Bonus content, what happen if it’s higher ranked player? I am only about D1~D2 in 1s last season so take it with some salt when I said “higher ranked” player means C1~GC1 player when plays other queue.

The basic requirement of a good air dribble, requires the following:

• opponent have full boost, if they don’t have boost they don’t have threat
• they got good soft first touch where ball is floaty, strong touch like the one shown in clip aren’t actually threatening and good player will improvise with other approach.
• they will stay “behind” and “below” the ball, behind means it serves to force a dunk/good air 50 if you can defend it, below means they can try to get reset, tip the ball different direction and air bump/demo you out of ball’s trajectory.

So to identify how to beat good air dribbler you always keeps taps of the following when defending:

• did he used boost a lot? before taking possession? good 1s player can hide this when taking pads, but if you know he has less than required boost to finish a air dribble, taking away their boost or bump before the setup is best. but remember don’t aerial challenge or dodge when bumping cause it takes really long to recover.
• tracking car/ball position and orient properly, give your self an angle to go up back wall or stay on the ground when you drive toward your near post to defend. matching ball’s momentum.
• if not ceiling shot or getting flip resets, they lost ability to speed up ball or change direction dramatically after 1.5s.
• if it’s ceiling shot/flip reset you would have to practice defending from air, back wall, or inside goal depending how and where they get it. (honestly against good player that’s a lot of guess work “after” they got the reset, it’s still doable but very situational. ) The reason being to have successful defend in 1s context, you need to 1. block the ball entering goal, 2. have enough boost left and good recovery, 3. regain possession of ball and boost denied opponent to keep going on offense. And you have to remember, they don’t have to shoot on goal, they can double tap as well. You would have to guess and account for all of that, including faking when defending air dribble shot with a reset. And you would have to do this pretty frequently going up ranks in both 1s and 2s.

Last but not least, practice doing air dribble yourself, it helps you to understand the weak spots during a setup you can challenge to force them maybe mess up a setup. how to identify that they already lost the ball or failed the shot. Then you’d get more comfortable at making your game plan when facing a good mechanical player. It’s very good practice even when losing, so don’t just rage quit when you see a too good for me shot. Cause in my perspective, that “shot” I referenced here happens like every match if you let them do the setup, it’s very regular, low quality, pretty easy to defend shot. And, usually free goal if you have full boost.