Competitively, Halo and League of Legends are basically the same game.

Competitively, Halo and League of Legends are basically the same game.

"Okay Audley, you've gone off the fucking deep end. How can a first person shooter with equal starts and a top-down MOBA with 100+ champions be the same game?"

I'm going to start off with extremely generic descriptions, but transition into more complex facets of play that exist in both titles that players may be completely unaware are parallel.

The team is more important than the individual. In both games, it's extremely unlikely one player will single-handedly carry the game. Furthermore, a team of 4/5 players that work together well are more likely to win than a team of 4/5 players that have superior skills, so long as the individual skill gap isn't enough to outweigh the teamwork team's ability to execute at all.

At the start of the game, both games have a generic win condition. Whether it be "Destroy the Nexus" in LoL or whatever the game type in Halo it is you're playing, there is a condition for victory.

On your way to the ultimate victory, there are smaller conditions that must be executed to accrue an advantage to set you up for that victory. In Halo, this is generally related to map control and power weapons. In LoL, it can range from taking towers and Dragons to item powerspikes, to certain level breakpoints that give you a certain skill powerspike.

Depending on your current circumstance, your actual "win condition" may vary wildly. In LoL, some team compositions simply reach a point that they can no longer be fought. Others rely on pressuring advantages early to get a large enough lead to overcome later troughs. Some rely on team fighting, while others rely on avoiding team fighting at all costs. In Halo, your win condition is not always "reach the max score" -- but simply to have a high score than your opponent. Near the end of Oddball games, you may simply try to keep the Oddball in a neutral location to keep the opponents from racking up score while you sit on a lead, rather than try to hold the ball yourself.

Information wins games. Both are imperfect information games, where you know for certain where you are at any given time. LoL gives you a minimap with other areas of revealed vision (allied towers, allied champions, allied wards). Halo gives you icons that show whether your teammate is in combat or not. But neither of these are enough.

You still need to know where your enemies are, whether through warding, pinging or calling out their location. You need to know what weapons or major cooldowns players have available to use, both on your own team and on the enemy team. These bits of information get fed into you through communication in games and empower you to make better decisions on where to go or what sort of plays you can potentially get away with attempting. Aggressive plays while the enemy outnumbers you in an area get punished, but knowing the enemy are concentrated on one side may let you know you can jump out and out-BR the fellow in the rocks (or all-in the enemy top laner and take his tower.)

Each game has lanes, and a blown lane assignment must be compensated elsewhere. Halo's lanes aren't as pronounced as League of Legends, but if you examine the successful competitive maps carefully, there is a general trend of aisles of play with segmented sightlines that force map areas to operate in a nearly linear fashion. On certain maps (Sanc, Pit) if a team takes map control from one “lane”, the best way to offset that is to press your advantage in another lane and “flip” the map to neutralize the bleed caused in one lane. In LoL, you'll often find successful solo queue junglers abandon losing lanes and attempt to snowball lanes that are doing well. Or in competitive LoL, you'll see teams that lose an objective on one side of the map often attempt to mirror the objective on the other side whenever possible.

When you're leading, you want to get further ahead. In LoL, this can mean continuously beating down on your lane opponent, taking objectives, or simply getting wards in the enemy jungle to track his movements so you can continue to execute. It could mean forcing a team fight, or overloading another lane while your opponent tries to catch up in your lane. Snowballs are common and easy to spot in LoL.

In Halo, snowballs come from two things: power weapon control and spawn killing. If you've got a numerical advantage, you push, you take over map control (or grab a power weapon). If you've reached the enemy base, you take their flag (and run it wherever their numbers are going to be weakest once they spawn.) Whenever possible, you kill the people as they respawn to avoid letting them influence whatever play is currently happening. You never drop an empty enemy Sniper in H2A, to keep them from ever seeing their rifle again. You always try to position in a way that will influence enemy spawns in a way that make killing them like fish in a barrel.

Sitting on a lead leads to comeback opportunities. Pressing an advantage leads to frantic decisions, forced mistakes, and steeper advantages.

When you're trailing, it's better to stall out than to try to force plays against the team with the advantage. In LoL, attempting to team fight at Dragon while down a few thousand gold in the mid game can turn into a dire situation of being aced and hemorrhaging towers. You can often offset leads by getting small areas of vision control and making a pick-off to slowly ease the gold lead into your favor, while champions with waveclear keep your towers safe. The longer the game goes on in LoL when you are trailing but avoiding giving up larger advantages, the less that flat gold advantage means as the percent advantage decreases.

In Halo, if your opponents have map control or power weapon control lorded over you, it's often best to play passively until your opponents overextend, and retake map control while you've gotten a numerical advantage. Map and weapon control are fluid, and avoiding hemorrhaging kills will allow your team to either take over new focal points on the map as weapons respawn / hills move or to take over the strong areas of the map to set up to slay your opponents and close the gap.

Team compositions are important. In LoL, it's pretty obvious that you don't want to run a team with 5 Marksmen. Such a composition relies on nearly perfect play to be able to execute a win, and the susceptibility to enemy burst or crowd control can leave you in big trouble. You generally want someone to tank, someone to support, a mage/assassin with damage from spells, and an ADC to deal damage with clicking (and probably double down on the tankiness).

In Halo, it's less obvious, and although many pros deny the existence of roles, time has shown again and again, rosters with a player dedicated to Sniping (ADC!), one generally dedicated to “selfless” plays (support) (flanking, objective-running), one player balls-out aggressive with a dominant BR (tank/bruiser), and another dedicated to controlling certain areas of the map (control mage) tend to have the most consistent high placings. Teams made of players of similar styles often struggle, and teams made of lesser skilled players with a decent composition often out-perform expectations.

Speaking of controlling certain areas of the map, Zoning is an important aspect in both games. In LoL, zoning usually refers to a player with high burst potential or CC / Engage potential standing in a position and using their presence as threat enough to keep a damage dealer from moving forward (or in some cases, like Alistar W, using the ability to keep them from coming near Baron while you finish off your smite.) Zoning can also accrue you advantages in minion kills or experience during the laning phase by keeping the enemy away from the minion wave.

In Halo, zoning is what makes Ogre 2 great. Whether he's controlling an actual power position or a portal on Warlord and watching cross-map sightlines, he's often in a position to keep other players from threatening his team, while staying relatively safe himself. Players also often use grenades to cut off a route or impede an enemy's advance moreso than to actually attempt damage. In H2A's King of the Hill on Warlord, controlling the base counter-clockwise from the hill often meant the best sightlines to assault the hill, while also great amounts of safety from the players spawning directly opposite of the hill's base – able to force those players into a less optimal path in order to advance for the objective.

Both games also emphasize Spacing quite heavily. Again, Spacing is something more prominent / known in LoL than in Halo. It generally refers to the distance between you/your teammates compared to the distance between you/your enemies. This mostly comes into play during laning phase and team fights. In bot lane, you usually don't want to attempt to trade when you are in range of both enemy laners – you want to trade while you+your ally are in range of the enemy ADC, but not in range of the support. This ensures you have more damage potential on a single target than you would with improper spacing. Qiao Gu demonstrate the power of teamfight spacing with the synergy between their mid laner and ADC, who are almost always in position to focus the same target in a teamfight.

In Halo, you'll find the more successful teams often talk to each other on positioning, and communicate whether they have another's help or not. Less successful teams focus on enemy positioning entirely, and don't focus on whether or not they have the ability to cover each other's sightlines. This also ties back into the aforementioned “lanes” of Halo – you can see OpTic Maniac often shift to the opposite side of Shrine off spawn to cover an uncovered lane while also guaranteeing he has additional angles on players his teammates may be fighting. Coach Towey of Evil Geniuses does a great job coordinating EG's ability to cover one another and ensure they are spaced well.

In both titles, if you were to make a sort of imaginary venn diagram of your potential damage / engage ranges over the course of an entire game, you'd likely find the most successful teams have the highest concentrated / most occurrences of overlap whenever they're in combat.

Mobility is survivability.

This aspect of both games is both accepted and entirely overlooked simultaneously. Sure, people acknowledge Flash is almost 100% must-take on most champions in LoL. They acknowledge that the amount of champions with dashes or hastes in their kits has been gradually increasing over time. Halo players acknowledge Sprint gets used defensively more often than offensively. And that often, attempting to chase is more dangerous than attempting to flee. But what they don't seem to acknowledge is the amount of damage you can avoid simply by being mobile.

Dodging engages in LoL with a blink, staying just-out-of-range of those melees through the Captain's aura from your Janna as you flee toward her with 18% increased movespeed...every missed skillshot or second you stay out of range simply by moving, you've given yourself additional survivability that can't be directly quantified. Is 20 movespeed worth more than 200 health? If it gets you out of the way of that Morgana binding, it absolutely is. If it helps keep you 50 extra range out of the way of Annie's ultimate as she activates Talisman and starts booking it straight for you, it is.

In the upcoming Halo 5, the Thruster Pack and Sprint combine to add so much additional survivability (even with the cost of delaying your shield respawn, it gives more than it takes). Grenades lose relevance as player mobility increases (limiting them almost solely to zoning potential or spot-checking). Close range combat becomes a battle of who can out-maneuver the other, with several areas of low ledges offering potential to parkour your way out of there with a combination of clamber and thrusters. Hell, even being able to get from one location to another more quickly can mean you snagging the power weapon before your opponent, or getting clear of a line of sight before an opponent has a chance to set up a shot with their sniping pick-off tool. Projectile weapons like the Plasma Caster are not much different than a LoL skillshot, and with the leaps granted by the Thruster, this means your best tool to survive isn't whether or not you have shields, but whether or not you can dance.

I truly believe that, at their core, almost all of these aspects of gameplay can be applied to any competitive title (and actually, to any team sport in existence) – LoL and Halo are just the two I have the most experience with and can generate the most examples of overlap from.

While I don't feel I am THAT mechanically skilled at either game (I honestly can't aim for shit in Halo), I take an analytical, measured approach to playing both and focus on playing smart over playing well. I am currently Diamond 4 in League of Legends and have coached a few pro and amateur Halo teams. I also never lose a matchmaking game of Warlord King, by applying the LoL concept of Zoning to every game I play.

Thinking about games in terms of overlapping concepts can help you improve your individual and team-based play and help you see a marked improvement in your ranking.

Zoning: Victory through Eminent Domain

One mistake novice players will often make in competitive games is assuming combat needs to be constant, that only through killing or attempting to kill someone can you accumulate advantages. More experienced players know this not to be true, but most aren't able to verbalize what it is they're doing that separates them from the lesser skilled kill chasers.

But that's why Audley is here to explain what that thing is...and it's an important term you'll hear often in League of Legends, but rarely hear it applied to First Person Shooters, even though it is used in almost an identical fashion. That term is Zoning.

Zoning is controlling an area of the map and forcing your opponents to react to you rather than their actual target. You'll see it often used effectively in laning phases of a LoL match. One player will have an advantage, but not enough of one to ensure a kill. What do they do? They put themselves between the enemy and the minions, forcing the enemy to either take damage to get farm, or back off and concede farm. You'll also see it in team fights of LoL where a tank or bruiser will stare menacingly at the enemy AD Carry to prevent them from joining a fight, or force them to deal with the tank first while the rest of the tank's team deals with the AD Carry's front line.

Zoning is an important part of high level League of Legends, but it's also an important part of Halo that goes completely overlooked, both by audience and even by some pro players.

So, “Audley,” you ask, “How the fuck do you zone someone in Halo?”

The most obvious answer to this, and often the only time you actually hear the term used in the context of shooters, is through grenades. Although Halo doesn't have Smokes or Flashbangs which are designed with that sole purpose in mind, its frag grenades are strong enough to force a player to reconsider moving in the direction they wanted. Seeing a grenade indicator in your path will force you to either stop or go somewhere else.

But zoning through grenades is elementary. Anyone can pick up the concept of “Oh, let me grenade down this hallway that guy's probably going to go down so I can beat him there or maybe damage him on his way out.”

The level of zoning most players don't consciously acknowledge, even if they do manage to pull it off from time to time, is more based on their positioning. Let's take an example from H2A, with recent application.

Warlord King of the Hill. Hill is at Blue, about 10 seconds in. The camera is on Contra for OpTic gaming. Where is he? Yellow flag, near Health pack. Ha, noob, quit statting kid! But wait... someone has spawned at Red. And they desperately want to get to Blue to clear out Contra's teammates from the hill. What are their options?

1. Push across top middle. WELP CONTRA'S GOT SHOTS IN THEIR SIDE.
2. Teleport. WELP IF THEY PORT HEALTH PORT, CONTRA'S GOT SHOTS IN THEIR BACK. IF THEY PORT RAMP PORT, THEY'RE RUNNING STRAIGHT INTO CONTRA AS THEY HEAD TO PORTAL.
3. Drop low and sneak across the bottom? STILL SHOTS IN THEIR SIDE FROM CONTRA.
4. Fight Contra first, then worry about the hill. CONTRA BACKS DOWN INTO HEALTH AND CAN POP BACK OUT IF THEY DECIDE TO KEEP PUSHING, OR STAY THERE HIDING AND WASTE THEIR TIME.

On Warlord King, on any of the side base hills, you almost always want to have a player in the base counter-clockwise from the hill. The reason for counter-clockwise rather than clockwise is just related to the angles, sightlines, and available cover for shooting toward the hill, but especially in the case of Blue hill, there's the added bonus that the hill rotates directly to you at the end of its countdown.

For Red and Blue hills, having a player hang near the Health pack of Green/Yellow respectively gives you a clear sightline on the hill, cover from anyone in the hill or top middle, angles on anyone leaving the base directly across from the hill (the most likely spawn), and puts you at an angle that forces them to turn AWAY from the hill in order to deal with you or dislodge you from your power position.

Back to the example, Contra managed to stay alive at Yellow all the way until the hill moved there, where he was finally taken out, but he'd managed to keep the enemy out of the hill and allow his team to gain time. Underdeveloped Halo IQs would just assume Contra was stat-whoring, when in fact his positioning is what was securing the hill.

Let's go back to the example and play out the scenario a different way. The player elects to try Ramp Portal, but Contra gets 2 shots into them. They back down into Red Nades. Between the options of “Throw a grenade and kill that motherfucker” or “Leave that person there.” what should Contra do?

If you said throw the grenade, you're failing to understand the importance of Zoning. You have a player that is more useful to your team alive than dead with their positioning there. At no shields, but alive, they aren't going to (usually) pop out and try to fight you or your team...and since they're alive, they're exerting spawn presence on the spawns around them, increasing the odds their teammates will spawn near them and reducing the probability any of Contra's teammates will spawn there. If you kill the player, that enormous negative spawn weight to keep your team from spawning there is removed AND you've added an additional negative weight to reduce the chances of the otherwise trapped player's teammates from spawning there, probably forcing them to instead spawn Green and be able to shoot at your person in the hill / be safe from your position at Yellow.

In King of the Hill and Oddball, leaving players alive at low shields in awful positions is a valuable tool. They are unlikely to challenge and are stuck dealing with the pressure they're exerting on spawns which will harm their team when you've left that player and use your 4v3 advantage to go kill the teammates.

Let's take another hypothetical. The hill is about to move to B on Lockdown (top BR). You're at BR2, and you've heard a call there are two people bottom middle. Your teammate JoeSchmoe227 is already back BR prepared to move up top for the hill. You have another teammate in Library, and the final teammate is stat-whoring at Snipe tower with Sword+Snipe. Where do you go?

There are two positions where you can go to effectively zone the opponents running across bottom mid from where you currently stand – you can drop to BR1 and just waste their time (but be on the same level as them, and thus risk death) or move to the Library bridge and try to shoot them as they come out from under glass toward BR1 (but give up the ability to cut them off from Open ramp if they ignore you and rush.) While both have their drawbacks, they have the enormous advantage of ensuring those players will not be reaching the hill full shields, allowing JoeSchmoe227 to clean them up and keep accruing hill time.

The final way you see Zoning used effectively in H2A is with regards to flag runs, especially on Shrine, but also on Warlord at times. The flag is across the halfway point after your teammate has run it through their hut, across your car, and into your rocks. But now the opponents have respawned in their rocks and rushed to try to get that clutch last second stop. They have two guys pushing your pillars and praying for a kill.

But you were clever and read this blog about zoning. You waited at your bonfire for them to get close, and as they pushed into the pillars, you leapt out into their BRs. They had to shoot you instead, or would die on your side with nothing done. Your flag carrier is free to run, while Tweedledee and Tweedledum are shooting some random idiot who was hiding bonfire with the intent to die. Flag captured. Game over. You won, because you escorted the final flag back and forced the interceptors to deal with you, rather than the objective. You zoned them. Good job, buddy.

There are far, far more applications of Zoning in competitive games than mentioned here, but I'm writing this solely to highlight the aspect of gameplay, because it doesn't get mentioned often, despite how enormous of a deal it is for setting up or even dynamically reacting to game situations. That's all for now.

Positioning: The Paramount of a Skillful Player

So, you guys remember a few weeks back when I wrote a big huge article about how Movement was the most important aspect of a competitive game?

Today I'm going to talk about something that stems from that: the most important skill of a competitive game. If Movement is the most important aspect, then it's a logical conclusion that Positioning is the most important skill.

(I'm going to go ahead and cut in on anyone who said "Manual dexterity" or "Awareness" are more important. I'll agree on the latter, as Positioning is actually part of awareness, more specifically, a part of situational awareness. But for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to talk about how movement around a map is the most important skill to a competitive game.)

It's fairly obvious based off my previous blog that I believe competitive games should encourage movement. Players should have goals that require them to leave their most powerful positions in order to gain advantages so they may get ahead and still be encouraged to get further ahead. Situations in which a player is encouraged to 'camp with the lead' are typically less competitive (although sometimes more tense) than situations where a player must press his advantage or lose it.

Now, it's time to apply that to the player's actions, rather than the design of the game. This is where Positioning comes into play. By positioning, of course, I mean the placement of a player (or his units) around a map at any given moment.

In StarCraft 2, this could refer to the bases to which you expand, as well as the location you decide to move your army. A unit positioned at a Xel'Naga Watchtower, for instance, is at an advantage over one attempting to move within the vision radius of said watchtower, as the former unit has vision much sooner of the latter and can react accordingly.

Currently, StarCraft 2's most consistent-placing player (with two First Place finishes in the Global StarCraft League in Korea) is oGsMC. MC is notorious for a heavy Sentry-based army composition he wields against his opponents. For those of you reading that play StarCraft 2, you may be thinking "But Sentries don't really deal that much damage." For those of you that don't play StarCraft 2, you're probably lost right now.

It's true, Sentries' attack is essentially tickling someone to death. They deal much, MUCH less damage than any other unit available to Protoss (save for a Probe, Observer, or Warp Prism, which aren't designed to engage in combat). However, the Sentry has one ability that isn't available to any other unit in the game: Force Field.

Force Fields create a (mostly) impassable block over terrain. (I say 'mostly' because certain units such as the Thor and Colossus can walk over the force field to pop it, and Roaches can move while burrowed under it.) For those of you still scratching your head as to why this is important...it's positioning.

Sentries allow you to completely determine the positioning of your opponent's army. If you're at a choke point, you can block it with a force field and only allow a few enemy units up at a time. If you're in a wide open area, but you have multiple sentries (like MC does), you can literally cut an enemy's forces in half by spamming force fields along the concave of his army. With his forces split, that means at least half his army is out of positioning, while yours is all at fighting force. If your opponent is trying to run with a weaker army, you can force field his escape path in order to ensure your army mops up and continues to push.

I personally believe Protoss are overpowered in StarCraft 2 almost entirely on the backs of the Sentry's Force Field ability (although Blink Stalkers are pretty B.S. as well). Those two abilities are the only two non-transport abilities in the entire game that can affect a unit's positioning.

To further support this case -- LiquidHuk (a Canadian/North American player) has recently made it to Code S (meaning, he's a Top 32 StarCraft 2 player in the world). Mechanically, his gameplay is much weaker than his opponents. However like oGsMC, he plays a more Sentry-focused build and positions his force fields well. Plenty of mechanical mistakes can be made up for by proper positioning.

This brings us to the next title I brought up in my blog about movement, League of Legends. I'll keep this one brief, but there are a few main important things regarding positioning in League of Legends.

The first is EXP Range. Minions that die have a certain range in which you must be in order to gain EXP from them (unless you were the one to actually kill the minion...but most skills don't have a long enough range to kill from outside EXP range). This means that during the laning phase, a player or team with a stronger lane can zone an enemy out from this range, while remaining in range to gain the experience from enemy creep that are dying. In essence, they are denying experience to their opponents, and gaining a level advantage.

It's a very basic skill to learn, but it's often only exhibited by skilled players. It is an example of pressing an advantage (a better lane composition) to gain a bigger advantage (a level advantage) by being encouraged to move. Sure, you could sit back and safely farm, but if you can move to threaten an enemy to force the enemy to back off and let you free farm without being able to farm themselves, WHY WOULDN'T YOU?

The next piece regarding positioning in League of Legends is simply the positioning of a team fight. I mentioned in a previous article (see: Composition) that you typically want to target down DPS players before Tanks. Can you see where I'm going with this?

If you said "I should run straight at a DPS player and try to attack him!"

No, shut up, you're wrong.

First: DPS positioning. You should almost always be near the back of your team, but not back far enough that you cannot deal damage, nor back too far that you can easily be flanked. You need to be near to your supports (who can protect you) and near your tank (so you can damage what he disables.)

Support positioning: You should be near your DPS Carries (so you can protect them) but as far away from the enemy as possible (supports often get focused before DPS because of their ability to protect so well.) The exceptions to this rule are the carries who also deal tons of damage or are hybrid tank (like my main, Alistar.)

Tank positioning: This is tricky, and really varies from tank to tank. However, tanks are generally tasked with initiation. This means they have two goals: 1) Be in a position to convince your opponents to attack you first. Generally, good players will "ignore the tank, focus on DPS." So sometimes, even if you run straight at opponents, if your team is nearby, they'll ignore you. 2) Be in a position to immediately threaten the enemy's DPS.

If you attempt to walk directly at the opponents they'll either 1) counter-initiate, and disable your entire team or 2) kite you, dealing long-range damage and retreating from your failed initiation. This generally means a tank's job is to flank in League of Legends (which makes the positioning for the rest of his team kind of tricky, unless they are simply baiting the opponents out of position for the tank to do so).

So tanks have the most complicated job of positioning themselves. How do you come from an angle from which the enemy DPS is exposed, while still being in position to prevent your unguarded allies from being initiated on? Tank players that can answer these questions to themselves are usually those that shine in their role. Anyone can play a tank, but few can play a tank extraordinarily well. And a large part of that comes from the player's positioning.

Finally, there is one Support champion that is generally regarded as hands-down the best support champion in the game, and "a complete counter to Area of Effect clusterfucks."

That champion is Janna. Her ability set allows her to disable enemies from a range (meaning she can be quite far away from enemies and allies and still disable to protect those in danger). It also allows her entire team to move faster, as well as her to move even faster than that. She can shield an ally who gets out of position in order to mitigate the damage they take. And finally, she has one ability that out-shines almost any other in the game.

It's called Monsoon. Once every two minutes, a Janna player can press his or her R button and in an area around them knock back any enemy champion. The direction the champion flies depends on where they were standing in regards to Janna. This can be used to knock away chasing enemies, split up entire enemy forces, get a pesky enemy off one of your squishy teammates, or knock an enemy back toward your towers and your team. It can single-handedly affect the positioning of all five enemy players. And all she has to do is be semi-kinda-sorta near you for you to be affected by it.

Janna is in a state right now of being banned in nearly all high-elo games, due in no small part to her ability to say FUCK YOU to the necessity of intelligent positioning, whether it be hers, or that of her opponents.

And now, on to Halo. Since I'm sure most of you reading this play Halo, and probably don't care about those first two games. But I include them, because they help to make a point (and you're probably subconsciously thinking about how to apply some of those examples up above to Halo, even if you don't realize you're doing it.)

Some of the important facets of positioning in Halo are pretty obvious, even at face value.

You want to move to places that have power weapons, because duh power weapons are powerful. If you don't understand that, you probably have nothing to gain from reading this blog.

You want to move side to side to attempt to avoid bullets in a fire fight. We call this strafing. While this is micromanagement of positioning, and more reliant on manual dexterity, it still can mitigate a lot of potential damage. A player with an excellent and unpredictable strafe will typically win the majority of their one on one battles against an opponent with a weaker strafe.

You want to move to a high ground. High ground offers some immediately obvious advantages. Most of you probably jumped straight to: you can see more of the map from up high, which means you have more potential targets to shoot at. (Caveat: this also means more people can see you, which means more potential assailants upon you. If they have a weapon with range to fight you...which, given DMR starts, means they DO have a weapon with range to fight you...then they will probably shoot you if you are a threat.)

The largest advantage of high ground is something that people use often without consciously realizing they're doing it. It's natural cover. If you're fighting someone on the ground below you, less of your body is showing (since you fire from your upper body, rather than your toes.) This means the opponent has less surface area upon which they can hit you. It also means that you can remove yourself from an opponent's vision by moving backwards.

If you are to do this, the opponent not only loses track of where you will assault from next (assuming you strafe just outside of their vision), but it also means they have only one way to regain vision of you easily: jump. Jumping makes them more visible, and forced into a predictable strafe. This will allow you to more easily land your shots upon them.

Because of high ground's positional advantage, a lot of (well-designed, competitive) maps will stray away from placing power weapons in high positions. This is a good thing, because it requires players to make positional trade-offs in order to gain their advantages.

Some of you are probably saying "Hey Audley, what about MLG's Snipe 3 on Guardian?" Well Point 1) It was a more balanced location than Snipe 1, since both teams could reach it with fairly even contestation, Point 2) it was a relic from the map Guardian was inspired by (Lockout), and Point 3) Snipe 3 is one of the most vulnerable locations on the map, due to its ability to catch grenades so well. Attempting to Snipe from up there was a death trap unless your opponents were already forced low. Stop arguing with me, Hypothetical Reader.

So if you can't get a power weapon from a high ground position, or said high ground position is too dangerous to fight from...what are you supposed to do?

First off, you have to put yourself in a position to get the power weapon in the first place. Generally, these are in positions where players will have to fight for them.

Remember when I was talking about League of Legends earlier? (No? You skipped it? Scroll back up and read that section, trust me.) Well, if you were to rush straight to a DPS Champion, which I said was a bad thing to do, you'd probably die to his entire team very quickly (focus fire hurts). The same goes for rushing straight to a power weapon (when it's placed well).

A player who mindlessly runs straight in to, say, Rocket spawn on Pit from MLG in Halo 3, or straight to Laser on Standoff in Halo 3, or straight to rockets on Boardwalk in Reach is generally going to die, quickly. These are in positions that either pass through choke points (Pit/Boardwalk Rockets) or are in areas of wide-opened sight lines (Standoff Laser) that all make it easy to kill someone who attempts to rush straight there.

I've mentioned the word "choke point" a couple of times now over the course of this article. The first was with regards to Force Fields from Sentries blocking choke points. Just now, I mentioned passing through choke points in order to reach a power weapon.
Choke points are dangerous places. They have very little room for lateral movement. You can either go forward, through them, or go back and leave them alone. If you decide to go through them, you are limiting your options for movement (and thusly your options for positioning).

If your opponents are attempting to haplessly advance through a choke point, there's one tool in your pocket that can halt that idea in its tracks. Well, hopefully you have at least one handy. You spawn with two of them. Say it with me now, class, Pistol cli--okay, I'm kidding. Grenades.

Grenades in the Halo games are often misinterpreted as tools for killing. In Reach, this is even more the case as the grenades feel very powerful. However, if you observe extremely high level play in the Halo games, you'll find that more often than not, grenades are not used as a weapon. They are used more as a Swiss Army Knife. It's not often you use a Swiss Army Knife to gut open a guy (although it is an option). You bust out the can-opener attachment and have yourself some Campbell's Soup. Eff yeah. Campbell's Soup.

Audley, what the devil are you talking about, Campbell's Soup? I thought you were talking about Grenades. While I admit the analogy was a bit odd, Grenades from skilled players are used most often to do a task without damage as a requisite consequence.

Sentry Force Fields can do it. Strong laning champions can do it in League of Legends. It's called Zoning.

Zoning is a way of forceably controlling your opponent's positioning. Typically, if players observe a threat to their well-being, they move away from it (or avoid passing into it.) So, for example, if you were attempting to rush through a choke point to get to a Rocket Launcher, and a grenade lands just barely ahead of you, you are given two options. You can suck it up and take the damage, leaving yourself very susceptible to a quick clean-up shot to kill you, or you can back off and let the grenade explode harmlessly.

Except even if the grenade doesn't deal damage, it still wasn't harmless. Like a Sentry force field that prevented you from pushing up the ramp into the enemy base, or like a Garen hiding in the bush to scare you out of experience range in lane in League of Legends, the grenade has zoned you out of your goal. You're delayed during the fuse time of the grenade, which means a few more seconds an enemy may move into position to battle you. Controlling your opponent's movements is one of the single greatest positioning-related skills you can begin to master.

If an opponent is running away, and you know where they are going to go, which is the better choice: attempting to shoot at them, while they're evading/sprinting/strafing away, or throwing a grenade just beyond where they are currently, forcing them to either die to the grenade, or stop and face certain death anyway?

The latter is the safer option. If you take the former choice, and the opponent manages to find cover or escape around a corner, you've missed out on a kill.

Another situation where a grenade can be effective without dealing any damage -- when enemies are attempting to reinforce their teammates. If their avenues to do so are limited, you can limit them further by placing a grenade along the path they would be most likely to take. If an overaggressive enemy over-extends onto your side in blatantly obvious bad positioning, throw a grenade where you believe his teammates will come from, THEN engage the stranded enemy. Chances are, that aggressive player is a Tank, and he's simply trying to get your attention long enough for his teammates to deal the damage to you. Cutting off those allies' reinforcement routes will also reduce the chances of his gambit being a success.

Halo: Combat Evolved gave grenades yet another positioning-related power that is not exercised nearly as prominently in the more recent titles. You could grenade weapons and even power-ups away from their spawn. This meant two things: 1) You could knock a risky weapon out of a risky position and 2) You could anticipate where a power-up would land from a grenade and knock it out of the generally expected position.

While we can still grenade weapons out of position in Reach, it's not nearly as effective as it was in the original Halo. It leaves me a little bit sad.

Another obvious positioning-related bit of information:
You want to move with your team.

This does not mean you want to bunch up together in a Flying V formation and run across the map. While humorous to see and be a part of, it's stupid and impractical.

More specificially, you want to move in a manner that allows you to help your team without being susceptible to splash damage.

Take Rat's Nest on Halo 3 for example. If you wanted to invade an opponent's Kitchen, it would be a poor idea to send four people across the bridge at the same time. A few grenades, a rocket, or a clip of Brute Shot would deal enough damage for someone to claim an Overkill. Instead, you'd want to try to engage from multiple entrances. Maybe one person across the bridge, one through the turret door, and two from the bottom floor (uh oh, no height advantage!) This would allow you all to help one another (the two coming from down low would likely have sightlines on anyone visible to the person coming from bridge, save for people directly above the bridge door, while the person coming from turret would be able to help the person coming across bridge with anyone actually at the bridge door).

A Sniper doesn't really want to move forward with his team, but he wants to put himself in a position that allows him to shoot what his team needs him to shoot the most. In Halo 3 (again with the Halo 3 references, Audley, what gives?) this was most prominent on Valhalla. If your team did not have hill control, the Sniper's biggest concern didn't need to be the enemies on the hill itself. Typically, a Waterfall Sniper needed to worry about the opponents at Turret (they controlled the choke point known as Water Cave). A Beach Sniper needed to worry about the opponents on the Pelican (they controlled the choke point known as Territory 4). Once the enemies possessing the ability to slay your choke point pushers were slain, you could begin to take a foothold back and potentially regain control of the hill. Teams that were unable to retake hill control were often unable to do so because of their Sniper's positioning.

In Halo Reach, one of the most common tactics on smaller maps outside of situations where it's not available, is to group up with Armor Lock. When you engage an enemy at a choke point, one player goes through first, getting the enemy's attention (and dealing a little damage). He or she then armor locks, and the next player (or two) come through, cleaning up the kills in the next room. This is an example of players moving as a team, as well as practicing the Tank / DPS roles (tank gets focus, gets enemy to burn ammo/grenades, then DPS come in to clean up).

On Hemorrhage in Halo Reach, attempting to assault an enemy Wraith is a daunting task. While a large part of that is the sheer power of the Wraith, one may find that an organized team is also protecting their Wraith with the very agile, anti-vehicular menace known as the Revenant. The Revenant moves in a manner to guard the Wraith from assaulting Warthogs, Ghosts, and enemy Revenants. And guess what? The Wraith stays alive for a long period of time, thanks to the Support (yes, capitalized) from the Revenant.

Being aware of your teammates' movements is a staple for positioning yourself. If you end up herp-a-derp zerging closely behind an ally, chances are the both of you will end up dead. If you both go for the same power weapon at the same time, that's less presence your team has on the map at any given time.

And that brings me to my next point, zone control.

At any given time, you want to have as much map presence as you possibly can, without leaving any of your team isolated.

The more holes you have in your cupboard, the more likely a mouse will feed. Likewise, the more holes you leave in your team's defenses, the more likely a player may sneak past and get behind your team.

An isolated teammate is a teammate you're asking to have killed. (Or if the case was self-isolation, the teammates is asking to be killed.) An uncontested zone is a zone you're asking to have taken.

We'll go back to Valhalla from Halo 3 again. That's right, gang, more Halo 3 references. If you did not control Pelican, your enemy took Pelican. And that meant they had a foothold from which to retake the hill. If you did not control Turret, your enemy could control turret. And that meant a foothold from which to retake the hill. Uncontested zones being given up led to loss of hill control.

On The Pit, in a 4v4 setting, this was a mess, and a large part of why I had a strong distaste for the map in Slayer variants. There were essentially four lanes across the map: Long Hall, Green Hall, Bridge/Sword, and OS. In 4v4, this meant you had two options: Leave every lane with an isolated player to control it or heavy push one lane and risk the enemy taking another lane.

In close games of Slayer, because of these choices, it typically led to the third option: "Sit around out of view for two or three minutes until the next power weapon spawns, then do what you can to get it." Although these games were tense when the score was near tied, it led to some of the most boring spectator experiences I've ever had from MLG.

In Halo Reach, this lesson is probably best taught on the Noble map, Tempest. I see two mistakes made rather often even in organized play on the map.

The first mistake is with regards to uncontested zones or isolated players. For some reason, players like to gravitate toward the Long Sword side of the map (and disregard the fact that the map is functionally the same on the opposite side). This often allows deviant players to slip past into the enemy's base via the river, or push down the sole defender of the side and continue advancing. Sorry Gandalf, but this time I SHALL PASS.

The second mistake I see made is with regards to the form of pushing I see employed upon the map.

I'm going to ask you readers to ponder for a moment, what is the strongest shape an army can take?

To anyone that said Flying V!!! No, shut up, you're wrong. Unless you mean a backwards V, then you're at least close. But that would be a Flying Lambda. I'll give you a hint: I mentioned the word earlier in the article. Up there in the StarCraft section.

Concave. You ideally want to be Concave around your opponents. It constricts opponents' movement options the most and allows you the most strength in your zoning and reinforcement.

Oftentimes, players try to push the enemy turret before attempting to secure their flanks. And this is where they are mistaken.

It's much easier to assist your allies who are pushing the enemy caves or man-cannon from your turret than it is to do so from the enemy turret. The sight lines are more open.

Additionally, it's much easier for your allies in those positions to assist YOU once you begin to push than it would have been if they were still around your mancannon or shotugn. If they are pushed up to semi-surround your opponents, then they are not only limiting your opponents' retreat options, but chances are they also have sight-lines into the side of the enemies, allowing a much easier team shot opportunity.

Once you have secured a concave around the perimeter of your opponents' base, it's much easier to collapse that perimeter where it's necessary in order to completely control your enemies.

Attempting to pressure your opponents in this manner also prevents those gaps through which those pesky aforementioned "mice" may sneak into your base, leaving your team from being forced into a situation of uncontested zones or isolated players, which happens much more often when teams attempt to push in a much more expanded Flying V that sometimes tends to happen on Tempest.

Once you've mastered moving with your team in a manner that prevents you from being caught alone, prevents your allies from being caught alone, allows you to secure power weapons, prevents your enemies from moving to reinforce, and prevents enemies from escaping, you've begun to master what it takes to position yourself properly to be a superb Halo player.

While intelligent positioning (and zoning) do not make you a master of the game, they can often serve as buffers from other weaknesses, such as poor accuracy or lack of communication. And that is why Positioning is (one of) the most important skill(s) in competitive gaming.

When you Master positioning, you not only control your own destiny, but often you control your opponent's.