How to Play Duo With Your Booster

This is for anyone who has booked a duo or self-play order and is about to sit in a lobby with a stranger who is better at the game than they are. Nobody explains the etiquette of that, so it gets learned badly over the first three matches. Here is how the session goes when it goes well, across every title we run.

What a duo order is, and what it is not

In a duo or self-play order you keep your own account and a booster plays alongside you until the target is reached. Your login never changes hands, your device and location never move, and every game on your match history is a game you were in. That is the appeal, and it comes with a condition: the order only progresses while you are both online, so it runs at the speed of two calendars rather than one.

What it is not is a coaching session with a boost attached, unless you ask for that. A booster given no instructions will play to win and say very little, because that is the correct default for somebody who was hired to reach a target. If you want the session to teach you something, that is a thing you request at the start. It is not rudeness that you did not get it, it is that nobody was told.

Before the session

Voice or text, decided in advance

Sort this out before the first queue rather than during it. Voice is faster and carries more information, and a booster calling a rotation in real time is worth a great deal more than the same call typed two seconds late. It is also not compulsory. Plenty of players prefer text, and plenty of boosters work perfectly well in text, particularly in games where the pace allows it. What does not work is discovering in game one that you assumed different things.

Keep the conversation on the platform chat. It is where the order lives, where support can see it if something goes wrong, and where a disagreement about what was agreed has an actual record. A booster asking you to move to a private channel is breaking our rules, and we would rather hear that from you than find out later.

Roles, heroes and champions

Say what you play before the session, honestly. Not what you want to play, what you are actually competent on. A duo where you are on a character you have eleven games on is a duo that is carrying a passenger, and the booster will feel it within two matches even if they are too polite to say so.

Expect the booster to ask for a role or a pick that suits the situation rather than your preference. In most team games the fastest duo is the one where the stronger player takes the position with the most influence, and that is frequently the position you wanted. Giving it up for the length of the order is usually the single largest thing you can do to make the order finish.

What carry actually means

It means the booster wins the game around you. It does not mean you can play badly without consequence. In every team game, a duo has to hold a lane, a site, a role or a position, and a player who is deleted early takes the carry with them. Your job is not to be brilliant, it is to be alive, to be where you said you would be, and to not hand the enemy free momentum.

During the session

• Follow the calls, ask afterwards. If your booster says go, go. The explanation is worth having, and the moment to have it is between rounds rather than while the window is closing.

• Say when you do not understand. A confused teammate who follows badly is worse than one who says so. Two words in the moment fix it.

• Do not talk to the enemy. Nothing said in all-chat improves your position, and the fastest route to a report attached to something visible is an argument with the player you just beat.

• Keep the tilt off the microphone. Losing streaks happen within an order and they are normal. A player who stops queueing after two losses has stopped the order.

• Do not backseat the booster. You are allowed to disagree and you are allowed to ask. What does not work is overriding calls in a game you hired somebody to win.

• Take the breaks. Long sessions decay. A short break between blocks of matches costs less time than the games you lose while tired.

Booster tip: in the first match, name the two habits you want called out and ask to be told in the moment rather than afterwards. Being corrected mid-match is uncomfortable for about ten minutes and then it is the most useful thing in the session. A booster who was told nothing stays silent and you finish the order exactly as good as you started it.

What a booster will and will not do

What they will do: play the position that gets the order finished, make the calls, adapt to what you can actually execute, and tell you honestly when a target is going to take longer than either of you hoped. If you ask, they will explain the reasoning behind a decision, which is the part worth having, and they will do it in terms you can use next week.

What they will not do: play on an account that is not the one the order covers, take the conversation off the platform, stream or record the session without you agreeing to it, or promise you a completion date they cannot control. They will also not coach you through a session they were not told was a coaching session, so ask at the start. And they will not spend anything on your account or your club, in any game, for any reason.

After the session

Spend five minutes on the review while the games are still fresh. Ask for the two things that cost the most, not a general impression, because a general impression is forgettable and two specific habits are not. If your booster mentioned something mid-match that landed, write it down before the evening blurs.

If the order is continuing across several sessions, agree the next block before you leave. Rebooking the same booster is worth more than most people expect: somebody who already knows what you can execute skips the first two matches of recalibration every time. Ask support to hold the same booster for the next session rather than taking whoever is next in the queue.

Leaving a review helps the next customer choose, and it helps us see which boosters are good at the duo format specifically, which is a different skill from being highly ranked.

When to switch to piloted

Sometimes duo is the wrong tool and the honest thing is to say so mid-order. The signs are consistent. Your schedules are not overlapping enough to make progress and the target has a deadline. The session has become an evening you dread rather than one you look forward to. Or the game has a rank band or party restriction that stops the two of you queueing together at the tier you are heading for, which is common in MOBAs and tactical shooters near the top of the ladder.

Switching is a conversation with support rather than a cancellation. The existing order is adjusted, which keeps the progress already made and your place in the queue, and a change in scope arrives as something you approve rather than as a silent edit. It is much simpler before a booster has signed in than after, so raise it when you first start thinking about it rather than at the end of a frustrating week.

Where to go next

What happens on an order where somebody does sign in is written out honestly on the safety page. Common questions about how orders run are on the FAQ, and if you want a duo arranged around an awkward schedule, support will tell you whether it is workable before you book.