The higher up the rank ladder you climb in Rocket League, the harder it can become to find definitive improvements to your gameplay. The training becomes less about learning new techniques to implement into your game and more about refining your mechanics to make you faster, more consistent, and more versatile. Along with this, the marks for improvement become more nebulous and harder to measure, which can lead to training becoming less productive.

One mechanic that is still uncommon as high as the lower champ ranks, but could help you get to the next level, are air roll shots. While incredibly useful and relatively easy to learn the basics, they are hard to master and harder to include into real-time gameplay decision making with consistency.

What differentiates an air roll shot versus any old aerial that utilizes air roll is incorporating your dodge to "shoot" the ball after air rolling. Due to this, these shots tend to be mostly grounded and come with more power. And it can be a great tool to add to your arsenal improve accuracy, misdirect opponents and increase power. While the options for air roll shots are near limitless, the most basic requires only two steps that deviate from your normal shot process.

1. After or during your jump to approach the ball, air roll your car so that the point of contact will pull away (most of the time and situationally) from the center of the ball. Depending on your approach, position, and where you want to aim the ball, you may want to turn your car toward the ball before air rolling away.

2. Instead of dodging forward into the ball, dodge diagonally so that the point of contact for your shot is the front corner of your car.

Your normal front flip shots are great and this may seem to be adding needless complexity into the mix, but as gameplay gets faster and more consistent in the higher rankings, so adding air roll shots to your game can offer noticeable benefits.

We have an image below to illustrate several examples of possible air roll shots compared to a traditional shot without air roll.

Accuracy and Options

In the Rocket League’s higher ranks, goals start to come at a premium. Players are better and faster at defense and rotations become cleaner. Openings for shots often require extended pressure or tactics designed to pull defenders out of the goal before one can be scored. In an environment like this, if an opportunity to score presents itself, you don’t want to be the player who was stuck just out of position or shooting shots too weak to offer any real threat. This is the primary benefit of air roll shots. They give you more options for goals. Angles that would be impossible or incredibly weak without them become viable threats.

If you watch professional players, you’ll notice that they air rolling for nearly every touch they make. This is not because it looks fancy—though it does—it’s because their mechanics are so good and their air roll shots so practiced and consistent, that it allows them to approach the ball at a faster line and afford them greater options for each touch. So why limit yourself to a simple front flip shot when you can do so much more?

Power and Game Speed

The best reasons to use an air roll shot are increased shot power and game speed. As a simple fact of the game, you can't predict the exact positioning to take the next pass or shot opportunity every time. Frustratingly, you'll be just outside of optimum positioning more times than not and that leaves a few options

1. Take a wide line to approach the shot from the perfect angle. This option diminishes game speed and risks and opponent having more time to challenge your shot

2. Approach the shot from the most direct line and shoot with a drastic angle and limited power.

Air roll shots allow you to bridge that gap. We have the gif below to demonstrate. Take a direct line, then use an air roll shot to create optimum point of contact.

Misdirection

Players often don't expect power with angles away from the direction where your car is pointing. This can lead to a great opportunity to surprise defenders. Not only does it open up possibilities of where you can aim on net, which naturally makes it more difficult to defend for your opponents, it also makes it harder to reach challenges. When an opponent is approaching for a challenge that will require them to predict your touch with a jump or pre-jump, an air roll shot can be perfect to direct the ball in a direction they couldn’t predict. Thus effectively using this mechanic will not only increase your goal scoring opportunities, but will lead to more consistent clears and passes as well.

Adding air roll shots to your game will take time and a lot of practice. It changes the fundamentals of the shooting mechanics that you've been learning since day one. To help with the process, we have a selection of good custom training packs below that you can use along with accompanying videos that show ways to complete the training:

WayproteinRL - 30EF-9E98-C844-E83D

Yeeza - 84D2-072D-80CF-7D0D

FluuMP - A4D6-1260-C51D-4375

While those packs are a great place to start, don't spend too much of your time with them alone. As with many mechanics in Rocket League, the best way to improve versatility and your ability to recognize opportunities for air roll shots in game is to jump into free play and focus on performing them as the opportunities organically arise while you hit the ball around the pitch.

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