Get good: Deathmatch

1v1 duels and free-for-alls

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

As I said in previous editions of Get Good, teaming up is always a sound strategy for people new to PC gaming. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes not an option. Yep, I’m talking about the dreaded Deathmatch, or duel. A Deathmatch is a free-for-all where you need to kill as many people as possible, whereas a duel is just a single player facing off against another single player. Though they differ in function, they’re actually pretty similar in how you should approach them.

Deathmatch win conditions vary. Most of the time the win goes to the last man standing, but sometimes it’s reliant on how many people you’ve killed—it all depends on the game. Duel win conditions are always the same, whether you’re doing a random quick-match in Overwatch—they call it 1v1, and it’s only available during certain seasonal events—or you’ve taken personal offence to someone in World of Warcraft; the winner of the duel is the person who doesn’t die.

Being successful at either of these modes is a bit tricky. You run the risk of facing off against people a lot more experienced than you—without having anyone to back you up. But there are a few options you may have at your disposal to help you out.

If you’re playing a game where you have a hero or champion select, your automatic instinct will be to go for someone powerful—this is a trap, don’t fall for it. The same idea applies to players with custom characters. Your first instinct will be to load your ability bar with high damage spells or attacks—this is also a trap. High damage is nice, but it’s not worth anything if you can’t survive. In a Deathmatch surviving is important because it may win you the game, and if it doesn’t—if you are in a position where you have to kill the most players—you can’t kill anyone if you’re already dead!

Whether you choose your character from a set, or it’s a custom one you’ve developed out of playing an MMO, before you enter a Deathmatch or a duel make sure you have a healing ability or at least something that will make you impervious so you can chug a potion or get a health-pack.

Next you should remember “ABA”—Always Be Attacking! Make sure the majority of your abilities have low cooldowns, so you’re never in a position where you can’t do anything. Having a couple of higher cooldown abilities is fine, as they usually tend to be more powerful, but they shouldn’t make up the majority of your skill set. As an add-on to that, use abilities or pick a character you’re familiar with. You want to be able to know the cooldown times and your skill rotation—the order in which you activate your skills or spells to capitalize on cooldown timers and ABA.

Next—and really this is just more of a personal preference that I found useful—get control. What I mean by this is if you have some way of incapacitating your opponent, such as a knockback, a grab, a sleeping spell—anything that will make it impossible for them to attack you—use it! You want to dictate the pace of the fight. Having that ability in your back pocket will allow you to escape to find heath, freely whittle away at their HP bar, or even kill them if you can get off a headshot. You’re basically making winning easier. You can also use this as an interrupt. If you know that they’re going to hit you with an ability that does a lot of damage, incapacitate them! Not only will it will save you, but they will still have the cooldown timer so they’ll have to wait to use that high damage ability again.

Other than that, just try your best and hope the players you’re up against are just as new to this as you are.