To be honest, as far as defense goes, I believe that awareness is key. Often times, we mention the word &quot;awareness&quot; and people immediately assume this is a natural born talent and can&#039;t be taught. To an extent, that is true. Some people (like chaindude for example) are freakishly aware of everything that goes on around them; even behind them, without looking! To that extent, it can&#039;t be learned (and to cheaters, no wallhack gives you the ability to see whats behind you without looking!).<br /><br />Awareness a lot of the time comes with practice and learning the dynamics of the map, the spawn points (so you can expect some help from a respawning teammate)weapon locations (the faster you get to a weapon, the faster you can get back to playing defense) and tendencies of runners. As Ladna mentioned, people immediately think being a dominant flag-runner is scoring everytime they touch the flag. This is not true, in fact, they will have more failed attempts than successful--that&#039;s just the way it goes. So the point I&#039;m making is that even the best of the best are predictable at times, watch them, analyze their routes, directions to the flag and what-not. <br /><br />Immediately, people assume a great defender has the best aim in the world and in some instances, that is true. But I would say roughly 80% of the time, that isn&#039;t the case. The best defenders are aware of their surroundings, experienced doom players and great at [b]positioning[/b]. Sometimes setting your opponent up to move in ways that makes him more open and puts him right in front of you is just as good. This isn&#039;t done with pure aim, it&#039;s done with movement and dodging. If you&#039;re able to cover yourself (even if you take a shot and don&#039;t die, this is just as good in some instances) or dodge a shot, you have the whole time while they&#039;re reloading to get a good shot off. So maneuvering around in a way that puts your opponent right in front of you as opposed to dodging hard, completely turning around and trying to make a great shot is usually a better route. Think of it as what you can do to make aiming as easy as possible for you, not how many shots you can accurately place everytime (though you do want to be accurate). That being said, you still have to have good aim and timing to accomplish this and it is this reason why rusty players can still play at high levels even when they&#039;re nowhere near as dominant in the aim department--because they know how to position themselves well and setup the enemies to make shots easier for them.&nbsp; <br /><br />As a defender, you have the advantage because flag runners and back-up runners are trying to get in and out as fast as possible. Delaying this gives your offense on the other side more time to take over on their end and gives your mid D and respawning teammates more time to help you, thus lowering the opponents chances of successfully capturing a flag. It&#039;s vital though that you do your best to frag incoming runners and maintain base stability on your own so your mid can also concentrate on backing-up a runner when the opportunity presents itself.<br /><br />I&#039;m posting this because it&#039;s what I&#039;ve learned over the last 7 years of DooM. Some of it isn&#039;t 100% accurate but it is a good guideline to understand some of the basic fundamentals of doom, not just CTF. You&#039;d assume that this is something people at this level shouldn&#039;t have a problem with, but unless you&#039;re JKist3 and have an IQ of 610, you&#039;re going to break fundamentals occasionally. Sometimes being reminded of them sheds some light on what problems you could be having with your individual game. If this helps a few players, then good. If not, welp, Rus...dicks.&nbsp; 