Red Jack University

The Art of Team-Fighting

An in-depth video, with examples and infographics, on how to team-fight efficiently is here:

TLDW;

Team-fighting consists of three phases:

1. Finding the fight
2. Positioning/ Setup
3. Engaging

These three phases endlessly repeat themselves until the game has ended. Finding the fight equates to your kill participation and wanting to make sure that percentage is as high as possible. Finding the fight is important because it aligns with one of the two cardinal rules of dealing damage which is just being present and being involved in the fight. You cannot deal damage if you aren’t there at the fight in the first place. You can find the fight by listening for shots, locating high-traffic engage areas, and just tuning into your overall map awareness. When you hear shots you should almost be like a shark that smells blood in the water. Once you find the fight stop sprinting and find cover.

Next is positioning. When positioning and setting up you want to make sure there are no opposing guardians behind you or in a location where you can be blindsided. You always want the opposing team to be in your peripheral vision. This ensures you won’t be flanked or t-boned. When it is time to setup you want to make sure you aren’t clogging your lanes with your teammates and setup at an angle that can engage in the same lane as your teammates. This is called the same lane different angle method (SLDA). This method just means you should be laning the same lane as your teammates but at a different angle. This method helps with spacing lanes and making it harder for your opponents to defend since they have to cover more angles in order to defend against your offense.

Finally, there is the engage. This is when the fight officially starts. The main goal you want to accomplish in this phase is dealing damage, without dying. Without dying is key here because the second cardinal rule in dealing damage is not dying because you can’t deal damage if you’re dead. You want to deal as much damage as you possibly can without dying even if that means dealing 5 damage before you have to leave the fight, because then at least you can return to do more. This is also why recovery is the most important stat in Destiny because it has the greatest effect on your survivability. There are multiple ways in which you can increase your team-fighting IQ and they are:

1. SLDA method (same lane different angle) – laning the same lane as your teammates, but from a different angle. Spaces your lanes and makes it harder for your opponents to defend against your offense.
2. Coms – communicating efficiently & callouts. Information plays a key role in games that require quick movements and strategic tactics in order to gain advantages when fighting with a team. The more information that is shared, the higher your chances are of securing kills and gaining advantages over your opponent that can sway the fight in your favor.
3. crouch (team) shooting – crouching while team-shooting to allow your teammates to shoot over you. Frees up space in your lane and makes team-shooting and laning a nightmare for your opponents.
4. Tickling (flanking) – presence kills! Tickling is the concept of drawing aggro away from your teammates and having the opposing team focus their attention on you so your teammates can play more aggressively and push for a team-wipe. The entire point of tickling is to make a play. Your goal is to create an opening in the defense so your team can gain an advantage. Flanking and taking a wide side-angle is just a very efficient way of achieving this goal and that is why tickling and flanking are like peanut butter and jelly, but they are not the same thing. Tickling is just a concept, flanking is the actual action, but you don’t HAVE to take a wide side-angle (flank) in order to perform a successful tickle.
5. Rotate and re-engage (R&R) – if you cannot find or punch a hole in the defense or have a trash angle then rotating and re-engaging is how you can find that hole in the defense.

If the fight is won, then the fight is won. If not, then either you’re dead or you should be regrouping or looking for a trade if you cannot regroup back with your team safely. Regardless, the whole process then starts all over again.

Other Team-fighting references:

The Art of Tickling (flanking)

An in-depth video, filled with examples and infographics to this guide is here:

TLDW;

Tickling

1. What is Tickling
2. High-risk | High-reward
3. Precise Coms
4. Trusting Your Teammates

What is Tickling

Tickling is the concept of drawing aggro away from your teammates and having the opposing team focus their attention on you so your teammates can play more aggressively and push for a team-wipe. The entire point of tickling is to make a play. Your goal is to create an opening in the defense so your team can gain an advantage. Flanking and taking a wide side-angle is just a very efficient way of achieving this goal and that is why tickling and flanking are like peanut butter and jelly, but they are not the same thing. Tickling is just a concept, flanking is the actual action, but you don’t HAVE to take a wide side-angle (flank) in order to perform a successful tickle.

Forcing the opposing team to divide their focus already accomplishes the first step of a successful tickle which is dividing the opposing team’s attention. The second step is inflicting critical damage. A successful tickle doesn’t require you to get a kill, it only requires you to draw your opponent’s attention and/ or inflict critical damage so that your team can get that team-wipe or gain map control or whatever advantage it is you are aiming for. 

Flanking is usually performed when there is a stalemate during a front-to-back team-fight and no one is dying resulting in a standoff until a hole is broken in the defense of one of the teams, but flanks are performed preceding team-fights all the time as well.

For anyone who doesn’t know what a front-to-back team-fight is, it’s just a fight where all players involved in the fight are facing each other and there are no players flanking or taking wide side-angles. A front-to-back team-fight is literally structured just like a tug-of-war. 

Anyone can flank, but if you are running with an organized team you can designate the flanking role to a specific player if you want to, so for example: your most talented slayer, your best sniper, any hunter with invis, etc.

High risk – High reward

Tickling (if taking a flank) is a high-risk/ high-reward play because it means you’re alone, and experienced teams look for, and call out lone wolf players because they are an easy target. If you go for a flank, and are targeted and killed then you have essentially just left your team and went off on your own which is a cardinal sin in Destiny, and a horrible play if it was not coordinated and planned.

If you are playing solo, then this is normally the case when you try to go for a flank, which in more cases than not, ends in a team-wipe or a huge loss in momentum for your team if you aren’t successful with the play. But the reward is high. The reward is breaking a hole in the opposing team’s defense allowing your team to gain momentum. This is why the tickling concept is completely different when playing with a team because this play can be coordinated with much more structure increasing your chance of success. 

Precise coms

Precise coms are almost imperative when tickling because in order for a tickle to be successful, you need to communicate to your team when you begin to draw aggro and when you have inflicted critical damage so they know exactly when to push to maximize the flank. Some examples of common coms are:

• “I’m engaging”
• “Stay alive” (absolutely positively don’t die within the next 30 seconds in time for me to make this play)
• “He’s tagged”
• “They’re weak”
• “I have (insert number here) on radar”
• “rotate”/ “wrap” (your team has a bad angle so relocate)
• “Big number”/ ”small number”  (indicator of how much super you have)
• “Heavy” (is spawning soon)
• “Push”
• “Watch me watch me” (pay attention to me, I’m about to try and make a play)
• “I’m weak” (I can’t help right now)
• “I’m right behind you” (I’m with you on this play)

Trusting your teammates

In order for a tickle to have its highest chance of success, everyone needs to stay alive for however long it takes to pull off the play. Remember, staying alive and inflicting damage is the basis of every team-fight. When a flank occurs, the team is essentially splitting up, which in Destiny is a cardinal sin. So the core mechanic of a flank involves putting your team at a huge disadvantage in order to try and reap a high reward! So if this play is to be executed efficiently then everyone needs to be alive. The flanker is trusting his teammates to stay alive until he can inflict critical damage and make the call back to his team to clean up the rest, and his teammates are trusting him to make a play.