High Pressure or Low Pressure? What’s Best For FUT 15?

The debate on this has been going on for a while in my circles.  Before we go into breaking them both down lets look at some hard facts about FIFA Ultimate Team 15.

• Pace up front (attackers) is a huge factor
• One on one defense is completely broken in open spaces cause of speed dribbling
• Lobbed thru balls are abused by 80% – 90% of players online
• Most goals are scored on counter attacks

These are the facts as of today. I wish EA would patch the game and fix some of these issues and they might. In my opinion I feel like the game changes a bit every couple weeks. For example like I said in my handicapping article about 3 weeks ago, It felt like handicapping was completely turned off in FUT and In Forms were performing as they should. Only a week later EA did some “server maintenance” again, and all of a sudden handicapping is back on to full effect. Now they will never ever tell you that is the case, but my Pele (95 pace) and my 2nd IF Neymar (93 pace) can’t seem to get much faster than a light jog now. I can sit here and name a million examples of how I know handicapping exists but I won’t waste your time, just take my word for it. So, back to the issue. With all the bugs or traits associated with FIFA Ultimate Team, should you set your team up to play high pressure defense or low pressure defense?

Defense drives me crazy. I obsess about it. I can win a game 4 – 2 and I’ll still be pissed about one or both of the goals I conceded and try to figure out how I can prevent conceding similar goals.  I’ve tried tweaking my custom settings over a dozen different ways and noticed what effects that may have in my game play.

When I play I don’t usually go to custom settings within the first 10 (game) mins by pausing the action and setting the settings depending on my opponents squad and playing style.  If he’s pressing high I make sure a lot of my attackers are instructed to get in behind and in custom settings I turn speed up to between 65 – 80 and build up passing to somewhere between 45 – 65 for a range of mixed passes (long & short).

Chance creation passing can vary with my squads. If most of my midfielders are the attacking type, I like to set the passing here somewhere in the 65 – 75 range (risky). This will make your CMs and CAMs take more chances and be more active making different types of runs forward. If my squad has more defensive minded midfielders then I’ll usually keep this setting low (below 35) and keep it safe. This will insure my CDMs don’t go making crazy runs forward and focus more on holding down the fort.

Low Pressure

This was my go to setting for most of my important DIV 1 (or 2) games.  I felt like a pressure setting between 16 – 27 was good enough to combat the lobbed thru ball.  Also if you’re going to use low pressure settings you should make sure your aggression settings are below 50. In all honesty the lobbed thru ball seems to be my defense’s biggest weakness and it’s probably because it’s just way too OP and abused in FUT. I would drop the pressure down if I noticed my opponent has pace up front and was using a lobbed thru ball within the first 2 or 3 plays of the match. It seems to work well but it also leads to very little opportunities for counter attacks. With low pressure  defense you end up winning the ball deep in your half and may have to build up your attacks with more than just a couple passes. The truth is this is still no guarantee that you won’t get scored on by a lobbed thru ball. There are plenty of times I almost broke my controller that will attest to that.

High Pressure

I never used to play high pressure games for the simple fact that the lobbed thru ball would kick high pressures ass every time. That has changed recently. Again I don’t know when EA patched this but I have been running high pressure defense for the last two weeks and I seem to be having a lot more luck with it than I did during TOTY or before even.  Setting my pressure to between 62 – 66 and aggression to between the same (but not on double team). Also I should say I’ve been choosing defenders with pace and high interception ratings. I still give away the occasional lobbed thru ball goal but the amount of passes I intercept early and the speed at which I can counter from there has led to some very easy goals.  I’m used to building attacks and dribbling around defenders (working for my goals) but this high pressure style of playing has led to easier goals. Sometimes making me lazy and not dribbling much at all.

The Verdict

I think there’s a time and place for both tactics. In the birthday cup tournament final I played a high pressure style in the first half and scored two goals on counter attacks. I was up 2 – 0 at halftime but my opponent had taken 6 shots on my goal (6 shots, 4 on target). I switched to low pressure for the second half to “secure” my lead (in FUT nothing is ever secure). It worked out and he only had 3 shots in the second half, scoring 1. I headed in a corner and the game ended 3 -1.

Experiment for yourself and drop a comment and let me know what you think. How do you like to set your pressure and why?