So, this is a bit of a different question: how do I get my brother to start doing aerials?

I love playing with him, but he is seriously starting to drag us down. It's not like he needs to go crazy, I'm good at getting all of the high lobbed balls for us. But, it really hurts when he's not even able to boost up in goal to block those corner shots.

Now, this is where the question gets more psychological. This is my older brother, and as the younger it is very difficult to critique him or offer advice in a non-confrontational way. I try to be as gentle as I can, but he always responds with, "I'm fine doing my thing on the ground." I've encouraged him to try the training stuff, but he doesn't seem to want to improve.

I don't want to be a dick, but we pretty clearly hit a wall when we start playing gold ranked players. DEAR ABBY, PLEASE HELP ME!

If you are on pc we can group and i can carry you in silver if you want

That rank is honestly pure hell. Total hell.

I spent the longest time not even knowing air roll existed and I highly recommend learning to utilize it. Its very useful and you will start reaching balls you thought you couldnt before.

It takes less time than you think to relearn a button configuration. I have air roll LT and boost Rb on xbox. I hold the controller with pointer on RB and middle on RT which took some time getting used to but has been worth it.

@whatthejish, you kinda just have to get over the hump of being bad at aerials and missing a lot but still going for them. The game is way more fun once you can do aerials, and the only way to get better is to attempt them in games (or training mode but that seems like hes not interested). I suggest playing in unranked mode so it doesn't matter when you miss. But if hes just gonna be stubborn about it, cant really help him

Moving my camera back helped me vastly with being able to hit aerials better along with just with the practice modes.

Yeah, I love the aerial game myself-- it's added so much enjoyment for me. If I play ranked without him, I easily climb up to Gold 3. But, then I plummet back down when I play with him. Meh, in the end it's probably more of a sibling thing and he'll need to "discover" it himself to start utilizing it regularly.

@jmakin, thanks for the offer but we are Switch trash players

I thought crossplay is enabled for all platforms?

My buttons are mapped completely wrong, but I still feel faster than most people I play with at my rank and balls never really feel out of reach so meh

700 hours in and i honestly dont think i can relearn. I tried changing boost a few months ago and i gave it a few solid hours and i just felt like i couldnt even maneuver my car.

It is but i dont think you can group with people outside your platform - if there’s a way i’d love to know it because my friends play on ps4. I own a copy on playstation but the latency is laughably bad, i play like a bronze on there

try adding their RocketID and not platform friends. I played with a PS4 friend. You should be able to do it

My mapping is this (xbox controller)

Right trigger accelerate/left trigger reverse

Y is air roll
X is slide
A is jump
B is boost

Camera switch is left stick press, score is left bumper i think

Right bumper is for voice but i dont use it so thats wide open.

The suggestion i think is to swap my boost and slide buttons for faster takeoffs or something. But honestly, I don’t see how it can help me. Not a fan of making the boost the trigger either.

If you ever want to progress to champion level you'll need to be able to hit air roll/handbrake, boost, jump and accel all at the same time. I made that remapping myself around 400-500 hours in and it didn't take long. Just do it

I cant think of a use case for that. Or why it would be completely necessary. What mapping would you use?

Oh yea i can see how that gives me more mobility in the air. I can fix this by just mapping handbreak to right bumper, i can use middle finger for trigger without much adjustment at all, because i broke my index finger once and had to play like that for half a year lol

For advanced positioning, powershots, clears, etc. you'll need to be able to air roll while boosting and tilting the cart and be able to hit the jump button while doing all of that. You don't need to hold accel at the same time, but I generally only let go of it when I want to brake, I think you add a lot more complexity if you have to switch your fingers around every time you switch from boosting to accel, and a lot of the time you accel without boosting so you can't double bind them. My mapping is pretty standard

A - jump
B - boost
X - unbound, voice coms i suppose
Y - camera mode

rt - accel
lt - reverse

rb - scoreboard
lb - air roll/handbrake

I hold the outside of my thumb pad over the b/boost button and can mash the whole thumb down so the inside pad hits the a*/jump at the same time or just roll it to hit only the jump button.

We have an identical setup it looks like other than handbrake is on the right. Lb feels ok too

While we're talking settings, and this has been mentioned several times in the thread, but once you have a few hundred hours you should start playing with the deadzone settings, I have .15 for controller deadzone and .30 for dodge deadzone, and aerial sensitivity at 1.45. The last one makes a huge difference in the feel of aerials, anything below 1.0 and I feel like I'm flying a buss, any more than 1.5 on PC and it gets way too touchy, but I think it's different on each platform. I have my Switch Pro controller set to 2.0 to get it to feel like my PC XBox 360 controller. And unless they've changed it, the steering sensitivity doesn't do anything on PC, but it makes a pretty big difference on the Switch and PS 4.

EDIT: nm, they fixed the PC steering sensitivity, seems to also have an accumulative effect with aerial sensitivity..

What is the importance of air rolling/hand-braking in the air? Also I used to refuse to practice but now that you can hop on for quick training sessions between matches I do it all the time. Has helped me improve from being a zero at aerials to passable. This month I’ve been borderline gold at 3v3 and borderline bronze in 2v2, not sure what that means.

When you first start doing aerials, you basically just jump up in the air and boost and learn to mess with the tilt, and even when you've got a lot of practice you have to nail that initial jump perfectly along with boosting and pitching backwards or forwards to contact the ball. But you're limited to only hitting the ball from the initial angle of your car to the ball, and you can't correct your trajectory to intersect the ball. When you start adding in air roll, you'll start flipping in odd directions and making a mess of things, but when you're not lined up with the ball on an aerial approach eventually you learn to instinctively air roll to an intercept angle and then boost to hit. And you can get more power on certain shots by moving slightly away from the ball on approach then boosting back from a tight angle right at the end.

No matter what I still keep going back to the dominus.

It is so much better for blocking and 50/50’s in my opinion. On octane i am constantly finding i miss the extra car length when i go in the air for touches to get possession. I also dont like how octane cant really do anything with a slow rolling ball. With dominus you just drive into it and you have a dribble/flick thats extremely easy to pull off, i can even do musty flicks with extreme ease, that’s like my go to shot now. I can hit the ball waaaay harder from a standing position than I can with octane. The hitboxes make way more sense as well.

Idk. For 1v1 obviously its octane all the way but I cant imagine using it as my main car with my current playstyle.

Also, remapping slide to LB has been great, thanks for that.

Should I buy it for my 11 year old brother?

best $20 Ive ever spent on a game

Sure, but maybe turn his chat off, especially if he hasn't experienced toxicity in other games

if we lived through halo 2 lobbies, they can deal with rocket league quick chat

Fyi re: aerials i’d rather have a noob stuck on the ground than these gold/plat scrubs that use 100 boost to go straight up in the air to hit a floater near the ceiling, that just barely goes anywhere and 3 opponents are waiting beneath to smash it. Or, they miss the ball entirely and are out of position with no boost or momentum left. **** those guys. Every time I see someone doing that I immediately rotate back.

My aerial skills are bad, in the sense I cant really aerial dribble well. I can steer my car in the air pretty well now and get double touches most of the time.

I just hit c2 and I can't do double touches most of the time I do only when I'm playing a lot, if I'm slacking (like 5-10 hours of gameplay) I get out of shape pretty quickly. Not sure how I got it even, pretty sure I don't deserve it. Stagnation at c1 satisfies me since I'm pretty sure I'm not improving. (and well it's hard to say from your own pov)