Still Practicing - Demo Included

So I've taken up bball to help with my airshot training (tr_rocketshooting2 can only do so much) and have gotten a LOT better over the past few months.

I'm not so much looking for pointers on how to play bball (I'm really quite bad at it), I'd like to learn that myself, but rather how to improve my rocket jumping. I always end up falling short or just plain not aiming my jumps right and going way off course. Of course, even if I jump right the other team is so good I don't last more than a second in the air.

Anyway, heres the demo. It's a full 30 minute round so don't feel like you need to watch all of it. Sure I might do something awsome here and there but I guarentee you it's all luck.

OK, I haven't watched the video yet, but one important thing is to curve your rocketjumps (if you are not doing this already). 

I haven't watched the demo yet, but one thing to remember about bball is that people will almost always strongly curve their rocketjumps. So always take that extra half a second to consider their actual trajectory rather than firing a rocket at where they would have been had they just jumped in a straight line.

Another useful defensive skill in bball is body blocking, where you rocketjump up to block the opponent with your player model in midair, and finish them off with a rocket whilst you are both in flight. This is actually a fairly useful skill to learn for actual matches, as quite frequently you'll find yourself rocketjumping at the same time as an enemy soldier, often trying to reach the same point - so you need to learn to airshot whilst both of you are moving at high speeds, rather than just the opponent.

Thanks for those tips, I've already managed a few midair airshots. The only real problem I have when I curve my jumps is I just cain't aim at the hoop so i'm basicly sabatoging myself my doing that. I mean, I can barley jump in as is, curving makes it that much harder for me. Also, how do "those guys" manage the super fast, double rocket jump across the court, landing IN the hoop without looking (I mean the ones where you rocket jump along the fence and then jump off it into the opposing teams goal)?

The easiest way to learn how to wall jump is to go through rj_rocketeer_r a couple times.  Basically you just rj along the wall then shoot a rocket at it and launch yourself.  It takes a little practice to get the right angles and timing down, but if you get through the rj map it will be very easy to do the bball jump.  When I do the bball jump I just do a short no crouch rj up along the wall then wall jump and fly into the hoop.  This isn't really necessary for matches though.

Yeah definitely go through a few jump maps, rocketeer is good. Your jumps seemed a bit sub-par, flick jumps are your friend (flicking the mouse to the right to shoot the rocket for more distance). The object of bball is to kill or protect the ball carrier, but many times instead of focusing on the enemies you went for the "spectator" that was just rocket jumping around and not attacking you. You put a serious damper on your deathmatch skills because you use all your rockets at long range! If you are going to shoot them at med-long make sure you reload for every rocket you shoot. A lot of times you get to the close range with nothing but your shotgun left.

I only watched about 10 minutes of it but that's what I saw. tl;dr Work on: Target priority, air control, rocket jumps, ammo management (specifically rockets).

*Aint watched the demo just some general tips*

Try to keep the jumps as flat as possible, by flicking back and firing at a lesser angle than usual. If I catch it right I can reach the hoop from the halfway line or even beyond that, so just practise jumping from around the centre circle. Also jumping by shooting at an angle against the fence generates a lot more distance.

To practise this, just try play through some rocket jump maps (rocketeer maps are nice, even the first one still has some slightly challenging jumps and is a nice place to hone your jumps, advanced I find really hard

I played bball with you a few days ago and your general ability at death matching is fine, always room for improvement of course, but that requires more play. But some other things you can do:

rocket jumping- jump maps. Nothing gets you better at maximum height, different kinds of jumps (I constantly just jump and shoot a rocket at the ground to get me at the hoop with less time for the enemies to airshot me in bball), air control, and wall jumping. Than having to do it over and over again with increasing difficulty. Good starting maps include rj_rocketeer (not adv) and jump_rush.

airshots- If you want some practice, tr_airshot is a great way to get down the rocket speed, where to judge depending on where the target is, etc. But obviously you wont always be standing still shooting at people perfectly coming at you. So after that, bball is great for airshots.

Thanks sheep, those maps were exactly what I needed. Jump_rush is simply amazing and it's a lot more fun than rocketeer imo. I already learned a lot with one playthrough (But I'll be honest I had to noclip past one...I'll come back to it later). I guess now I need to figure out what I did right lol.

Is it just me or is that water jump in rocketeer nigh impossible? And don't even get me started on the advanced one. Maybe I can get past the first jump after I master jump_rush...

*sniff sniff* I'm the only one who actually downloaded and watched the demo... AND I DON'T EVEN GET ANY THANKS... Gosh...

Anyways once you get done with rush it's time to move on to either rj_rocketeer or rocket_base_jumper