How to Climb Ranks in 2XKO

We've combined Apsirant and Iron into one section because the tips will essentially be the same.

If you've been placed here, you're likely brand new to fighting games — welcome to an awesome community.

Fighting games are incredibly gratifying because you can often transfer skills between games and a lot of it takes place within grassroots. Try to go to a local someday!

To climb out of Aspirant and Iron in 2XKO, the main theme is being intentional with the fundamentals.

What do we mean by this?

To start, you'll have an advantage here if you can move, jump, attack, and block when you mean to.

Ultimately, you're going to want to train your hands to do what your brain wants to do. Your decisions won't be the best early on, but it's better to do the wrong thing intentionally than to do the right thing by accident at this point.

Don't let anyone let you feel bad for using Pulse if you want to, you can find players using it all the way up to Platinum and even Diamond just fine.

This will allow you to get familiar with the flow of battle from a macro standpoint before you worry about the micro of consistently pulling of combos later on. Pulse will also help you understand what general combo flows look like for your character.

If you don't like using Pulse, feel free to skip it, of course.

Once you reach Bronze, you're likely still working on consistently moving your character and inputting the moves you want, but you've certainly gotten better.

At this level, it's all about remembering to use your resources like the Super meter and Break. Your timing for these won't be optimal, but a good number of players are still forgetting to use them at all.

Lastly, you're likely to understand a general game plan for at least one of your characters. You might not know or use all of their moves, but you can do certain moves and simple sequences on command.

At Silver, players begin to use Assists more consistently. It might not always be on cooldown, the right situation, or lead to a follow-up, but the intention is starting to form.

You'll also see a better recognition of Health bars, with players swapping in their second character so their point character can stay alive and heal up.

Players will typically be better with one character over another (if they're playing solo) but they'll be making use of Double Down Supers.

Simply knowing to block highs and lows will be a pretty big advantage here, defense is rare and can usually frustrate opponents.

When you reach Gold, players are beginning to understand what the characters you don't play as want to do (if you need help with this, check out our Champion Guides where we cover how to play against every character).

Fundamental bread-and-butter combos are becoming more common, and players likely know situations in which to apply each Super.

The major thing here is that Assist usage on cooldown is even more present, and you'll see some players start to form strategies around 2X Assist.

Things begin to heat up at Platinum, and you'll start to see some players with some pretty advanced combos — they'll usually just lack consistency in pulling it off, especially in tense situations.

In general, a theme that separates Platinum from Diamond is composure, so you can often come back from rounds and health deficits. Never give up!

At this point, players are becoming pretty competent with both of their characters, you might see adaptations with the point character being swapped out before the round begins.

Speaking of both characters, players are making the jump to use assist characters to extend combos and block strings.

To separate yourself from the pack, improve your counterplay options like anti-airs, Push Block, and Parry against obvious attacks.

Upon reaching Diamond, you'll see a noticeable jump in player completeness, specifically at Diamond 3.

At this point, players understand common block strings and high/low mixups, especially into overheads.

Parries become even more common, you can see them used against Supers and Projectiles.

Combo length really starts to extend, and you'll see more conversions out of niche situations. While the common BnBs are still prevalent, you'll start to see some player originality shine at times.

Freestyle begins to enter the fray as a Fuse choice but you'll still see 2X Assist and Double Down.

At Master, players will have an understanding of matchup-specifics and make mid-match adaptations against players they're facing.

Compared to Diamond and below, combo damage makes a jump and drops become much rarer.

Outside of execution, you'll see an evolution of macro, with mind games, different round openings, and fake pressure.

While you'll still see every champion, the Meta Tier List choices are becoming more standard.

Grandmaster is where it all really comes together: execution, adaptability, fundamentals...the works.

These are players that are likely competeing at their weeklies, following tournaments, and keeping up with the latest tech in Discord and X.

You'll really have to keep your blade sharp if you want to climb, as the players you're facing are often the ones developing and advancing the limits of characters.

Be ready for constant rock-paper-scissors within rounds and have a repertoire of optimized combos for different situations, such as from midscreen, at the corner, off of an anti-air or assist, and so on.