PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds Pro Guide

How do I become a Master at PUBG?

When playing Battle Royale games like PUBG there is a lot of variance in our performance as there are fewer ways to practice and improve. A lot of fights get started when we aren’t ready or when we need more loot to even try and take the fight. Practice makes perfect but we do have some tips for how to be proactively practicing. It isn’t easy to make it into the upper echelon of players, with eight ranks to power through and a whole lot of RNG on the way, reaching that Master/Grandmaster level is no small task. Let’s go over the best way to work towards increasing our rank regardless of what our goal is.

Sheer power of will.

The way a lot of the upper level games go are campfests and calculated rotations. Often time people won’t stray too far from the plane line as the circle often comes up around where the plane line itself is. If you want to go super far away you’ll end up being forced to rotate because of the Blue instead of being able to take the time and see your rotations. The topic of this section is the willpower it takes to consider your movement and decisions before taking action, which is something we all struggle with.

We drop in, get our loot, take the initial fights, and then just assume we need to go to the next area to get more loot. If we effectively communicate with our team on what our needs are then we can collaborate to share loot and be equally geared across the four of us.

If you need a scope, your teammate doesn’t need three of them for his two guns. A red dot will suffice but you’re looking for at the very least a 2x for any weapon to be viable for the mid game skirmishes. It can be helpful to have a few different sights for different fights but overall this tends to take away a few seconds of your response time and leads to less effectiveness in firefights.

The main thing we should be focused on in every zone is getting the best possible position we can for the next rotation and holding it until the circle changes again. Look for vantage points and hilly terrain when there is a lot of open ground to cover, when approaching cities or small outposts make sure there are no enemies in the area you’re trying to control before proceeding, and if you aren’t sure make sure to go slow and check your corners.

There are a lot of places to hide and a lot of windows to cover so there should always be caution when moving in to take an area and comfort that comes out of gaining control of that area. Hold sight lines and track enemies and always talk about what you’re thinking about the next move should be and calling out where enemies are according to the compass and natural callouts so your teammates know exactly where to look.

With all of this in mind never be afraid of the Blue, there is always a window of time we can spend in it without it really threatening our lives. Use it to create room between you and whoever is holding you back from where you’re trying to go. When the circle is closing we should already have begun rotating to the safe zone, but the first three or so Blues are nothing compared to the end Blues, if you need that extra second to loot then take it or if you can’t find a vehicle right off the bat don’t panic, you will be able to make it on foot even some of the longest distances.

What should my inventory look like game to game?

Yes, we should be well equipped to use every and any gun we find for as long as we need to use it for, there are way better loadouts that we should try and find before we really begin fighting though and they are pretty obvious. Assault Rifles and Snipers are going to be able to keep us in short, mid range, and long range fights throughout the entire game so prioritizing those is a given. Some things are a little less obvious though.

Grenades and smokes are essential for the mid and end game phases, being able to use grenades to clear buildings and trenches where enemies may lie in wait will give us a little advantage moving forward, and secure a few extra points towards our rank. Smokes are able to be used to help create clear pathways to move through when we are at a disadvantageous position coming into the next circle. Being able to clear that path is the difference between taking first place in a game and getting gunned down in the street in 4th place.

There is no reason really to carry a tertiary weapon as the ammo will just take up room in our inventory and when we are looking to challenge the best of the best we are going to lose the Pistol vs AK fight every single time. Don’t think of it as practice gone to waste, think of it as a stepping stone we crossed to get to the next. Don’t carry Pistols in Diamond.

Instead carry the extra meds and grenades that you find, these have many more use cases and are just simply better than the extra 9mm rounds that just bore a hole in your backpack. In many cases we don’t think of them as items but Vehicles are a huge part of the game whether we have very far to rotate or may not move at all. We should never travel 4 to a car and while we will expand on that more later, make sure that  you and your team have 2 or 3 vehicles between you. Placement points exist and some strategies revolve around just that.

Whether it be the first thing you look for or the last those vehicles can and will save your life when you have to use them. They make for a quicker rotational method and offer some minor defenses with their high speed and their own Health. It can be dangerous to ride around in a car about to go up in smoke, but the bullets it takes for you are worth all of its weight in chicken dinners. If we were just merely running on foot we would have taken those same bullets to the body.

At the higher levels of competitive PUBG there is noticeably less emphasis on armor, it is a very important part of any kit at any level but so much happens in an Elite rank match that it often isn’t the first thing on anybody's mind come the late game.

Hitting your shots does. We take so many bullets throughout a game that armor and helmets get broken left and right, if we can hit our own shots it will dissuade enemies from continuing the fight. Focus on keeping your health topped off and draining your targets own stock of healing items, getting the kills is more reliable than eating a few extra bullets.

Higher level strategies.

Competitive PUBG is by and large a Squad focused setup. So most of these strategies will be more aligned with Squad matches but they can also translate to Solos and Duos really well. So take all of this with a grain of salt and utilize it to the best of your abilities if you prefer solo runs.There are a lot of different strategies and styles of play that we can use, it becomes more of a preference than an optimal way to play.

We mentioned it before but being the best means winning the most, and the only real way to ensure that is to survive until the end. Because of this, higher ranking matches tend to emulate the pro scene where after the initial drop, there are often still full lobbies 15-20 minutes into the game, or some teams lose only 1 or two players and still look for ways to come out ahead of the rest of the teams in the game.

This isn’t COD, camp away Scout Master. Find a corner in the safe zone and hold it down until you need to find a new corner. When you’re one of the teams that has to rotate in order to get to the zone in time, find a hill and wait for the best opportunity to push out of it.

Every game is going to be different because of how the plane and zone work, we will have to move some games and others we will want to get kitted and sit in a building waiting for someone to approach. 

While there are a few different maps to play on the strategies all remain relatively the same, look for opportunity only when you have to and always finish off the kill lest someone else steal it away from you. Use grenades to clear out rooms and finish kills without wasting ammo when able. Grenades are powerful and can blow up vehicles as well, they are one of the most overlooked tools in the game in the earlier ranks of PUBG. Along with Vehicles that we can use as mobile cover or faster rotations, the importance of these cannot be understated.

Of course, they counter one another as well, grenades can destroy vehicles and vehicles can move out of the way of grenades rather quickly. Attempting to disable enemy vehicles in the early and mid game can help you gain positioning on them in the late game when they are trying to rotate to the zone. When it comes to playing we should have a normal group of people we play with, designate an In Game Leader and Point Man/Entry Fragger to help with coordination in game. It makes it easier to do something when you know exactly what it is you’re supposed to do.

Not everyone is made out to be an IGL but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the people who are, are perfectly suited for the job. Don’t flame your IGL for making a bad call, talk to them after the game about thow there was a better play to be made and that’s just how we grow as a squad and separate ourselves from the rest of the pack.

Entry Fraggers main goal is not to simply just die, it is more to gain information at the risk of your life, their job mainly comes into play in the final 5 squads when you dearly need to know where they are at and if you can’t find one or two squad’s positions than it is time for your EF to swing wide left and try to draw some attention from them 

Seperating to control the safe zone outskirts is another way to find some extra picks onto late rotators and set up a safe area for teammates to move between if need be. Two people are plenty to kill an entire squad if the right conditions are met, and at the end of the game there is a good chance that the 3 squads vying for first are only made up of 2 people each. Always look for opportunities where spreading yourselves thin is a better strat than moving as a unit, and remember that sometimes it is better to just stick together until you get a better handle on the current situation.

Strategy in BR games is a preference, there are plenty of other ways to play but this system is proven and strong. If you and your buddies are more gung ho and want to take every fight you possibly can, there’s no reason for you not to. If it isn’t working though, there's nothing wrong with taking a tip from our guides and running with some more structure.

Practice makes perfect.

The only real way to practice in PUBG is playing unranked matches, but playing the game isn’t the only way to improve at it. You can always force you and your teammates to play with certain restrictions to help improve one or two aspects of your overall game in normals and that will work and warm everyone up for the next time they face that scenario. This is one of the best ways to practice in fact, but lets go over some other ways we should be working on our gameplay.

Studying how other people that are better than us play is a great way to shore up our own mistakes and increase our ability to play better. We can do this by watching streamers and pro matches, if they really are the best of the best than we would simply be able to learn more about how we should play  There are a few other perks to watching pro players but they often answer questions on stream and the analysts will dissect a lot of what happens in the pro match making it easier for us to take in and understand.

This of course is going to be different levels of helpful depending on the person, try and take in as much as you can but sometimes it really isn’t the same as getting into a game and trying to improve your abilities.

For the most part taking breaks is always a good idea, keep a level head and don’t play mad, it doesn’t help a majority of people and in Squad matches it will rub off on your teammates and make everyone falter where they normally wouldn't. This is exactly when those streams and VODs are good to turn to, if we are still trying to keep our head in the game but we are a little upset about how our recent games have gone, switch on a good stream or look at YouTube for some tournament VODs and take the time to refresh your ideas on the game.

Thank you Player Unknown.

Player Unknown BattleGrounds is one of the first of the Battle Royales, even though the genre has been dominated by Fortnite and Apex Legends, PUBG has endured and has made waves all over the Eastern Countries, it still holds a place here in the West. If the gunplay is what draws you in, or the realistic art and graphics, go ahead and keep playing PUBG. This is the last PUBG guide and we wish you all be blessed by the Player Unknown, and unlimited Chicken Dinners