Flipping, or "dodging" as it’s called in game, is a mechanic that can be used to add power to your shots, deceive your opponents, recover quickly, and gain speed. There are many different, innovative ways to utilise flips and new flip/flick techniques are being found as the skill ceiling rises higher and higher. Dodging is just achieved by jumping once, pushing your analogue stick in any direction and pressing jump again. This will flip the car in the direction you are pushing. There is only approximately a 1.5 second window after you use your first jump to when you can use your second jump. Anything outside this window and you’ll lose your second jump.

In the early days of Rocket League, no one would have even dreamed to use the dodge function in the way it is regularly used today and it’s quite amazing to see how far we have come since 2015.

Back in these early days, the only way that flips were used was to either change the direction of a ball or to add power. If you see the below video of a game between veterans Kronovi and Gibbs who were ranked 1st and 2nd respectively on the leaderboard at the time, you will see just how little flips were used when the game was first released.

Fast forward to January 2016 and flips were becoming the norm. With people using them to pick up speed around the pitch or to gain extra power on the ball by dodging into it as it bounced, people at the highest level of the game had started to use the air roll function in order to get a better angle on their flips. This is still very much used today and is a great way to throw off your opponents. For example, if you’re going up for an aerial, you could air roll your car, upside down so that when you front-flip, you are doing so upside down meaning the ball will loop over your opponents.

It was in that very month that the below tutorial was released by a player known as Kazoo who claimed to have discovered a useful new mechanic known as the “half-flip”. Some people had seen Kronovi performing this mechanic on stream as well and it’s entirely possible that he got this from Kazoo. This mechanic revolutionised the game and is still used very heavily in Rocket League and is considered one of the essential skills for recovery as it is often the fastest way to turn your car around.

Around about the same sort of time as the half-flip came about, we saw something that would revolutionise the 1v1 game and that was the dribble-flick. People had been dribbling for a few months by this point but the flick was not seen often. What used to happen was that people would dribble with the ball on their roof then just pop it up over the defenders using a single, or occasionally a double, jump. This is still very much effective play today but once it was noticed how much extra speed you could get on the ball and how tough these were to defend for unsuspecting victims, it became the thing to learn.

There are various types of flicks that can be achieved in the game. The most common one is the front-flip flick. This is done by keeping the ball on top of your car having it slightly over the front of your car, jumping up once to pop the ball up and then front flipping which brings the tail end of your car forwards, launching the ball at speed towards the direction you’re facing.

For more information on the basic flicks, see the video below from Kronovi who covers how to both dribble and flick the ball. The flicks section is approximately halfway through the video.

Since the birth of the flick, we have seen some more advanced flicks arise from the game. As the game’s skill ceiling increased, people at the highest level had to become more inventive, a player known as Musty who back then was known as “A Musty Cow” invented a move called the “Musty Flick”. This move implements a great mind game by utilising the “crossover point” referenced in the video below from SubParButInHD. The crossover point is essentially the point in which your car’s nose goes from facing forwards to facing backwards. If your car’s nose is facing forwards then a front flip is how you gain momentum, if your nose is facing backwards, then a backflip is used to gain momentum.

Musty’s flick is achieved by popping the ball up on the front of your car, tilting your nose forward past this crossover point, and then back-flipping to juke your unsuspecting opponent as he watches the ball fly over his head in dismay. People have now started utilising the Musty Flick in aerials where people will be expecting some sort of air dribble. It was also used in the NBC Universal Open in 2017.

Similar to Musty’s innovation with his flick, we’ve seen other creative ways to make flips more unpredictable. One of these is the Turtle Flick which was involved in top 1v1 player OSM’s winning goal in the League of Rockets’ “Dream Goal” competition. A clip of this goal is shown below.

There are a number of other inventive ways to flick the ball mid-dribble such as the 45° flick and the 180° flick along with the tornado flick and probably many more out there. Practicing these would be a very useful attribute to your gameplay.

One of the latest dodge/flip techniques in the Rocket League meta is the “Ceiling Shot”. The idea for this shot came quite some time ago when it was noted that if you left a surface without jumping off, i.e. falling from the ceiling, then you wouldn’t be restricted to the approximate 1.5 second window to use your second jump meaning that people were able to delay their hit of the ball, meaning that the defenders would not be able to read the play.

The ceiling shot was made particularly famous by Cloud 9’s Squishy Muffinz in the RLCS Season 4 World Championships when he executed one to perfection against Method.

The method (excuse the pun) for executing the ceiling shot is to pop the ball up off the wall while driving up it so that it floats up high but preferably does not touch the ceiling, drive up onto the ceiling, and then allow your car to fall off without pressing the jump button. This means you have not used your jump so that you still have it available to you, boost down a little so that you are below the ball’s height and then front-flip at the ball. Because you are below the ball and the flip will keep you at your current height, you will hopefully make contact with the ball and send it into the goal.

The idea of keeping your second jump by leaving a surface prompted some of the best players in the game to think outside the box and not long after, it was realised that if you contact the ball with the underside of your car, having all four of your wheels making contact with the ball, it registers this as you leaving a surface, meaning that you gain your ability to flip back, meaning that, if you time it right, you can get an additional touch on the ball. During season 6 of RLCS.

As players used flip resets more and more, some freestyle players wondered if it would be possible to chain multiple flip resets together by timing their flips right and often cancelling the flip by pushing the analogue stick in the opposite direction to that in which they are flipping allowing the wheels to come into contact with the ball and get another flip.

Shortly after people started chaining flip-resets together, people sought to find out the best way of chaining them together. It was then, that the stall was brought in. A stall is not possible without binding either Air Roll Left or Air Roll Right to a button. It is executed by pressing the Air Roll Left/Right button, and flipping in the opposite direction. When timed right, the car will gain the momentum of the flip but won’t flip at all. This means, when you’re underneath the ball, you’re able to jump closer to the ball and allowing the wheels to touch the ball again.

Some freestylers are now able to chain many, many flip resets together as seen below.

Innovation can be a great thing in Rocket League and utilising some of these alternative ways of flipping and flicking the ball can add that little extra something to your game to help you beat your opponents. However, it’s important to remember that these advanced mechanics should not be prioritised over your core mechanics and you should always make sure you’re able to consistently hit the ball well before you add fancy plays like this to your repertoire.

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