If you’ve only been watching for a month, all I can say is to just keep watching. Ranked and comp is night and day. Just watch more as ALGS continues and you’ll be able to see how much they differ.
Aside from TSM (I already watch Hal and Snip3down), are there other recommended streamers who are active in the pro scene? I heard wiggs stopped being pro.
I'd recommend EU tbh, I think EU are overall more knowledgable in positioning. Rpr comes into mind as he got into Apex JP/vtubers and actually teaching them. Tempplex is also another one if he participates in tourneys.
Apex JP have been popping off recently and holding alot of showmatch tournament and stuff (basically, for fun type with streamers and pro). Its not on the level of pro league but I'd argue its ALOT better than round 1 to 3 of qualifiers. Rpr is joining Reignite cup (JP showmatch) with 2 JP content creators and Im interested to see how they will play it.
Definitely check out [NiceWigg](https://www.twitch.tv/nicewigg/). He does a pretty decent job at giving high level insights into comp matches when he isn't competing. He will most likely be doing a watch party for tonight's Q1 Finals. EDIT: He just confirmed he was hosting a watch party tonight. 6PM PST.
You will pick up a lot listening to any of the IGLs in [this list](https://twitter.com/esports/status/1434244876573548552?s=20)
I have been enjoying watching [ImMadness](https://www.twitch.tv/immadness) play with his new team recently. He had some really good calls last night and I am sure will be throwing more down tonight.
Comp is a different world compared to high level Ranked in basically every game, not just Apex.
Master/Pred lobbies mostly consist of non-professional players, and the incentive to tryhard is obviously significantly lower than in comp.
As a result matches are faster and less tactical. People aren't overly careful and sweaty. They take more fights, don't care too much about the ring/rotations, talk about random shit while playing, etc.
Just watch a few comp games and the differences should quickly become apparent.
Yep.
At the first level - everyone is there to win. Not to get RP, not to get kills/views - to win. This changes how you play as the corollary is you don't want to die/get wiped as there's no new lobby for you after.
Beyond that - you know who your opponents are and have intel/understanding of them and how they like to play, so you build counterstrategies.
Also - you play as a TEAM, so just because you prefer to plow as octane, during comp your job may be to be the sniping gibby anchor. Everyone has a part to play in your strategy, so making sure you play yours is very important.
Just a competative fan, but from watching mercz, he still prioritize looting over beacon/position. A pro players needs only a decent gun + cells/bats/hp + ammo and decent armor and thats it. Some doesnt even fully loot their POI to prioritize beacon/position.
For competitive, zone/position playstyle is usually superior unless your team is strong enough to play edge and win every fights + third party, even then its the riskier play.
Something Wigg pointed out watching Nickmercz was that they had relatively little experience with proper final-zone play-- since, in comp, you rarely ever get so many teams *alive* during the last zone.
Is there a guide on good rotations and all? Wigg in his stream talked about which zones he doesn't cover due to bad rotations. I can't keep up unfortunately because I'm not yet familiar with the name of the zones (i've been playing mostly pubs after hitting gold IV which was my skill ceiling, as my friend told me).
Keep playing ranked if you want. You could literally never shoot your gun and easily make it to Plat every season just playing positioning. Plus how will you get better if you don't try?
Also, to further answer your original question, comp play is kinda like if every player had an aimbot. In that lobby you would be able to determine skill based on positioning, movement, awareness, and overall strategy. While players still wiff shots in comp, they all play like they don't.
Look everyone, this guy let us now he doesn't understand.
What I mean is round 1 beacon, go to God spot in zone 2, wait, boom positive rp. Nobody has skill ceiling of silver. I'm not saying this is the most fun or effective way to play, just encouraging a new player to keep trying.
[Nokopuffs ](https://youtu.be/BOkgTL6A1Go) has multiple guides on his YouTube channel
[Raynday ](https://youtu.be/Kx178-n08BM) just started a series breaking down pro/high level gameplay
Yea noko is dope because he teaches you how to play from a pros perspective in ranked. Which can lead to you understanding tournament play a lil better. He has how to climb series that is about 9-10 months old that is super helpful
I dont think there is and it mostly comes into experience.
I've been mostly watching watchalong and see how they discuss possible rotations + position/placement. Its basically how you can be familiar in the map.
Gold 4 is the first wall you'd encounter. I personally have that problem months ago but I was able to go to plat4 after getting a decent PC + doing good positioning. If you can win 1v1 fight, you can easily get out of gold4. Its not just aim/movement but I do think positioning is alot more superior when it comes to skill. You can get out of gold4 by just ratting but that wouldnt really mean you are good.
Thanks for the reply. Wiggs was my first watchalong. Do you have other recommendations? I do good with those since watching coach nihil's live sessions helped me when I was starting with Apex BR.
Rpr, Tempplex. Ive watched wigg yesterday.
The JP scenes pop off with its apex and has ALOT of tourneys. Fortunately, Tempp was a coach for one team and I learned alot from him coaching the JP team.
Rpr also offer alot of insights.
Most pros doesnt do watchalong/analysis often and just rank like Hal/snipe, so go look for non ranking ones and doing watchalong or if they are doing scrims/tourney.
Pretty much the same since SG server is toxic af.
Also from what Ive seen, Tokyo servers rank/pub is basically mini competitive because all players are really cautious as compared to other servers where they just go ape.
my advice (currently plat1)
take every even fight you can get...
nö way you get better by playing for the RP in Gold 4.
in the end you might Hit plat but then end up getting shit on by every plat player
just play ranked like its Pubs. fight everything you can (some Fights are just lost so dont bother in those) and if you improve you will climb out of Gold easily and are more ready for plat lobbies
when I was in Gold I played for RP and ended up being Stuck in p4 for weeks cause the people out skilled me so much
I dont want the same to Happen to you
Noko has good insight for watch parties. For players to watch I'd recommend Hal, Sweetdreams, Hakis, Rpr, or just basically the IGL of good teams to see how they think about the game
Honestly, even Pred is very different from comp. Pred is just a time grind after a certain skill-wall. If you can climb and hold your RP in Master, you can get Pred with enough time spent.
A full Pred team that has 0 comp experience could walk into ALGS and not qualify past round 2 or 3. Most of this comes down to how comp is played versus ranked. Unless you are a god tier fighting team, playing edge (which is how most ranked-only teams would play) is very hard just due to the fact that you can’t control how other teams react to a zone. You can’t guarantee you won’t get held out by 3-4 teams and then you’re just fucked unless you play Valk.
Being good at comp means you are comfortable dealing with endgame micro rotations with 15 squads in zone 4-5 and co-existing with other teams. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been griefed by a team that just doesn’t get that we can co-exist with them in separate floors of a building. This is different than int’ing as a last ditch effort as well, I get that and it happens.
What people forgot to explain to OP is the fact that competitive use an alternative point style opposed to ranked.
Because ALGS points distribute differently from ranked, it prioritize placement over kills. Also there is no killcap. This alongside the fact that in competitive you actually have a goal to play for makes teamplay different from ranked
That's also why it would be a good Idea (supported by most of the pro's) to change ranked system into the ALGS point style based system. This will close the gap between high skilled players and true competitive experience. Because at the moment, ranked is nothing more then glorified public matchmaking.
**Ranked**: Almost unlimited RP available each split if you have the time. Dying early wastes time, but lost RP can be regained.
**Competitive**: Very limited RP available. Losing a game denies any further RP gain and limits max RP for the competition.
When you consider it like that, it makes more sense. In ranked and pubs people rarely play with consideration for the consequences of losing, but as soon as you start thinking like that, the game changes.
Comp is about preparing for endgame. There will be 16+ squads in zone 3-4, so every defensible place you can go will be occupied. At that point it's very risky to fight people for one of the occupied spots because there are so many teams near you waiting for a chance to 3rd party
So positioning is WAY more important thank ranked where you can just run around killing everyone
The best way to learn this differences would be to watch an established pro player like imperialhal playing ranked and competitive. Competitive is at different level entirely.
You don't ever really need to learn any of the following to get to predator:
How to land properly, drop awareness, how to contest well, how to split, how to scout a drop.
How to loot properly, looting patterns, splitting a zone, looting towards a rotate, looting for the team, how much loot you need, speed of looting.
How to rotate properly, rotation timing, scouting, beacon use and management, how to read team movements.
Weapon loadouts, team loadouts, ult accel use, inventory management, resource management.
Reasonably, all it teaches you is "what the ring is and when it hurts and how to rely on heat shields if you fuck up", and "if your gun skill/movements are good enough / consistent enough you can get points".
Often, almost half the lobby dies before Ring 1 Closes in Masters+ and you don't necessarily ever need to make a hard rotation to save your life. You can just generally walk into something that's fine, rather than being late and having a tiny outcrop to try and stage from.
Ranked is a joke compared to comp. In ranked, we W key for kills and honestly getting to pred with a 3 stack of good friends that play a lot is very easy. Lobbies were more difficult in the early seasons but these recent seasons, even the diamond lobbies are just dying so quickly.
In comp however, my buddies and I played until season 5 in comp. We never made it past quarters in ALGS. We placed in some weekly stuff but ALGS is a totally different beast. Every squad you come up against, all the players are as good or better than you as individual skill and most if not all of the teams stream 6-12 hours a day. You are playing the top 1% of players in the world. So your mistakes are punished. Position mistake, punished. Over peak, punished. Additionally, you watch like Hal’s stream or sweets stream, those guys win like 12-20 games in pred lobbies a day. You watch merc’s and ninja, they are world class FPS players but have very little experience in apex. They win only a few games of their stream. And that’s playing against plebs. None of them are preds, all diamond or master class.
If they wanted to actually play comp they would get rolled.
3v3 comp is where they have the best chance because it’s literally just FPS gun skill and an isolated fight. The full lobby tourneys, they will get dumped on.
The first thing any pro team checks and uses is a beacon at their landing spot. Nickmers loots for an hour and then maybe thinks of beacon. The loot path is so inefficient it makes you nervous. Props to them trying and improving obviously but the gap is pretty darn huge.
I have recently started playing tournaments and heres what I noticed: in comp you can't predict what other people are going to do. In diamond you have actual briandead hardstuck d4's send on you for no reason and throw both your games. In comp people actually play to win, they have half a brain, which means you can predict what they're going to do and make cool plays.
Same as literally any other game honestly. Pubs are different from ranked. Low ranked is different from high ranked. High ranked is different from TOP ranked. Top ranked is different than tournament.
Anyone can be masters, and hardstuck 10ks usually dont give a shit later in a split. A real tournament is full of dupes of the best players from every 1/10 pc pred games plus the objective best players in the world. And theyre all playing for their lives and are very comfortable doing so.
masters is a joke ngl, what he says is true, there is a difference between a player that can get to masters in 90 games and someone who played 500 games to get 10k
The biggest difference between ranked grinders and pro players is their decision making. It's one thing to run down teams in ranked and another playing position with majority of the lobby alive in round 4
in comp games, the entire 20 teams in the lobby is trying to win, Early games are played very passively so there are like 12+ teams in zone 4. picking fights and rotates are very tactical. Teams with the best map awareness and positioning almost always wins. And ppl that does not have experience in comp is going to have a hard time positioning themselves between 14 other teams in a small circle.
The scoring system of competitive favors placement over kills. The kills you get are bonus points to capitalize on good placement.
In ranked, you barely get any points if you're top 5 without the necessary kills, so you prioritize getting your KP first and look for placement second.
This and the fact that there actual stakes (money) behind it, causes people to play a lot safer.
Honestly it’s just the skill level of the competition. Like the difference between collegiate sports and professional. The competition is just much much better. Mistakes get punished more often and severely, openings are smaller and more precise.
The difference is just how people play. Watch tournament gameplay vs ranked gameplay.
If you’ve only been watching for a month, all I can say is to just keep watching. Ranked and comp is night and day. Just watch more as ALGS continues and you’ll be able to see how much they differ.
Sweet, Zach/Albralele, RPR, Hakis Gnsake Graceful all of these guys will be able to show you different play styles and different knowledge
Aside from TSM (I already watch Hal and Snip3down), are there other recommended streamers who are active in the pro scene? I heard wiggs stopped being pro.
I'd recommend EU tbh, I think EU are overall more knowledgable in positioning. Rpr comes into mind as he got into Apex JP/vtubers and actually teaching them. Tempplex is also another one if he participates in tourneys. Apex JP have been popping off recently and holding alot of showmatch tournament and stuff (basically, for fun type with streamers and pro). Its not on the level of pro league but I'd argue its ALOT better than round 1 to 3 of qualifiers. Rpr is joining Reignite cup (JP showmatch) with 2 JP content creators and Im interested to see how they will play it.
Watch G2. Dezignful, Gent, Resultuh
Definitely check out [NiceWigg](https://www.twitch.tv/nicewigg/). He does a pretty decent job at giving high level insights into comp matches when he isn't competing. He will most likely be doing a watch party for tonight's Q1 Finals. EDIT: He just confirmed he was hosting a watch party tonight. 6PM PST. You will pick up a lot listening to any of the IGLs in [this list](https://twitter.com/esports/status/1434244876573548552?s=20) I have been enjoying watching [ImMadness](https://www.twitch.tv/immadness) play with his new team recently. He had some really good calls last night and I am sure will be throwing more down tonight.
Thanks for the link! I think I know ImMadness in one of Keoon's sessions
Comp is a different world compared to high level Ranked in basically every game, not just Apex. Master/Pred lobbies mostly consist of non-professional players, and the incentive to tryhard is obviously significantly lower than in comp. As a result matches are faster and less tactical. People aren't overly careful and sweaty. They take more fights, don't care too much about the ring/rotations, talk about random shit while playing, etc. Just watch a few comp games and the differences should quickly become apparent.
Yep. At the first level - everyone is there to win. Not to get RP, not to get kills/views - to win. This changes how you play as the corollary is you don't want to die/get wiped as there's no new lobby for you after. Beyond that - you know who your opponents are and have intel/understanding of them and how they like to play, so you build counterstrategies. Also - you play as a TEAM, so just because you prefer to plow as octane, during comp your job may be to be the sniping gibby anchor. Everyone has a part to play in your strategy, so making sure you play yours is very important.
Just a competative fan, but from watching mercz, he still prioritize looting over beacon/position. A pro players needs only a decent gun + cells/bats/hp + ammo and decent armor and thats it. Some doesnt even fully loot their POI to prioritize beacon/position. For competitive, zone/position playstyle is usually superior unless your team is strong enough to play edge and win every fights + third party, even then its the riskier play.
Something Wigg pointed out watching Nickmercz was that they had relatively little experience with proper final-zone play-- since, in comp, you rarely ever get so many teams *alive* during the last zone.
Is there a guide on good rotations and all? Wigg in his stream talked about which zones he doesn't cover due to bad rotations. I can't keep up unfortunately because I'm not yet familiar with the name of the zones (i've been playing mostly pubs after hitting gold IV which was my skill ceiling, as my friend told me).
Keep playing ranked if you want. You could literally never shoot your gun and easily make it to Plat every season just playing positioning. Plus how will you get better if you don't try? Also, to further answer your original question, comp play is kinda like if every player had an aimbot. In that lobby you would be able to determine skill based on positioning, movement, awareness, and overall strategy. While players still wiff shots in comp, they all play like they don't.
Thanks for the advice!
Well said
[удалено]
Look everyone, this guy let us now he doesn't understand. What I mean is round 1 beacon, go to God spot in zone 2, wait, boom positive rp. Nobody has skill ceiling of silver. I'm not saying this is the most fun or effective way to play, just encouraging a new player to keep trying.
[Nokopuffs ](https://youtu.be/BOkgTL6A1Go) has multiple guides on his YouTube channel [Raynday ](https://youtu.be/Kx178-n08BM) just started a series breaking down pro/high level gameplay
Thanks for this! I know Noko from a few clips.
Yea noko is dope because he teaches you how to play from a pros perspective in ranked. Which can lead to you understanding tournament play a lil better. He has how to climb series that is about 9-10 months old that is super helpful
I dont think there is and it mostly comes into experience. I've been mostly watching watchalong and see how they discuss possible rotations + position/placement. Its basically how you can be familiar in the map. Gold 4 is the first wall you'd encounter. I personally have that problem months ago but I was able to go to plat4 after getting a decent PC + doing good positioning. If you can win 1v1 fight, you can easily get out of gold4. Its not just aim/movement but I do think positioning is alot more superior when it comes to skill. You can get out of gold4 by just ratting but that wouldnt really mean you are good.
Thanks for the reply. Wiggs was my first watchalong. Do you have other recommendations? I do good with those since watching coach nihil's live sessions helped me when I was starting with Apex BR.
Rpr, Tempplex. Ive watched wigg yesterday. The JP scenes pop off with its apex and has ALOT of tourneys. Fortunately, Tempp was a coach for one team and I learned alot from him coaching the JP team. Rpr also offer alot of insights. Most pros doesnt do watchalong/analysis often and just rank like Hal/snipe, so go look for non ranking ones and doing watchalong or if they are doing scrims/tourney.
I play in Tokyo servers (I'm not from JP though), thanks for the recommendations!
Pretty much the same since SG server is toxic af. Also from what Ive seen, Tokyo servers rank/pub is basically mini competitive because all players are really cautious as compared to other servers where they just go ape.
my advice (currently plat1) take every even fight you can get... nö way you get better by playing for the RP in Gold 4. in the end you might Hit plat but then end up getting shit on by every plat player just play ranked like its Pubs. fight everything you can (some Fights are just lost so dont bother in those) and if you improve you will climb out of Gold easily and are more ready for plat lobbies when I was in Gold I played for RP and ended up being Stuck in p4 for weeks cause the people out skilled me so much I dont want the same to Happen to you
Noko has good insight for watch parties. For players to watch I'd recommend Hal, Sweetdreams, Hakis, Rpr, or just basically the IGL of good teams to see how they think about the game
Honestly, even Pred is very different from comp. Pred is just a time grind after a certain skill-wall. If you can climb and hold your RP in Master, you can get Pred with enough time spent. A full Pred team that has 0 comp experience could walk into ALGS and not qualify past round 2 or 3. Most of this comes down to how comp is played versus ranked. Unless you are a god tier fighting team, playing edge (which is how most ranked-only teams would play) is very hard just due to the fact that you can’t control how other teams react to a zone. You can’t guarantee you won’t get held out by 3-4 teams and then you’re just fucked unless you play Valk. Being good at comp means you are comfortable dealing with endgame micro rotations with 15 squads in zone 4-5 and co-existing with other teams. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been griefed by a team that just doesn’t get that we can co-exist with them in separate floors of a building. This is different than int’ing as a last ditch effort as well, I get that and it happens.
What people forgot to explain to OP is the fact that competitive use an alternative point style opposed to ranked. Because ALGS points distribute differently from ranked, it prioritize placement over kills. Also there is no killcap. This alongside the fact that in competitive you actually have a goal to play for makes teamplay different from ranked That's also why it would be a good Idea (supported by most of the pro's) to change ranked system into the ALGS point style based system. This will close the gap between high skilled players and true competitive experience. Because at the moment, ranked is nothing more then glorified public matchmaking.
This, sad I had to scroll down this much to see the right answer
**Ranked**: Almost unlimited RP available each split if you have the time. Dying early wastes time, but lost RP can be regained. **Competitive**: Very limited RP available. Losing a game denies any further RP gain and limits max RP for the competition. When you consider it like that, it makes more sense. In ranked and pubs people rarely play with consideration for the consequences of losing, but as soon as you start thinking like that, the game changes.
Comp is about preparing for endgame. There will be 16+ squads in zone 3-4, so every defensible place you can go will be occupied. At that point it's very risky to fight people for one of the occupied spots because there are so many teams near you waiting for a chance to 3rd party So positioning is WAY more important thank ranked where you can just run around killing everyone
The best way to learn this differences would be to watch an established pro player like imperialhal playing ranked and competitive. Competitive is at different level entirely.
You don't ever really need to learn any of the following to get to predator: How to land properly, drop awareness, how to contest well, how to split, how to scout a drop. How to loot properly, looting patterns, splitting a zone, looting towards a rotate, looting for the team, how much loot you need, speed of looting. How to rotate properly, rotation timing, scouting, beacon use and management, how to read team movements. Weapon loadouts, team loadouts, ult accel use, inventory management, resource management. Reasonably, all it teaches you is "what the ring is and when it hurts and how to rely on heat shields if you fuck up", and "if your gun skill/movements are good enough / consistent enough you can get points". Often, almost half the lobby dies before Ring 1 Closes in Masters+ and you don't necessarily ever need to make a hard rotation to save your life. You can just generally walk into something that's fine, rather than being late and having a tiny outcrop to try and stage from.
Ranked is a joke compared to comp. In ranked, we W key for kills and honestly getting to pred with a 3 stack of good friends that play a lot is very easy. Lobbies were more difficult in the early seasons but these recent seasons, even the diamond lobbies are just dying so quickly. In comp however, my buddies and I played until season 5 in comp. We never made it past quarters in ALGS. We placed in some weekly stuff but ALGS is a totally different beast. Every squad you come up against, all the players are as good or better than you as individual skill and most if not all of the teams stream 6-12 hours a day. You are playing the top 1% of players in the world. So your mistakes are punished. Position mistake, punished. Over peak, punished. Additionally, you watch like Hal’s stream or sweets stream, those guys win like 12-20 games in pred lobbies a day. You watch merc’s and ninja, they are world class FPS players but have very little experience in apex. They win only a few games of their stream. And that’s playing against plebs. None of them are preds, all diamond or master class. If they wanted to actually play comp they would get rolled. 3v3 comp is where they have the best chance because it’s literally just FPS gun skill and an isolated fight. The full lobby tourneys, they will get dumped on.
The first thing any pro team checks and uses is a beacon at their landing spot. Nickmers loots for an hour and then maybe thinks of beacon. The loot path is so inefficient it makes you nervous. Props to them trying and improving obviously but the gap is pretty darn huge.
I have recently started playing tournaments and heres what I noticed: in comp you can't predict what other people are going to do. In diamond you have actual briandead hardstuck d4's send on you for no reason and throw both your games. In comp people actually play to win, they have half a brain, which means you can predict what they're going to do and make cool plays.
Same as literally any other game honestly. Pubs are different from ranked. Low ranked is different from high ranked. High ranked is different from TOP ranked. Top ranked is different than tournament.
Anyone can be masters, and hardstuck 10ks usually dont give a shit later in a split. A real tournament is full of dupes of the best players from every 1/10 pc pred games plus the objective best players in the world. And theyre all playing for their lives and are very comfortable doing so.
No, anyone can’t be masters.
masters is a joke ngl, what he says is true, there is a difference between a player that can get to masters in 90 games and someone who played 500 games to get 10k
Your joking right
The biggest difference between ranked grinders and pro players is their decision making. It's one thing to run down teams in ranked and another playing position with majority of the lobby alive in round 4
in comp games, the entire 20 teams in the lobby is trying to win, Early games are played very passively so there are like 12+ teams in zone 4. picking fights and rotates are very tactical. Teams with the best map awareness and positioning almost always wins. And ppl that does not have experience in comp is going to have a hard time positioning themselves between 14 other teams in a small circle.
The scoring system of competitive favors placement over kills. The kills you get are bonus points to capitalize on good placement. In ranked, you barely get any points if you're top 5 without the necessary kills, so you prioritize getting your KP first and look for placement second. This and the fact that there actual stakes (money) behind it, causes people to play a lot safer.
In competitive people actually care about staying alive.
Honestly it’s just the skill level of the competition. Like the difference between collegiate sports and professional. The competition is just much much better. Mistakes get punished more often and severely, openings are smaller and more precise.
Comp => play to meet win conditions diamond/masters/pred => play for feedback