Going down hard: For when you absolutely, POSITIVELY have zero chances of survival

Hey, everyone! It's been a while since I posted here, but I'm, uh, I'm back! *party parrots*

Anyway, I was playing Ranked a coupla days ago and saw a certain someone mess up pretty badly, leaving us in a misshapen 4v5 game. That certain someone, whose name I will not say, happened to be a 5k infamy player, and the way he made his exit was terrible. He literally just blindly walked out of cover, got blasted to smithereens, tried to retreat with nitro without firing a single shot (he was in an interceptor), and got hit by a nice, well-shot rail after his nitro ran out. Considering all this happened BEFORE our fixer even got a bolt through, his positioning and overall gamesense was definitely terrible during that game. But that's fine, we all have bad days. No, the thing that bothered me the most was that a 5k infamy player managed to go down with just 2k damage to his name. If he wasn't tanking infamy ofc, which I don't think he was, because I had a couple more games with him, and he moved really well when not under that much fire.

I was pretty bothered because, you see, what gets you to Nightmare, statistically speaking, is games where you die before the match ends. Let that sink in for a moment. You're polishing the vast majority of your skills for when you SURVIVE to the end of the game for the most part. But another thing you need to master is the art of going down hard. In a way that acquits your death, gives it meaning.

Moving on. This does not, in any way, mean that you're allowed to go Rambo. Leave that sort of thing to the movies. It means that you NEED to be able to take care of situations that have gone hopelessly bad, and give your team at least FIGHTING ODDS. With that out of the way, let's get into the meat and 'taters.

Starting off
What is a hopeless situation? Well, that sort of thing varies. There's players for whom three players ganging up on them is slightly inconvenient at worst (and at best, it's basically a "target-rich environment "), and there's players who get heart-pounding, drenched-in-cold-sweat, Halloween-at-midnight scared with just two opponents on their tail. Ain't nothin' wrong with that. The first thing you need to understand in combat is your LIMITS. That's the first step of handling a hopeless situation: to be able to UNDERSTAND that you are in one. The main difference between a mechanically-skilled player and a TRULY GREAT player is that the great player may not be perfect, but they know what to do when!

Now that we have THAT out of the way...
Let's talk about what situations you can get into as a player who understands the basics (DON'T BE JOHN RAMBO, look around you, etc).
You sure-as-hell won't get into a situation where your entire team is in such a position that they can't even hit the enemy. That's for damn sure. So where can you really get caught like that? Sudden retreats, kiting gone wrong, running into a mine with terrible timing, getting stuck when you drive into a wall without looking... Any number of things can be the cause. What do you do then?
In my experience, here's what to do when the worst-case comes to be.

1. Analyze
This is the most important step of them all. Where is your team? Not WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR TEAM? Is your fixer alive? What's the current condition of the game? Remember, you have a second or two to react, even if you just got spotted. Now, think about what will make your death meaningful. Most importantly, acknowledge that you're probably not getting out of this alive.
2. Goals
Your goals need to be simple. What do you need to do? Is your team retreating? Maybe buy time for them by holding down a corner of the map using obstacles. Are they advancing to your position? Apply burn debuffs. If you don't have them, go big and go bold. Use all your big moves before you no longer can. Does your team want the enemy assassin speeder to stay the hell away? Stop them, any way you can. In my assassin days, when I made suicide runs, I'd have fixed numbers in my head. How much damage I'd do before I went down. Goals make you stronger than someone who is randomly firing at you.
3. Mark your limits higher
Being sure of your own inevitable demise makes you strong beyond measure, because it removes many of the limiters you have accumulated to keep you alive. Explore those. Debuffs? Shrug those off, you don't need to be afraid of those if you literally have like 2000 HP. At that point a kid with a screwdriver could get through your HP bar. Rather, that's one debuff your team will not have to worry about for another few seconds. Stun? Just get it broken any way you can, no need to wait until it wears off, you're surrounded in a target-rich environment anyway. Someone will waste a cannon shot. Mortars? They kill you too slow to be counted, again. If you're in a slow ship, 180 as many people as you can, it'll buy you 1.5 seconds before their turrets line up again. There's many more, think about what would happen if you only needed to do a shitton of damage in a minimum timeframe, and make those moves count.
4. Acclimatize yourself with firing back when fired at
Many people have problems shooting back when they get shot. The shot's flash can waste a few milliseconds of time. A few milliseconds can be the difference between a dead fixer 5-1 win and a 0-5 defeat. Make every move count. There's no place for wasted moves when you're close to death. Thus, there's no use getting flustered when being continuously shot at. Learn to shoot back under pressure.

There's a lot you can expand on here with more experience, but it will go into heavily specific territory, and it's better to work it out yourself. However... I guess that about covers it for this part! I hope you never have to make a sacrificial play in your BB career, but hey, better safe than sorry!

Anti out!