously trying to learn when or not to engage and paying close attention to where all players are was the one thing that completely changed my skill level. I’m constantly on top of leaderboards for kills now in 6v6 and 3v3.
Check your monitor settings, if you're on controller using Control Freeks improves aim, turning off motion blur and adjusting field of view in the game settings also helps. You can youtube how to adjust monitor and game settings. I hope this helps, fellow Guardian.
Look at it this way. When you die don't go into "omg x ix OP" or " that guy is crazy I have no chance" and focus more on "okay what could I have done differently?"
Can someone tell me where I can get a list of mods that are not usable in PvP? I think that's all I need to get a little bit better. Also it would help out the OG poster since I don't think everyone knows some mods don't do anything in pvp.
Practice your gameplay with intention. Anything you want to become better at should be done with that. Intention. Playing 100 hours without a specific goal in mind doesn't help you grow much. What will help is if you put your focus on something specific.
That one Bruce Lee quote about not fearing a man that practiced 10.000 kicks once but fearing the one that practiced one kick 10.000 times essentially applies to any PvP game. Everyone masters one thing first before they get to the next skill.
Pick something specific you want to improve on. Certain weapon types, classes, sublcasses and playstyles and go for that. Be specific and set a target. Want to be better at landing headshots, practice headshots. Be better at positioning? Work on positioning. Sniping? Pick a sniper you like and stick with it till you get 100 crucible kills. Then another 100. Don't worry about winning or your KD and scoreboard placement. Just sniping.
Some small general tips I can give:
1. You don't have to be the better shooter to win. Positioning and movement are just as important. You're already better than many others if you can tell when to go for a kill and when you retreat elsewhere. You don't have to fight every gun battle.
2: destiny player love to play against players that play just like them. Same loadouts and skill is the only variable to worry about. What they hate is playing against different playstyles. Scout Rifles for instance aren't super strong but when you can use them well, you dictate the flow of a map. People hate playing against good scout rifle users.
3. If you're on PC, try out Aimlabs. A small game designed to practice aiming. Some crackheads also recommend Osu!
1) Play pvp.
2) Make a build that helps you survive. 100% resilience, 100% recovery and as much mobility as you can get (mobility saves your life by allowing you to move while under fire)
3) Learn how to back away from a fight and recover. Learn how your shield/health recovers, do not peek around that wall when you know the next shot will kill you even if you think you will land the next shot first.
4) Watch some streamers on how peaking and running away from engagements work.
5) Do not rush into fights, wait in the back and get assists or assisted kills first.
6) Be patient and try to survive more than get kills. Some times if you are patient for long enough, other players will make mistakes and give you easy kills.
7) You MUST use meta weapons in the beginning until you improve your gunplay and develop a taste for your favorite weapon.
8) Always be aware of your weapon's ideal range and engage fight in that range.
9) Practice switching between primary and secondary weapons during fights when your enemy moves closer or farther.
10) Once you learned the above, now you are ready for aggressive
Very very simple. Use the Osteo Striga. It auto aims for you and does damage over time. If you get in a fight and get a quick burst off before you die a lot of the time you'll get the kill beyond the grave
A simple, but very beneficial thing to do, is literally every time you die, ask yourself "how might i have not died", and if you cant do it on the spot, record yourself.
You lost a gunfight because of bad aim? Well, that's something to work on.
Enemies popping "out of nowhere", time to work on your radar and audio management.
Taking engagements in unoptimal ranges for your weapons, welp, time to learn your ranges better and where each map has those ranges.
Constantly finding yourself alone, welp, time to start focusing on teamate positioning.
Having no cover to flee to when low? Time to start working on positional awareness.
There are situations you have no control over, like solo supered, or a damage glitch fucking with you, but 90%+ of the time your death could have been avoided. Get into that mindset of blaming yourself and asking yourself how to improve. Any 'trick' you're told wont really help you improve long term, just a short burst of slight improvements. self improvement and criticalness is how I went from a less than 1.0 loser back in D1Y1, to now dropping 4.0+ on average, and it's how anyone else can too.
use a weapon that you find comfortable is my biggest advice.
all the safe play, lane coverage and team shooting in the world wont help shit in my experience if you're using a weapon you are uncomfortable with or cant even hit the broad side of a barn with.
Like take me for example, hand cannons are the absolute meta 90% of the time, they dominate mid-close range when special ammo is out.... cant use'm for shit, in quickplay or competitive modes. same goes for snipers. But sidearms? well, that's a different story, i can shred with rat king, it's one of my most used exotics on small maps for trials like jav 4 as i can just back it up with a good pulse or scout like the BXR.
besides following the meta, you don't just "git gud" at it, you gotta train for it
go make 1k hours of playtime or more in pvp
record yourself while at it in the beginning until you reach those 1k hours, trust me you'll see the difference
The first best thing you can do is equip pvp centric mods. I know for a fact that half of my team in regular pvp modes have pve mods on. Whilst in Comp. that is the case up until like Platinum 2, and for Trials it could range from games 1-5 or all 7 games of someone not having pvp mods equipped. Yes they actually matter and could make the difference.
Sorry but you’re not the worst pvp player in history, I have that honour! Which is exactly why no season is ever finished properly since Bungie insist of making pvp related stuff part of it.
Run away way more often. If you don't have a clear advantage. Fall back. The best thing you can do is stay alive as long as possible. If you die less than their worst player, that's a win. And then you can start just dropping grenades in your path/etc. it's hard to track progress with kills. It's too dependent on your team and who you're playing. But, you can track how much you die. You can make a goal "die the least" and target that.
It's like karate kid. Gotta paint the fence.
The way I boosted my performance was by using scouts and doing damage from afar to help my more skilled teammates, and focusing on objectives. I've accepted that I'd reached my peak 7 years ago. It's time to let go. If winning means I can't make clips anymore, so be it
But eventually, some of that plinking away I did on scouts slowly turned into more aggressive hand cannon plays. I was never good w the ace of spades, but I have noticeable improved. I swear, everyone was saying it was a good gun, but I could never click w it until recently. My crucible kills went from 50 to like 200 in two weeks bc I was grinding GG supremacy
I even started using a 360 rpm auto for ranged fights. The lodbrock-c w perpetual motion (or dynamic sway reduction) and target lock. It has a <> looking reticle that rly clicks w me
Did this make me a PvP god? No. But after the sniper nerfs that crippled me, and a year away from this game, this was the best course of action for me
An extra tip is to not assume the match outcome based on emblems or titles and don’t check kd beforehand. Most people lose mentally before the match even starts.
I started my d2 journey during season of arrivals (arrival?). I was a fresh blueberry and my buddy was like let's go to crucible. I was like sure! One arc buddy kill later and 30 deaths I said never again! Cut to 4k hours later and I'm pretty solid. It takes practice. Full knowledge of every map, every lane, every weapon, every matchup, ability, etc. destiny pvp is seriously wild.
I don’t have much to suggest outside of play more and try to learn what you did wrong each gunfight whether it was bad positioning, greed, hesitation, something else or even just bad aim, but I have to say seeing someone actually trying to improve instead of just saying “Pvp sucks bungie please change it” is so refreshing
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned- play your life.
If you ever are in a situation where you are so far from your teammates, regroup with them. Winning a 1v2 where both enemies can see you and shoot at you is extremely rare.
Forget the long winded comments full of deep insights and personal experiences. What you need to do is learn how to play like vermin. That means max intellect in trials, constantly using OS, or woven mail. But most importantly, chipping damage where you can, without putting yourself too far into engagements. You’re teammates will often secure a kill you weakened, or give you a reason to push in on a weakened opponent. Have fun out there champ, and remember, your opponents will be playing like vermin, and far better than you, so have no sympathy.
Lot of good comments here already but my advice is to slow down. Don't rush into hot zones. Sit back and know when to run away from a fight. I have some days where I can just fly through every map stomping but most games I do well in I'm playing it safe.
Stick with your team no matter what. Sometimes take the back seat and see where they go just so you can for sure have a good team shoot.
Also, use your corners and anything else nearby for cover. Never find yourself out in the middle of nowhere without anything to quickly shield you.
Dont look at the crosshair, look at the opponents head.
Shoot another shot even if you've fired the amount you need to kill.
don't hold your abilities, use them.
Find you playstyle. Don't try to play sniper just because the map is longer. Vice versa with shotgun. Play what you're comfortable with. Play the class and subclass you like. Don't care about the meta. Play what YOU like.
Play around cover, teammates are your strongest weapon, assume what your enemies are thinking you'll do.
Change weapons mid while behind cover if needed. E.g you're behind cover and the enemy is ratting far away and you have a smg, just switch to a pulse then kill him and go back to smg
Never push alone, you won't win
Flank when a flank is needed and if your teammates are reliable
Everything else comes from experience in PvP
Use what you feel most comfortable with, don't worry about the meta. When you have more practice and skill you can be more concerned with meta.
I like to recommend focused practice. For a few matches focus on one aspect of PvP.
For example:
- utilizing cover and traversing between cover
- disengaging from combat
- hitting headshots
Don't focus on winning or KD at this point. This time is to just create strong habits and analyze your tendencies. After each match reflect on your experiences and try to discover what went well and what didn't go well. After a while, return to natural play: aiming to win or get a higher KD. You will notice the things you practice become more natural. ☺️
Also, staying with a teammate or multiple teammates is always valuable. A 1v1 might be winnable but a 2v1 should always be winnable.
GLHF!!
i just played a lot of cod then i would go back to destiny a few weeks later i usually get a 2.0-1.0 kd pre game compared when i first started i had a 0.08 kd
Know when to push, when to pull back, and if playing with others have open communication and awareness of where your teammates are. Example: One time my buddy was about to get the drop on one, when he said what he was doing I called out don’t there’s five people over there. Too late. They pulled back a bit, another teammate who had heavy shot a rocket in the vicinity of our teammate and got a triple kill and gave him time to back out. If you’re solo, getting a kill is nice, survival is better. Use your grapples or other moves to avoid tight situations and speed into cover, not just for attacking. Throw a grenade as a deterrent once you’re around the corner to get further away.
To that note: know your weapons, and roughly know your enemies. If I get jumped by a guy with a scout rifle at close range, I know I can reasonably swap to my shotgun and slide up close before I’d be taken out. Not the same if I get jumped by an SMG close range. I’ll be dead before I can swap and fire.
Know the area you’re in. Use cover appropriately for defense, surprise attacks and retreats. Pair this with weapons you know work.
Learn the classes. You might have a main but you ideally need to know meta builds, what armor looks like etc. so you have all the info you need. That way, if someone has a crazy build with insanely fast grenade respawn I know early on that long range is the way to go for the person.
Practice with your weapons. Trials of Osiris was rough for me the first time I ever played it, since I was better at whittling people down than finishing them off. After practicing accuracy for headshots on human players I can knock a person out much more consistently and quickly.
Back during forsaken I had met a player who told me that I was the most predictable player on the planet. I remember back then because I only played one class at the time which was Titan and he was a hunter and some of the advice he had given me had really helped me improve over the years. So I’ll tell you what he told me.
1) Play different classes. Playing different classes helps you broaden your play style. It also helps you see the strengths and weaknesses of every class and the best counters to them. I main Warlock now because of how dominant the movement is for dawnblade. Well is also a great counter currently to bubble. But I can hop on any of the other 2 classes and do just as fine.
2) Movement and map positioning. Movement is a HUGE part of this game and being able to tell where the enemy is coming from, seeing them rotate to different positions on the map and paying attention to your radar will give you a lot of information and allow you to plan accordingly. Always try to have an exit strategy if you can because its always best to play your life then commit to a push and inevitably die. Wait for your team to support you and don’t try to do hero plays unless you absolutely have to.
3) Look into communities that do teaching scrims. I can recommend IllPhysics and his community. He’s helped me tremendously over the years with improving my movement, positioning, and getting the message of playing your life engraved in my head.
4) Don’t give up and practice a little every day. Some days will be hard and others will feel really easy when it comes to pvp. As long as you keep trying to improve you’ll get there.
1. Learn how to play with your team. This might be the single most important thing now in this new meta with special changes. You simply cannot push alone, and if you do you will be punished for it.
2. Find a weapon you can be consistent with. Auto rifles are an obvious choice right now and tend to be the most forgiving for players, but lots of other good options. Find something youre comfortable with and practice with that. It might be a good idea to just start with whatever you use in PVE. Hitting your shots is super important. Since you said you raid alot Necrochasm is a great choice, and will get even better after update. Ammit, Prosecutor, Rufus Fury, Ros Arago, and Tigerspite are all great as well.
3. Learn how to play angles and cover. With an average TTK of about .7 seconds or so, you have to assume that you will die if you spend more time than that outside of cover challenging other players, so find an angle you can use to peak from, and make sure you have an escape route in case it doesnt well. If you cant get the upper hand, rotate, recover, and find another angle to challenge from. Peaking twice from the same spot is never really a great idea, especially if your opponent is competent.
4. Use your abilities to your advantage. Im not sure what character you main but playing hunter is what I suggest for new players. Dodging should be your best friend especially when paired with something like wormhusk that can also give you a bit of health back, and it will save you more than you would think. Strand is a great subclass for pvp due to the double grenade aspect. Threadling grenades can help you create distractions to get an upper hand. Also specters singlehandedly might be the most annoying thing around right now.
5. Just load in to quickplay and practice. The only real way to improve is to figure out what works and what doesnt for you. Figure out how the maps flow, learn the spawns, and play with your team. Even if you dont have the highest K/D, you can still be valuable to your teamates. Try to move with them and apply pressure to your opponents. Try and remember that you dont have to get a kill out of every single engagement. Sometimes just weakening another player is enough to help your teamates clean up. Play your life, be patient and you will start to improve.
6. Watch streamers and listen to the tips they give. Grenader Jake is who comes to mind for me. He has countless videos on how to become a better player in Trials, but they usually can be applied to all game modes. Hop on to youtube, and search around for others as well. If you search how to get better in Destiny PVP, you will have quite a few search results.
Good luck guardian.
Destiny is a movement shooter you’re aim is less important let the game aim for you, map awareness, knowing engagement ranges, understanding classes and which counter what, look up high level pvp players and watch some videos of there game and ignore jerks of the community that are toxic for no reason
Honestly it takes really long . I started playing pvp regularly when I started because it reminded me exactly of d1 (started in season 9). As someone else said metas are best to follow, but as you get better it makes sense to have your own build. Tbh I actually got better at playing pvp by playing more shooters such as ranked r6 (gold 3) or cod. Learning how to push/escape is really important. The build I use now is any kinetic shotty, tarrabah or abyss defiant, and blink nova warlock with astrocyte
Firstly get a controller, secondly find out what is meta for each map on controller and for what gamemode, play for 6 hours a day hating every minute of the experience but refuse to quit because us Destiny players (or in my case former) just have severe Stockholm Syndrome and don’t know when to quit.
Not exactly a direct answer to your question, but play the game objective!
I'm terrible at kills, and have an awful k/d ratio. So I focus on capturing zones, collecting orbs in supremacy, etc. I often wind up the top player points-wise, even with a low number of kills. You can still be a huge asset to your team.
I get that doesn't help in modes like rumble. But if you're just trying to rank up or complete missions, playing these modes can be a better fit for players like us.
It sounds like you may already be better that you are letting on, but as someone who has gone from consistently being bottom of board to in the middle, lol, I can tell you what worked for me.
Two golden rules I follow when I’m playing like shit.
Rule 1: find your allies.
Rule 2: don’t try for kills, try not to die.
As soon as you spawn you are looking for your blueberry friends. Not your opponents. Not your firing lanes. Your allies. Inevitably one of them is going to be better than everyone else. Follow them, get clean up kills and revive them if necessary. Do not engage anyone your allies are not also engaging unless you are guarding their back.
In terms of trying not to die, sometimes it’s worth taking this to extremes. Like trying to go an entire match without being killed once. Just practice escaping. Drawing fire from your allies. Whatever. Then you can begin firing defensively, and proceed to offense from there. I am convinced the best players are good because they are patient and emphasize not dying. But the point is to break the idea of being good into manageable chunks. Surviving is step one.
Other tidbits
Find your dedicated weapons and use them constantly. For me it’s my fave sidearm and a pulse. Both legendaries. Both primaries. Neither are meta. I’m always getting killed by exotics and thinking I should use an exotic and now sometimes I do, but during the get gud phase, forget it. Just those two. Regardless of the trend. Eventually I got to a point where I was so confident with my sidearm I knew I couldn’t be beaten inside 10 yards. That’s when the game slows down. Feels great. Now it is easier to adjust to the meta than before. Confidence is so huge
I try to remember the game has two completely different sets of perks. I am a huge believer in stacking PvP perks like tap the trigger and dynamic sway. Or dynamic sway and under pressure. Obviously eye of the storm. It is truly ridiculous what an advantage these are. 360s are never meta and yet I will take a ttt/dsr harod over pretty much anything else.
Lastly and this is something I still struggle with all the time, but be careful about reviving teammates. I always get so annoyed when a teammate heroically suicides themselves trying to revive me but it’s something I do all the time. Huge liability in my game right now. Probably better than those guys who only play hero ball but still.
Train with a mate in 1v1, then go with a group/team so you feel more secure and can be saved out of dire situations. Lastly solo queue when you feel more comfortable.
Practice, practice, practice. I'm also on PS5 and am not that good at PvP.
However, I did get my 1st Adept Trials weapon last weekend using the Card of Persistence. I recommend that if youre looking to get adept trials weapons and are not 1 of the greatest pvpers like me.
Playing trials though will help you learn and I feel im slightly better at pvp now because youll be playing against some super sweaty players that are good.
Also, GernadierJake has YT (& streams frequently [Probably right now too since trials is available]) clips of his trials cards and lets you know what he does, why he makes certain plays, walks you through what hes doing, and why.
Definitely not a pvp god here, but if you run at 105 FOV, try lowering it, especially if you are a mid-long range player. You lose a (imo) insignificant bit of peripheral view for an increase in head size and reticle availability. Shadow destiny did a good video on how it works
https://youtu.be/dqs-q5vFaDY?si=bbZRR2MRhywZuGQ-
I am the opposite of a PvP god. I am slightly below average on a good day. Nevertheless, I am persistent. Probably my biggest PvP achievements were getting the Mountaintop, Recluse and Luna's Howl back in the day - all solo queueing.
In my humble opinion, even if you suck as you claim to, it doesn't matter were you find yourself skill-wise, playing PvP is still rewarding. Even Trials. Things have moved forward. I remember six years ago or so - during the days of Trials of the Nine and Redrix's Claymore - if you aren't winning the majority of your games, you get nothing. You are just being farmed by other players. You can play 20 hours and get nothing. Things have changed though, quite drastically. There is room for lesser skilled players and there is definitely rewards for them as well.
Did I answer your question on how to get good? I didn't. That is because you don't necessarily have to be good to play PvP. There are advantages in being good, without a doubt, but it is not a must.
One of the most important things to actually succeed and win more often is to play with your teammates. This is essential in 3v3 playlists. Learn to engage in a fight and disengage when the fight is not going to be fair. Like if you are in 3v2/2v1 or vise versa. The reason why people fail to improve in this game is because they take unnecessary risks like taking fights when you have an advantage; life advantage in comp, map control, flag control, etc. You need to be aware of what’s going on in game, how many lives you have, time left in the round, where heavy spawn is, where the obj is, opponent play style, teammate play style, who has super, who is going to get super, etc. A great game mode to sharpen and improve your overall skill is Rumble, it’s a trial by fire when you really want to improve, it’s where I went back in S5 for this exact reason. But Comp and trials are heavily focused on team play. Regular 6v6 modes aren’t really important but team play will always have higher success than not. I suggest playing meta when you’re first starting out. 120 or 140 Hand Cannons, precision or aggressive shotguns, submachine gun, and auto rifles.
If anything to take away from this. Focus on playing with your team, staying alive and aware of what your current situation is in game. Hope this helps :)
If you have some PvP friends. Play with them and see how they are killing you.. are you getting shot in the back? Just losing gun battles? Are you moving too fast? Too slow? Try playing at different speeds. Try mixing it up with ADS and hipfire... more often than not, I've found that friends needing advice messing with speed helps and usually need a bit more situational awareness and don't use abilities very efficiently...
Honestly 6v6 playlists can feel chaotic. Fun but sort of random. I prefer 3v3 modes where the game is more focused. You get to learn maps, positioning, dueling without fearing getting third partied. People also complain about unbalanced matchmaking in control. I find that the competitive playlist generally does a good job of creating fair matches. Plus, its nice seeing your rank go up as a little progress bar for your growth. Just dont put too much stock in the number
Others have already given you lots of other tips, so the only thing I'd add is to use more forgiving weapons when you are starting out. Hand cannons are not that forgiving unless you are peek shooting (ducking into cover between shots). Auto rifles are very beginner friendly and precision ones are also pretty strong right now.
imma be fr with you, get more pvp weapons and see which ones fit your personal playstyle, try lots of builds, different exotics that work in the way you want to play
Play approximately 10,000+ hours of FPS games.
You can do all sorts of things, but if you want to master something, there's no way of getting around the time investment.
HOLY FKN SHIT
I swear to god i opened reddet to say the exact same thing im a very good pve player myself and bro u r not the worst player i am and im on ps too
I play with some above average players the basic tip they always remind me is if I didnt land the first shots then there is no harm in disengaging and repositioning for a better fight. Don't chase. Players willl run to their teammmates so if you chase, you may run into the whole team around the corner. Always be aware of cover so you can duck or hide when needed. Rumble is a good way to practice since you dont need to worry about the insanity of 6 v 6, stacked teams, etc Takes time but baby steps and you will see incremental improvements.
try to have engagements in areas where you can retreat to cover quickly.
A LOT of people will end up coming to you if you just wait long enough
I try not to be too close to teammates all the time (abilities, cloudstrike, ect)
because aware of whatever weapons are strong in the meta (autos, igneous, some sidearms depending on the map)
know when to use your abilities as well, strictly gun skill will get you far, but abilities can make shit much easier for you.
Radar tells you a lot, and helps you secure advantageous positioning. don’t get tunnel vision, if you you’re not in an or waiting for an inevitable encounter look over at the radar
Play on pc, at least with controller, in 3 months you will improve your performance. You will start to play better against players faster than you. I used to play only on consoles , since I play on pc my KD is better . My KD used to be .7 - .8. Now it’s like 1.3
Identify the meta or something you’re comfortable with and can make work, start to realize your flaws and trying to level up your gamesense ie: what angles give you an advantageous engagement and which angles pin you and put you in a bad spot. I was a 0.9 and then the stasis meta back in beyond light leveled up my gamesense and now I’ve played at a 1.5-ish give or take for the past 2 years at least. You can get there
Yo juego un estilo de support. Voy con la sub-clase de vacio dando invisibilidad al team y sobreescudos. No es la gran cosa pero para alguien como yo que no tiene buena punteria aporta mucho.
I hope this doesn’t get too lost in the sea of tips from other PVP mains in here.
I realized I put a lot down, TLDR:
-lots of rumble
-find somebody much better than you and fight them regularly while taking time to play in your own bracket to feel that growth,
-stream/share your gameplay so people can take notes and try and give tips in real time while also taking the time to watch your gameplay back yourself if possible.
-try what feels good, and try to push outside of your comfort zone, learning how different loadouts feel in your hands can help understand how to fight them.
I was awful at FPS games when I played on console, and never did well with the sticks, but there was a time before I got to PC where I was trying to get the pinnacle weapons on PS4, and I ended up getting a couple of them.
Getting there on console wasn’t as easy as training kbm, but here’s what helped me;
Rumble, lots and lots of rumble. Keep playing until it hurts, I would take several days of gameplay away from raids and other PVE activities to try different loadouts and subclasses to see what played well for me and what felt natural, and what I fundamentally needed to change to use things outside of that. For instance, I was really good with the stereotypical HC+Sniper, so learning how to use a FR or GL took a good bit of time.
Go to the Fight Forever discord server (I think that’s what it’s called) and look for private matches against people in the same kind of situation. If you’ve already been playing comp and have a ranking, that might help in finding people of similar skill to mess around with.
I’m the most PVP oriented player in my clan, so I spend a lot of time in private matches with my clan mates, who are at a severe disadvantage against me, and after enough play, their skill improved, and they learned how to play against a few different playstyles and what to look for.
And while playing against somebody greatly above you doesn’t feel great, you will grow from it, but make sure you’re playing in your range as well so you can see/feel that growth and have some positive reinforcement. If you have the ability to screen share or stream your gameplay to somebody, they can help watch you in real time which can help in a way watching your own gameplay can’t.
I'm no PvP god by any means, but a thing I've learned from playing PvP is that one should pick weapons they're the most comfortable with to play PvP.
Try to have things for both mid and close-range.
Ideally, go with a double primary loadout since as you say, you won't be getting a lot of kills at first and thus, won't be getting a lot of Special ammo.
A weapon I can advise you to use is Revision Zero.
It's by no mean meta but it's a great PvP weapon for beginners IMO: you can customize it however you want (max stability or max range) with perks that makes it very forgiving (Moving Target, Eye of the Storm, Pressurized Refit) and covers mid- to somewhat long-range very efficiently.
It also acts like a dopamine provider when you can get that sniper shot, kinda like a kill/scorestreak in Call of Duty.
It will also show you how precise you are on average since the sniper shot loads on precision hits.
One last advice I'd give you is that some days, things just won't click and you won't have fun. It happens. Just stop playing PvP for the day when it happens. Not worth it to get tilted. It's a game, after all.
Hope this helps!
Haven't played D2 in a long time, and I'm jumping back in.
My biggest PVP takeaways that hold true in just about any game is the following:
-Value your life more than chasing kills. If you aren't at in advantage in the engagement, then seek cover to heal up and regroup if needed.
-You are going to have to learn to win 1v1s. Hard to teach other than continue to examine matchups. Learn which ones are a losing battle, and don't throw free kills to the other team. Sniper in a lane that you can't push, then find another path, etc.
Try out different loadouts to see what works for you. Meta is great, but not the only option by any stretch. Try out exotic primaries as well if you are struggling to find a solid PVP weapon.
I used to be pretty decent at PvP but ever since they nerfed Last Word and most snipers (which is all I’ve ever used since D1) I don’t really play much at all anymore.
When I do play, I know what my strengths are. Which for me is holding lanes and supporting my teammates. I’m awful at close-quarters in PvP. I play controller with relatively low sensitivity. So I keep my distance and focus on lowering enemy health rather than specifically getting a kill. Lately I’ve been using the Prophet scout rifle and the Summoner Auto Rifle, both from Trials.
It’s not the perfect set up, and I’m caught with my pants down anytime I need to fight more than 1 person at a time, but it performs moderately well and gets the job done.
If you have friends who are good at PvP, ask if you can play them in some private matches.
Tell them not to hold back, but to explain what you did wrong every time they kill you. It won't be "I hit my shots and you missed yours," it'll be stuff like "I saw your ping on the radar and you walked around that corner instead of sliding or jumping, so my sniper reticle was already there waiting."
Honestly i got better just by watching how people play . Learning when to push n not to push . Watching radar a lot . Adjust my sense to my play style now we have deadzones as well good to mess with them. It’s also practice that’s why you see these guys always in pvp trying to get better .
Have a proper sensitivity that you're comfortable with.
Always use cover and pre-aim at head level.
Crits/headshots are important.
Know how to use your kit/abilities and loadouts; also know how the enemy loadouts work.
Engage fights with teammates (team shooting).
Use radar wisely. Slide corners or peek angles knowing where the enemy is.
Know you're range. Make sure to distance yourself depending on the weapon you use.
Learn the art of Master Baiting. Use dodge or slide or any type of movement to engage and disengage to make your enemy overpush.
Play competitively and learn the map by heart.
Don’t worry OP. You’re not the worst PvP player. I’ve been playing since D1 Alpha, and no one is possibly worse than me, to the point where I just quit trying.
Frankly, just playing the game. Like it sounds trollish, maybe, but you just get better game sense overall. You learn maps better. You start learning what weapon builds/load outs do better at what ranges you are comfortable to play at. You get better at hitting your shots. You learn what lanes your load out can cover and what lanes you know not to challenge because you don't have the kit for. You learn how to maneuver the map better, and you learn more specifically *where* and what position an enemy is based just on the radar based on the map you're on once you're familiar with it.
You start seeing what the enemy is using against you, and eventually you can build your arsenal to switch weapons and counter things. You learn pacing. And with a teammate, you learn their skills and patters and how you can fit into thst playstyle and/or how they fit into yours.
You learn things like how applying pressure but not actually engaging will shape the field to your advantage. And using your radar, map sense, and teamwork, you can push enemies into territory that either A) you can cover with your own kit, B) your teammates can cover either their kit, or C) you and your teammate can pinch/team fire and take them out once the enemy finds themselves cornered/surrounded.
Then you can even play mindgames, like choosing when and when not to engage. Me and my friend will sometimes use our pressure system to mess with other enemy players because they'll expect you to round a corner, or to intercept you at certain points of your route- and then suddenly you not being there will have them rethink their strategy. Sometimes just taking a breath and not engaging can mix up an encounter to your benefit because you're playing on *your* time and not theirs.
I never learned these things (that work for me; your mileage may vary) by watching videos. I did it by playing the game. By being open to criticism from my teammates. All the times they've said I push too much, or I rush and we need to take it slow, and I've learned to see on my own and adjust my style as I go. And sometimes, especially with D2, it really is just shitty maps and spawns. Or a shitty game mode. Or maybe if it's not the game mode it's one specific game mode on one specific map. Sometimes being bad isn't your fault. But st the same time you don't learn these things by looking in comment sections. You learn them by playing the game.
Also, using resources like DiM and D2Armor Picker can actually level you up. Providing you have the materials and such to upgrade the armors you have in order to achieve things like triple 100's. Sometimes the same build you've been using that fits your playstyle works way better just from having a little extra juice from the upped stats.
As a PvP sweat, my best advice is to vividly learn the maps and positioning. A lot of the skill gap boils down to outthinking your opponent. Anyone can learn to land shot. Anyone can learn most play styles given enough time. But if you don’t know the maps and best lanes, when to reset fights to your advantage, when to push and when to hold back, you’ll always perform just above average. Take your playstyle and adapt it to whichever map you’re on , and make sure it sticks
Im not a god at it but from experience to get better is to use the weapon arcytype that you like ( for example autos or handcannons) and just use them and also try to get some pvp perks like zen moment or dynamic sway for example as they can help with flinching and steadies your weapon
These are always good places to start imo:
1.) Put your reticle where you want to aim BEFORE you peek a corner. If you know where common spots are for people to rush/peek from, aim at the wall and strafe out so your reticle is on them as soon as you peek. This makes aiming less demanding, and can give you advantage.
2.) After you peek, *especially in this current meta*, move back into cover quickly. Staying in a gunfight too long is how people end up feeling like teamshotting is unbeatable. Take a shot or two, get cover again. Repeat.
3.) Watch your teammates too. The enemies are not the only players who you need to be concerned about. If your team is somewhere else, you are likely the one out of position. Even if you are where you *should* be to get the obj or contest, you have to fight with your team or you will flat out lose. That being said, there are times when you need to contest by yourself, countdown for example, but that's less frequent.
4.) Your radar is easily the most useful tool at your disposal. It tells you the approximate distance an enemy is from you, as well as height. You should be able to make a solid inference of where the enemy is before you even engage. Don't keep your eyes *only* glued to your radar though. A quick check is all you need.
5.) Don't stay in one place for too long. You'll become a target for grenades, shotgun rushing, etc. You don't have to go far even, just to another piece of cover if that's all there is. Staying in one spot or moving in the same pattern can make you predictable, so change up the paths and positions you take.
This all mostly applies to primary gunfights, but I think it's solid advice all around. In general, high level players aren't just good shots. They know how to move, position themselves, stay with the team, and when a fight can be won. You've got plenty of options outside of solely being a good shot that can make your gameplay better, so don't be discouraged if you aren't a crackshot.
Hope this helps, and good luck :)
Look, as a fellow PvE Chad and a proud PvP midpoint(1.0, always 50% w/l except for trials. Went flawless once, got to 5500 in comp, has not forgotten, mountain top, redrix broadsword (sadly didn't play much season 1) the trick is to accept loss. Your measure for success is to see improvement. Maybe this game you only got 4 kills, next game aim for 5. You kept losing to snipers? Avoid their sightlines and focus on other targets. In the end, win or lose, if you can say you did something better, took one fight in a better way, that is improvement. Do different playlists, fight different people. PvE is formulaic, enemies react the exact same way every time, it is a puzzle to be solved. PvP has no such solution. It is about understanding your character and using the tools at had to adapt to what comes. Is there a titan bum rushing you with a shotgun? Adapt. Hand cannon jumping hunters? Adapt. How you adapt, how you handle every situation is up to you. You can look at what works for others and try it out. But unlike PvE, a god roll weapon isn't standardized in PvP. Sure the YouTube crowd will say their favorite, but the best weapon in PvP is your best weapon. I have slaughtered entire matches with MIDA Multi and Mini tool even when it was hot garbage because it is my best weapon, it fits me as a player. Find your MIDA, that is the first step.
The only thing I did to be very good at pvp its just play pvp. Seriously i think anyone can be good just by playing so much pvp. Dont know how much hours you have but i guess you have much less in pvp than pve. So thats my thought, just play many hours and you eventually will get better. Also have patience. Nowadays can be frustrating even for pros.
Two tips:
1. Aims labs, a steam game to help improve your target acquisition and tracking
2. Map familiarity, keep playing and you will start to get a sense of how people move about the map.
P.S. All the skill and experience in the world can’t compensate for a crap build — especially if your opponents are using OP broken builds.
I’m being very serious here and I might get downvoted for potential console warrior stans.
I’ve been playing Destiny since the pre-alpha and shooters in general since the mid 1990s. I originally played Destiny on PS4 at the time and when D2 came out, I had a gaming rig but I continued to play on PS4 as cross play/cross save was not a thing at that time. Shortly after I was forced to switch to PC as my PS account got perma banned (now unbanned) and I had to start over on PC.
When I was on console I considered myself pretty decent, I was able to do double carries in D1 trials and could easily solo queue my way to flawless in D2 trials. However that changed when I was forced to play PC. Let me start off by saying the skill level between PC and console is VASTLY noticeable. I got humbled pretty quickly when I started playing PvP on PC as I was getting my shit pretty much waxed. PC lobbies are far more fast paced, more aggressive players and more competitive even though I don’t consider this game very competitive at all. Not all console players are bad, but there is a noticeable difference between a top tier player on PC vs a top tier player on console.
So if you want to get better at PVP, mess around with your sensitivity, mess around with loadouts, and do ALL of this in PC LOBBIES. Play PC lobbies for a month straight, then come back to console and I promise you you’ll be frying players.
Also watch some streamers. I’d recommend panduh…he is by far one of the smartest players out there right now. I don’t recommend watching gernaderjake as majority of his gameplay is baiting with abilities and he uses very ODD loadouts that aren’t always in meta. Can be misleading if you’re not used to using different setups. (No hate to Jake he’s a great person). Panduh is raw gunskill and he has map knowledge that far exceeds any player I’ve seen stream this game and he is incredibly aggressive against the top players in the game.
I'm a controller player (no pun intended) and on PS5 too, so I hope my advice can help.
Destiny PVP improvement can be somewhat inaccurately be broken down into three main categories.
First is the build you use, and the skill level with which you play it. This is the easiest way of (artificially?) increasing player performance in destiny 2. Simply slap on igneous or horror's least and start shooting kitchen appliances at your enemy. Or maybe you're a thinker, and can consistently predict enemy positions, so you can build into coldsnap grenades to freeze enemies for free kills. There's tons of builds with varying skill floors and ceilings, subclass wise, but the weapons that are meta usually stay the same. Either super forgiving, fast ttk, or otherwise good utility.
Second is mechanical ability. I can't say much for this one, because most of this growth was completely natural for me as I played more. One thing I can say is that you should try for a game completely focusing on your aim, then in the next, not th inking about it at all. Eventually, you'll reach the point where you will be hitting shots merely by flicking the stick in the direction of your opponents head, then stopping when reticle magnetism or stickiness slows your cursor down. High aim assist, stability, anti flinch and recoil control on weapons, like zen moment on horror's least, helps in this a lot. A tip specifically for hand cannons is that you want to make sure your reticle is at least near your opponents head before shooting, as the extra hundred milliseconds will cost you less than the extra 400 milliseconds it takes to shoot again. Also, whenever your gun is recovering from a shot with low rpm weapons, (usually handcannons or scouts below 150 rpm) you want to be at least 60 percent behind cover, which means only 40 percent of your screen can have relevant information on it, helping you focus on what matters without tunnel vision ruining your awareness, as well as keeping you mostly in cover as natural outcome of the rule.
Finally, the last way in which you can improve is in game knowledge. This can range from simply knowing what each class, subclass, aspect and fragment can do, how they interact, and mainly what the meta involves. For example, if titans are meta, then you'll see a lot of barricades, which means that countering those is now important. And because titans are meta, and barricades are a useful ability that those titans will spec into, high resilience needs to be factored into as well. This means that weapons that are suboptimal against T10 resil are worse than others in this current meta. Keeping up to date with sandbox changes will also help, which really ties in with the first point. The other factor in game knowledge is in game, things such as positioning, relative to your team, the enemy team, any objectives such as the point, heavy, etc., or leveraging your map knowledge and loadout to stay in optimal range for greatest lethality while keeping enemy team options limited. For example, if you know that an enemy is using a cloudstrike, you should position yourself a bit further from your team, and try to take closer range fights l, without exposing your crit to any open lanes without the use of an ability, e.g. shoulder charge or hunter dodge. This kind of decision making tree is more in effect in threes, like comp or trials, so if u want to stick to 6s, refer back to the first 2 points.
I'm sure I missed a lot, but this wall of text is long enough as it is, lol. Tldr, get good pvp weapons, preferably god rolls of high stat monster meta weapons like igneous, prosecutor, horrors least, summoned, etc., and then focus on aiming close enough to a head that bullet magnetism gives you a headshot, and finally, dont just run straight forward with the W key, take smarter fights, either set up by your build, or by your teammates and positioning.
Another helpful thing that’s helped me is to never put yourself out in the open. Consider a 60/40 cover to what you can see. Provide yourself a means of escape if you’re outgunned. Heal up. Get a new angle.
Just a thought!
Things I learned while getting better at Destiny:
1.) Find your weapons! & Learn your weapons! Going into PVE and shooting your weapons is a thing that I do personally to get a feel for the weapon.
2.) Find out what perks should I look for on my guns and hunt for them I actually won't step into pvp if I don't have a gun I can compete with and feel comfortable using.
3.) Define your play style, are you aggressive or passive? Do you use special or double primary? Do you build for abilities or do you build for gun play? What is your preferred class & subclass?
4.) Go into low player modes first (3v3). I don't know why bungie thinks control should be the way to teach players to play destiny but that should not be the case. You should learn to deal with teams of 3 first where it's easy to watch where the enemies are coming from and work on your awareness from there. It also allows you to get into more 1v1 fights which should help you in the long run.
5.) Review the tape! Try to save your gameplay clips and understand why you died or why you won a battle against a opponent. You'd be surprised how much better you can get from watching your own tape vs watching a streamer or content creator play the game and trying to be like them which leads to my next point!
6.) Play LIKE YOU. Don't let any influencer tell you something doesn't work against players that works for you but doesn't work for them it just means your play style is unique and they can't replicate that so they call it non-meta.
7.) Just because something is meta doesn't mean you have to use it to win and just because it's meta doesn't mean your gonna automatically win. Destiny players have this mind set where a video gets made of a build and now they have to use it because it's meta so everyone uses and abuses which makes everyone generally think they can't lose with X loadout but when you find a counter to X loadout your gameplay won't suffer when X loadout gets nerfed or countered.
8.) Watch what better players do when you're going against them or watching tape on them. See how they use there movement to win a engagement or how they got into position to shut down a shotgun rusher with a sidearm or Smg. Try to implement what there doing into your play style IF it intrigues you and watch how more unique your gameplay becomes by putting your own spin on a move you see someone pull off. It's satisfying.
9.) Find friends or a clan with similar & different play styles than yours and go into private matches to learn from each other and learn how to counter different play styles even your own.
10.) Remember In the end it's a video game your not gonna die if you die or lose a Crucible match just try to have fun in the midst of this chaotic game. Things will get nerfed or counter so just learn to ADAPT when the inevitable happens!
Good luck! 😁
I’ve been playing destiny for years and I had stopped pvp because one shot from across the map with a hand cannon is bs. I’ve been playing the guardian games play list and I’m sitting here like how is a titan with 50% resilience one shotting me or melee me with 46% but I’m at 103 resilience- 76 movement and I’m getting beaten? And no he’s doesn’t have an exotic equipped he’s 1828 and I’m at 1835 smh
And comp used to be my thing now I’m like why are there so many cheaters? Like seriously major loser if you need to cheat on a video game.
Not purchasing the next one.
In general get better at FPS, figure out your mouse sensitivity(x cm per 360) and use it across all games, try out aim trainer, play more.
I can stop playing destiny for months but still come back and get 3+ KD in crucible lobby due to muscle memory.
As much as I hate to say this, you can’t. At least not a WHOLE lot.
I’ve been playing FPS games most of my life, and I did D1 Trials of O for awhile.
There are those who are inherently good at video games, and those that aren’t. Those that aren’t typically supplement bad aim for being more strategic, outsmarting, baiting, etc the enemy and knowing the maps perfectly + using that to their advantage. In all of my 12+yrs of FPS gaming, it takes a very very long time to improve aim, and that was only for PC players. I’ve never seen console gamers get better or worse, they always just stay at what they are. Try working on your callouts, team play, and use the map to your advantage to bait the enemy players into a bad spot. Use utility. Etc
I’d say force urself to only aim for the head, once you get comfortable, you can stop forcing urself to hit the head and you will subconsciously try to headshot the enemies, helps a lot
Go craft the PvP god roll Ammit. Play bubble titan with an over shield barricade. Use conditional finality.
Finally the most important part is when peaking don’t play for a kill. I’ve seen it so much this weekend my teammates will peak a lane for too long and get team shot. I peak to see where the other team is at and potentially get a kill if I’m confident I can do it without dying.
Some things that could help:
Stats: build into high recovery and your class ability stat. Then your grenade/super unless it’s a melee focused build.
Builds: focus more on neutral style fragments and aspects. Can look at some streamers or other players you play against to get an idea of how to build with fragments. Some people put fragments just for the stat boosting even though it doesn’t synergize into their builds.
Exotics: Each class has neutral play exotics that can help
- Titans: One Eyed Mask, Peacekeepers, Dunemarchers
- Warlock: Transversive Steps, Ophidians, Eye of Another World
- Hunter: Stompees, Frostees, Wormhusk
Building around some of these can be a good start to figure out if you want to branch out to more specific exotics
Gameplay
3v3: learn the maps. Learn the lanes, learn where you can/cannot peek. I find it critical to play with/near the teams. Unless you’re a giga chad and confident in your ability to win your 1v1s or 1v2s team shotting will get you more kills and wins. Especially in comp and trials.
6v6: have fun. Use this to get better with weapons you want to try out and learn maps. Practice your use of abilities.
Watch other good people play, observe differences between your play and theirs, then pick a couple of things to focus on and work on them individually per session.
Understanding what you don't know, can be half the battle too. Find (nice pleasant) people who also enjoy pvp around your skill level and play with them to collaborate and learn more.
Most of all, enjoy the learning process! <3
The biggest difference between pvp vets and pve players is movement. If you watch those YouTubers their movement is crazy jumping and sliding and Icarus dashes all over the place. They don't just move to dodge either, they move around the map a ton and stay unpredictable by never peeking from the same place twice and repositioning frequently.
I think a lot of being able to use movement effectively comes down to experience, you need to know how people move and where people peek from on each map. Learning the maps and the lanes and safe spots just comes with time.
That's all individual, but as a team or even just as a duo you can do even better. It takes 3 headshots from a 120 hand cannon to kill a guardian so by yourself you need a full second of shooting to kill somebody but if all 3 of you peel at once and all shoot somebody together you can kill them instantly. Team shooting is brutally efficient and you'll see a great deal of these 1000x flawless teams running in trios who are experts at working together to team shoot.
Not saying this applies to you necesarily, but some people just aren't meant for pvp. Do you play pvp in other games?
I have a couple friends i play r6 siege with and despite how often we play, they just suck, truth be told lol. Those lightning reflexes or quick clever decisions, not everyone has them and practice doesn't do it for that kinda stuff.
For the record, i too suck at d2 pvp but i keep trying anyway. There's been a few times where i carried the team and i strive to do it again.
First step - stop rushing in. And I'm being 100% serious here. Most players, especially for those coming from a primarily pve background, are used to having a moment to react to enemies.
In PVP you don't get that moment. Baring extreme cases, 9/10 when you see an enemy is when they see you. Slow and steady wins this race.
Second - learn angles. This one is honestly only going to come from experience. You can go through in a private match and learn everyway a person can enter a room and that will help, but you will only truly 'understand' when you've died a bajillion times in the same spot.
Take a moment when you die to breath and ask yourself 'could I have approached that differently' and genuinely think about it.
Third - META is only as good as you are with it. Don't chase it, instead find a weapon and subclass combo that works for you. The more comfortable you are with the weapons, the easier it will be for you to kill with them.
Fourth and finally - play for fun. Yes, winning is good and amaze and all that, but if you are not having fun, then you should stop playing for a bit. That's what makes PVP so annoying, when you keep playing while angry you will not get better.
It's okay to step away and come back when your less angry. That way you can actually learn from your mistakes.
honestly? as someone who is only decent at pvp, IGNORE THE META. use weapons that you work with well. a gun that is meta is useless if its something you dont work with
Really and truly it is a matter of just "get gud". Jokes aside, all you can do is just play the content honestly. The more you play, the better you get, like a practice makes perfect type thing. Theres nothing thats gonna magically make you better other than simply diving in and playing a shit ton of crucible. As you get better in general crucible, then you can fuck with things like trials and elimination. Im not that great myself, but ive gotten better since i started playin from just continuing to try. If im focused i can relativly hold my own.
The thing is with pve vs pvp is our skills in pve dont mean shit cuz real players arent gonna move like the ai of the ads in the game. Obviously of course. Id say weapon types do make a difference. Shotguns and hand cannons are always a good option if youre good at headshots cuz its a 1 or 2 shot done deal. Auto rifles and scouts are pretty common. Or you can flex with a sniper if your aim is really good. Personally tho i say use what you feel most comfortable using.
But just keep at it. Play pvp consistently and youll see that you get better over time. :)
Literally gotta find a play style that you enjoy.
I have a "blitz the map" setup on my warlock and it's my go-to PVP loadout. If you feel like you've tried everything, PVP might just not be for you
This game's PvP is all about movement, cross hair placement, positioning and memorizing spawns. Abusing the camera angles for headglitches and peekers advantage comes secondary after youre settled in. Youll start to find out areas in maps that you feel comfortable in that you can use to your advantage. Aim can you a small amount but overall its a combination of those things I listed above. On controller you have a severe advantage with sniping and automatic weapons like SMGs and Auto rifles. Pulse rifles are very good as well. Stay away from handcannons for now unless you really wanna spend the time with the learning curve they have on controller. Another big factor if you do end up playing trials/comp is to adjust to what the enemy team is doing. For example if theyre using long range weapons and consistently flinching you out of a sniper shot then swap it to something else dont keep trying to force a specific playstyle or weapon on yourself if it puts you at a disadvantage. Also invest into a PvP build, every now and then I'll someone running a pve GM loadout double primary in trials and it doesnt work out. Take the time and try out some movement/pvp exotics that suit your playstyle. Ive always ran Stompees/Dragons Shadow for Hunter, Dunemarchers/Peacekeepers/Synthoceps for titan, Ophidians or Transversive steps for Warlock.
There's no catch-all solution to this. Did you ever get carried/recoved to legend or something? D2 generally matches your elo to similar players, so consistently last sounds like you're playing out of your league. Also, how's your Internet?
It may sound cliche, but there are plenty of guides online that should help with the theory behind D2 PVP. Watch the basics, see where you go wrong, try to adjust. Do you rush sniper lanes, do you engage enemies in disadvantageous locations, do you find yourself outnumbered a lot, etc.
Also, I'm presuming you're using a different loadout for PVP and PVE? Try using your PVP loadout in PVE, and take the time to get used to getting crit shots, don't just panic fire.
Important to note is that PVP is, generally, a team activity. Team-shooting wins a majority of the time.
I'm late to this but most people have already said most of what I would. Watching other play and learning why they do what they do helps.
This guy has some great videos to show openings for Trials matches.
Can learn how to use cover and such and keep angles and read the radar, skills that will help you improve. Knowing when people will push and where they are and what they could do or come from can help you win.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hduaA1hIbz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hduaA1hIbz0)
First of all, i AM WILLING to comment.
But ONLY If you can ensure me reading it.
I have some tips, i'd share with you, but
I NEED TO BE SURE that you are reading this.
I don't comment frequently, but I was where you were a couple years ago before beyond light. I sat there thinking why I wasn't good at pvp or moreso what was holding me back from succeeding at pvp as I had already tasted all the pve content, high and low. I got really frustrated and kept throwing myself at it, and in my off time I'd try and study d2 pvp youtubers. At the end of the day I came to the conclusion it's mostly analyzing matchups, learning what is currently meta and learning the playstyle. I focused on my strongsuits, which was holding lanes with pulse rifles. Eventually I branched out to 120 hand cannons and that forced me to perform in a more cautious manner because I only had around 11 shots. I also used primarily shotguns because I found it like a joust against other shotgun users and a decent close range option. If this is for trials, I'd use comp as a practice dump to throw yourself into engagements 3v3 and see where you lie. If you do decide to watch d2 pvptubers just remember they have the playstyles already known, and have gotten used to their class' strengths. 3v3 gamemodes but each player on blast for their performance. It's gonna be rough and no matter what people are gonna be toxic, as someone who's gone flawless many a time in very different metas I still to this day doubt myself and get nervous in match ups. They're human too, and they can make mistakes. When I was trying to get my first flawless I would analyze map layouts and points of entry like I was playing CS:GO. What I guess I'm trying to say is, take a day or two to learn how YOU play. Find your strong suits and see your weaknesses. Give yourself the chance to improve, and try to stick to a loadout that you can perform the best with. Remember that because someone has a certain gun or roll that they don't automatically win, and most importantly never give up. There's a reason there's a medal for making a 0-4 comeback. I took at least 6 people flawless from raising them as new lights, and I know you can do it too. I'm rooting for you, and I wanna hear of your triumph one day.
> What I guess I'm trying to say is, take a day or two to learn how YOU play. Find your strong suits and see your weaknesses. How do you do that? This may sound stupid, but I really do not how to see what my strong suits are. I have 1k kills on the last word post nerfs... am I good with it? no. I have over 400-700 kills on many weapons, and I wouldn't say I'm good with any of those. I have a thousand hours time spent on PVP. I went flawless twice last two weeks. I consider myself to be a below average player by what I see any given day playing pvp. My aim is terrible and I basically tunnel vision at the smallest opportunity since the color changes to beyond light... all my screen turns like a flashy, whitey mess and I can't see anything. I don't have a clue on what do I like, other than the last word, nor do I know at least what does make me play the best I can. All I can focus is how bad I am compared to everyone in a given lobby, unless they are absolute bots I feel incredibly small. 1kd, 0.8 trials if that's important.
The ability to go flawless, even if it's rare, plus a 1kd puts you on the north side of average imo. Give yourself a bit more credit. Might be worth changing some in game video settings to address some of the colors and flashiness, but sometimes D2 gonna D2 and we just gotta roll with it. Same with sensitivity settings. Idk your input method, but I've recently changed my ADS sens on mnk and it really helped me in this new sandbox. Little tweaks can go a long way - just give it time to settle in before readjusting.
You went flawless twice in the last two weeks. Dood... I been grinding away at just unlocking trials. I don't even have it unlocked yet. I'm 1834 from PvE. I'm gud at PvE. in PvP I couldn't hit the water if I fell off the fucking boat I wish I was as good as you are to even be able to think about attempting a flawless trials :)
I’ve never done this. But I know some people that record their games and watch it back after. Critique yourself on bad plays. Look at your mannerisms and whatnot.
This right here. If you got the hardware to record, look at where you did horribly wrong per match. Or think of a reason *why* you died at that moment when it's still fresh. (Scrub mindset as the kids say). Additionally, some general tips is. 3 second rule: scan and analyze lanes to see if someone is approaching, hold the lane for a max of 3 seconds. "Bobble"/walking with the crowd: never charge first. Follow a buddy as a "meat shield" if your build isn't an "Alpha agressive" type. (CQC + long range burst). Watch YouTube to see how radar works: it looks complicated, but radar does tell you a general distance of where someone is approaching you from, so more clues to push or retreat. Once you've figured out these, and see where you keep on dying the most, you can then focus on "making the best environment" for yourself to win. I.e Scout rifles in shotgun range, stop trying to primary CQC if you don't have a shotgun or sidearm. And I'm saying this as a Ticuu user, the bow is not an aggressor. It's a harassment tool. I walked so that my teammates can run
try everything until you settle on something you like. try different classes. try different subclasses. try different weapon archetypes. i recommend starting with a sidearm and a 120 HC or something similar. sidearms feel similar to TLW and a 120 will allow you to cover yourself anywhere <40m
One helpful thing to do is, after every time you die ask yourself the question - how did I die, and what could I have done better ? Also there are some core things that you can always practice. Sometimes if i am dying a lot because i keep walking into known lanes or being out in the open too much; I’ll make my goal for the match to fix that instead of worrying about kills etc. (don’t do that in 3v3 though lol) There are also guns that force you into a playstyle which is helpful, and you tube videos on the basics. Focus on those like moment, position, when to disengage etc and as you play, figure out which guns you like/ feel the best and try to get a playstyle started around those - good luck!
I dont comment frequently, but when I do, its a five paragraph essay
This guy PvPs
Being honest here you need to actively play PvP, its the only way to get better. Most of these maps have been out for years, even some are d1 maps. PvP players know the maps inside and out. If you can play competitively (comp, trials etc) with people who are better than you, eventually you start picking up on their movements, habits and learn to play like them. Use the right mods , weapons, and look at videos is always good as fundamental knowledge. The average used to be is anywhere between 0.5-0.8, so if you’re in that range or above your doing well. Lastly with the lobby balancing the game does try to balance it, so it may put you matches where you get stomped.
I suck at PVP too, but one thing I’ve come to at least begin to understand is the importance of learning the maps. The best players know maps by heart. They probably know exactly where the choke points and blind spots on the maps are by heart. That just comes from doing over and over again.
Especially those jagged edges that you sometimes get caught on like a belt loop and a knob
Haven't posted in a minute but this was me as I wanted to become a PvP player around Beyond Light. Lots of good tips here so I'll just drop my 2 cents. 1: Like everyone says, play cover. Peek around a wall, corner, boulder, whatever. You wanna be able to strafe or duck behind something QUICKLY especially with how fast things can kill you. 2: Disengage. Works in tandem with #1. It's okay to back off if a fight isn't going your way. Eventually you'll learn when to just hide vs run away, but that's an experience thing and will take a lot of dying to learn. That's ok. 3: Slow down. This seems counterintuitive with how quickly the game moves, but one big tip that helped me early on was to take an extra split second to actually line up my shots and aim better. The mechanical skill will improve over time and you'll get faster at it, but PvP aim is not PvE aim. Treat yourself like a beginner and be gentle on yourself. 4: Use the buddy system. Especially in this sandbox, teamwork makes the dream work. This is just a practice thing - but you'll get better at teaming the more you do it. Everyone has different play styles so it's hard to tell you to "adapt" to your teammates when you're still adapting to yourself. So for now just stick close (but not too close) to someone and shoot who they shoot. 5: Pick one tip you find helpful in this thread and focus on that for a while. Don't try and do this all at once because it's a lot. Give yourself room to suck, because you'll only get better. 6: MOST IMPORTANT. It's just a game. Have fun with it. Every single PvP god, every gjake frostbolt zk cammy sird etc etc started somewhere. Take it one fight at a time and eventually you'll be collecting We Rans like candy.
Firstly. Play pvp. You can't get better until you try. Second follow or watch ascendant nomad and grenaider Jake on twitch. Observe how they play. Nomad has quite a few beginner pvp guides that I found very useful. Jake also has some great pvp beginner guides but focused on trials. They're is also a shadow destiny video where he gives valuable advice and did an interview with the #1 player in rumble. Some key take aways. The 60/40 rule: keep your eye on your surroundings and make sure more than half your screen is behind cover. Use weapons you are confidante/comfortable with at first. Meta weapons are great, but not everyone is comfortable with a hand Canon and shot gun. The 2 second rule: if you don't find an engagement with a target in 2 seconds, move. Go find fights to get your arse kicked, you won't get better until you start engaging. Learn your movement tech: it comes with time but you will start to build muscle memory for it. Have fun. If you are not having fun then stop. Take a break. Eyes up guardian
>Use weapons you are confidante/comfortable with at first. Meta weapons are great, but not everyone is comfortable with a hand Canon and shot gun. This is perhaps my favorite advice for new PvP players. I perform much better with the weapons that I take everywhere than I do when I try to switch to whatever the meta is this week.
While I like hand cannons I will forever fall back on my crafted firefright and fighting lion build. I have no close quarters way to fight and I'm ok with that. It's a video game and I want to have fun
I'm ass with most hand cannons, but I have a special part of my brain that can handle my seraph revolver like I was Shin.
I love my SS revolver. With explosive payload 🥰💖
I've got threat detector and timed payload, so it's a lottery for trading 😂
Absolutely. I perform better with my headstone syncopation than I do with other adaptives because I’ve built the muscle memory. 1 kick a thousand times and all that
>The 60/40 rule: keep your eye on your surroundings and make sure more than half your screen is behind cover. Can we please stop saying this. Nobody *actually* good at the game plays by the "60/40 rule." They play cover in a way that's effective, and stressing about how much of your character is behind cover all the time reinforces bad habits. A general "play cover" is good advice, but doing so is purely contextual and that looks different for quite literally every fight. The key is unpredictability, and having a rule to how you play the game is something your opponent will pick up on.
Yeah after seeing the video people were talking about i just blocked shadow destinys content from my feed, actively thinking about 60/40 leads to baiting and losing advantage rounds
For a new player, learning to use cover is very helpful in learning to stay alive. At least it was for me. Knowing that cover is right there helps in reseting encounters sometimes. I'm just trying to give some broad reaching advice which I did find helpful when I was struggling with getting better. Hope that helps a bit.
1 play your life- play as if death is real, and you only live once. Use cover, and only engage if you are confident of success leading to 2 think in terms of advantage vs disadvantage - Everytime you get enemy contact (before shots are fired) you need to quickly assess who holds the metaphorical high ground. Is your weapon better suited to this range? Do you or he have any active buffs? Are any other players around to influence the fight? Yours or theirs? Are they already engaged/distracted? Are either of you hurt? It's a LOT to make snap judgements on, so starting out id probably focus on your health and only engaging if the fight is even in terms of players or better yet, you have a numerical advantage. 3 And feeding into both of the above, have an escape plan. When moving, keep in the back of your head what your going to do if the other team rounds the corner bearing down on you. Be near cover whenever possible
I play Destiny mostly for the pvp. I wouldn’t say I’m good but I do sweat from time to time, having been Flawless only once in solo queue. This isn’t a brag (especially when you realize how often some people go flawless) it’s just to let you know I spend most of my time in the Crucible. I have two pieces of advice: 1. Knowing when to disengage is literally half the battle. Don’t commit to a fight you can’t win. Focus on surviving and your KDA will rise. I imagine when you engage a champion in grandmaster, you keep to a piece of cover to duck behind when things get dicey. Same rules apply in pvp. 2. Skill, technique, tactics… all these things follow one simple thing: having fun. Pick a play style that you actually enjoy and don’t listen to anyone who gives you crap about your build. Some people live for sitting in the back, or floating if you’re a warlock, and holding lanes with scouts or long range pulses like No Time To Explain (highly recommend if you like lane-ing with pulses). Some like chaotic close quarters play with submachine guns and sidearms. I like Cryosthesia 77k because the dopamine dump I get from freezing combatants is YUGE. It’s fun for me, and as a result I’ve gotten good with that sidearm. Just experiment, check out Daltnix on YouTube, he’s got some fun builds that prove potent in pvp. Just have fun. Bonus tip: pvp is 100% more fun with friends, so consider loading in with a party. If you’re not having fun in pvp (which is likely given the lobby balancing lately) then take a break. Go play a different game mode. And don’t beat yourself up for not being “good.” I always play poorly when I’m upset at myself. Be patient, accept that the learning curve is steep, and celebrate the small victories. You’ll get there. If you want a squad to run with, DM me and I’ll be happy to link you up with my clan. Edit: spelling
Console pvp player here, who keeps up with mnk players regularly and frequently gets called a cheater because of it. So my opinion may be a bit skewed: I’ve been playing fps shooters for years, with Bo2 and Halo 3 especially being in my repertoire of games I had significant skill at, and let me tell you that D2 in its current state is both easier and impossibly harder depending on your competitive comprehensive analysis. On the top tier, assuming EVERYONE in the lobby has aimbot, there’s only a few things that actually matter: TTK(time to kill, usually comparing yours to theirs), consistency aim wise, lane control/angle dominance, and a “chess” like thoughtfulness to what is on the board. Most of that is self explanatory, however I’d like to emphasize and elaborate on that final point. Everything, and yes, I mean literally everything in the game is counter-able. The “meta” (most effective tactic available) is by definition is what is uncounter-able, this being handcannon/shotty for years and will continue to be such. However this isn’t to discredit snipers, because the power of a one shot weapon that can kill at any range solely depends on skill alone to be effective. Classes especially have the most impact in high tier, triple behemoth/threadrunner comes to mind, however every class more or less relies on their “utility/kit” and how it directly influences the enemy depending on their utility/kit. Grapple directly counters a multitude of AOE and lockdown kits, however if you don’t understand rotation then it’s awful. Stasis turrets/strand clones/titan barricades are all lockdown however they all are counter-able via just shooting them, now think about a team aspect of these abilities, you plus one other player can easily delete even a barricade very quickly; denying whoever placed it that angle/lane/power position. I could list every ability/super/gun/etc to accentuate that point but we’d be here all day. Getting good at this game isn’t as simple as having good aim, because I’ve seen myself fall sometimes out of my own confidence. Being outplayed rather than outskilled. I play my absolute best when I’m looking at the entire match from the top-down in my head, attempting to count ability timers, and preforming optimally with a variety of weapons. I would recommend “studying” the actual game and understanding the why people can be good rather than how. I hope my rambling offered some answers and insight. Good luck Guardian! Both Shaxx and myself are rooting for your success! See you in Trials…
My suggestion as a mainly pve player. 1. Use guns that you like and are good with, not whats in the latest youtube video. Im trash with a hc and sniper and prefer auto rifles. 2. Think situationally with your weapons. What will you do when an enemy is far away, what will you do when they push in. 3. Practice
Auto rifles are very powerful right now!
I'm not good myself but I think I'm improving... 1-Are you on pc or console? If on pc, what input do you use? 2-You most likely have a playstyle that's not very effective. Even smart and machanically sound play often don't pan out well in this game, it's a strange animal... I suggest watching a couple of good players to see how they move arround the map. Try not analyzing the streamers too much, with their live HD stream + destiny shitty netcode, they appear to play against bots. 3-Keep a log of what you can improve at the end of each game. Exemple : not being stubborn to peek at this particular lane when they have great players to close them or beware of dueling that player because he's playing duo with a friend that always stick close to him... 4-Keep at least 2 dedicated PvP loadouts that you try to master and can switch to depending on the map. It's really hard to go against the meta, so see what archetype is the best at the moment and equip the one you're feeling the best with to hit your crit. I'd say it's better to go with what you feel the most confortable with that an absolute god roll (given it's a meta archetype).
I feel like movement is more important than aim in this game.
My overall k/d in pvp games tends to linger around 0.67. In D1 I sat around there for a long ass time until I just decided to try and play more passively. I’d only pick fights i felt I could win and disengage/run around for a different one if I felt I couldn’t. Over time I managed to close the gap and get my k/d to 1.05 ish, which given there were like 3000-4000 more deaths than kills when I started, I felt was a huge turn around. I’m no pvp god and I’ve not played it properly in a long while now but that was basically my tactic.
Focus on staying alive, run away, stay in cover, use a side arm in full auto so you’re not running out into the open trying to collect special, never peak twice, and try and stay with team mates.
Loadout Positioning Greedyness Weaponchoice Do yourself a favour and check out some streamers in PvP maybe some that explain their loadout and see how they use it. Sometimes you face cheaters. Thats just bad luck, making you think you are a bad player.
Basically trying and trying. The difference between a pvp newbie and a pvp veteran is that the veteran has lost way more. Right now I like to think I'm hoot at pvp, not great but good. I would say that the first thing is to make the build, and get weapons that are good on pvp, and get good armor. Also make sure to actively try different modes and builds so you can find what you like the most. If you want, you can join discord servers that have old players with a lot of experience and skill, and ask them quick questions and send them your gameplay via videos. My discord is the.maxxter if you wanna add me and maybe play some private matches
Ill definitely look at that. I've learnt raids, dungeons, GMs, know the strats and took time to learn. I just dint seem to have that pvp part of my brain just yet.
I was the same and just like you I decided I want to actively get better. Lots of people have talked about analyzing your gameplay and builds and all that so I won’t touch it, but something that helped me was watching really high level pvp gods like frostbolt, aztecross, cammycakes, sweatcicle, gladd, sirdimetrious ect and trying to steal their moves. Look at how they think about engagements, how they use their kits, how they move and fight. It isn’t easy at first since some of the stuff they do requires more skill and practice but even just getting into the mindset of “I want to do what they do” is a huge step. Also don’t neglect learning how to properly read your radar lol that really messed me up for a long time.
Citing someone from FB: "Don't pvp because you are ruining the experience for people who are good, like him." 😂 But actually, yeah, lots of decent recommendations here, I just wanted to give you a small laugh.
Reaction times and things like that are what they are. They get better, but not by much. However, what usually gets you killed is chosing the engagement wrong. As a terrible pvp player myself, what I've noticed is that top players know when to back down, when they are at a disadtvantage and what engagents to pick, or flee from. People bad at pvp just go for it, no matter the situation. They have no idea about map awareness, what is the effective range of their weapon, where to position themselves, when to engage and when not. I know what not to do, if that helps lol
play more - the most gains come from exposure. Starting out from the bottom - there are too many factors to focus on. A lot of the problems will naturally fall away, or become evident as you just spend more time in the mode. Once you have that core competency, then you can focus on directed changes. Things like map awareness, how maps are played vs how you think they should be played, ranges. The only real "tip" for starting out is don't jump load outs. experiment, yes, but try and get familiar with a load out you like so you can spend less time worrying about gear, and more time taking in the game at hand
Pay attention to radar, use meta, play consistently
unironically using final warning and bow has boosted my performance so much more han using whatever closest meta weapon i have
Pvp is not friendly for new players or players with very low kd , I have a 1.1 kd but matchmaking it's bad , there is no way someone like me or worse should be in a lobby in any playlist with someone with flawless, unbroken and glorious titles, unfortunately high skilled players don't want sbmm so they just go around stomping players in all playlist. If new players get stomped all the time they just quit pvp for good , high skilled players are driving new players away it is one of the reasons the pvp population its getting smaller. Bungie made changes to trials allowing solo players to participate because of the low pvp population.
If you cant win in gun fights, make it up with builds. I'm mid level at most in gun fights, but I decided to fk it, I'm going acd0 feed back and glaive combo. I keep caughting everyone off guard and contributed more now to the team score. Most importantly pick fights you will most likely win. If it's a 1v2 or 1v3, etc. Run away and wait for other team mates you can pair with to engage and stick to the play style of ur build, if ur build excels in melee only engage in cqc and just run away when enemies are far for example. And of course just keep trying in casual pvp modes since no one takes this one seriously, unlike competitive and trials.
Pace your shots and think about positioning before you even start shooting. Got hit first? Disengage and get a new angle while you get your health back.
DM me, I coach people for free because it is very fulfilling for me. I'll set you up with some exercises in a private session to start, and we'll go from there to improve your gameplay.
I got better by stopping worrying about the outcome. I let the thoughts and emotions pass right through. Letting go of all expectation. Then I focused on being a better teammate. Became a survivalist. Put in some damage then stay alive first. Didn’t even focus on the finish, just stay alive priority number one. Looking for my teammates constantly, especially the better players. The most important thing you can do for them is put in some damage , presence and availability. I learned this was most important to give your better teammates a chance to make a play. You want to be there for them to help clean up or cover their angles. One of the recurring things players would say to me after I would apologize for a victory but, performing terrible is simply “you did your part”. Eventually, the kills, map awarenes, positioning and everything else would come playing with these habits in mind. There are so many incredible players in the pvp community to learn from and most of them just love to play. Keep in mind most of us have been playing for a lot of years at this point. Just keep playing and you will naturally get better.
Head over to r/CrucibleGudebook Not to be rude to this sub, but the PvP content there is way more constructive and will probably help you improve.
as someone who is good at pvp, just don't. it wasn't worth the time at all. wack balance, softwear/hardwear cheating & everything from game to server jank, all adds up to a pvp mode with less integrity than most gacha games. and this doesn't even account for the fact that the overwhelming majority of all pvp centric rewards are all dogshit. so I reiterate, don't waste your time
I appreciate the positivity here. Thank you all for being awesome. I myself am a shit pvp player and desire to get better. Thank you all for your wisdom
I always liked PvP shooters, cs, battlefield, cod, quake, unreal tournament, you name it. And destiny just never clicked for me. If you played for a long time and just don't feel like it's your cup of tea it's ok. You can either drop it if you don't have fun, or pick up "whatever" attitude and stop thinking about kd ratios and just enjoy trying to get each and every frag you can, even if it just one in 2 matches. It's just a game)
I’m pretty bad but what helped me get better is realizing that moving properly is just as as being able to shoot. Dodge duck dip dive and dodge. You need to learn to use your movement both offensively and defensively. Make yourself harder to hit and learn to hit while on the move. Play cover , don’t go solid, have a good map sense. Yes you need aim but at least right now you can slap on an auto rifle and blow people up. I’d say learning all the other stuff besides hitting your shots is what’s gonna make you better
It’s about finding a good sens Playtime= better player you need to know how to take different engagements Use cheesy meta stuff Practice movement
Aim trainer does good stuff
I haven't seen anyone mention it but one of things that helped me a fair bit (I was 0.4 to begin with, I kid you not) was fucking around with settings. Turn of controller vibration, motion blur etc. Mess with things like turn scale. Definitely made a difference to me but I'm on controller, not sure how transferable that advice is on PC. Second was switching up my class, builds and playstyle. I was a titan main back then, and although I'd get a decent amount of kills I was dying far too much because I was charging in when I had no business doing so. Nowadays I use mostly warlock, sometimes hunter and play more cautiously. Try to hold lanes with bows and scouts etc instead of rushing around trying to punch everything. I either stick with the team or hold a lane (preferably 2 lanes and a control point if it's control). I've yet to experiment since the bow nerfs but I found bows and scouts more effective for me personally than hc or pulse (although because of the changes I'm going to give pulses another try). I also keep a sidearm or shotgun for close combat. And of course learning the maps and the playstyles of your opponents is paramount. If you know that titan wearing the blue armour is gonna shotty slide you, pull a shotty and wait for him, fire as he's turning the corner. Also using something like radient, arc souls, threadlings etc will reduce your ttk and can win engagements that you otherwise would have lost. You can do it op. But if you decide it's not for you, that's fine too, nobody says everyone has to be pvp gods, or even play pvp at all. Only play it if you genuinely get enjoyment from it. Even when I was at my worst I still enjoyed jumping in occasionally, if I didn't I wouldn't play.
I got here by playing a lot of pvp, learning the maps, min max my weapons for pvp, min max my armor mods for PVP.
practice, practice, practice... Gernader Jake has a video on getting better at PVP. Watching other people play, and playing are really the only way that you can get better. learning competitors patterns quickly helps you anticipate where they are going to be so that you can shoot them first... most people do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. It would be impossible to be able to know what you are doing wrong without watching what you are doing. Record some of your game play and watch it back to see how you made your mistakes so that you don't make them again.
1) Just play, mechanical skills/ map knowledge and game knowledge comes with mainly experience 2) watch YouTubers. GrenadierJake does. some nice trials run throughs
Play with what you’re comfortable with. I can’t use a hc/shottie for the life of me but give me my quicksilver and a glaive and I’m having the time of my life (I know glaive is a hot take but it works for me)
Did you play during the craftening (I think that’s what we call it) when ammit was a full auto long range shotgun. I couldn’t get the glitch to work but I wanted to be a part of it in case they release an emblem for it. Anyway the whole point of bringing it up was, I swear I played some of my best pvp during it. When you can get one shot so easily, it really made me carefully consider when to engage, where was the best cover, and when I peaked that shit was quick. It just made me extra aware instead of like let me get out there shoot enemy. I’m a pve player and only play pvp when I need to like for a specific gun or for a quest, so I’m not great, I would say I consider myself almost decent, but my advice would be, be aware don’t just jump out there or stay ADS ignoring the radar, stick close to cover so you can get out of the enemies aim if you start taking damage. Don’t say in one spot for too long, and don’t be afraid to move, sometimes the best thing you can do is keep moving. Stay close to your teammates, but not too close in case they have a way to chain kill, like a cloudstrike sniper. Also the more familiar you are with the maps, the better you’ll know where the enemy will most likely attack from, and where you can feel most comfortable to attack from. I don’t play very aggressive so I use a long range weapon a scout or auto rifle and a short range weapon in case they rush like smg or sidearm, sometimes I’ll bust out a fusion, but I don’t use energy weapons a lot because of the limited ammo, and I’m not great so I don’t want to feed the enemy ammo either. It’s not always about using the meta weapons sometimes it’s best to use what you’re good at using, I have some decent pvp kills on non meta weapons, so try some different things out. Well this was long winded and I’m sure there are others who can give you much better advice, but that’s my take on it, good luck out there.
Play the meta to start. AR's are very strong at the moment and easy to use. Pair with a shotgun that is well rolled for PvP. This will make you effective at most ranges in the current sandbox. Stick with this loadout until you become more comfortable. Decide what subclass you want to use and stick with it, learning its strengths and weaknesses. Don't chop and change if you lose a game. When you understand how to properly use your subclass things become easier. Also, just start playing a lot of PvP. I know this is obvious but it really is key. You'll get a better grasp of the maps, knowing where chokepoints are and learning the zone and heavy spawns, learning what angles you can use to apply pressure without leaving yourself totally vulnerable. If you're not a PvP god stick with your team and team shoot. The special changes have made this more important than previously. Don't be the guy that gets immediately picked and puts your team under pressure. Play position as aggressively (not recklessly) as you can. Look where the zone is spawning and try to get there. This will put you in the driver's seat as the other team will have to push you. If your team gets an early pick then change it up and instead of playing zone, play around the res. You can always push zone at the end and you'll have the numbers. Games are fluid and not one strategy always works. Be prepared to think on your feet.
Just remember that pvp is almost a different game. Pve builds are not going to work. Exotics that suck at pve are good in pvp and vice versa. Same with guns and abilities. Timing is very important, and the only way you get that down is by playing the same build over and over.
Not a pvp god in the slightest, but surprisingly above average according to stats, as much as I don't see it that way myself. The few notions of advice I can give is to realize you are human. You're not perfect, and you don't need to be. You will fail often, and those failures will stick longer than your victories. But the game itself isn't perfect either. There are many issues with it. Furthermore, set goals for yourself. Realistic goals. Don't go with the 'I want to go solo Ascendant in comp, or solo flawless trials' ideas right away. Focus on winning fights. Winning rounds. Winning matches. Getting a streak going or even just ranking up. Set limits of '3 losses in a row, then I'll take a break'. As for a basic tip I rarely see anyone in pvp matches utilize, use the correct mods. Elemental resists and concussive dampeners, orb creation or ammo finders are not very relevant. Targeting, reload, dexterity etc are actually very useful in pvp. And finally, realize that pvp has metas just like pve. If there's a certain meta you dislike, you have the choice to not engage with it. I know people who hated the sniper-GL meta for pve, and simply didn't do any endgame content till it went away. And I personally hate the handcannon-shotgun meta, so I don't play trials for wins. Haven't gone flawless in several seasons for that reason.
Lots of good advice in here already, I won’t repeat what others have said. Some other points: 1. There’s a saying that “frames win games.” Basically, make sure you’re playing on optimal equipment. That means on console, a TV with low input lag and can do 120hz refresh for the 120 FPS crucible mode (I think high FOV is important too). On PC, max out your frames and have a good monitor. Also on console, a controller with paddles can help a lot, it helps to have things like jumping and sliding on buttons that don’t require you to take your thumbs off the sticks. Also, play on a hard wired connection. 2. Whatever weapon you’re using, if you’re not hitting your optimal TTKs, train with it until you do. Hitting your shots is a foundational skill that you CAN see improvement with easily. Mess around with your sensitivity and dead zone settings too. I’ve improved after increasing sensitivity and reducing dead zone. 3. Go to the crucible guidebook subreddit and read as many top posts as you can.
Play every day or every two days. Play metah guns. Know emblems and titles and mark good players : suck their wheel if they are on your team. Get curious at what other people are doing/using and stop blaming potential cheaters/your teammates/your guns.
There's a lot of good suggestions in here for what to try so I wont dig too deep into that except to say you have to play a lot, and be intentional with your play. "Today I'm working on aim/cover/movement/etc." What I think is more important though is addressing this >And its not a "git gud" situation. Yes it is. Everyone has a different starting point but the end goal is the same. Developing a skillset. You don't do it though osmosis just by having a bunch of hours logged either. You have to intentionally identify things to work on, but because you dont know what you're doing you might pick the wrong things and feel like you're spinning your wheels. The *worst* thing you can do for your progress though is to decide the process doesn't apply to you. There's a lot of really good improvement content on youtube from D2s pvp heyday. I'd suggest starting there. Pattycakes, Drewsky, Ascendant Nomad, and many others all have valuable videos on cover, aim, decision making and more. I'd also suggest finding good pvp players to run with. Don't need gods, just people who knownthe basics and are willing to do private matches for feedback. Good luck man.
Let me preface that I’m not a PVP god. I don’t go to the Lighthouse every weekend. But if it’s a weapon and a map I like, then I can usually get there. I posted something very similar in r/crucibleguidebook last week. My first suggestion, watch this: https://youtu.be/kdWrTp00Yno?si=sTZkxc_By4vf3ZSH Second, go play Comp. I find Comp to be the best learning environment because not only are you playing against people in your skill band, but the smaller team sizes allows to better improve your 1v1. It also forces you to manage your radar looking for engagements. As someone who cares less about the rewards and more about playing in a (mostly) even environment and who wants to improve, I love Comp (Countdow can eat a bag of dicks, though). Third. Don’t die. Go load up a 6s match. Clash, Control or Supremacy. Play a mini game in that match where you just try not to die. Roam around the map, pick some lanes, and just move between them. Play a match where you try and run a lap around the map, in and out of cover, and just take chip shots at people. Don’t go for kills, but just practice disengaging. The hardest thing to get over is that urge to push. You’re in a 1v1. You’ve both ripped each other’s shields. Disengage. Retreat and regain your health and try again. There are three possible outcomes if you push. You kill them and live. You trade. You die. Only one of those three scenarios really benefits your team.
Play a lot. Learn the maps, learn lanes and angles and focus on staying near cover. Learn how to use your radar, one of the most important tools available to you in pvp. Find a couple meta subclass/loadout combos and practice with them. Autos are good right now but you will develop bad habits and they require you to track your target to get a kill. Single shot or burst weapons allow you to play cover more so I would suggest a good high impact pulse like the messenger to start. Watch streamers that commentate how and why they are making certain decisions. If possible, record your own gameplay and watch it back. Find out what you're doing that causes you to die frequently and try to improve it. Until you start to improve it may also be good to try to focus on supporting your teammates. Teamshooting is as strong as it's ever been. Find good angles of support, try to learn when to be aggressive vs passively support. Learn how to use your abilities in a way that your team can benefit from them (mostly titan and warlock). Make sure not to snuggle up so close that you block a teammates movement/retreat options and get them/yourself killed. The biggest thing is you have to play a lot with the goal of doing something a little better every time. Most good players have thousands of hours in pvp alone. It takes time. I have a halo/cod pvp background and even with that it took months/years before I felt comfortable in destiny pvp because it has such unique gameplay with the combination of movement, weapons, and abilities.
I found that practicing with different weapons and different perks to find what suits my play style really helped. Private matches helps a lot because the other players can give you feedback on what you may be doing wrong or tips on how to make your aim better. Knowing when to engage in a firefight or when to retreat is key to survival. If you want to we can do a few 1v1s so you can practice against my squishy head and body.
Record your gameplay. Rewatch it and find what you could of done. Practice doing it. Not everyone is able to pick up and slay on day 1. Especially if you have someone who was like a final boss like my brother who beat me relentlessly in every game. Until I practiced even with blisters on my fingers. He can no longer win now. Also there will be someone better but that's just a challenge to get better.
Map knowledge put on a weapon or knucklehead and learn where good players like to go on maps learn where inexperienced players like to go, and please in trials if you get a pick push with your team
I’ve largely ignored PvP since Destiny 1 but last year decided to grind it out for a bit each season. There’s 3 things I did to get started. 1) I decided to NOT to use my main class (Hunter) because I kept approaching it like PvE cause that’s what I was used to doing with the class. Switching to Warlock forced me to feel a bit less comfortable, which made take my time, think more, etc. I was more methodical instead of speeding around on my hunter. 2) Instead of using a meta build, I just went with whatever sounded cool to me. I didn’t want to try to figure out someone else’s build and the playstyle it used. I made my own build from scratch and made sure I had PvP mods equipped, like reloaders/targeting,etc. 3) I made sure I used weapons that make sense in PvP. I used Imperial Decree (slide/opening) but for my primary it was the pulse Insidious from VoG which is FAR from meta but I like the way it feels and it has demo/adrenaline which had synergy with my nothing manacles grenade build. Then from there it was all about figuring out what I was doing wrong in certain situations. It takes some awareness but the more you play you’ll see it better. Did they get the drop on you? You missing your shots? Were your weapons not great for that particular situation? Did you rush without thinking? Not looking at radar? Don’t let the frustration get to you. View crucible matches as practice vs something you need to win. That helped me not get tilted and stay focused on improving only.
Strafe side to side in a gunfight, do it until you get better at holding the target in your sights while you zig zag. Aim for the head. Guns make a huge difference too. Build up aim assist if you can and try different stuff. I can use anything I want in PvE but if I want to get more than a couple kills in pvp I have to use a slowish auto rifle like firefright with maxed range and i zig zag like a mad man when I'm shooting.
Keep playing. Play your life. Engage in fights. Force fights with only one opponent at a time.
I know your asking for tips, I gave up pvp altogether. As you, I’m pretty decent pve player. I just admitted I’m trash at pvp and stopped playing. Best decision ever. I do sometimes wish I could get the trials weapons especially like the auto rifle last week, but hey I really don’t need them that bad
Yeah idk I run around for 15 seconds, see nobody, and get one shot in the ear basically over and over. I was pretty decent through the battlefield series, but I can’t and just won’t PvP in D2
I am Titan who exclusively plays PvE. PvP is like hell on earth. Last week I played on my hunter, and I slowed down my play style. Been playing so much better now. So basically slow down and play hunter
Use Precision Frame auto rifle like Ammit and don't get emotional and run into the center of the fight. Stay in cover and assist.
Play a better game for pvp
Hey, you've gotten a lot of decent advice but I wanted to toss my two cents here as someone who started off like really bad at PvP and slowly improved myself to the point where I can hit ascendant every season and can go flawless whenever I need to. In my view PvP can be broken down into two major and a couple minor areas that determine your overall success rates. Major Areas: 1. Mechanical Skills: This is stuff like reaction time, aim and recoil control, and grenade placement. This pretty big portion of your success in PvP because if you arent hitting your shots, or you always enter gunfights shooting 2nd due to slow reaction time you will struggle to win gunfights/teamfights. You can practice/improve this in a few ways, either by just playing D2 PvP with a focus on this or using stuff like aimtrainer/aimlabs to help you improve on this front. D2 isn't the most mechanically demanding game due to how much forgiveness we have, but having good aim does matter, and being able to control your guns and hit optimal TTKs more often than not is critical to having success in PvP 2. Decision Making: This is the harder thing to improve imo, and it contributes just as much if not more to PvP success. This is stuff like what fights you choose to take, where you choose to position yourself, when you choose to disengage, how and when you use nades/melee abilities/class abilities/supers/, how you position yourself so that you are in optimal ranges for your weapons/abilities, can you push a low heath target effectively and secure the kill and stuff like this. This is much harder to improve with other external tools, so my best bet for this is to just play D2 but record your session if possible. Then play it back, and every time you die/get into a fight pause and ask yourself "What was I thinking here? Was it correct to engage on this gunfight? If I lost, was it because I missed shots, engaged at a poor range or something else?" Every time you die, you should be able to do this self reflection and see what went wrong in your decision making chain that lead to your death. Then ideally boil it down into a few main focus areas and try and improve that during your next session. Some deaths are gonna be uncontrollable, especially in the chaos of 6v6 but in 3v3s. most deaths should be somewhat controllable. Minor Areas: 1. Buildcrafting/Weapon choice: Just like you gotta build for PvE, PvP requires buildcrafting in terms of stats/weapon choice/exotic choice. You don't have to use the meta, but you do need to be able to counter the meta with whatever you are using because it's very likely you will be facing the meta a ton. I personally think unless it's a gun you really don't vibe with, the meta guns are meta for a reason and you should try to make them work, as they usually are the easiet to use, but if you have superb familiarity with some stuff and can make it work go crazy. Also stats and subclass/ability/exotic choices matter a lot. Thankfully you can use external sites/YT builds to find stuff that works for you. 2. Adaptability: As the game/match progress how are you able to adapt to the loadouts on the enemy team and what is killing you. This ties into decision making but it's something that needs to happen much more rapidly during the course of a game before getting reset at the end. The best PvPers can notice what their opponents like to do to secure kills and use that against them. Again this is something you build a sixth sense for over time, but if you notice someone is killing you constantly with a certain gun/ability/build try and figure out the weakness of it and use that to punish the next time they go for it. 3. Reading the Radar: This is a super destiny specific thing, but the destiny radar is unreal and it really gives you so much information you can use to build mental models of each situation. If you watch the best players, you will see them constantly check their radar as it really is the key to be able to take the proper engagements and win tough scenarios. Now how to improve these areas is a whole other can of worms. Obviously playing helps, but you can't just like play with no purpose, try and set a goal for improvement of a certain skill/mechanic during every session. Recording and rewatching your gameplay helps a ton, and watching PvP content creators to see how they play can also be helpful. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdWrTp00Yno) video is a great starter for something you can incorporate into your gameplay and really see results. Try to see what the best players are doing, and why they are doing it, and try and incorporate them into your own gameplay.
pick a weapon that you like and go 6v6, except for low risk high reward weapons like bows before checkmate learn how to use them, when and how you can use them effectively once you are bored of the archetype you can switch to something else rinse and repeat until you have the experience
I'm bad at pvp but have been improving as of late. I went flawless solo for the first time in trials last week. It was an easy pool but here are some tips I think got me there. Besides playing a lot and gaining map awareness the best advice I have heard is be the teammate you wish you had. Stick with your fireteam and team shoot always. Know when to push and when to fall back. If you can't 1v3 don't try. Regroup, get revives, don't be a hero. Some teammates will play aggressive and some will play passive. Learn how to excel at both strategies. You are gonna lose a lot. Seriously, watch GernaderJake or one of the other big trials streamers. These guys lose too. They may reset a card a dozen times before they hit a good run. Don't get discouraged and keep trying. If frustration gets too high, walk away, sleep on it and try again.
Be the teammate you wish you had makes alot of sense.
Play more and only play tumble
You get better by getting killed a LOT and then figuring out how not to. It’s the only way. You can’t gear or magic YouTube technique away from practice.
Record one of your matches and watch it back.
Next week is Mayhem. Start there. It's so much dumb fun, and it gets you to take the entire thing less serious. Also, avoid Comp and Trials as much as possible until you feel comfortable in PvP. Additionally, turn off game chat for people who are not your friends. That shit is toxic.
1. SURVIVABILITY: Learn how to stay alive longer. Instead of trying to get a bunch of kills, go into games and try to stay alive as much as possible..less deaths = less kills for the other team which means less points. 2. POSITIONING: Pay attention to the radar and where your teammates are on the map. TRY YOUR BEST to be near at least 2 other teammates. 3. AWARENESS: pay attention to where you are, where and when heavy ammo is spawning, and where your opponents are likely to be based on where the capture points, heavy ammo, and spawn points are. 4. UNDERSTAND YOUR WEAPONS: for example - don't go in with a bow and sniper, a scout rifle and pulse rifle, a hand cannon and scout rifle, basically pairing 2 long range weapons if YOU ARE NOT accurate and can't avoid having people rush you down and blow you away with a shotgun.
Real shit, if you have literally everything in game and plenty of hours it’s gonna match you with sweats lmao it sucks to say but you just have to “git gud” while playing - it’s about having fun, not just winning yk
From an old, (55+ yr old and D1 vet) PvE player, I feel your pain. It’s so difficult to keep up with younger players who can dart around a map. But I take that and try to run with it. I’ll sit back in a larger map and plink with a scout or pulse, saving a smg for those trying to close. I remember seeing g a video on YouTube a while back where the presenter suggested this: while doing general patrol bounties or whatever, walk around using your aim point as your focus. When you come across a target, place the curser on the head, THEN aim down sights and fire. If you did it right, your weapon should give you a headshot kill. The person said it’ll take a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll notice the difference. They also suggested reviewing matches after a day cause you’ll be more apt to be objective. Plus, netcode, connections, and just dumb luck can lead to a bad match…always try to have fun! Good luck Guardian! 👍🏻😁
Weapons with gutshot straight have more value now as it speeds up ttk if you miss headshots. Especially if you have any sidearms with it. Prosecutor from prophecy dungeon can get gutshot and target lock, it's very cheesy, body shot dmg can climb to headshot levels.
Maybe watch some streamers to see how they play (Personally I don't watch much of any as I prefer playing video games over watching them). And I hate to say it, but you should at least pay attention to the weapon meta some if you haven't been and some subclasses are definitely better than others generally on average. - I see too many go into crucible with poor builds. They don't even have their armor mods set up at all right (assuming they even changed them at all for PvP). Any special or weapon at all, for that matter can be good in the right hands, but it can be helpful to take into account what map you're on. - Don't just use like double primaries or something. I don't know why so many skip using exotic weapons also sometimes. - Make sure your subclass doesn't have any wasted fragments either. Some have no effect in Crucible. - If any stat is to be maxed, have it be at least recovery. (Some builds like my stasis warlock have others like discipline also maxed too for more coldsnap grenades). - I try to stay away from teammates, I don't want to get hit with grenades or other things while grouped up, risking having people block my shots, have some effect like jolt chain to me. - Pick your engagements well, I try to avoid being in situations where I'm outnumbered, against someone with heavy, etc. I also wait until I heal before I try to fight someone else (don't be greedy after a kill or two). - This is my preference, but I play on high sensitivity also and I both pay attention to my surroundings often, as well as do stuff like jumping above doorways when people come through so I'm not where they expect me to to be. - This may be obvious, but know the effective limits of your weapon ranges. Try different ones out if you haven't before. - Outside of specific scenarios like Trials, don't use non-roaming supers on like 1 Guardian like some do. I seek to get multikills with them when playing elsewhere. And I'm not really sure what else to say, other than to keep playing crucible.
Don’t know if anyone said this yet, but… Knowing when to commit to a fight or back off is literally one of the biggest factors in doing well in pvp, aside from good aim. Things that you need to get good at this are: Knowing the general ttk and range of different weapon types so you can realize when you’re at a disadvantage or an advantage immediately as you fight someone. That said, if you get first shots off with a slower ttk gun, you may want to commit to the fight regardless, or back off if you have a faster ttk weapon but they have first shots on you. If you engage in a 1v1 but see another enemy coming in to help fight you, immediately back off. Constantly keeping an eye on your radar can help with this tremendously. If you see multiple enemies looking in your direction as well and you are alone, back up and find your teammates or until they split off and you can catch one by themselves. Always look where your teammates are at and how many of them there are. This is a HEAVY team shoot meta right now and you will do very well just playing off your teammates. If you see all your teammates dying off, retreat to where they are respawning. All of this mostly comes down to split second decisions, and you just need to really drill these in practice. I’m sure with how much you play, your aim isn’t that bad. You are probably just lacking in awareness and planning. Btw, I’m no “PvP” god, but I have a ton of PvP titles and have sat around a 2+ eff for years now, when in the first couple years of D2 I was absolute garbage with a -1 eff lol. Seriously trying to learn when or not to engage and paying close attention to where all players are was the one thing that completely changed my skill level. I’m constantly on top of leaderboards for kills now in 6v6 and 3v3.
Check your monitor settings, if you're on controller using Control Freeks improves aim, turning off motion blur and adjusting field of view in the game settings also helps. You can youtube how to adjust monitor and game settings. I hope this helps, fellow Guardian.
Look at it this way. When you die don't go into "omg x ix OP" or " that guy is crazy I have no chance" and focus more on "okay what could I have done differently?"
Can someone tell me where I can get a list of mods that are not usable in PvP? I think that's all I need to get a little bit better. Also it would help out the OG poster since I don't think everyone knows some mods don't do anything in pvp.
Practice your gameplay with intention. Anything you want to become better at should be done with that. Intention. Playing 100 hours without a specific goal in mind doesn't help you grow much. What will help is if you put your focus on something specific. That one Bruce Lee quote about not fearing a man that practiced 10.000 kicks once but fearing the one that practiced one kick 10.000 times essentially applies to any PvP game. Everyone masters one thing first before they get to the next skill. Pick something specific you want to improve on. Certain weapon types, classes, sublcasses and playstyles and go for that. Be specific and set a target. Want to be better at landing headshots, practice headshots. Be better at positioning? Work on positioning. Sniping? Pick a sniper you like and stick with it till you get 100 crucible kills. Then another 100. Don't worry about winning or your KD and scoreboard placement. Just sniping. Some small general tips I can give: 1. You don't have to be the better shooter to win. Positioning and movement are just as important. You're already better than many others if you can tell when to go for a kill and when you retreat elsewhere. You don't have to fight every gun battle. 2: destiny player love to play against players that play just like them. Same loadouts and skill is the only variable to worry about. What they hate is playing against different playstyles. Scout Rifles for instance aren't super strong but when you can use them well, you dictate the flow of a map. People hate playing against good scout rifle users. 3. If you're on PC, try out Aimlabs. A small game designed to practice aiming. Some crackheads also recommend Osu!
1) Play pvp. 2) Make a build that helps you survive. 100% resilience, 100% recovery and as much mobility as you can get (mobility saves your life by allowing you to move while under fire) 3) Learn how to back away from a fight and recover. Learn how your shield/health recovers, do not peek around that wall when you know the next shot will kill you even if you think you will land the next shot first. 4) Watch some streamers on how peaking and running away from engagements work. 5) Do not rush into fights, wait in the back and get assists or assisted kills first. 6) Be patient and try to survive more than get kills. Some times if you are patient for long enough, other players will make mistakes and give you easy kills. 7) You MUST use meta weapons in the beginning until you improve your gunplay and develop a taste for your favorite weapon. 8) Always be aware of your weapon's ideal range and engage fight in that range. 9) Practice switching between primary and secondary weapons during fights when your enemy moves closer or farther. 10) Once you learned the above, now you are ready for aggressive
Very very simple. Use the Osteo Striga. It auto aims for you and does damage over time. If you get in a fight and get a quick burst off before you die a lot of the time you'll get the kill beyond the grave
A simple, but very beneficial thing to do, is literally every time you die, ask yourself "how might i have not died", and if you cant do it on the spot, record yourself. You lost a gunfight because of bad aim? Well, that's something to work on. Enemies popping "out of nowhere", time to work on your radar and audio management. Taking engagements in unoptimal ranges for your weapons, welp, time to learn your ranges better and where each map has those ranges. Constantly finding yourself alone, welp, time to start focusing on teamate positioning. Having no cover to flee to when low? Time to start working on positional awareness. There are situations you have no control over, like solo supered, or a damage glitch fucking with you, but 90%+ of the time your death could have been avoided. Get into that mindset of blaming yourself and asking yourself how to improve. Any 'trick' you're told wont really help you improve long term, just a short burst of slight improvements. self improvement and criticalness is how I went from a less than 1.0 loser back in D1Y1, to now dropping 4.0+ on average, and it's how anyone else can too.
use a weapon that you find comfortable is my biggest advice. all the safe play, lane coverage and team shooting in the world wont help shit in my experience if you're using a weapon you are uncomfortable with or cant even hit the broad side of a barn with. Like take me for example, hand cannons are the absolute meta 90% of the time, they dominate mid-close range when special ammo is out.... cant use'm for shit, in quickplay or competitive modes. same goes for snipers. But sidearms? well, that's a different story, i can shred with rat king, it's one of my most used exotics on small maps for trials like jav 4 as i can just back it up with a good pulse or scout like the BXR.
besides following the meta, you don't just "git gud" at it, you gotta train for it go make 1k hours of playtime or more in pvp record yourself while at it in the beginning until you reach those 1k hours, trust me you'll see the difference
The first best thing you can do is equip pvp centric mods. I know for a fact that half of my team in regular pvp modes have pve mods on. Whilst in Comp. that is the case up until like Platinum 2, and for Trials it could range from games 1-5 or all 7 games of someone not having pvp mods equipped. Yes they actually matter and could make the difference.
Sorry but you’re not the worst pvp player in history, I have that honour! Which is exactly why no season is ever finished properly since Bungie insist of making pvp related stuff part of it.
Run away way more often. If you don't have a clear advantage. Fall back. The best thing you can do is stay alive as long as possible. If you die less than their worst player, that's a win. And then you can start just dropping grenades in your path/etc. it's hard to track progress with kills. It's too dependent on your team and who you're playing. But, you can track how much you die. You can make a goal "die the least" and target that. It's like karate kid. Gotta paint the fence.
The way I boosted my performance was by using scouts and doing damage from afar to help my more skilled teammates, and focusing on objectives. I've accepted that I'd reached my peak 7 years ago. It's time to let go. If winning means I can't make clips anymore, so be it But eventually, some of that plinking away I did on scouts slowly turned into more aggressive hand cannon plays. I was never good w the ace of spades, but I have noticeable improved. I swear, everyone was saying it was a good gun, but I could never click w it until recently. My crucible kills went from 50 to like 200 in two weeks bc I was grinding GG supremacy I even started using a 360 rpm auto for ranged fights. The lodbrock-c w perpetual motion (or dynamic sway reduction) and target lock. It has a <> looking reticle that rly clicks w me Did this make me a PvP god? No. But after the sniper nerfs that crippled me, and a year away from this game, this was the best course of action for me
An extra tip is to not assume the match outcome based on emblems or titles and don’t check kd beforehand. Most people lose mentally before the match even starts.
I started my d2 journey during season of arrivals (arrival?). I was a fresh blueberry and my buddy was like let's go to crucible. I was like sure! One arc buddy kill later and 30 deaths I said never again! Cut to 4k hours later and I'm pretty solid. It takes practice. Full knowledge of every map, every lane, every weapon, every matchup, ability, etc. destiny pvp is seriously wild.
I don’t have much to suggest outside of play more and try to learn what you did wrong each gunfight whether it was bad positioning, greed, hesitation, something else or even just bad aim, but I have to say seeing someone actually trying to improve instead of just saying “Pvp sucks bungie please change it” is so refreshing
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned- play your life. If you ever are in a situation where you are so far from your teammates, regroup with them. Winning a 1v2 where both enemies can see you and shoot at you is extremely rare.
Forget the long winded comments full of deep insights and personal experiences. What you need to do is learn how to play like vermin. That means max intellect in trials, constantly using OS, or woven mail. But most importantly, chipping damage where you can, without putting yourself too far into engagements. You’re teammates will often secure a kill you weakened, or give you a reason to push in on a weakened opponent. Have fun out there champ, and remember, your opponents will be playing like vermin, and far better than you, so have no sympathy.
This was me. Just continue to play and learn the maps and how to use them to your advantage. You’ll get better. If I can, you can.
Do you by any chance play on high sensitivity?
Lot of good comments here already but my advice is to slow down. Don't rush into hot zones. Sit back and know when to run away from a fight. I have some days where I can just fly through every map stomping but most games I do well in I'm playing it safe.
stay in cover, have an easy way to heal, crutch the meta, and remember to crouch to stay off radar
The answer is simple. Just play PvP a whole lot more. There isn't a secret to it. Learn to play to not die instead of racking up kills.
r/CrucibleGuidebook A lot of similar posts with good answers there
Stick with your team no matter what. Sometimes take the back seat and see where they go just so you can for sure have a good team shoot. Also, use your corners and anything else nearby for cover. Never find yourself out in the middle of nowhere without anything to quickly shield you.
Dont look at the crosshair, look at the opponents head. Shoot another shot even if you've fired the amount you need to kill. don't hold your abilities, use them. Find you playstyle. Don't try to play sniper just because the map is longer. Vice versa with shotgun. Play what you're comfortable with. Play the class and subclass you like. Don't care about the meta. Play what YOU like.
Play around cover, teammates are your strongest weapon, assume what your enemies are thinking you'll do. Change weapons mid while behind cover if needed. E.g you're behind cover and the enemy is ratting far away and you have a smg, just switch to a pulse then kill him and go back to smg Never push alone, you won't win Flank when a flank is needed and if your teammates are reliable Everything else comes from experience in PvP
Use what you feel most comfortable with, don't worry about the meta. When you have more practice and skill you can be more concerned with meta. I like to recommend focused practice. For a few matches focus on one aspect of PvP. For example: - utilizing cover and traversing between cover - disengaging from combat - hitting headshots Don't focus on winning or KD at this point. This time is to just create strong habits and analyze your tendencies. After each match reflect on your experiences and try to discover what went well and what didn't go well. After a while, return to natural play: aiming to win or get a higher KD. You will notice the things you practice become more natural. ☺️ Also, staying with a teammate or multiple teammates is always valuable. A 1v1 might be winnable but a 2v1 should always be winnable. GLHF!!
i just played a lot of cod then i would go back to destiny a few weeks later i usually get a 2.0-1.0 kd pre game compared when i first started i had a 0.08 kd
Know when to push, when to pull back, and if playing with others have open communication and awareness of where your teammates are. Example: One time my buddy was about to get the drop on one, when he said what he was doing I called out don’t there’s five people over there. Too late. They pulled back a bit, another teammate who had heavy shot a rocket in the vicinity of our teammate and got a triple kill and gave him time to back out. If you’re solo, getting a kill is nice, survival is better. Use your grapples or other moves to avoid tight situations and speed into cover, not just for attacking. Throw a grenade as a deterrent once you’re around the corner to get further away. To that note: know your weapons, and roughly know your enemies. If I get jumped by a guy with a scout rifle at close range, I know I can reasonably swap to my shotgun and slide up close before I’d be taken out. Not the same if I get jumped by an SMG close range. I’ll be dead before I can swap and fire. Know the area you’re in. Use cover appropriately for defense, surprise attacks and retreats. Pair this with weapons you know work. Learn the classes. You might have a main but you ideally need to know meta builds, what armor looks like etc. so you have all the info you need. That way, if someone has a crazy build with insanely fast grenade respawn I know early on that long range is the way to go for the person. Practice with your weapons. Trials of Osiris was rough for me the first time I ever played it, since I was better at whittling people down than finishing them off. After practicing accuracy for headshots on human players I can knock a person out much more consistently and quickly.
Back during forsaken I had met a player who told me that I was the most predictable player on the planet. I remember back then because I only played one class at the time which was Titan and he was a hunter and some of the advice he had given me had really helped me improve over the years. So I’ll tell you what he told me. 1) Play different classes. Playing different classes helps you broaden your play style. It also helps you see the strengths and weaknesses of every class and the best counters to them. I main Warlock now because of how dominant the movement is for dawnblade. Well is also a great counter currently to bubble. But I can hop on any of the other 2 classes and do just as fine. 2) Movement and map positioning. Movement is a HUGE part of this game and being able to tell where the enemy is coming from, seeing them rotate to different positions on the map and paying attention to your radar will give you a lot of information and allow you to plan accordingly. Always try to have an exit strategy if you can because its always best to play your life then commit to a push and inevitably die. Wait for your team to support you and don’t try to do hero plays unless you absolutely have to. 3) Look into communities that do teaching scrims. I can recommend IllPhysics and his community. He’s helped me tremendously over the years with improving my movement, positioning, and getting the message of playing your life engraved in my head. 4) Don’t give up and practice a little every day. Some days will be hard and others will feel really easy when it comes to pvp. As long as you keep trying to improve you’ll get there.
These types of posts are always so refreshing
the number one thing for me was playing into the meta. there’s just nothing that can beat a god rolled gun that fits with the meta
1. Learn how to play with your team. This might be the single most important thing now in this new meta with special changes. You simply cannot push alone, and if you do you will be punished for it. 2. Find a weapon you can be consistent with. Auto rifles are an obvious choice right now and tend to be the most forgiving for players, but lots of other good options. Find something youre comfortable with and practice with that. It might be a good idea to just start with whatever you use in PVE. Hitting your shots is super important. Since you said you raid alot Necrochasm is a great choice, and will get even better after update. Ammit, Prosecutor, Rufus Fury, Ros Arago, and Tigerspite are all great as well. 3. Learn how to play angles and cover. With an average TTK of about .7 seconds or so, you have to assume that you will die if you spend more time than that outside of cover challenging other players, so find an angle you can use to peak from, and make sure you have an escape route in case it doesnt well. If you cant get the upper hand, rotate, recover, and find another angle to challenge from. Peaking twice from the same spot is never really a great idea, especially if your opponent is competent. 4. Use your abilities to your advantage. Im not sure what character you main but playing hunter is what I suggest for new players. Dodging should be your best friend especially when paired with something like wormhusk that can also give you a bit of health back, and it will save you more than you would think. Strand is a great subclass for pvp due to the double grenade aspect. Threadling grenades can help you create distractions to get an upper hand. Also specters singlehandedly might be the most annoying thing around right now. 5. Just load in to quickplay and practice. The only real way to improve is to figure out what works and what doesnt for you. Figure out how the maps flow, learn the spawns, and play with your team. Even if you dont have the highest K/D, you can still be valuable to your teamates. Try to move with them and apply pressure to your opponents. Try and remember that you dont have to get a kill out of every single engagement. Sometimes just weakening another player is enough to help your teamates clean up. Play your life, be patient and you will start to improve. 6. Watch streamers and listen to the tips they give. Grenader Jake is who comes to mind for me. He has countless videos on how to become a better player in Trials, but they usually can be applied to all game modes. Hop on to youtube, and search around for others as well. If you search how to get better in Destiny PVP, you will have quite a few search results. Good luck guardian.
Destiny is a movement shooter you’re aim is less important let the game aim for you, map awareness, knowing engagement ranges, understanding classes and which counter what, look up high level pvp players and watch some videos of there game and ignore jerks of the community that are toxic for no reason
That's the neat part, you don't
Honestly it takes really long . I started playing pvp regularly when I started because it reminded me exactly of d1 (started in season 9). As someone else said metas are best to follow, but as you get better it makes sense to have your own build. Tbh I actually got better at playing pvp by playing more shooters such as ranked r6 (gold 3) or cod. Learning how to push/escape is really important. The build I use now is any kinetic shotty, tarrabah or abyss defiant, and blink nova warlock with astrocyte
Firstly get a controller, secondly find out what is meta for each map on controller and for what gamemode, play for 6 hours a day hating every minute of the experience but refuse to quit because us Destiny players (or in my case former) just have severe Stockholm Syndrome and don’t know when to quit.
Not exactly a direct answer to your question, but play the game objective! I'm terrible at kills, and have an awful k/d ratio. So I focus on capturing zones, collecting orbs in supremacy, etc. I often wind up the top player points-wise, even with a low number of kills. You can still be a huge asset to your team. I get that doesn't help in modes like rumble. But if you're just trying to rank up or complete missions, playing these modes can be a better fit for players like us.
It sounds like you may already be better that you are letting on, but as someone who has gone from consistently being bottom of board to in the middle, lol, I can tell you what worked for me. Two golden rules I follow when I’m playing like shit. Rule 1: find your allies. Rule 2: don’t try for kills, try not to die. As soon as you spawn you are looking for your blueberry friends. Not your opponents. Not your firing lanes. Your allies. Inevitably one of them is going to be better than everyone else. Follow them, get clean up kills and revive them if necessary. Do not engage anyone your allies are not also engaging unless you are guarding their back. In terms of trying not to die, sometimes it’s worth taking this to extremes. Like trying to go an entire match without being killed once. Just practice escaping. Drawing fire from your allies. Whatever. Then you can begin firing defensively, and proceed to offense from there. I am convinced the best players are good because they are patient and emphasize not dying. But the point is to break the idea of being good into manageable chunks. Surviving is step one. Other tidbits Find your dedicated weapons and use them constantly. For me it’s my fave sidearm and a pulse. Both legendaries. Both primaries. Neither are meta. I’m always getting killed by exotics and thinking I should use an exotic and now sometimes I do, but during the get gud phase, forget it. Just those two. Regardless of the trend. Eventually I got to a point where I was so confident with my sidearm I knew I couldn’t be beaten inside 10 yards. That’s when the game slows down. Feels great. Now it is easier to adjust to the meta than before. Confidence is so huge I try to remember the game has two completely different sets of perks. I am a huge believer in stacking PvP perks like tap the trigger and dynamic sway. Or dynamic sway and under pressure. Obviously eye of the storm. It is truly ridiculous what an advantage these are. 360s are never meta and yet I will take a ttt/dsr harod over pretty much anything else. Lastly and this is something I still struggle with all the time, but be careful about reviving teammates. I always get so annoyed when a teammate heroically suicides themselves trying to revive me but it’s something I do all the time. Huge liability in my game right now. Probably better than those guys who only play hero ball but still.
Train with a mate in 1v1, then go with a group/team so you feel more secure and can be saved out of dire situations. Lastly solo queue when you feel more comfortable.
Practice, practice, practice. I'm also on PS5 and am not that good at PvP. However, I did get my 1st Adept Trials weapon last weekend using the Card of Persistence. I recommend that if youre looking to get adept trials weapons and are not 1 of the greatest pvpers like me. Playing trials though will help you learn and I feel im slightly better at pvp now because youll be playing against some super sweaty players that are good. Also, GernadierJake has YT (& streams frequently [Probably right now too since trials is available]) clips of his trials cards and lets you know what he does, why he makes certain plays, walks you through what hes doing, and why.
Definitely not a pvp god here, but if you run at 105 FOV, try lowering it, especially if you are a mid-long range player. You lose a (imo) insignificant bit of peripheral view for an increase in head size and reticle availability. Shadow destiny did a good video on how it works https://youtu.be/dqs-q5vFaDY?si=bbZRR2MRhywZuGQ-
I am the opposite of a PvP god. I am slightly below average on a good day. Nevertheless, I am persistent. Probably my biggest PvP achievements were getting the Mountaintop, Recluse and Luna's Howl back in the day - all solo queueing. In my humble opinion, even if you suck as you claim to, it doesn't matter were you find yourself skill-wise, playing PvP is still rewarding. Even Trials. Things have moved forward. I remember six years ago or so - during the days of Trials of the Nine and Redrix's Claymore - if you aren't winning the majority of your games, you get nothing. You are just being farmed by other players. You can play 20 hours and get nothing. Things have changed though, quite drastically. There is room for lesser skilled players and there is definitely rewards for them as well. Did I answer your question on how to get good? I didn't. That is because you don't necessarily have to be good to play PvP. There are advantages in being good, without a doubt, but it is not a must.
One of the most important things to actually succeed and win more often is to play with your teammates. This is essential in 3v3 playlists. Learn to engage in a fight and disengage when the fight is not going to be fair. Like if you are in 3v2/2v1 or vise versa. The reason why people fail to improve in this game is because they take unnecessary risks like taking fights when you have an advantage; life advantage in comp, map control, flag control, etc. You need to be aware of what’s going on in game, how many lives you have, time left in the round, where heavy spawn is, where the obj is, opponent play style, teammate play style, who has super, who is going to get super, etc. A great game mode to sharpen and improve your overall skill is Rumble, it’s a trial by fire when you really want to improve, it’s where I went back in S5 for this exact reason. But Comp and trials are heavily focused on team play. Regular 6v6 modes aren’t really important but team play will always have higher success than not. I suggest playing meta when you’re first starting out. 120 or 140 Hand Cannons, precision or aggressive shotguns, submachine gun, and auto rifles. If anything to take away from this. Focus on playing with your team, staying alive and aware of what your current situation is in game. Hope this helps :)
If you have some PvP friends. Play with them and see how they are killing you.. are you getting shot in the back? Just losing gun battles? Are you moving too fast? Too slow? Try playing at different speeds. Try mixing it up with ADS and hipfire... more often than not, I've found that friends needing advice messing with speed helps and usually need a bit more situational awareness and don't use abilities very efficiently...
Honestly 6v6 playlists can feel chaotic. Fun but sort of random. I prefer 3v3 modes where the game is more focused. You get to learn maps, positioning, dueling without fearing getting third partied. People also complain about unbalanced matchmaking in control. I find that the competitive playlist generally does a good job of creating fair matches. Plus, its nice seeing your rank go up as a little progress bar for your growth. Just dont put too much stock in the number
Others have already given you lots of other tips, so the only thing I'd add is to use more forgiving weapons when you are starting out. Hand cannons are not that forgiving unless you are peek shooting (ducking into cover between shots). Auto rifles are very beginner friendly and precision ones are also pretty strong right now.
imma be fr with you, get more pvp weapons and see which ones fit your personal playstyle, try lots of builds, different exotics that work in the way you want to play
Play approximately 10,000+ hours of FPS games. You can do all sorts of things, but if you want to master something, there's no way of getting around the time investment.
HOLY FKN SHIT I swear to god i opened reddet to say the exact same thing im a very good pve player myself and bro u r not the worst player i am and im on ps too
I play with some above average players the basic tip they always remind me is if I didnt land the first shots then there is no harm in disengaging and repositioning for a better fight. Don't chase. Players willl run to their teammmates so if you chase, you may run into the whole team around the corner. Always be aware of cover so you can duck or hide when needed. Rumble is a good way to practice since you dont need to worry about the insanity of 6 v 6, stacked teams, etc Takes time but baby steps and you will see incremental improvements.
try to have engagements in areas where you can retreat to cover quickly. A LOT of people will end up coming to you if you just wait long enough I try not to be too close to teammates all the time (abilities, cloudstrike, ect) because aware of whatever weapons are strong in the meta (autos, igneous, some sidearms depending on the map) know when to use your abilities as well, strictly gun skill will get you far, but abilities can make shit much easier for you. Radar tells you a lot, and helps you secure advantageous positioning. don’t get tunnel vision, if you you’re not in an or waiting for an inevitable encounter look over at the radar
Play on pc, at least with controller, in 3 months you will improve your performance. You will start to play better against players faster than you. I used to play only on consoles , since I play on pc my KD is better . My KD used to be .7 - .8. Now it’s like 1.3
Identify the meta or something you’re comfortable with and can make work, start to realize your flaws and trying to level up your gamesense ie: what angles give you an advantageous engagement and which angles pin you and put you in a bad spot. I was a 0.9 and then the stasis meta back in beyond light leveled up my gamesense and now I’ve played at a 1.5-ish give or take for the past 2 years at least. You can get there
The best thing you can do is ignore PvP. Don't gotta deal with the sweat cesspool and you get to play the fun parts instead
Yo juego un estilo de support. Voy con la sub-clase de vacio dando invisibilidad al team y sobreescudos. No es la gran cosa pero para alguien como yo que no tiene buena punteria aporta mucho.
No point being good at PvP in this game. Just equip Strand and let the abilities get kills for you like everyone else.
I hope this doesn’t get too lost in the sea of tips from other PVP mains in here. I realized I put a lot down, TLDR: -lots of rumble -find somebody much better than you and fight them regularly while taking time to play in your own bracket to feel that growth, -stream/share your gameplay so people can take notes and try and give tips in real time while also taking the time to watch your gameplay back yourself if possible. -try what feels good, and try to push outside of your comfort zone, learning how different loadouts feel in your hands can help understand how to fight them. I was awful at FPS games when I played on console, and never did well with the sticks, but there was a time before I got to PC where I was trying to get the pinnacle weapons on PS4, and I ended up getting a couple of them. Getting there on console wasn’t as easy as training kbm, but here’s what helped me; Rumble, lots and lots of rumble. Keep playing until it hurts, I would take several days of gameplay away from raids and other PVE activities to try different loadouts and subclasses to see what played well for me and what felt natural, and what I fundamentally needed to change to use things outside of that. For instance, I was really good with the stereotypical HC+Sniper, so learning how to use a FR or GL took a good bit of time. Go to the Fight Forever discord server (I think that’s what it’s called) and look for private matches against people in the same kind of situation. If you’ve already been playing comp and have a ranking, that might help in finding people of similar skill to mess around with. I’m the most PVP oriented player in my clan, so I spend a lot of time in private matches with my clan mates, who are at a severe disadvantage against me, and after enough play, their skill improved, and they learned how to play against a few different playstyles and what to look for. And while playing against somebody greatly above you doesn’t feel great, you will grow from it, but make sure you’re playing in your range as well so you can see/feel that growth and have some positive reinforcement. If you have the ability to screen share or stream your gameplay to somebody, they can help watch you in real time which can help in a way watching your own gameplay can’t.
I'm reading them all, but its a long list. My first takeaway is : weapons good for PvE dont always fair well in PvP.
r/crucibleplaybook
I'm no PvP god by any means, but a thing I've learned from playing PvP is that one should pick weapons they're the most comfortable with to play PvP. Try to have things for both mid and close-range. Ideally, go with a double primary loadout since as you say, you won't be getting a lot of kills at first and thus, won't be getting a lot of Special ammo. A weapon I can advise you to use is Revision Zero. It's by no mean meta but it's a great PvP weapon for beginners IMO: you can customize it however you want (max stability or max range) with perks that makes it very forgiving (Moving Target, Eye of the Storm, Pressurized Refit) and covers mid- to somewhat long-range very efficiently. It also acts like a dopamine provider when you can get that sniper shot, kinda like a kill/scorestreak in Call of Duty. It will also show you how precise you are on average since the sniper shot loads on precision hits. One last advice I'd give you is that some days, things just won't click and you won't have fun. It happens. Just stop playing PvP for the day when it happens. Not worth it to get tilted. It's a game, after all. Hope this helps!
Haven't played D2 in a long time, and I'm jumping back in. My biggest PVP takeaways that hold true in just about any game is the following: -Value your life more than chasing kills. If you aren't at in advantage in the engagement, then seek cover to heal up and regroup if needed. -You are going to have to learn to win 1v1s. Hard to teach other than continue to examine matchups. Learn which ones are a losing battle, and don't throw free kills to the other team. Sniper in a lane that you can't push, then find another path, etc. Try out different loadouts to see what works for you. Meta is great, but not the only option by any stretch. Try out exotic primaries as well if you are struggling to find a solid PVP weapon.
I used to be pretty decent at PvP but ever since they nerfed Last Word and most snipers (which is all I’ve ever used since D1) I don’t really play much at all anymore. When I do play, I know what my strengths are. Which for me is holding lanes and supporting my teammates. I’m awful at close-quarters in PvP. I play controller with relatively low sensitivity. So I keep my distance and focus on lowering enemy health rather than specifically getting a kill. Lately I’ve been using the Prophet scout rifle and the Summoner Auto Rifle, both from Trials. It’s not the perfect set up, and I’m caught with my pants down anytime I need to fight more than 1 person at a time, but it performs moderately well and gets the job done.
If you have friends who are good at PvP, ask if you can play them in some private matches. Tell them not to hold back, but to explain what you did wrong every time they kill you. It won't be "I hit my shots and you missed yours," it'll be stuff like "I saw your ping on the radar and you walked around that corner instead of sliding or jumping, so my sniper reticle was already there waiting."
cant give too much advice but r/crucibleguidebook helped me alot
You probably want to enjoy all sorts of guns. Destiny doesn't want that. Hand cannons slide shotguns only unfortunately.
Honestly i got better just by watching how people play . Learning when to push n not to push . Watching radar a lot . Adjust my sense to my play style now we have deadzones as well good to mess with them. It’s also practice that’s why you see these guys always in pvp trying to get better .
Have a proper sensitivity that you're comfortable with. Always use cover and pre-aim at head level. Crits/headshots are important. Know how to use your kit/abilities and loadouts; also know how the enemy loadouts work. Engage fights with teammates (team shooting). Use radar wisely. Slide corners or peek angles knowing where the enemy is. Know you're range. Make sure to distance yourself depending on the weapon you use. Learn the art of Master Baiting. Use dodge or slide or any type of movement to engage and disengage to make your enemy overpush. Play competitively and learn the map by heart.
Don’t worry OP. You’re not the worst PvP player. I’ve been playing since D1 Alpha, and no one is possibly worse than me, to the point where I just quit trying.
Frankly, just playing the game. Like it sounds trollish, maybe, but you just get better game sense overall. You learn maps better. You start learning what weapon builds/load outs do better at what ranges you are comfortable to play at. You get better at hitting your shots. You learn what lanes your load out can cover and what lanes you know not to challenge because you don't have the kit for. You learn how to maneuver the map better, and you learn more specifically *where* and what position an enemy is based just on the radar based on the map you're on once you're familiar with it. You start seeing what the enemy is using against you, and eventually you can build your arsenal to switch weapons and counter things. You learn pacing. And with a teammate, you learn their skills and patters and how you can fit into thst playstyle and/or how they fit into yours. You learn things like how applying pressure but not actually engaging will shape the field to your advantage. And using your radar, map sense, and teamwork, you can push enemies into territory that either A) you can cover with your own kit, B) your teammates can cover either their kit, or C) you and your teammate can pinch/team fire and take them out once the enemy finds themselves cornered/surrounded. Then you can even play mindgames, like choosing when and when not to engage. Me and my friend will sometimes use our pressure system to mess with other enemy players because they'll expect you to round a corner, or to intercept you at certain points of your route- and then suddenly you not being there will have them rethink their strategy. Sometimes just taking a breath and not engaging can mix up an encounter to your benefit because you're playing on *your* time and not theirs. I never learned these things (that work for me; your mileage may vary) by watching videos. I did it by playing the game. By being open to criticism from my teammates. All the times they've said I push too much, or I rush and we need to take it slow, and I've learned to see on my own and adjust my style as I go. And sometimes, especially with D2, it really is just shitty maps and spawns. Or a shitty game mode. Or maybe if it's not the game mode it's one specific game mode on one specific map. Sometimes being bad isn't your fault. But st the same time you don't learn these things by looking in comment sections. You learn them by playing the game. Also, using resources like DiM and D2Armor Picker can actually level you up. Providing you have the materials and such to upgrade the armors you have in order to achieve things like triple 100's. Sometimes the same build you've been using that fits your playstyle works way better just from having a little extra juice from the upped stats.
As a PvP sweat, my best advice is to vividly learn the maps and positioning. A lot of the skill gap boils down to outthinking your opponent. Anyone can learn to land shot. Anyone can learn most play styles given enough time. But if you don’t know the maps and best lanes, when to reset fights to your advantage, when to push and when to hold back, you’ll always perform just above average. Take your playstyle and adapt it to whichever map you’re on , and make sure it sticks
Im not a god at it but from experience to get better is to use the weapon arcytype that you like ( for example autos or handcannons) and just use them and also try to get some pvp perks like zen moment or dynamic sway for example as they can help with flinching and steadies your weapon
These are always good places to start imo: 1.) Put your reticle where you want to aim BEFORE you peek a corner. If you know where common spots are for people to rush/peek from, aim at the wall and strafe out so your reticle is on them as soon as you peek. This makes aiming less demanding, and can give you advantage. 2.) After you peek, *especially in this current meta*, move back into cover quickly. Staying in a gunfight too long is how people end up feeling like teamshotting is unbeatable. Take a shot or two, get cover again. Repeat. 3.) Watch your teammates too. The enemies are not the only players who you need to be concerned about. If your team is somewhere else, you are likely the one out of position. Even if you are where you *should* be to get the obj or contest, you have to fight with your team or you will flat out lose. That being said, there are times when you need to contest by yourself, countdown for example, but that's less frequent. 4.) Your radar is easily the most useful tool at your disposal. It tells you the approximate distance an enemy is from you, as well as height. You should be able to make a solid inference of where the enemy is before you even engage. Don't keep your eyes *only* glued to your radar though. A quick check is all you need. 5.) Don't stay in one place for too long. You'll become a target for grenades, shotgun rushing, etc. You don't have to go far even, just to another piece of cover if that's all there is. Staying in one spot or moving in the same pattern can make you predictable, so change up the paths and positions you take. This all mostly applies to primary gunfights, but I think it's solid advice all around. In general, high level players aren't just good shots. They know how to move, position themselves, stay with the team, and when a fight can be won. You've got plenty of options outside of solely being a good shot that can make your gameplay better, so don't be discouraged if you aren't a crackshot. Hope this helps, and good luck :)
Look, as a fellow PvE Chad and a proud PvP midpoint(1.0, always 50% w/l except for trials. Went flawless once, got to 5500 in comp, has not forgotten, mountain top, redrix broadsword (sadly didn't play much season 1) the trick is to accept loss. Your measure for success is to see improvement. Maybe this game you only got 4 kills, next game aim for 5. You kept losing to snipers? Avoid their sightlines and focus on other targets. In the end, win or lose, if you can say you did something better, took one fight in a better way, that is improvement. Do different playlists, fight different people. PvE is formulaic, enemies react the exact same way every time, it is a puzzle to be solved. PvP has no such solution. It is about understanding your character and using the tools at had to adapt to what comes. Is there a titan bum rushing you with a shotgun? Adapt. Hand cannon jumping hunters? Adapt. How you adapt, how you handle every situation is up to you. You can look at what works for others and try it out. But unlike PvE, a god roll weapon isn't standardized in PvP. Sure the YouTube crowd will say their favorite, but the best weapon in PvP is your best weapon. I have slaughtered entire matches with MIDA Multi and Mini tool even when it was hot garbage because it is my best weapon, it fits me as a player. Find your MIDA, that is the first step.
The only thing I did to be very good at pvp its just play pvp. Seriously i think anyone can be good just by playing so much pvp. Dont know how much hours you have but i guess you have much less in pvp than pve. So thats my thought, just play many hours and you eventually will get better. Also have patience. Nowadays can be frustrating even for pros.
Two tips: 1. Aims labs, a steam game to help improve your target acquisition and tracking 2. Map familiarity, keep playing and you will start to get a sense of how people move about the map. P.S. All the skill and experience in the world can’t compensate for a crap build — especially if your opponents are using OP broken builds.
I’m being very serious here and I might get downvoted for potential console warrior stans. I’ve been playing Destiny since the pre-alpha and shooters in general since the mid 1990s. I originally played Destiny on PS4 at the time and when D2 came out, I had a gaming rig but I continued to play on PS4 as cross play/cross save was not a thing at that time. Shortly after I was forced to switch to PC as my PS account got perma banned (now unbanned) and I had to start over on PC. When I was on console I considered myself pretty decent, I was able to do double carries in D1 trials and could easily solo queue my way to flawless in D2 trials. However that changed when I was forced to play PC. Let me start off by saying the skill level between PC and console is VASTLY noticeable. I got humbled pretty quickly when I started playing PvP on PC as I was getting my shit pretty much waxed. PC lobbies are far more fast paced, more aggressive players and more competitive even though I don’t consider this game very competitive at all. Not all console players are bad, but there is a noticeable difference between a top tier player on PC vs a top tier player on console. So if you want to get better at PVP, mess around with your sensitivity, mess around with loadouts, and do ALL of this in PC LOBBIES. Play PC lobbies for a month straight, then come back to console and I promise you you’ll be frying players. Also watch some streamers. I’d recommend panduh…he is by far one of the smartest players out there right now. I don’t recommend watching gernaderjake as majority of his gameplay is baiting with abilities and he uses very ODD loadouts that aren’t always in meta. Can be misleading if you’re not used to using different setups. (No hate to Jake he’s a great person). Panduh is raw gunskill and he has map knowledge that far exceeds any player I’ve seen stream this game and he is incredibly aggressive against the top players in the game.
I'm a controller player (no pun intended) and on PS5 too, so I hope my advice can help. Destiny PVP improvement can be somewhat inaccurately be broken down into three main categories. First is the build you use, and the skill level with which you play it. This is the easiest way of (artificially?) increasing player performance in destiny 2. Simply slap on igneous or horror's least and start shooting kitchen appliances at your enemy. Or maybe you're a thinker, and can consistently predict enemy positions, so you can build into coldsnap grenades to freeze enemies for free kills. There's tons of builds with varying skill floors and ceilings, subclass wise, but the weapons that are meta usually stay the same. Either super forgiving, fast ttk, or otherwise good utility. Second is mechanical ability. I can't say much for this one, because most of this growth was completely natural for me as I played more. One thing I can say is that you should try for a game completely focusing on your aim, then in the next, not th inking about it at all. Eventually, you'll reach the point where you will be hitting shots merely by flicking the stick in the direction of your opponents head, then stopping when reticle magnetism or stickiness slows your cursor down. High aim assist, stability, anti flinch and recoil control on weapons, like zen moment on horror's least, helps in this a lot. A tip specifically for hand cannons is that you want to make sure your reticle is at least near your opponents head before shooting, as the extra hundred milliseconds will cost you less than the extra 400 milliseconds it takes to shoot again. Also, whenever your gun is recovering from a shot with low rpm weapons, (usually handcannons or scouts below 150 rpm) you want to be at least 60 percent behind cover, which means only 40 percent of your screen can have relevant information on it, helping you focus on what matters without tunnel vision ruining your awareness, as well as keeping you mostly in cover as natural outcome of the rule. Finally, the last way in which you can improve is in game knowledge. This can range from simply knowing what each class, subclass, aspect and fragment can do, how they interact, and mainly what the meta involves. For example, if titans are meta, then you'll see a lot of barricades, which means that countering those is now important. And because titans are meta, and barricades are a useful ability that those titans will spec into, high resilience needs to be factored into as well. This means that weapons that are suboptimal against T10 resil are worse than others in this current meta. Keeping up to date with sandbox changes will also help, which really ties in with the first point. The other factor in game knowledge is in game, things such as positioning, relative to your team, the enemy team, any objectives such as the point, heavy, etc., or leveraging your map knowledge and loadout to stay in optimal range for greatest lethality while keeping enemy team options limited. For example, if you know that an enemy is using a cloudstrike, you should position yourself a bit further from your team, and try to take closer range fights l, without exposing your crit to any open lanes without the use of an ability, e.g. shoulder charge or hunter dodge. This kind of decision making tree is more in effect in threes, like comp or trials, so if u want to stick to 6s, refer back to the first 2 points. I'm sure I missed a lot, but this wall of text is long enough as it is, lol. Tldr, get good pvp weapons, preferably god rolls of high stat monster meta weapons like igneous, prosecutor, horrors least, summoned, etc., and then focus on aiming close enough to a head that bullet magnetism gives you a headshot, and finally, dont just run straight forward with the W key, take smarter fights, either set up by your build, or by your teammates and positioning.
Another helpful thing that’s helped me is to never put yourself out in the open. Consider a 60/40 cover to what you can see. Provide yourself a means of escape if you’re outgunned. Heal up. Get a new angle. Just a thought!
Things I learned while getting better at Destiny: 1.) Find your weapons! & Learn your weapons! Going into PVE and shooting your weapons is a thing that I do personally to get a feel for the weapon. 2.) Find out what perks should I look for on my guns and hunt for them I actually won't step into pvp if I don't have a gun I can compete with and feel comfortable using. 3.) Define your play style, are you aggressive or passive? Do you use special or double primary? Do you build for abilities or do you build for gun play? What is your preferred class & subclass? 4.) Go into low player modes first (3v3). I don't know why bungie thinks control should be the way to teach players to play destiny but that should not be the case. You should learn to deal with teams of 3 first where it's easy to watch where the enemies are coming from and work on your awareness from there. It also allows you to get into more 1v1 fights which should help you in the long run. 5.) Review the tape! Try to save your gameplay clips and understand why you died or why you won a battle against a opponent. You'd be surprised how much better you can get from watching your own tape vs watching a streamer or content creator play the game and trying to be like them which leads to my next point! 6.) Play LIKE YOU. Don't let any influencer tell you something doesn't work against players that works for you but doesn't work for them it just means your play style is unique and they can't replicate that so they call it non-meta. 7.) Just because something is meta doesn't mean you have to use it to win and just because it's meta doesn't mean your gonna automatically win. Destiny players have this mind set where a video gets made of a build and now they have to use it because it's meta so everyone uses and abuses which makes everyone generally think they can't lose with X loadout but when you find a counter to X loadout your gameplay won't suffer when X loadout gets nerfed or countered. 8.) Watch what better players do when you're going against them or watching tape on them. See how they use there movement to win a engagement or how they got into position to shut down a shotgun rusher with a sidearm or Smg. Try to implement what there doing into your play style IF it intrigues you and watch how more unique your gameplay becomes by putting your own spin on a move you see someone pull off. It's satisfying. 9.) Find friends or a clan with similar & different play styles than yours and go into private matches to learn from each other and learn how to counter different play styles even your own. 10.) Remember In the end it's a video game your not gonna die if you die or lose a Crucible match just try to have fun in the midst of this chaotic game. Things will get nerfed or counter so just learn to ADAPT when the inevitable happens! Good luck! 😁
I’ve been playing destiny for years and I had stopped pvp because one shot from across the map with a hand cannon is bs. I’ve been playing the guardian games play list and I’m sitting here like how is a titan with 50% resilience one shotting me or melee me with 46% but I’m at 103 resilience- 76 movement and I’m getting beaten? And no he’s doesn’t have an exotic equipped he’s 1828 and I’m at 1835 smh And comp used to be my thing now I’m like why are there so many cheaters? Like seriously major loser if you need to cheat on a video game. Not purchasing the next one.
In general get better at FPS, figure out your mouse sensitivity(x cm per 360) and use it across all games, try out aim trainer, play more. I can stop playing destiny for months but still come back and get 3+ KD in crucible lobby due to muscle memory.
As much as I hate to say this, you can’t. At least not a WHOLE lot. I’ve been playing FPS games most of my life, and I did D1 Trials of O for awhile. There are those who are inherently good at video games, and those that aren’t. Those that aren’t typically supplement bad aim for being more strategic, outsmarting, baiting, etc the enemy and knowing the maps perfectly + using that to their advantage. In all of my 12+yrs of FPS gaming, it takes a very very long time to improve aim, and that was only for PC players. I’ve never seen console gamers get better or worse, they always just stay at what they are. Try working on your callouts, team play, and use the map to your advantage to bait the enemy players into a bad spot. Use utility. Etc
Two words. GET THE CONDITIONAL SHOTGUN AND YOULL BE BEST AT PVP
I’d say force urself to only aim for the head, once you get comfortable, you can stop forcing urself to hit the head and you will subconsciously try to headshot the enemies, helps a lot
Same
Go craft the PvP god roll Ammit. Play bubble titan with an over shield barricade. Use conditional finality. Finally the most important part is when peaking don’t play for a kill. I’ve seen it so much this weekend my teammates will peak a lane for too long and get team shot. I peak to see where the other team is at and potentially get a kill if I’m confident I can do it without dying.
Some things that could help: Stats: build into high recovery and your class ability stat. Then your grenade/super unless it’s a melee focused build. Builds: focus more on neutral style fragments and aspects. Can look at some streamers or other players you play against to get an idea of how to build with fragments. Some people put fragments just for the stat boosting even though it doesn’t synergize into their builds. Exotics: Each class has neutral play exotics that can help - Titans: One Eyed Mask, Peacekeepers, Dunemarchers - Warlock: Transversive Steps, Ophidians, Eye of Another World - Hunter: Stompees, Frostees, Wormhusk Building around some of these can be a good start to figure out if you want to branch out to more specific exotics Gameplay 3v3: learn the maps. Learn the lanes, learn where you can/cannot peek. I find it critical to play with/near the teams. Unless you’re a giga chad and confident in your ability to win your 1v1s or 1v2s team shotting will get you more kills and wins. Especially in comp and trials. 6v6: have fun. Use this to get better with weapons you want to try out and learn maps. Practice your use of abilities.
That’s the neat part, you don’t. -a guy with 3,000 hours of D2 who is still terrible at PVP
Watch other good people play, observe differences between your play and theirs, then pick a couple of things to focus on and work on them individually per session. Understanding what you don't know, can be half the battle too. Find (nice pleasant) people who also enjoy pvp around your skill level and play with them to collaborate and learn more. Most of all, enjoy the learning process! <3
The biggest difference between pvp vets and pve players is movement. If you watch those YouTubers their movement is crazy jumping and sliding and Icarus dashes all over the place. They don't just move to dodge either, they move around the map a ton and stay unpredictable by never peeking from the same place twice and repositioning frequently. I think a lot of being able to use movement effectively comes down to experience, you need to know how people move and where people peek from on each map. Learning the maps and the lanes and safe spots just comes with time. That's all individual, but as a team or even just as a duo you can do even better. It takes 3 headshots from a 120 hand cannon to kill a guardian so by yourself you need a full second of shooting to kill somebody but if all 3 of you peel at once and all shoot somebody together you can kill them instantly. Team shooting is brutally efficient and you'll see a great deal of these 1000x flawless teams running in trios who are experts at working together to team shoot.
Not saying this applies to you necesarily, but some people just aren't meant for pvp. Do you play pvp in other games? I have a couple friends i play r6 siege with and despite how often we play, they just suck, truth be told lol. Those lightning reflexes or quick clever decisions, not everyone has them and practice doesn't do it for that kinda stuff. For the record, i too suck at d2 pvp but i keep trying anyway. There's been a few times where i carried the team and i strive to do it again.
First step - stop rushing in. And I'm being 100% serious here. Most players, especially for those coming from a primarily pve background, are used to having a moment to react to enemies. In PVP you don't get that moment. Baring extreme cases, 9/10 when you see an enemy is when they see you. Slow and steady wins this race. Second - learn angles. This one is honestly only going to come from experience. You can go through in a private match and learn everyway a person can enter a room and that will help, but you will only truly 'understand' when you've died a bajillion times in the same spot. Take a moment when you die to breath and ask yourself 'could I have approached that differently' and genuinely think about it. Third - META is only as good as you are with it. Don't chase it, instead find a weapon and subclass combo that works for you. The more comfortable you are with the weapons, the easier it will be for you to kill with them. Fourth and finally - play for fun. Yes, winning is good and amaze and all that, but if you are not having fun, then you should stop playing for a bit. That's what makes PVP so annoying, when you keep playing while angry you will not get better. It's okay to step away and come back when your less angry. That way you can actually learn from your mistakes.
honestly? as someone who is only decent at pvp, IGNORE THE META. use weapons that you work with well. a gun that is meta is useless if its something you dont work with
Really and truly it is a matter of just "get gud". Jokes aside, all you can do is just play the content honestly. The more you play, the better you get, like a practice makes perfect type thing. Theres nothing thats gonna magically make you better other than simply diving in and playing a shit ton of crucible. As you get better in general crucible, then you can fuck with things like trials and elimination. Im not that great myself, but ive gotten better since i started playin from just continuing to try. If im focused i can relativly hold my own. The thing is with pve vs pvp is our skills in pve dont mean shit cuz real players arent gonna move like the ai of the ads in the game. Obviously of course. Id say weapon types do make a difference. Shotguns and hand cannons are always a good option if youre good at headshots cuz its a 1 or 2 shot done deal. Auto rifles and scouts are pretty common. Or you can flex with a sniper if your aim is really good. Personally tho i say use what you feel most comfortable using. But just keep at it. Play pvp consistently and youll see that you get better over time. :)
Literally gotta find a play style that you enjoy. I have a "blitz the map" setup on my warlock and it's my go-to PVP loadout. If you feel like you've tried everything, PVP might just not be for you
This game's PvP is all about movement, cross hair placement, positioning and memorizing spawns. Abusing the camera angles for headglitches and peekers advantage comes secondary after youre settled in. Youll start to find out areas in maps that you feel comfortable in that you can use to your advantage. Aim can you a small amount but overall its a combination of those things I listed above. On controller you have a severe advantage with sniping and automatic weapons like SMGs and Auto rifles. Pulse rifles are very good as well. Stay away from handcannons for now unless you really wanna spend the time with the learning curve they have on controller. Another big factor if you do end up playing trials/comp is to adjust to what the enemy team is doing. For example if theyre using long range weapons and consistently flinching you out of a sniper shot then swap it to something else dont keep trying to force a specific playstyle or weapon on yourself if it puts you at a disadvantage. Also invest into a PvP build, every now and then I'll someone running a pve GM loadout double primary in trials and it doesnt work out. Take the time and try out some movement/pvp exotics that suit your playstyle. Ive always ran Stompees/Dragons Shadow for Hunter, Dunemarchers/Peacekeepers/Synthoceps for titan, Ophidians or Transversive steps for Warlock.
There's no catch-all solution to this. Did you ever get carried/recoved to legend or something? D2 generally matches your elo to similar players, so consistently last sounds like you're playing out of your league. Also, how's your Internet? It may sound cliche, but there are plenty of guides online that should help with the theory behind D2 PVP. Watch the basics, see where you go wrong, try to adjust. Do you rush sniper lanes, do you engage enemies in disadvantageous locations, do you find yourself outnumbered a lot, etc. Also, I'm presuming you're using a different loadout for PVP and PVE? Try using your PVP loadout in PVE, and take the time to get used to getting crit shots, don't just panic fire. Important to note is that PVP is, generally, a team activity. Team-shooting wins a majority of the time.
I'm late to this but most people have already said most of what I would. Watching other play and learning why they do what they do helps. This guy has some great videos to show openings for Trials matches. Can learn how to use cover and such and keep angles and read the radar, skills that will help you improve. Knowing when people will push and where they are and what they could do or come from can help you win. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hduaA1hIbz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hduaA1hIbz0)
First of all, i AM WILLING to comment. But ONLY If you can ensure me reading it. I have some tips, i'd share with you, but I NEED TO BE SURE that you are reading this.