PSA: [Some of] the unwritten 'laws' of crys-tier matches

[KickRox]

I've noticed that it's a coin toss whether or not the most effective strategies are employed by teammates & by no fault of their own. There are some that I still haven't deduced through experience and some that I didn't start to utilize until well after I managed ranking to Crystal.

The community relies on itself to syndicate these strategies so in the spirit of that sentiment, I'll list some of the strategies/knowledge that people might not be aware of yet.

• Be aggressive. "I'm going on ahead." should be on your hotbar if you're rolling Melee. Pressure is tantamount only to CC & burst, especially at the beginning of a match. Forcing melee/tank enemies up front to consider dropping back to protect ranged teammates can distract, and ultimately lead to numerical advantages @ the crystal. It's here that Sprint tracks are incredibly useful.
  
• Be aggressive; but don't forget kills ≠ victory. Pressure is important, but not if your entire squad is pushing 4/5 enemies back to spawn while the 5th runs the crystal 50% up your ass.
  
• Cover Potions, Cover Potions, Cover the effin potions - Especially when the crystal is @ your checkpoint. Check your teammates' HP & make sure no one is guarding back to the potion, and even if your at 75%+ get that thing on off the ground to force the enemy to retreat if they get low on HP; instead of healing up and continuing to pressure you.
  
• Guardian: It takes two to tango; PLDs: use a macro to announce & mark the teammate you are about to cover. There's alot to focus on and if they don't know it's coming, they might not make it count. If you're the one being covered, the second you see the tether, stop what you're doing and pop an elixir, immediately. This is the most important element of Guardian.
  
• "Fall back and regro-- Defeat!" Always be conscious of the clock and the score. If you're down, and the clock's under a minute, avoid "Retreat" qchat.
  
• One for all. If a teammate starts to poke before the crystal unbinds, and ends up going in, whether you agree with the decision or not, you're all most often better off engaging. If you don't, and the teammate dies, you're immediately at a 4v5, with no LBs to tip the scale back in your favor. You might have an advantage in that some enemies have actions on cooldown. It doesn't take much to create an opening and secure a kill before your teammate goes down.
  
• Big Comebacks happen all the time. They may not be 99% comebacks, but don't throw up your hands after 60 seconds b/c your team died once. Regroup, call targets and try to turn it around. 4 minutes is an eternity in CC and A LOT can happen with proficient use of LBs.

I'm leaving a lot out but that's all the room I have and there's plenty left to learn. So, feel free to drop anything you wish you saw more of from teammates.

[IsaacMerquise]

From my experience playing in crystal, the only rules I've seen are that most of your teammates will believe they are Naruto Goku and try to anime dive an entire enemy team 1v5 only to get deleted. Or on the flip side, you will have ranged dps who are severely allergic to the cart and think having less than five seconds on the game-winning objective is a good thing.

[Saucy_Jack]

From my experience playing in crystal, the only rules I've seen are that most of your teammates will believe they are Naruto Goku and try to anime dive an entire enemy team 1v5 only to get deleted. Or on the flip side, you will have ranged dps who are severely allergic to the cart and think having less than five seconds on the game-winning objective is a good thing.

Ranged dps shouldn’t be on the crystal a lot of the time outside of breaking the cap point tbh, low obj time for a ranged dps isn’t necessarily even bad.

It doesn’t push any faster to have more people on it, and it matters more for your ranged to stay alive and kill the enemy team. Most of the time, the “game winning objective” only needs one player from your team on it at a minimum, not for every role to be on it.

Usually the ranged dps only stand on the crystal in three scenarios:

1. OT emergency

2. Breaking a capture point more quickly

3. During or at the end of a team fight that your team is clearly winning, so they can push and dps at the same time while the melee run past the crystal to finish off a few more kills

If there’s any actual threats near the crystal though, I’m pretty happy to see the ranged staying safe and killing people rather than trying to push and getting focused. Especially true if a teammate is already on the crystal since you want to spread in a LOT of scenarios to avoid giving the enemy team free extra aoe damage.

[Gserpent]

I'll add a few based on what I see in games a lot.

You don't have to keep pressing your advantage. Always monitor your team's HP and MP. Cool, you won a fight and took the checkpoint at the cost of most of your cooldowns and a lot of your mana. You should keep pushing, right? *NO.* Fall back, potion up, give your cooldowns time to come back up again. Your enemies are respawning with full cooldowns and mana, while your team is low on both? You're going to get rolled. Back off.

If you're behind and Overtime is coming up, don't push into the enemy team. The specific timing here varies based on where the crystal is, but I'd estimate it to be in the 30-45 sec range. That's enough time to have a fight and push the crystal around, but not enough time for your team to recover after the fight. It's just like the above - awesome, you won the fight, overtime starts, your team is still behind. But now the enemy respawns are arriving with full everything while you just blew LBs and mana and cooldowns to take control, and now you're dead and the game is over. I've seen *so* many games end like this. It's okay to back off. Hell, if it's OT you practically *want* the enemy team to push into you, it gives you the defender's advantage.

Pay attention to enemy party list. There's really no excuse for getting dunked on by a DRG or watching a SAM wipe out half your team. If you're in Crystal, you're supposed to know better. If the SAM has LB, watch for the Chiten buff (if you don't know what Chiten looks like why are you even in ranked?) If the DRG has LB, watch for their gauge to empty and either run away or guard. Don't try to Guard through enemy burst if there's a NIN around with LB and you don't have over 50%. Don't try to Guard if there's a MNK with Meteodrive, etc. I see way too many mistakes made by people who are clearly not looking at enemy party list, and they make these mistakes consistently (it's not just a bad game or fluke or something.)

Stand on the damn point! If you rolled the enemy team and you're on the checkpoint, *most* of you should be standing on it. Not near it, not around it, *on* it. It captures faster if more people are on it. It can be useful to have one or maybe two people off harrying enemy survivors (particularly a class like NIN), but everyone else needs to be standing *on* the point. I'll spam push the crystal and there will *still* be people loitering like 5 feet away from the point instead of on it. How did these people make it to Crystal...?