It takes most players several hundred hours to reach the Diamond ranks. Diamond players are good at Rocket League. They're the top 12% actually. As a Diamond ranked player, you're used to seeing the fruits of your training grind pay off, but at this level it can get hard to know what to train next. The grind to Champion requires just as much training as it took to get here and wasting time on once in a blue moon mechanics will only slow you down.

You likely already have most of the baseline skills that you need to get to Champion, you just need to work on making those skills deeper and using them with more versatility. Below is a list of a few techniques that can help you make the leap into the top 2% of the player base ranked Champion.

Wave Dashing

One of the universal differentiators of any rank from those below it is the speed of the game. You'll naturally get better at reading the game and reacting to the most likely outcomes of touches before they happen, but you still need to work on improving your speed around the pitch. Perhaps the best single addition to your gameplay that can affect this is the wave dash. ObsidianOwl, one of our other contributors, has already given an in-depth tutorial on the mechanics of the wave dash that you can find here.

Additionally, you can find several videos on YouTube. While wave dashing is common in Champion-level gameplay, it is most often limited to wall-to-floor scenarios. Grounded forward or sideways wave dashes are not common and should not be your focus for now, as they are used mostly for misdirection and not for game speed.

The mechanic is relatively simple and could be mastered sooner than at Diamond rank, but it becomes absolutely vital to keep up while pushing to Champion level gameplay. Training should really only take a couple days of before you master the mechanic relatively consistently. However, retraining your brain to recognize wave dashing opportunities in game can take some time. It will help to play a few exhibition or unranked games with the focus of implementing wave dashes with less on the line than ranked. Once you start to see the opportunities, you'll find yourself using it to get off the walls all the time. As a training tip, we do recommend that you keep ball cam enabled while you’re practicing, as learning how to wave dash with car cam and then transitioning to using it in gameplay scenarios where ball cam will mostly be enabled can be jarring.

Wall Aerial Versatility

If you've made it to Diamond levels, you should already be proficient at traditional wall hits and clears. In order to progress into the Champion ranks, you'll need to focus on expanding those skills. Just like one of the necessary indicators of success in aerials is getting to the ball faster than your opponent, doing the same on the wall increases your success rate. Lots of players time wall touches to make a play just as the ball is making contact to the wall. So if you and your opponent are both doing that, the best you can hope for is a 50/50. One way to increase your success rate is to attack the ball before it gets to the wall. The earlier you can safely launch, the better.

We've all practiced air dribbles ad nauseam because they're sick as hell, but sometimes the traditional jump, air-roll to forward, and then making a play for the ball simply takes too long. That works great if the ball is relatively in front of you a la an air dribble. If the ball is more behind you, or perpendicular, you may need to rotate your car a full 180 degrees before you can start actually aiming. You need to start steering your car as soon as possible. Sometimes that means that jumping from the wall and air-rolling to backwards allows you to start actually steering more quickly. You should already be capable of steering a backwards aerial with the inverted controls. Just practice implementing that into an aerial with the wall as your starting point.

The below image shows a player making a traditional forward aerial approach from the wall. He has to rotate his car nearly a full 180° and is unable to adjust his trajectory until completing the roll. This leads to greater required aerial corrections afterward and can cause misplays.

Since the player launches backwards in this example, he can steer almost immediately. This allows him to reach the ball sooner and with greater momentum, which also leads to a more powerful shot.

Another benefit to approaching an aerial touch backwards from the wall is that it changes the dynamic of your flip. While flying forward and flipping into a ball, you'll be required to hit it forward or down if you want to maintain any forward momentum. However, when flying backwards, flipping can now push the ball forward with an upward trajectory. This can be very useful for touches in your own half for better clears or for passing across the field.

Backwards Wall Pass

One super easy pass to make that can also be effective if used correctly is the backwards wall pass. When paired effectively with other offensive options, a well-communicated and properly executed lateral pass off the wall is a great way to catch your opponents off-guard. If you're running the ball along the side wall and you have time before a challenge, once you get to about the midfield line or the edge of your opponents' box, drive the ball up the wall and pop it off. The basic mechanics of the setup should be similar to an air-dribble, but more vertical. After you've popped the ball off the wall, it should be essentially right behind your car. Jump and pull back to hit the ball with the nose of your car to push it toward a teammate. Flip into it for more power if required.

There are a couple rules to consider when performing this type of pass:

• This pass should mostly be performed with a vertical line on up the wall. If you are setting up on the wall and the ball still has momentum going toward your opponents’ half, do not perform a backwards pass to a teammate. This will lead to the ball being easier to reach for your opponents than your own team and the defense will intercept it a hundred time out of a hundred. In this situation, you can instead try to draw out a defender by striking for a backboard pass, or if your team is back and you have no one to pass to (or otherwise feel like slowing the game down would be beneficial), you can go for an air-dribble or some other play along the wall.
• If you're closer to your opponents' goal when you initiate this pass, you will need to actively make the pass backwards toward your own half, but you'll need to ensure that your team is also not positioned too far forward for a more traditional center.
  
  

Slow Play/Controlled Transition

As you advance through the Diamond ranks and approach Champion, managing possession will become a huge asset to your success. At this level, you should be comfortable managing the pitch and possess enough ball control that you don’t need every touch to be a strike.

So if you're on defense but you can gain control of the ball without pressure, there's no need to boom it. Doing so may just give the ball back to your opponents and give them time to settle with the ball. Gaining control instead of clearing the ball will allow your teammates to recover from defensive play and hopefully join you as you transition to offense. Slow plays allow for a couple of obvious benefits:

• Even if you end up losing the ball to a challenge, it was a challenge that you could also play for. Clearing the ball when you don't have pressure will almost inevitably lead to the opposition gaining control without pressure.
• Once you have control in a slow play situation, your team can move into the best position and provide you with more (better informed) options for applying offensive pressure.

The image below shows a great use of this that allows the player to take the ball all the way up the field under his control, and then make an equal play for the challenge. If he'd made a power clear instead, the opposing team would have gained control uncontested or maybe cleared the ball right back before his team could recover.

Fast Dribble Flicks

Flicks become more viable at higher ranks in 3v3, due to the players' increased skill and you shouldn’t be caught lagging behind. The extended dribbles found in solo duels will almost never be useful in high-level standard. There are simply too many other players on the field to approach your opponents’ net like that and too many better options as far as passing and pressuring goes. However, the same skills can be used in a much more limited way, though not necessarily easier. You'll find that the ability to quickly catch the ball, control it on your car, and flick will be incredibly versatile. You should know how to flick at this point and dribble along with it. In order to bring this to Diamond/Champ level gameplay, you need to work on your catches. The illustrious "Wayprotein" has a great custom training pack for just this. The code is A85F-0C53-A1BE-75EB. You can find his YouTube video showing a full run of it below.

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While this video and training doesn't focus on quickly flicking the ball, the foundational skill of catching the ball with precision is essential for quickly gaining control for a flick.

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