Help with Rocket

[Midtown]

Hello, I have been having trouble playing Rocket recently. He's my favorite character in the MCU and I really want to make him work. In my experience my Rocket gameplay is so centralized on healing that I rarely have time to do anything else. Every second of the game it feels like I'm just mashing right click. I understand he's an easy character to play but it just feels like characters like Luna and Mantis had way more impact every time I played them instead of Rocket. Maybe this could be chalked up to skill issue but some advice either way would be appreciated.

[Izuzul]

Helping to finish low hp enemies or to burst down an overextended tank/dps. you are correct that most of the time you are healing and on the move. You're not gonna be best in dps ever but you can still help with some kills.

Try to keep that respawn beacon close to the action, but not in it. If you despawn it yourself it's only a 5 sec cooldown so don't be afraid to reposition it as the fight moves. and use your ult to help push, it charges quickly so you get to use it often. Bounce those orbs around corners to heal out of sight teammates. Don't forget you can wall climb (you move pretty quick in this mode)

be mobile and don't be afraid of divers. Depending on distance I usually dash behind them and then spin for a face spray of bullets, or quick escape. Also can dash behind then use your one time use jetpack to go straight up and then shoot em in the head from above while they try to find you.

[Good Person]

From my experience,

His guns kinda crap outside of against big targets or when very close to someone, that plus the fact that you're probably going to be healing plenty and the general delay on the heal fire makes it awkward to really push any kind of damage, which is fine. Ideally you want to pair him with a Luna or CnD so they can focus more on the healing and you can just help get picks when/where you can.

Honestly, the only few niches I feel on rocket is :

Getting people to trade ults with him (You use ult, and if your team is competent, luna/Mantis Has to use ult or lose numbers, which opens up space your dps to ult afterwards). His ult can also be used to help burn Mantis/Luna during their ult if that's something your team desires to do.

Being generally difficult to catch kill and having forgiving/easy healing.

Rez.

I'm not sure what else to really say.

[Midtown]

Publicado originalmente por Good Person:

From my experience,

His guns kinda crap outside of against big targets or when very close to someone, that plus the fact that you're probably going to be healing plenty and the general delay on the heal fire makes it awkward to really push any kind of damage, which is fine. Ideally you want to pair him with a Luna or CnD so they can focus more on the healing and you can just help get picks when/where you can.

Honestly, the only few niches I feel on rocket is :

Getting people to trade ults with him (You use ult, and if your team is competent, luna/Mantis Has to use ult or lose numbers, which opens up space your dps to ult afterwards). His ult can also be used to help burn Mantis/Luna during their ult if that's something your team desires to do.

Being generally difficult to catch kill and having forgiving/easy healing.

Rez.

I'm not sure what else to really say.

His other niche I found was pairing with bucky or punisher. Something I completely forgot to mention thats quite strong

[Mikeal]

I'm seeing a lot of good advice so I'll just add a little bit.

Rocket's armor beacon resurrects the first ally to die within 50 meters. You want to keep it closer than this in case a teammate extends outside its range and dies. (unless your backline flanker is really bad, then keep your rez for people who wont instantly die again.)
Your beacon also instantly disappears when you die, so you need to keep yourself alive to get any use out of it.

Unless you need to do immediate healing, orbs should be bounced off of walls to maximize the amount of time it's near your allies. This will free up a small of time you could use to shoot, reposition, or set up a new beacon with that you would otherwise be using to spam heals.

Also, when Rocket reloads, he reloads his healing orbs and his bullets. If you avoid reaching zero on either of those you do not auto-reload, meaning you can use both before having to reload.

[Lewis]

For reference I'm a Rocket main pushing GM so he's 100% viable and can thrive in the upper ranks. People opt for Luna and Mantis because of their burst healing potential but they do not compare to Rocket when it comes to sustained heals for a couple of reasons imo.

1. Rocket's orbs have AoE attached to them so you can be off and still hit your intended target, they bounce off walls and slow down when they come into contact with someone who needs heals making them stack really quickly and they can be bounced off walls to hit your divers in the enemy teams back line to sustain them too. Ontop of that, Rocket is the least susceptible to divers. I just played a game where they had a Panther, Thor, and Magik constantly diving and they didn't manage to kill me once because I played like a Rat. What that means is when players begin to dive you, all you need to do is scramble onto walls, gain elevation and use your dashes sparingly to always avoid wiping as it's critical that you do not die as a support to keep heals going.

2. Your BRB(respawn beacon) is one of the most powerful abilities in the game since it's not locked behind an ult and it respawns a player at full HP wherever you set it. This is really powerful in higher ranks because everyone begins to play conservatively and they wont go and die for random reasons. What this means is that kills come less often than in bronze which makes the beacon really important because should your tank or your other support fall, they'll respawn right back and continue the standstill. It's less effective when you're being rolled but it's incredibly useful for turning the tide in your favor. If the team just spent a minute focusing your hulk to kill them only for the hulk to die and respawn right in their face 5s later that'll give your team the time to push back and swing the momentum back in your favor. This ability also give jump packs and armor packs for players so you should be throwing this in spawn so that everyone can grab them since the jumps are useful for avoiding dives for characters like CD, Luna, or Mantis since they're cooked if they miss their only stun/mobility abilities.

3. The only people who say his gun is crappy are those who don't play him and don't have a strong fps background. If you have played games like Apex or Counter Strike his weapon has the beam potential of the guns in those games. It could certainly use a buff in the range it's effective in, but at close ranges it's devastating. You can shred a vanguard's HP in a single magazine especially if you're getting head shots on them which will either kill them or force a retreat. Vanguards move so slow that they are no threat to any competent rocket player since you can scramble with your dashes and wall climbs if they get too close. When it comes to fighting other supports its just a skill issue, if you hit your shots on them you'll beam then before they can do anything, but if you miss they'll use one of their stuns to kill you, that's just a get good situation. When it comes to DPS you can obliterate most of them like the Punisher. You'll struggle with any long range character like Hela, Hawkeye or Iron man so avoid them like the plague. Magik, Black Panther, and other divers you likely wont be able to kill, but they can't kill you either since you're too nimble and characters like Psylock are a threat but nothing significant since they can't scale walls as quickly and your hitbox is so small that their crossbow bursts spread out too much to all hit you when your running.



Another thing worth noting is that this may not be a Rocket issue and more so you don't understand how to play the support role properly. Supports aren't just healbots who stand behind tanks the whole game to heal without doing anything else. There's certainly a time and place when you should be pocketing a tank but typically you should be at a distance dealing with the small stuff. If you're team is pushing and they have a Penni, it's YOUR job as the support to beam her spiderweb to disable her mines and stop her extra health. If you see moon knight drop and Ankh next to your time, its your job to destroy that Ankh. As a support you cover the stuff the others are too busy to deal with. When you get better at the game you can also cover flank routes to delay any potential flankers and call them out before your backline gets dove since you can escape from pretty much anything. There's also basic stuff that you should be able to recognize like if your team's Luna/Mantis is ulting there is absolutely no reason why you should still be healing, you should be focusing on either their healers or their tanks, whichever is closer for you. Whenever your team is pushing up in general, especially if your tank is able to sustain themselves w/o heals for some time like Magneeto or Strange, you should be acting as DPS and not a healer because often times putting out DPS reduces the amount of heals you need to do. Just think about it, in the games you steamroll the opponent you'll notice that both the healers had eliminations on them similar to their assists, that's because when that Captain America is pushing your Doctor Strange, when you beam that Captain America he needs to retreat or die meaning he can no longer damage your Strange so you therefore do not need to heal Strange as much.

People who call Rocket "niche" just don't know what they're talking about in my opinion, they're the same ones who call wolverine niche but he's stacked when you go up against a competent one. Watch some guides on how to play his kit and make sure your keeping the grand strategy in mind when your playing recognizing when you're about to launch an offense or when you need to retreat.

lmk if you have any questions