Quake Champions Tips and Tricks
#1: Keep Moving
This is probably the most important thing, always keep moving, never stop. Don’t linger in the same room for a long time, don’t try to ‘camp’.
Plenty of weapons in this game heavily punish a stationary target/style.
Even in a 1v1 fight, its important to move:
Strafe left and right against Machine gun/Shotgun/Lightning gun/Railgun.
Delay your strafes a bit against Nailgun.
Keep jumping against Rockets/Tri-bolt.
Try to not chase your opponents. Easiest way to get ambushed, die a horrible way. If your target escaped, go find health and armor, and look for the next opportunity to murder them.
#2: Keep yourself topped up
Watch your health and armor. Look for health pickups and armor pickups if you’re not full.
Taking a fight with less health than you could will almost always end up in you dying horribly.
Just try to be annoyed when you’re not full health, and be comfortable when you are.
Try to remember where the health and armor are on each map, to know where to retreat after a fight.
#3: Use different weapons
The starter machine gun is powerful, however you can frag faster. Look for other weapons to pick up whenever you spawn. They are more powerful and easier to kill with.
POWER weapons:
These are the most important weapons to look for, easiest to use and very good fragging power.
ROCKET LAUNCHER – your close-mid range powerhouse. You have to predict movement after a certain distance, but getting up close and shooting people’s legs usually makes short work of them.
LIGHTNING GUN – mid range god of a weapon. Keep your crosshair on the enemy for massive damage. Especially effective against big tanky champions.
RAIL GUN – quake’s sniper. High damage, infinite range. Point and click. However, it has a very long reload time that makes you vulnerable. Only use this if you absolutely have no other weapons, or you know that the enemy wont shoot back at you.
Other weapons:
These aren’t used as much, but they are great if you don’t have access to the above 3, and also can be more powerful with Quad Damage, than the power weapons.
SHOTGUN – close range only, VERY powerful against small, squishy champions, and also rivals the Rocket launcher’s damage on big bodies.
NAILGUN – spam spam spam. If you expect people to come through a door/corridoor, just hold onto your mouse1 and collect frags.
TRIBOLT – your other spam weapon, this one you aim at items, not players. Especially on Quad, Mega and Armor.
#4: Quad Damage
In every mode except duel, this powerup will spawn usually in the middle of the map, announced by “INCOMING QUAD” 15 seconds before it appears.
As the name suggests, it just makes you deal 4 times the damage.
TEAM DEATHMATCH
Try to move to where it spawns when you hear the announcer, even if YOU don’t get it, make sure someone in your team does.
When your teammate has quad, follow them closely, try not to take any health/armor/weapons that they might need. They are the ones that can kill people in 0.1 seconds, not you.
Following them closely lets you grab the quad, if they die, letting you continue the rampage.
When you have quad, try to stick to your teammates. QUAD ISNT GODMODE, do not jump into 4 of the enemy team and expect to wipe them without taking damage. You will die, you will give the quad to the other team, and you will make your team mad.
DEATHMATCH/FREE FOR ALL
Bait the quad. Always bait the quad, never directly go for it, never stand on the spawn spot. You will get rocketed/railed and you will feel bad. Be at a good distance away, spam rockets, aim your rails so you can kill whoever picks it up next. You’re there to frag and if people just walk to a certain point, all you have to do is shoot there. If you see that the area cleared up around quad and you’re the only one there, grab it and go to town.
SACRIFICE
Work with your team and secure the powerup zone. Quad and Protection alternates, Protection makes you take 1/4 of damage (opposite of quad). When you have the powerup, try to guarantee that the soul stays at your obelisk.
#5: Mega health and Heavy armor
These two are located usually at the opposite corners of maps, it’s important that you try to pick them up, they give you +100 hit points and can give you 50 points more than your maximum.
VERY IMPORTANT IN DUEL.
In a 1v1 situation, every point of health/armor you have over your opponent is crucial. Being able to have 50 more is insane. These items are very high priority and try to get them every time they spawn.
Time the items. When you pick up one of these, glance quickly at the timer at the top of your screen, and add 30 seconds to the timer. That’s when you have to come back. (Church of Azathoth has 45 second timers)
#6: Keyboard and Mouse settings
Try to bind power weapons close to your movement keys.
Rockets, Rail, LG. The standard binds are
Q – Rockets
R – Rail
E – LG
You will want to switch between these 3 the most, so it’s very important that you have them close to your movement keys.
You don’t have to time your jumps, you can hold your jump key and jump whenever you land.
For mouse, try to find out your sensitivity by looking at how badly you do with the lightning gun.
If you have a lot of trouble keeping your crosshair on a moving target, LOWER your sensitivity.
Try to find a sweet spot, and just play for a good 30-ish hours (not in one sitting) on that sensitivity to get used to it. DO NOT COPY PRO’s sensitivity. It most likely won’t make your aim as good as theirs. Try to find YOUR sensitivity by YOURSELF.
#7: FOV and other settings
Field of View is a very important setting. Both a small FOV and large FOV has its advantages and disadvantages.
LOW FOV – Playing on low Field of View has its quirks, but it also teaches really bad habits.
Most popular LOW FOV: 105
Advantages: Targets appear bigger, pseudo-zoom effect. Helps you concentrate on your target.
Disadvantages: Bad peripheral vision. Die often by not seeing threats on your side/behind, Railgun’s zoom doesn’t really zoom.
HIGH FOV – This is for more awareness, often agreed to be more beneficial than low FOV.
Most popular HIGH FOV: 120
Advantages: Good peripheral vision, see targets from a wider angle.
Disadvantages: Targets appear smaller than low fov.
Try both, and then try to find a decent value between the two.
SOUND SETTINGS
For the love of all that’s holy, turn off your music volume, ESPECIALLY if you’re a dueler. It masks footsteps, item pickups, jump sounds, and it will make your life miserable.
If you want to listen to some tunes while playing, just use your own playlist.
GRAPHICS SETTINGS
Get something that can measure your FPS (fraps, bandicam, afterburner), and try to adjust your settings lower and lower until you can get a constant 60 FPS or higher. This will help you react quicker, and make the game more enjoyable in general.
#8: Attitude
DO NOT GIVE UP
The nature of quake is that you start out being a total scrub, getting beaten every game. That is normal. You’re not the only one that’s doing badly.
No player in this world have sat down to quake as their first fps/game and played well against others who have a sliver of experience.
Just keep playing, just keep dying, keep losing. It’s part of the experience. The more you play the better you get, if you give up you forfeit your chances on being a good player, getting all the girls, and respect, like the top pros at QuakeCon.
When you get into a game, just focus on yourself. Try to frag as hard as you can, try your best.
If you see four players that are all level20 or higher, don’t be like “omg terrible matchmaking”, just go out there and frag.
#9: Champions
No character in Quake Champions is overpowered. No ability is gamebreaking, and everything can be nullified by 1-2 well placed rockets. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that one character is broken because you see someone go 43-2 with them.
A good player will do well on every character.
Play EVERY champion. Try them all throughout MULTIPLE games, use their abilities, their passives, see if they fit your style. Try to pick three champions that you want to learn and master. Do their rune challenges, find out what’s the best way to use the abilities.
Ranger is a very well-rounded character, easy to learn and do well with.
Smaller characters (Anarki, Nyx, Slash) are for people who enjoy outplaying their opponents, dodging shots left and right, picking your battles.
Medium characters are for people who consider themselves decent aimers, and like having every advantage they can get over the other.
Tanks are brute force. They are for people with raw, good aim, straight into the fray, and just outaim and outsurvive the opponent.