#This is common sense, for the most part. These are not hard set rules, they can be bended or broken, but only if you absolutely know what you are doing.

1. Gun will spray, tap for vandal, control for phantom
2. It is harder to attack than it is to defend
3. Don’t peak naked, use a flash or any other ability. Anything that tips the balance in your favor.
4. Radiant with Vandal will lose to two Irons with classics (with crosshair placement, and if they know where the radiant is and the radiant doesn’t know where they are). (Assuming no abilities). So use abilities to gather information.
5. If you’re not killing with 6 bullets, you’re not killing with 25, Reload reveals your location
6. Lurk is important. The lurker stops the rotation, clears the site in case of a rotation from the attacking team.
7. You can defuse until the first crack appears.
8. Smokes are used to make the opponent peak an angle unsafely.
9. If you need to check two angles at the same time, use an ability to block off one angle.
10. Before pushing onto the site, make sure to make the defenders use up as much of their utility as possible.
11. Try to get to cover when taking a fight.
12. Don’t buy an OP when your teammates have spectres. Introducing an OP into the game without ARs to defend it is suicide.
13. Always tell and ask your team about opponents’ habits.
14. Always tell and ask your team about opponents’ guns. If the opponent is attacking on save, don’t push. It’s likely they are together. The pusher might get one or maybe two kills but they just end up with a vandal in a 3 v 4. Not to mention your team will still not know which opponent has the vandal, so none can push in blindly anymore.
15. Try to bait as much utility from your opponent as you can. All you really need is one well placed flash to kill them, just make sure they don’t have anything left to defend from that.
16. MAP CONTROL IS A REAL FUCKING THING. DON’T PUSH, GET A KILL, DIE AND THEN CLAIM THAT YOU ‘ATLEAST GOT ONE KILL’. NO BITCH. YOU JUST GAVE THEM MAP CONTROL, INFORMATION AND/OR GUN. NOT TO MENTION ULT POINTS, ECON AND THE ADVANTAGE OF NOT HAVING TO DEAL WITH WHATEVER ROLE THAT JUST GOT KILLED. Two kills? ok.
17. Don’t die with your utility. Make it a point to use all of it before dying.
18. Don’t naked peak an OP. Unless your aim is Radiant and your opponent is Silver. Use a flash, smoke or really any utility that gives some advantage over the other person. SLPT for KJ: Use the turret against the OP. The turret will either help you punish a whiff or give them something to shoot at while you take your shot. Not guaranteed to work every time though.
19. Don’t enter a site alone. Too many angles to check. Ask your teammates to enter with you following a flash.
20. Learn how to best use your agent’s ult.
21. Unless you’re rotating, walk.
22. Get your classic out as soon as you run out of bullets on your gun. It is much faster to press right click than it is to reload.
23. If you are planning to use a molly when entering a site, let your teammates know.
24. 90% of the time, the sage heal will come within the first exchange. Don’t disturb the poor soul who chose sage.
25. Competitive is not the place to try out new things. Use unrated to try out those crazy plays that you saw on some YouTube video with 500 views. Once you can make those plays consistently, take them to ranked.
26. Don’t camp on site where you don’t get any information until they are on the site. They will check the corners and they will kill you. Nobody enters the site alone.
27. Peaked an angle, saw it was empty? Good, hold it. No rule dictates that they need to peak within the first second of the round.
28. Contest the ult orbs. DON'T give them away for free.
29. Pick your gun accordingly. If you have a preference, play areas of the map that are advantageous to that gun. Don’t peak B long (Bind) with a phantom, use a vandal. If you only want/can play with a phantom, peak A short instead. Phantom for short range plays, Vandal for long range plays.
30. If everyone (including the opponent) is buying but you still have your second round Marshall, pls buy. Once again, you are silver because of consistency (or lack of).
31. Try and count how many players are on each site. If three got spotted on A, and someone is playing mid, push B, there will only be one players left to defend.