Rocket League Shooting Guide - How To Shoot Effectively In Rocket League?

Shooting in Rocket League is one of the most under analyzed aspects in the game. Mainly because it's just so incredibly complex and so hard to break down into simple terms. Powershots are a very specific aspect within shooting that's a much easier concept to teach but shooting as a whole is incredibly complicated. Because of this, most people just learn how to make good shots naturally through trial and error of playing the game or in training packs. That's how pretty much everyone in the player base has learned it up until this point.

But with this new perspective we are about to give you, you'll be able to see shooting for what it really is and use that to your advantage against everyone else that still sees it the way you do right now.

So we will first begin by explaining the foundation of what makes a shot good in the first place compared to a bad shot, and then explain how you can use that knowledge to choose exactly and how you should practice in order to improve your shooting as fast as possible.

Two main factors that determine whether an attack is good or bad

Alright, almost everyone can look at a shot and decide if it was good or bad. But what about these shots makes them good or bad? Well, simple enough, there's 2 main factors that go into it:

The first one is the time from when the ball leaves your car to when it reaches the goal, so we'll just call that the time.

And the second one is the readability. So basically just how easy it is for the defender to tell what the attacker is going to do and where they're going to place it.

Factor 1 - Time

You want to make your shot have the least amount of time and the least amount of readability as possible. The less these 2 buckets are filled, the smaller chance the defender has at saving it. A cool way to visualize this is by taking the total of each of these buckets and placing it into its own separate thing. Whether the shot goes in or not may depend on the rank or skill level of your opponent. But regardless of the opponent's skill, you still want to keep these as empty as possible. You want to make your attack as unreadable as you can while also lowering the time between your hit and when it reaches the goal. 

Now, there are some exceptions to this that make it slightly more complicated. For example, the time factor depends on two things which are your distance from the goal and the speed of your shot. Theoretically, you could reduce the time by literally just reducing the distance to the goal to be right next to it. So technically, the time would be at almost zero but we all know it's not that simple. The closer you get to the goal before taking your shot, the higher the risk is that the defender will push out and cut it off before you even shoot it. So that's something to be aware of.

Factor 2 - Readability

As for the readability factor, what makes a shot readable actually depends on how creative you are as a player. This is something almost everybody struggles with. It's a really bad habit to just hop into freeplay and go for air dribbles over and over again if you're already decent at them. You need to mix it up a bit. If you only practice a few different types of attacks, those are the only ones you're going to be good at when you actually get

in game and your opponents are going to realize that and have a pretty easy time reading you since you've only got a few different types of shots in your repertoire. So being creative is basically being able to score in all sorts of different ways. That's why it relates to how readable you are.

Now, with this system, you can pretty much rank any type of attack or offensive mechanic in the game on how effective it will be. For example, mind games, if done correctly, would probably be a completely empty bucket on the readability but decently full on the time, since the ball isn't going to be going very fast but it's really hard to tell what the shooter is going to do. Whereas something like just a good strong powershot from somewhat close range would be a mostly empty bucket on the time but decently full on readability, simply because the defender probably knows where it's going but they just won't be able to get to it in time. Something like a ceiling shot or a flip reset is probably mostly empty on both because you can use your flip at any moment making it really hard to read and you can get a decent amount of power if you do it right. The only type of attack that doesn't really fall into this analogy is something related to a bump play but that's not really about the shot itself. It's more just about getting a solid bump so that's just it's own thing.

How To Improve Your Shooting In The Two Factors?

We've broken down the main factors that make a shot good or bad. Now that we've done this, you can actually work specifically on whichever aspect you think you struggle with the most. Whether it be creativity, spacing, or powershots. So we are now going to cover what it looks like to be struggling with one of these aspects and how you should practice to improve that aspect of your shooting.

Time - Speed (Powershots)

We'll talk about powershots first which relates to speed. 

Most of the time, you can tell you're not getting enough power on your shots just by playing the game. But if you're still unsure, watch some gameplay of a high level player and see if you're impressed by the amount of power they're generating from their shots. You'll probably be impressed by their gameplay as a whole anyway but try and drown out everything aside from the power of their touches. If it looks like they're hitting the ball with power that doesn't exactly make sense to you, you definitely need to work on your powershots.

Powershots Training Pack

To practice this, use the training pack (0274-95F1-C1BD-2AA6) that we believe is the best for practicing to get that power specifically instead of focusing on a ton of things at once like shot placement, hitting it early, and power. The main idea for these shots is to try and hit it as hard as possible by of course flipping into it with your nose. Make sure you flip just before you hit the ball to generate the most power instead of flipping just after. And don't worry about your shot placement. Only worry about how hard you're hitting the ball for this drill. 

Time - Distance (Spacing)

Now, on the other side of the bucket is spacing which relates to distance.

Spacing is a pretty broad topic because it includes your teammates as well as your opponents but since this guide is about shooting, we're only going to talk about how it includes your opponents. 

The best way to visualize spacing with your opponents is through that diagram about the risk of your opponent cutting you off increasing as you get closer to the net. Basically, a shot with really good spacing is one that gets as close to the net as possible without the opponent cutting it off. Remember, you want to lower that time between your hit and the goal to be as short as possible and lowering your distance to the goal is one way of doing that. But it does come at the cost of risking the opponent pushing the ball early, so you have to find the perfect balance to where you're close to the goal but not too close to where the opponent can cut it off. 

A sign that you're struggling with spacing is if you have a low shooting percentage so like if you have 1 goal with 6 shots. A lot of the time that means you're taking shots from too far away and the defender has a ton of time to read your hit and save it. The best way to improve your spacing with your opponents is simply by playing 1s. In 1s, you'll get, by far, the most opportunities to read your opponent on defense as possible. As you're playing, try and notice some patterns for what they normally do when they're about to cut you off. When you think they're about to push you, that's when you shoot. You can use this method of recognizing patterns to learn spacing in any mode but you get the most opportunities for it in 1s. So if you're trying to learn it the fastest, 1s is the best place to do it. Remember that the objective is to shoot during that sweet spot where you're close to their goal but they aren't pushing you yet.

Readability - Creativity

Finally, we've got creativity. This of course relates to your readability bucket.

As we mentioned, your readability strongly correlates to how confident you are with different types of shots starting from the same point. So basically, if you find yourself in this position at one point in the game, you might just keep dribbling and go for a flick and score off of it. But if you find yourself in that same position later on, you don't want to do that exact same thing because if your opponent is smart, they're going to be expecting it.

Instead, you should try something different like dropping it down and going for a hook shot or something. The more types of shots you have up your sleeve, the harder it is for the opponent to read you. A sign that you struggle with creativity is if when you play 1s, you usually take early leads in the beginning but you end up losing in the end. The cause for that could be you totally choking under pressure every time or the opponent is just adapting to your playstyle and can read your attacks way easier by the end of the game. Creativity is probably the most underrated skill to have among non-GCs. 

Creative Shots Training Pack

If you struggle with creativity, which chances are you do,here is a training pack (F75F-9E7E-3C58-C02F) that will help you take different types of shots from the same situation. For this pack, your objective is to hit each shot in as many different ways as possible.  For example, in this first one you can take the shot immediately and place it on the right side of the net or you could do it on the left side. You could also do a hook shot and place that wherever you want. You can fake the hook shot and then do a touch and flick. You can hit it off the backboard and double tap it in. Or you could completely not hit it at all at first and take it up the wall for a ceiling shot or air dribble. There's so many different ways you could take this shot. When you're practicing this, you want to be good at as many of these as you can. The more tricks you have up your sleeve, the harder it is for the opponent to prepare themself for what you're about to do.

Don't only practice what you find fun or only what you're already good at. Practice everything that you could legitimately use in a game. You'll immediately notice yourself scoring more often when you shoot and you'll leave the defenders lost as to where you're going to place it and even what you're going to do entirely. The key to unpredictability is not making your decisions spontaneous. It's about having a wide range of skills that you can use at any moment you want. Taking these shots in multiple different ways is the best way to get in the mentality of doing things differently each time so you won't be as readable to the defenders. 

So to recap what we covered and bring this whole thing full circle, we began by talking about what makes a shot good or bad and determined that it comes down to time and readability. But you can break that down even further to where time is about speed and distance and readability is about creativity including shot placement. Then we talked about how you can determine which of those aspects you struggle with the most and what you can do to improve those aspects. We hope you learned something and enjoyed this.  Cheap Rocket League items and credits for sale are available on AOEAH.COM at the best prices, go to check out now.