Find out how to scale until the top of FUT Divisions.
Scaling the FUT Divisions: The Struggle is Real
One of the biggest mountains to climb in FUT every year is conquering the divisions, and in particular, winning division 1. Millions of FUT players try constantly not just to win through the divisions, but only a very skilled few have the ability to conquer all.
For me personally, I have managed to get to the holy land which is division 1 in every past year since I started playing FUT in FIFA 14. However, the sheer quality of players in this league combined with the incredibly tough benchmark of 23 points out of a possibly 30 has stopped me every time. In fact, staying in division 1 is hard enough as it is.
This year in FIFA I have yet again strived to make it to the top. Living in Australia, players here heavily favour divisions in this region as it is difficult to find a single match or cup match at any given time simply because there is no one else playing them. Hence, if you want to relax with a bit of FUT, divisions is the way to go.
I started my divisions journey way before release day, setting myself an aim of a saving for a simple yet over-powered League 1/Brazil hybrid before release day (include link here). I decided to stick with the tried and tested methods for building teams from previous FIFAs: 41212, pace, skills and over-powered players. Having achieved this goal with money in the bank, I was ready to roll. Despite the difficulties everyone faced at the start with servers constantly dropping people from games and awarding them undeserved losses, I managed to battle through divisions 10-5 with relative ease, winning all but one of the possible trophies.
Division 4 is when it started to get tough. I soon realised that my starter team simply didn’t have the quality to keep up with strong opponent using strong teams. Having managed to barely hold, I shook things up, moving away from the wide formation to a narrow one. I was starting to see that FUT 16 favoured a packed midfield where it was easy to pass through the middle and press with a compact team. I had moderate success with 4231 and 4321 but these formations lacked a CDM who is always so important for me and my style of play: someone who can stop attacks before they become threatening and can start my own attacks to.
Eventually I found that 41212-2 with two central midfielders was the formation for me and the ability to press with so many midfielders in the middle and pass quickly and easily was the key to my success. It wasn’t long before I had mastered division 4 and entered division 3.
However, division 3 is where I hit something of a brick wall. All of a sudden I was losing match after match, struggling to get the ball out of my half and not being able to find the space to attack. Quite quickly 0-3 and 1-5 results became too common as my goal difference and win-draw-loss record took an absolute battering. It wasn’t long before I was demoted to division 4. However, the step down in quality of opponents was so great that it wasn’t difficult to bounce back to division 3. This cycle continued for some time but in order to keep playing FUT I had no choice as it was so tough to be paired in other match formats.
So I had a dilemma on my hands. I was stuck between division 4, which wasn’t too much of a challenge, and division 3, where the opponents where simply too good. To find out why this was the case, I did some research. As it turns out, you may be paired with players in a slightly higher or lower division than you if a player in the same division cannot be found. IN addition to this, a division 3 player can be matched up against player as high as division 1 or players just demoted from division 1 and trying to make their way back. A scary prospect for sure.
However, now it is a different story. I’m currently in division three with a record of 2-2-0 and feeling pretty good about my chances of holding or even gaining promotion. What changed? Well it was a combination of things.
Firstly, practice. As I used my teams and formations more often, I was able to recognise where the runs came and the best ways to attack. That being said, my finishing ability still need work.
Secondly was a change of squad. I became bogged down with using the same squad for too long as it had some of my favourite players in real life but simply couldn’t do enough to compete with division three players. It is important to know than in FUT it usually pays to listen to your head over your heart, be it in the transfer market or when through on goal, the logical decision is often the best.
Lastly, was the FIFA patch. Recently, EA released their fifth patch for the newest game, which brought with it important changes including better through balls, better passing and lower strictness in awarding penalties (although penalties are probably too difficult to get now). However, one important change for me was the reduction in pressure which you could place while defending which was a problem I faced all too often. Many players were able to abuse high-pressure, ultra-attacking football to strangle their opposition and always win the ball high up the pitch with little impact on player fitness. However, with the latest patch I am able to pass it around and find gaps more easily as high-pressure has been nerfed.
So what can be taken out of this? Firstly, never give up. I suppose this applies with anything in life but especially in a game which can be as infuriating and frustrating as FIFA, keeping calm will do you a lot better than a broken controller.
Don’t be afraid to shake things up sometimes. It is no good getting into a rut and not doing anything to get out of it as you will be stuck there forever. Also, trying new teams on FIFA gives you the opportunity to uncover hidden gems you would never have expected to be so good.
Finally, learn the game. Learn what mechanics of the game work better, which do not and try and angle your game-play as such. For example, FIFA 14 was a game which heavily favoured heading in order to score goals and hence it was a good attacking strategy. However, in FIFA 16, heading is not as preferable as it has a lower success rate. Possession football is perhaps a better approach if executed with patience and timing.
The Author: Neel Parmar
Neel grew up playing various video games of all genres, but in the past few years has grown an increasing passion for FIFA in particular.
With his extensive knowledge of the ever popular FUT game-mode, he naturally wants to share it with the FIFA community.
Despite pursuing a degree in science, he always had a penchant for writing and has had letters to editors published in popular magazines as well as contributing to FIFA based websites.
Neel is keenly interested in all things football related, be it on the real or virtual pitch, and is an avid Barcelona fan.