My Nintendo Switch tells me I currently have “60 hours or more” in Pokemon Unite. This is the extent of my experience with MOBAs - I never tried League, never touched Dota, and know next to nothing about Smite, Arena of Valor, or whatever else all of you veritable MOBA masters like to spend your time playing. Because of this, I’m actually a bit shocked I’ve hit max rank in Pokemon Unite this quickly. I thought I’d be stuck in Expert or Veteran forever.
I think the reason I’ve made it to Master is largely because I have devoted quite a lot of time learning not just what I’m supposed to do in Pokemon Unite, but also what I’m not supposed to do. I’ve paid attention to players who were better than me, experimented with builds I saw the enemy team excelling with, and tried my best not to repeat stupid mistakes that ended up with me dead and my team suffering for it. As a result, I’m a Master rank player mostly because I know where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to do purely from knowing where I’m not supposed to be and what I’m not supposed to do.
The single thing that annoys me most about other Pokemon Unite players is that so many people think they’re a whole lot better than they actually are. While junglers - I should specify, junglers who know what they’re doing - can have a massive impact on the outcome of a game, most of Unite boils down to effectively working with your team. You should have two people up top, two people down bottom, and one jungler farming mid. Beyond this, you should be pushing and retreating based on what your lane partner is doing - even if they’re making stupid mistakes, it’s on you to make sure those mistakes don’t cost your team. If you let them go off on their own, they’ll die. If you play based on their style and use your own know-how to complement it however, you should be able to at least survive until your jungler comes to help you. Climbing the competitive ladder in solo queue is all down to eliminating your ego and recognising that the best players are the ones who are able to adapt.
On that same note, going off on your own because you’re either a) pissed off at your co-laner or b) overconfident because of some stupid ego shit is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Once you’re doing your job properly, it doesn’t matter whether you get five kills or 50 - what matters is you’re protecting your towers, collecting your farms, and controlling engagement and momentum whenever an opportunity to push presents itself. If you’re pushing for team kills and solo tower takedowns every 30 seconds, you’re essentially turning the game into a 5v4 in favour of the other team while simultaneously serving as level fodder for them. You might think you’re being extremely active, but the detriment you’re imposing on your team is doubled.
What you need to do instead is know every single farm spawn right down to the second - from your starter lane Aipom to the neutral Corphish in top, to 8:50 bees and 7:00 Dred, it’s up to you to know exactly where you should be at all times during the game. At higher levels, missing something as simple - if not ostensibly unimportant - as 7:20 Combee and Vespiquen can irreparably change the tide of an entire match. Once the enemy team gets a level on you, they’re far more likely to win Dred unless you’re clever or lucky enough to steal it. They get Dred, they’re now two levels ahead - each and every one of them is now capable of winning almost any 1v2 they find themselves in. Playing Pokemon Unite at higher levels means playing a version of Pokemon Unite where every second of the ten-minute runtime requires you to perform perfectly in adherence to spawns, location, and lane-based duties.
It’s really not that complicated. Unless you’re a jungler - which I’ve already written a more detailed breakdown for - all you need to do is know your farms, cooperate with your co-laner, and play patiently. After the first three minutes, when your jungler is now operating with free rein outside of mid, you have a little bit more leeway in terms of where you need to go - at Master rank, 7:00 Dred almost always draws a full 5v5, leaving top lane wide open for anyone who hangs around. As an example of how complex these seemingly simple tradeoffs are though, destroying a tower on your own and grabbing Rotom for your team is still sometimes worth less than the first Drednaw given that the whole other team will have gained an extra level from having more ‘mons on the mark. Unless you’re communicating with your team using an external voice chat app, you really should be looking at the commands they’re giving - even if they seem stupid, they have a far lower chance of working out if you ignore them to go off on your own and likely die anyway.
That’s actually my main point when it comes to doing well in Pokemon Unite - the single smartest way to play is to act based on your teammates’ actions. Don’t go off hunting for kills on your own, don’t leave your teammates to die, and definitely don’t think you’re better than everyone else just because you have different ideas. If someone isn’t playing the way you want them to, the onus is on you to be the bigger person and adapt. Stubbornness in a MOBA is the surest way to lose spectacularly - if you want to get to Master rank, you will need to recognise that it’s sometimes more important to help others than to do your own thing out of pride, inevitably lose, and then blame your team for said loss. When you stop to think about it, your failure to engage with them is as much a factor in getting stomped as theirs to engage with you.
Want to climb to Master rank in Pokemon Unite? Learn the map timers and jettison that ego of yours. I promise, it works.