Quake Champions is a very competitive game. So when should you play ranked?

This question comes up quite a bit I’m hoping I can help out a little with this question. I’m by no means a professional at any game, but I think I can give you some help of when you should dive in and do your first ranked duel. We will even dive into a little bit of the 2v2 ranked play as it does add a different dynamic to the game.

When should you try ranked or duel?

There are several things you need to be able to do first before you take on your first ranked duel or a custom duel. Below will be a list of the top things that are important to being competent at duels.

Movement

Megahealth and Heavy Armor Spawns + Times

Map Knowledge (ex. Weapons, Jump Pads, Vials, Small Armor etc..)

Unholy Trinity Skills (Rocket Launcher, Lightning Gun, and The Rail Gun.)

Knowing these 4 things alone will at least make you “decent” at dueling on Quake Champions.

That isn’t all, be sure to actually face an actual human opponent a few times before diving head first into ranked. The good thing about duels is after your 10 placement matches, you will be facing players around your skill level more. The better you do the more you will rank up and face harder opponents. If you are talking about 2v2 do these 2 things but make sure you practice with your partner, focus on call outs and times together. Then face another team in ranked.

There are a bunch of other factors we will talk about below to make you better at dueling or ranked play but those 4 should get you started and on the right path. Keep scrolling down below to find some more helpful tips!

Sounds

Time to buy a pair of headphones like… now.

No seriously! Sound is SUPER important.

Random Headset… I don’t like Razer

If you are playing ranked and you don’t have headphones you are losing a lot of information your opponents will be giving you.

All the armor pickups, jump pads, shots fired around corners. Your opponent will be giving you viable information. Quake Champions doesn’t have the “GREATEST” sounds of all time but you will be sacrificing a lot by not playing with headphones. Listen I also love playing metal or some kind of up-tempo music while playing TDM. If you are playing ranked the MUSIC has got to go. So NO MUSIC either while playing ranked. If you cannot hear your opponent you have already lost the match.

Timing The Power-Ups

Tick-Tok

Learning that the Heavy Armor and Mega-health spawn ever 30 seconds after pickup is huge.

Also learning how to throw your opponent off by taking it later than normal can be an effective strategy. Myself, I’m terrible at controlling the power-ups. Just absolutely awful…

So don’t feel alone if you don’t quite get it. Ranked is played differently than any other modes available in Quake Champions. I’m used to going straight for the action, which also isn’t a good strategy even in TDM. You want to have basically a full stack and you want your timing to be correct so you can keep it under control. Map control and Timing I think kind of go hand and hand. Control the timing of the power-ups and you are controlling the map.

You also want to know the timing of weapons and you can actually deny opponent weapons. I believe weapon spawns are around 10 seconds pickups in ranked. So grabbing the Rail-gun and rockets before your opponent does can give you great benefits for at least 10 seconds.

Movement

Movement is easily the first thing you should really learn in Quake. It does take practice but you will get the hang of it. Strafe jumping has been around for a while but even back in the day whenever I played Quake III. I didn’t think it mattered that much (me being a dumb kid didn’t know any better or played ranked back in those days anyway.).

Frothy’s Jump Strafing Tutorial helped me and it should help you too!

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Being able to move across the map very fast is very handy in Quake Champions! You should also learn how to rocket jump.

Rocket jumping can be very useful to get to spots quicker and does increase your overall movement speed. On Blood Covenant, you should practice jumping from Heavy Armor to the bridge if you’ve never tried it out before. It’s very useful to master, map even then getting over to rail-gun from the bridge.

Call-outs

Calling out is more useful for 2v2 than it is for duels. I mean I guess technically if you are a streamer or just wanting to remind yourself. You could say like mega in 1:25 or something for example.

But calling out whenever you picked up a power-up and or where you saw the other team in 2v2 is very helpful. This lets your buddy know when or where to go.

Directing them when to attack is also very helpful. You shouldn’t try to 1v2 the other team really at any giving point. Another reason you want to utilize callouts more specifically in 2v2 ranked is that you do have the major power-ups. You have to get the Quad Damage or Protection in this mode and you want your teammate around so you all can secure it.

After getting that Quad damage you can then open up a good ole can of Whoop-A$$ on the other team. If you don’t have the quad you basically have to run around the map hoping you don’t run into the Quad without warning. If you and your teammate can coordinate an attack, most likely you can take the quad away.

Practice

This might even be obvious but maybe it’s not. You can’t be good at something unless you practice. Really this can apply to anything in the world. Some people literally think people wake up the next day and can write a novel or figure out a mathematical equation. No, it takes work. It doesn’t happen overnight either you gotta learn the alphabet before you can write your first sentence ya know?

Ways you can practice is hopping into the discords and start meeting some people in your skill area. That or you can practice vs a bot in a weird way. Join up in a TDM and just put 1 bot on the other team. It’s not exactly the same but it can give you a little practice if you can’t find someone to duel in a custom.

Offline Practice

I’ve found that Quake Live does let you host your own server and practice against bots. It is a good way to practice offline and or on terrible computers. You can even download Quake Champions style maps. I’ve been practicing move and jumping around on Blood Covenant on Quake Live on the slow nights at work.

Champions to play in ranked

Sad to really say this but whenever it comes to competitive games. There is usually some sort of Meta. Meta being that some champions are just going to be better at dueling than others.

That isn’t to say that you can’t win at all with all the Champions you can, but some just have better abilities or passive skills that translate better to the ranked game.

Before the November Patch BJ’s duel wielding LG’s where just the go-to move for most players. Rush, Duel LG’s you basically won the game. Now with BJ’s nerf which did hurt him, he’s not so much the current Meta. He is still very useful for the most part. What I’m trying to get at the more patches and balancing that Saber/ID does to Quake Champions the more the Meta will change.

Choose whose right for you

I wouldn’t dare pick Eisen for instance right now in a duel, I think his Turret(Wall-e) is just useless. Not saying you can’t win with him, you can totally out skill someone in Quake which is what makes Quake so great in the first place. Meta in games do kind of suck and kind of take away the fun in the game in some aspects but as time goes on. The game will become even more balanced allowing everyone champion to really stand a chance.

Good dueling champions are Ranger, Visor, Clutch, Nyx, and Athena.

Learn more about the Best Quake Champions here.

Video Settings

It’s not uncommon for many competitive/professional gamers to lower their video settings so that they never lose a frame. If you can’t run Quake Champions at a constant 60fps then you are really hurting yourself. What I try to do is try to run at a constant 144 frames with m 144hz monitor so I gain even slightly better advantage. Having higher frames does, in fact, help you aim, as the gameplay is so much smoother, you can see a more fluid motion whenever trying to aim.

Go ahead try putting Quake Champions on a Locked 30 fps? Let me know how you do.

Don’t worry about how pretty the game looks if you are in ranked, you want every advantage you can get! Trust me all those frames do help!

You don’t have to just take my word on it, look at what Quake Champions Pro Rapha suggests.

Liquid Rapha’s Video Settings

I think since he has taken this screenshot he has actually upgraded. You get my point though, you got to sacrifice the prettiness for the fluidness. Find all of Liquid Rapha’s Settings and More here.

For the FRAMES.

Don’t be discouraged

Listen you aren’t going to be the best at the game whenever you first start. I played Quake III back in the day all the time and I came into Quake Champions and got stomped. I wanted to give up probably just like most of you. Then all of a sudden I kept playing and playing. I started making sure I grabbed mega healths and mega armor before diving into a battle.

Making sure I had a decent weapon to fight with before I attempted to fight. I started not chasing every single person I saw, instead, I would go try to rebuild my stack (HP and Armor). All this came with time.

Best Quake Player Ever?

The only people to have started out GREAT in QC is the people who never quit playing Quake from the start. They already had great movement, the knowledge of maps, learned quickly what the spawn rates where. They also probably played tons of other first-person shooters that translated over well to QC.

I’m still here to tell you that its still a learning process and you shouldn’t give up and be discouraged. Just keep playing and having fun, keep honing those skills it will come and it will be rewarding.

The Quake Professional Sib is a good example as someone who just gives up and stops trying.

Sib is always sad

Conclusion

I hope this post helps someone out there. I love quake and I want to help even more people love quake and quake champions. If you think there is something I should add to this post be sure to leave a comment down below! You should check out my post on is Quake Champions Dying? Quick hint it’s not but it could use some love.

Quake Champions will continue to keep getting better and more polished as time goes on. We live in a different world now where games don’t come out perfect but are developed almost along the way. It has made strides and the developers are listening to feedback!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these Quake Champion Duel Tips.

Find The Smango

As always you can find me on twitter – @realkynerd follow me if you play Quake let me know I try to retweet anything a quaker does or says!

Don’t forget guys Quake Champions is FREE on steam maybe you’ve never even tried Quake before and you found this post. Go give it a try now!

Maybe you are a fan of the lore, did you know Quake Champions had comics!? Check out the review here!

Be sure to like and share out to some people who might be thinking about giving quake a try! You could also join the Quake Champions forums if you want! The forums are currently looking for moderators and heck even members. It’s brand new, just like this blog though. It’ll grow with time but if you want a place to begin your forum moderation duties. Why not make it QuakeFans? See you all in the arena!



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