Rocket League: How To Do Air Dribbling

What is Air Dribbling in Rocket Legaue? An air dribble is a fairly advanced move where you touch the ball many times with your car to ‘carry’ the ball across the pitch. It can also give you the edge in ranked play. It can make the ball really unpredictable and hard for your opponents to defend against your shot. Because you keep touching the ball in the air, it’s very hard for a defender to predict the flight path- it keeps changing. Air dribbles are useful in all gamemodes, and we think they’re the most useful in 1v1 because you need a fair amount of space, especially when you’re first beginning, to get the ball in the air and start dribbling.

It is basically like normal dribbling on the ground- hence the name, but a double/triple touch aerial. So it’s not easy to learn. You may have been trying so hard to work on your wall to air and ground to air dribble skills using trainers but still having a lot of trouble. No worries, check out below tips you will get better!

Added to the fact that you can take the ball to the very top corner, this technique is like holding a toy above a baby’s head and laughing as it cries. First you should learn how to setup air dribble opportunities in game. There are four ways to start an air dribble. The below first three steps are the prerequisite abilities you will need to start one.

1. Chipping the ball

When the ball is rolling towards you on the ground, you can drive into it without jumping to get the ball to jump upwards. If you are travelling fast, the ball will go very high up and quite far forward.

2. Bounce dribbling

To do it, chip the ball up very slightly, as we covered in the previous section. Boost into the ball again just after it bounces. You can keep repeating this. The timing is quite hard to get down at first, and it’s much easier with a car with a tall hitbox like the Octane. It’s useful for useful for powerhits and starting air dribbles.

3. Balance dribbling

Balance dribbling is useful because you can juke your opponent with it. Once you get the ball onto your roof, practice jumping or flipping in any direction to see the effect it has on the ball. The only way to get consistently good at balancing the ball on your car is to practice it in freeplay. Experiment with altering the throttle amount (if you’re on a controller) and feathering the boost (tapping it repeatedly instead of holding it) to balance it.

4. Wall hits

To practice wallhits just go into freeplay and hit the ball up the wall. Then drive up the wall and hit it. For harder hits try and be lower down than the ball when you hit it. Practice them a lot until you can hit the ball from the wall every time (accuracy is less important for if you want to do an air dribble with it)

5. Starting an air dribble

The easiest way is using bounce dribbling. Do the pop we covered earlier where you jump under the ball when it’s just bounced. Now, as you pull the nose of your car up, instantly start boosting. Aim your car for the bottom of the ball and fly at it. Practice doing this- we’ll cover the actual dribble in the next section.

6. Air control

Air control is a must have, if you have no air control you’re not ready for this skill. Learning to control your air dribbles is mostly practice and fine car control. Once you have a decent height, use very little boost. Remember that a little tap of boost can send you quite a distance (in proportion, of course). When you want to carry the ball forwards, be slightly behind and under the ball. When you are high enough, you can guide the ball in different directions, but remember, if you stop touching the bottom of the ball, gravity will take hold, so only do it at the end of your dribble. Also, make sure your car is travelling roughly the same speed as the ball. This is essential if you want full control of the ball.

7. Fancy stuff

Once you’ve mastered the basic air dribble, whether from any start or just one, it’s time to get fancy. Something that isn’t fancy but can catch your opponent off guard is to begin an air dribble, but before your second jump runs out, do a front flip for a powerful hit towards goal. If your opponent is expecting an air dribble, they will be stranded as the ball curves gracefully towards their goal with the finesse of a dead swallow coming out of a catapult.

There are some differences when you do air dribbling on ground and in on floor, so players distinguish air dribbling with two types: Ground Air Dribbling and Wall to Air dribbling.

1. Wait for a high enough bounce. You can’t just air dribble from the ground anytime.

2. Right after the ball touches the ground and starts to bounce back up, jump and go right underneath the ball.

3. Rotate your car and air roll if necessary to hit the ball and keep it off the ground. Hit toward your desired target.

Getting that 30 degrees angle when hitting the ball is KEY to keeping the ball up in the air and controlling the ball. Without mastering it, you are only able to keep the ball in the air for a small period of time and can only hit it to a general location.

1. Hit the ball flat into the wall. Flat means that the ball does not bounce whatsoever.

2. After doing so, drive onto the wall underneath the ball in a position that you are able to press the jump button to hit the ball and in a comfortable position.

3. Press the jump button once to hit the ball.

4. Air roll your car so that you are upright and your nose/front of your car is facing the ball.

5. Hit the ball and keep it off the ground for as much as possible to your desired target.