If you're stuck in diamond, you're probably wasting hours every week without realizing it. Let's change that together. Diamond is supposed to be where you start mastering mechanics and building your game sets.
But most of you guys just end up mastering bad habits instead. That's why today we're reacting to nine real mistakes that diamond players make. These are pulled straight from actual coaching clips inside my private Discord community.
And of course, if you're new here, we've got a free Discord community as well. It's linked below. Join for free bonus tools, more free content, and teammates who actually want to win.
Let's get into this new format. I'm Luke. I'm GC3, a Rocket League coach for the last 5 years, and of course, I founded the Grand Champ boot camp, where we've helped thousands of players rank up with real coaching from real pros.
But here's the twist. I'm going to be reacting to advice my own coaches gave to diamonds last month. Think of me as your translator.
I'll be turning this prolevel coaching into something that makes sense, whether you're platinum, diamond, or even champion. And yeah, this is kind of like quality control cuz I know I don't look like it, but technically I am the boss. So if their advice sucks, not only is your rank on the line, their jobs might be too.
What could go wrong? This is a new format. I mean, come on.
What What could go wrong? So Rosi the video guy. I hope you picked uh good clips.
Let's get into it. Okay, let's get into the first three. First three mistakes are going to be from Torment, former world champion, uh defensive MVP, hailed as one of the best defensive players in Rocket League history.
Let's do it. Torment, what do you got? And once you're here, middle rotation, uh, support your teammate.
So like you get these, this is good. This is good right here. But you see how you haven't seen what happens yet.
And you immediately this this mistake, right? Yeah. So this mistake is facing the wrong direction on the play.
So when Tormund says middle rotation, what he means is, yes, you're rotating around the middle, but generally you want to stay within, you know, what some would call this boost diamond. When you move this way, we're now facing the wrong direction on the 50/50. So, you see the only thing that's over there is the half boost.
And I think that's what Chaotic is looking at. Um, but if this 50 loses, uh, your coverage, you're slow to cover back here. Whereas, if you're in this exact same spot, but facing this way, uh, you can cover, you can you can turn up and you can turn back.
So, this is facing the wrong play. Let's see what happens. The 50 is now happening, and you actually looked away, I'm pretty sure, and went to the side, right?
You just want to stay on this pad. And I would keep going back straight and then see the 50 happen. And then if the ball goes that way, you go that way.
The ball goes that way, you'll start going that way, right? And it depends how far it goes. Obviously, if it stays center as well and you need to make a save, you go make a save or you stay center so you can challenge if this guy keeps the ball.
Like you want to stay in the center of the field until you know you're able to commit to the side you want to go to. Cuz then you go over here and you see exactly what happens. I mean, it's basically just going straight in your net.
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it was just going in. You want to be thinking when the 50 is about to happen when the ball is moving towards a collision.
We are facing sideways um positioning flexibly towards the play, not away from it, even if there's 100%. Okay, a bit of a tighter rotation. This guy could have shot the threat right now here.
Here's here are the two threats. This guy getting a pass or this shot going on target at your near post and your teammate can't really cover it. It could actually go anywhere, but like think about your near post especially and you're going out here and you're right now that the guy's up and you're facing this way, right?
You need to be facing your net and already in that position where you could reach that for a save, right? So, tighter rotation for sure. And a lot of people do this on Yes, tighter rotation for sure.
What he means by tighter rotation is if we go back here two seconds, you see he did this route that was very long where he swooped around. Now, this is not bad. Uh, I like that he's staying on this side of the play as opposed to moving into the corner with the play.
That would make this almost impossible. But a concept here, it's called timing your rotation. So, you want to base this like the tightness uh that that Torment is describing.
Um, don't take this out of context. You want to base the tightness of your rotation based on how close, okay, the ball is to being shot or how soon the ball is going to be shot. So, if the ball's going to be shot quicker, we're moving, you know, through here and maybe we even go through the middle and turn up quick.
Um, if it's going to take a little bit more time, we swoop around and we grab grab this pad. If it's going to take a ton of time, you go for your corner boost. But you want to time your rotation as you're collecting pads with the speed of the play and already in that position where you could reach that for a save, right?
So tighter rotation for sure. And a lot of people do this on the way back. They do this like wide like they they think they have to go back post every time.
And you can see it right here. You're in the middle of the field, which is good. And you're like, "Okay, I need to rotate to my back post.
" And this just looks kind of doesn't it look a little bit almost goofy? Like it looks like why? like like there's no reason for you to be there, but you've been told you have to be there, so that's why you go there, right?
And this is very common cuz a lot everyone tells you rotate back post, rotate back post, but it's not like a it's not like a every situation kind of thing. What I would do is rotate down the middle and obviously you don't want to do this and like drift a net. I don't think that's good.
And you don't want to just be spacing your net. So I would come out and do like a mini turn and like here almost. Yeah.
So exactly what Torma's describing here. He's correct. he's drawing this line because the play is moving this fast.
If the play was moving super slow, Chaotic's route could be fine. Um, then you have time to maybe go up the backboard and you're meeting the play. You're arriving when it's coming.
But tournament's right. You need to you need to cut in more. Depends what you're expecting though, right?
Cuz sometimes if there's a guy super wide for a pass and you think the pass can lob over, maybe you needed to go a little wider so you can like cover that like aerial for it and reach the ball before the shot guy. I would base your your second man position a little bit on where their second man is and also what you think the first man can do with the ball because now he comes in and frankly this this could have been a near post shot, right? That's why I'm saying it.
And now you're you know you're back here. Correct. Torment.
He's a G. He's a G. Yeah, he's a defensive play.
Like yes, correct. You don't need my approval. But and before we get into the next section, if you're a platinum through GC watching going, "Oh, I actually do all this stuff.
" DM my Discord account with the keyword help. That's H A L P. I'd love to see if me and my team can help.
Jokes aside, I'll have my free Discord first link below. If you want to be like one of the players in these videos, I'd love to help you rank up. We got XD Joe moving into the corner.
First thing is like you're kind of challenging from like Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This challenge is not a great angle to start, but you also don't really want to again flip.
Yes, you don't want to flip, but play this back. Okay, another one. Two.
Okay, so the issue is this ball looks like it's equidistant. All right, like it looks like he is as far from the plate as it as are you roughly speaking. But it's not.
And this is a beginner trap. When the ball is moving in one direction, all else equal the direction the ball is moving in, that team has possession. That team gets it for free.
And so we look here and we think, "Oh, I can beat this guy to the ball. " But what you fail to remember is the ball's moving towards orange. So, at any point he can play it around you.
And this is kind of a kind of a yolo dunk that a good player will just beat you 90% of the time. Uh, we have to we have to be mindful of that. First thing is like you're kind of challenging from like it's not a great angle to start, but you also don't really want to again flip into these challenges, right?
When you're when you're beat when you're the second person in the ball unless you're sure that your recovery is going to be good. Um, I like this is to avoid leaving your team in bad spot. So, Torment reads immediately that this guy's second of the ball, he's already going into the analysis of why you shouldn't challenge if you're second.
I think that's very useful advice. What I would add is for many of you watching that are diamond or below, you also need to be aware of when you are beat to the ball. Sometimes we don't even recognize when we're second.
We just see the ball and we just go spots. You see how the ball gets boomed and you're now relying on your teammate to defend this situation right there. There's two people kind of pressing in your half now and he's last.
So you need to again maybe he can make this play which I like looking at the bottom he definitely does not get scored on here but you see how you're basically just putting the game in his hands entirely here and you didn't really get any value and you can't get back to impact the play at all right yeah I'm selfish not what I mean what I mean all right I like Joe now it's just more about like you you overcommit basically if you overcommit like this it'll it'll put your teammate in these spots and you you probably get left in these spots too your teammates definitely all do this um but the better you can get at not putting your teammate in that spot, the more you can kind of, you know, just impact games, right? Cuz ideally, you want to like maybe you're beat to the challenge, like the ball was here and this guy's beating you. So, you just go like this and you turn out and now if you're really fast back, you can maybe demo the guy that's supporting out mid.
Um, or you can go back and just like support your teammate, right? If you can match the speed of the counterattack, that'll that'll help you in twos, especially. Yeah, Tormund saying get GTFO.
Get get out of there. When you're second to the ball, you can't be full sending like that. You're leaving your teammate in bad situations.
And think about what can I do besides this challenge immediately after it happens. Right. Next clip.
Okay. Here. Oh, we got another Joe clip.
Now we're analyzing Coach Freaky. Uh European pro. Played on teams like Vitality.
Um German pro. Uh over five years, seven years in the RLCS. Uh he has a blue tag.
I don't. Okay, let's let's watch. This is a usual um habit that I see with um with most diamonds.
Um mainly because again it is not smart if you're thinking about continuous movement that you stop completely turn around and build momentum this way rather than just transferring your momentum. Okay. Okay.
So, I'm guessing what's about to happen here is Joe SMO is about to do a 180 and he's going to chase this ball after it was already hit back here cuz that's what every diamond does. Like the natural movement here is you hit the ball here. It's moving towards bear in mind it's moving towards this guy right now.
PT is about to get the ball. So, PT is going to get the ball. He's going to bang it this way.
And then what Joe should do is he should rotate around like this and let his teammate go in. But what most diamonds do is they see the ball coming back at them and they go, I'm gonna go get it myself and they cut their teammate off and then it's really awkward. What side are you supposed to rotate on?
Opposite side of play of ball. Okay, so if the ball currently, let's just say here, see like we're drawing a line through the middle. This is the left side.
This is the right side. Which side is the play side? Left side.
So if the opponent would now move the ball this way, which is very hard if he comes from here, totally get it. You could have just done this and reposition yourself. Now, if the opponent moves the ball into the opposite side, so essentially what happens, he drives this way, moves the ball that way.
Technically, you need to move to the other side. So, why stop if you could have just made pressure and then when he hits it, you continue rotation. The problem that you create for yourself is you start driving forwards, you break, you flip backwards or build backwards momentum, and you're still on the play side.
How's your teammate ever supposed to challenge for what Freaky is getting at and I think he's about to talk about teammates in a second. In Rocket League, you're you're stuck in this car. We can't go back and forth efficiently.
It It's really costly. You can do it in 1 v one. When you have infinite boost or when you have infinite boost in Rocket League, we generally don't want to move in lines.
We want to move in arcs, circles, these nice curves, right? Cuz we're we're a car. So, build backwards momentum.
and you're still on the play side. How's your teammate ever supposed to challenge for you now? I mean, I also don't think he was in a position to challenge.
I mean, not yet. No, obviously not. He's not yet supposed to challenge, but how can he challenge now?
How does he challenge? How when does he challenge or he's driving bumpy? Yeah.
See, prime example, prime example of what happens when we're rotating play. Cuz if you think about the rotational cycle as like literally what it is, a circle. Yeah.
Like literally think about it this way. We're moving like in in your example technically first man. Second man.
Yeah. We're moving this way. Yep.
So second man needs to move up the order to first man. First man needs down the order or like towards down the field. Um I mean you get what I'm trying to say.
I have no good uh directions I guess. Up and down whatever. Um, so if if you essentially do this, you're rotating into your teammate rather than around him towards behind him.
And then we're having a lot of diamonds complain about their teammates. Um, but the thing you got to understand is like in diamond you have a lot to learn and that's okay. Like in this clip for example, Joe was like, "Ah, you know, kind of my teammate wasn't ready to challenge.
" But the idea is when you move in these intuitive ways like Freaky was talking about, you make your teammate better. Cam the Ram 85 here normally plays like a diamond, but if you put Freaky on his team, he'll play like a champ three because Freak is going to make it so easy for him to play. So be like Freaky in that way.
That issue of like bumping into each other. It prevents I'm not saying be freaky. Um I mean you could I don't This is a Rocket League video from John.
See here because you consist literally the moment you turn off ball game cam is already in your face. Yep. Good job being receptive to that feedback Joe.
That's great. Nice. Opponent misses.
Let's reposition middle. Come on, reposition. Help your teammate.
As long as the middle is open. And this is another thing here. It's like, why move back if we're in offense?
Why build momentum away with that flip if my teammate has control over the ball moving it forwards? Freaky is correct. Many players, you you might be included, we get bored.
We flip because we feel like we should be doing something. When in reality, what this player did was not wrong. you should drive and kind of get back behind so you could shoot, you know, on that.
But the flip builds momentum the wrong way. Rarely do we want to flip like this um when we're watching the play and we don't know where the ball's going. We want to reposition, but we don't want to flip.
The gap is bigger. The gap from your position to the ball's position is bigger. So, guess what happens?
Literally every time every time you force yourself away from the play too much, you're going to end up in a loop where you just do this. Mhm. Because you turn around to move away from the play back to turn into the play back to I have to chase after the play.
Cuz if you're too slow to prevent the opponent from clearing it like that, you obviously have to turn around again to get to the ball. Yeah, Freaky is right. Unlucky.
It gets bmed out. But if that ball goes over that guy's head and you know we're not ready, it's on you. So it's hard when you don't see the exact thing you want in the play.
The principle he's teaching is correct. Getting the boost. Okay.
Waiting a little. Come on. Ed dribble.
No, you don't want to air dribble. Yeah. Not the best control.
Um, it's very hard to dribble the opponents here. So, here, if nobody challenges you right now, I would have technically with your first touch flicked the ball. Literally, don't control the ball.
flick it upwards and follow it with an aerial because uh dribbling the ball here is the worst idea since you have two opponents in front of you. A dribble in my opinion mainly makes sense if you have one opponent in front of you because you could technically flick it over that player that challenges you. But if you would flick it over a challenger, the teammates of him behind him will typically have it covered.
So a dribble against two opponents is not smart. But if you instantly with your touch here, if you would just instantly now jump and flick the ball, you surprise them because they don't expect that. And then if you give the the ball enough momentum forwards and upwards, you would have possibly also had the opportunity to follow it with an aerial.
Mhm. Yeah, I think so. And then, well, obviously, I mean, yeah, your teammate should cover that, right?
But you also get dunked right at your own net. I'm not going to disagree with Freaky. Um, what I've seen, Diamonds think they have really good mechanics.
Um, but often times our mechanics in Diamond are just not there yet to do a fast play like this. And that's okay. The GC option, what Freaky would do is I'm sure he would flick that and they would follow it up and he would score cuz he's Freaky and he's better than me and probably better than you.
But if you're diamond and that seems a little too difficult, what I would recommend to most of my Diamond students here is a simpler play. I would say don't just like Freaky said, dribble it and put it on your car. when you see two opponents back, if you don't have a way to beat them, which is either a flick or a ground to air dribble, um something more like potent mechanically, I rather you take a low 50 with two players back on the opposing team, then try to do a dribble and flick it and guaranteed give it to one or get dunked.
Low 50 is going to be a much safer option when you can't when you don't know how to get past two defenders. Otherwise, like Freaky said, you're just going to give a give the opponents a 1v one. I agree with what Freaky says.
I I might give different recommendations, but it depends on your if you feel mechanically strong as a diamond, do a freaky set. Last but not least, Shock played for Ghost Gaming between 2019 2023. Four-year competitive career, season 9 NA MVP.
Also played for the Sonics. Very good North American player. And he's from Illinois like me.
So I'm biased. I like him. Uh I'm from Chicago.
You know, I grew up in these streets without no heart. Comment below if you know what reference that's not true. I grew up on the north side.
I'm I'm lucky to be very privileged. Okay, let's watch Rocky. The reason is because I don't think there's a touch that you can get that really helps your teammate and makes it easy for them.
Yeah, it's fair cuz I I did end up hitting it too hard. Okay, so here Shock is talking about what options you should go for if you find yourself in the corner like this as a diamond player where you've got two two guys here. Uh what would most people do?
They would probably just slam it forward, which I think is what Shock's getting at hard which threw it over. So yeah. Yeah.
Here I'd love to see you bump like just get one tap of the ball forward and then bump. Mhm. So here's the reason we're our job here is to pressure, right?
Yeah. Us hitting the ball hard is not pressure though. Just hit sister.
Yeah. Our teammates not going to score that at this ring, right? Yeah.
This is kind of a mess up on me. Yeah. So the way that I view the best way to generate it is a little bit of mess up, but what Shock's saying is correct and you can use it in more than just this situation.
The pressure here is tap the ball once so it's like rolling towards the net and then drive past it and bump. Yeah, cuz that's that's what that's what was going through my head at that point. Like that's what I wanted to do.
I just ended up hitting the ball too hard and I was like, "Yeah, there's no point. It's already over. That's a dead play.
I'll just go back. " I would still bump probably cuz it's probably a really free demo. But I understand just to kind of throw him off anyways.
Yeah, I mean you're still pressuring them, but you're trying to hit them. So, this kind of play is called running through. You have your teammate behind you, your first man, and you have no meaningful play on the ball.
So, I want you just get one touch, and drive through it and bump them and try to bring it towards the net that way. And they're going to be really uncomfortable on the spot. When you see people near post like this, like near side, they're usually very easy bump targets.
They're not going to be able to move with a lot of momentum. Shock is correct. his pro career was I when I talked with them about it, Shock was largely like a disruptor.
Um there were some pros that really brought this angle onto the scene. Uh Shock was one of them. Comm on version one was another pro who kind of got this reputation of just being a disruptor.
Basically, they would they would play this game in such a way like they wouldn't always be on the ball like you see Zen nowadays, but they popularized a style of Rocket League that crushed um two three years ago that now kind of all the pros just bake into their gameplay on top of the mechanics. What you can steal from Shock and Comm is when you see a play like this in Rocket League where I can't air dribble from here. I can't do like there's nothing I can do with this ball in the corner.
The best play is often don't play the ball. play these guys. That's the idea.
I wouldn't just go bit to the back post cuz you're getting your boost ticket. So, here's a spot where like we need to understand what the safest play is, right? So, Rafa is rotating back here.
We see one guy ahead of him cutting him off. One guy at the midfield. Teammate looks like he's saving the ball this way.
A lot of people have a misconception because they've learned in the game for so long that they should always go back post when they rotate back, but that's wrong here. Okay. This ball is either in or it isn't, right?
Yeah. Only one of two things. So, if it's in, can you do anything about it?
Uh, not really. No, because if it's in, you not there to save it, right? Yeah.
So, you have to play like the ball isn't. So, if the ball isn't in, where is it going to go? uh to the center, right?
It's going to come off the backboard in some capacity as it comes here and to the center. So, if the ball's going to go out to the center if it's not in, why would we go back post? Yeah, I get it.
Right. There's no point. It's not where the ball's going.
So, the safest play here is not to huddle up and net. It's to Okay, if my teammate doesn't have this, I'm going to cover the miss and I'm going to omit and cut it off cuz I'm going to stop a shot from happening. The best defense is one where we stop the shot before it happens rather than saving one.
So, as you can see, you go back here, but you don't play as if it's a miss or coming off the backboard, which it does. You play as if, oh, I'm supposed to go back post when I rotate back. And now we're letting a shot happen, which we you should have been there to cut it off.
And now, because we let a shot happen, we cause a double commit. That's awkward, which immediately leads to a goal. And then we blame our teammate for missing and uh say, "Ah, these diamond teammates suck.
These guys suck. Jokes aside, this is a really common uh three strategy. Actually, a lot of threes players will do the same thing where they rotate back and they just hard stick to the back post.
Hard stick. Hard jeez. Uh, Rocket League.
Rocket League. Rocket League. Right.
They assume that if they're the ball's coming to their side of the field, they go to the back post. But like Shock said, you you actually want to linger in the midfield before you go to the back post. The back post is when you have a teammate contesting, like let's say uh up up in front of the field and you're focused on the net.
But when we're in this position where we don't have a teammate defending, we need to cut this because anything any shot that comes from here, you don't have the reaction time to save a wellplay shot will be in 100% of the time. So yes, like Shock said, we should be cutting into the midfield here, cutting his line. Next clip.
The play changes as you play and like taking in information. The first thing you should be doing as you turn around here is looking at where your opponent is and how fast he's jumping. Then once you see that here, you should just never jump.
You just turn around. Grab boost. Take the 100 pounds on our wall.
But the ball is here. How would I know that this guy is here? Shock.
How? Yeah, but you're you're so focused on the ball here that you just turn and go right away. I'm being a little bit mean.
Shock is right. When your camera goes in the air, it's really easy to make this mistake because we have to deliberately check player here to see this. Otherwise, if we're just looking at this area of the screen, this field of view, we don't even see the guy down here.
So, it's it's really easy to do this. The solution is when you recognize these low vision situations, red flags go off in your brain. You go, I got to be extra careful about checking.
This is just one of those small things. It's not even a Rocket League mechanic. It's just a Rocket League awareness thing that you will develop um and that hopefully you can now actively pay attention to now that I've kind of mentioned it.
One of the biggest things you can do to improve is to spend your downtime off the ball watching your opponents and what they're trying to do as well as your teammate. Cuz whatever your opponents are doing, what your teammate is doing, it should be defining your decision-m. It should never be just about the ball.
So spending more time while you rotate, while you move around, while you're off the ball, looking at your opponents, looking at what they're trying to do, that leads you to correct decision-m. But when your eyes stay locked onto the ball, like it probably did here. Um, you make decisions where it's just like, oh, I'm just jumping at him to jump at him, and now I'm zero boost, and now they're counterattacking, right?
Okay. Comment if you liked this new format and which coach you liked the most, or ideas for how we can spice it up in the future. And last but not least, uh, join the free Discord because rent is not cheap in Chicago, guys.
I'm moving soon. Chicago rent prices are nuts. Like, they're nuts.
Um, so, uh, anyway, if you'd like to support me on my journey, not to have to. Uh, I know I promote a lot. I'm self-aware enough to know that.
Uh, but the reason I do that is because I don't want to have to sell you shitty mobile apps to make a living. I know there's this perception that like because, you know, I'm a gaming YouTuber and I have like, you know, 400k or whatever subs, it's like I'm just rolling in it. Like I'm rolling in it.
The only people that like will give me like a bag is like Raid Shadow Legends. Dude, I don't want to promote Raid Shadow Legends. Raid Shadow Legends, if you're watching, I'm sorry.
I'm sure your guys app is great. Anyway, um coaching coaching something diamond.
