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My first tier 10 3 mark. I know, pretty shit, but i've had a mental block for years - thanks to the community here for all the tips, and in particular to @kolni for his great feedback and analysis.

Finally did a thing, broke the 10k damage barrier. Almost 11k but adrenaline

Alright, so since I've been a part of WoTLabs for so long I thought I'd share my story on how I got here. About WoT, going pro, being the best and the wonderful and not so great times I've had because of it. This is just a personal story, for some it can be entirely pointless but some people might enjoy it. (This is purely my experiences that made me the player I am today,, so if you're not interested in that type of thing this probably isn't for you.) Let's start off at the very beginning. I was 12 or 13, my uncle introduced me to this game. After an hour of playing or so I got kind of hooked, but as I was kind of underdeveloped in some areas at the time I started focusing on very different things than what my reasoning now will never see. I got a code with a T2 Light Tank, and it made money! Great, I could spam the OP round day in day out and earn credits along the way. T18 was also a stupidly strong tier 2 so I kept myself to playing those two. I liked being in charge, dictating the game. 2K games later (yes you heard that right) I got bored of the T2 gameplay, and decided to try something a little higher tier. I made my first forum post on the official forums frustrated about players rolling me over, and I was lucky enough to have Poltto (old EU Legend) answer me there. He gave me some great advice on how to think about the game that I still carry with me. Being sure and confident in your ability aids you just as much as perfect mechanics will. That belief had some sort of value. I am diagnosed with autism, so I found this very soothing. Then I looked at Poltto's stats and was amazed. How in the actual fuck? At the time I had just gotten my first tier 9 (M46 Patton) with about half his outputs in everything. I got curious about player skill, something I hadn't really considered as games weren't competition to me. Now they were. It felt like I had figured it out, getting to enjoy the satisfaction of improvement. I started off by watching various streamers (not RU streamers though as their meta lets them get away with way too much stupid shit) to both find openings and rotations mostly, I always liked low armoured assassin champions. I picked up Shaco in League and climbed pretty high in the first season, getting into the real mindset of the drive you need to actually improve to the point you want. Taking this process into WoT wasn’t really difficult, it almost came naturally. Fast forward about 6 months: I found WN8 and WoTLabs from two OM guys that just crushed my entire team and frustrated as I was, flamed in all chat. They told me to look up WotLabs and the Elitist+Stronk Pluton channels in game to meet some stronger players.. I looked at it, and the metric seemed pretty good. I thought... is this what people use to measure their strength in? Probably not. I saw myself on that ladder, very far down. I played ranked solo queue in League where people try harder, so I improve. II had the same feeling for tanks, I needed to go up the tiers. Once I felt improvement, I couldn't stop. That was it. The urge, and while I had a career in music production right off the bat in high school.. This was what I really wanted to do.. I started looking into the numbers, who the great players were; emu87, zzlzxzzlzx and unkwwn comes to mind. You are not there yet, but you can be if you improve is what I told myself.. At this point I had about 2 years of playtime, not doing anything else but s3alclubbing in game every game I played. 1 year later I decided to move up the tier trees. I wanted to become good at the game. It felt like a good challenge, and I like a good challenge. I also started platooning with some better players, Draz_H from S3AL in particular had a 6K game in his Type 59 on Kharkov the very first game we played together so I was just blown away. He offered to give me some pointers and explained that preserving HP and a good opening is normally enough to have a good game. The trick to this according to him was reading the line up according to the map state. I never really figured this concept out until then. Time to find more information to build my gameplay upon. (Now about at 1500-1600 WN8) Here comes the next contender: Hellcat (pre-nerf). I watched EJ play it in an interesting way I’d never seen before.. Concepts like vision and kiting were easier to put together as parts of the game's inner workings while watching someone else. I was 1500 WN8 56%WR at the time (s3alclubbing buffed my WR, as I said.). of this happening.. I grew something inside of me, I wanted to improve. And today, that desire still hasn’t gone away, It’s fueled much, but also caused much frustration along the way. I was learning now, reviewing my own retardation in replays for months to get a better sense of right and wrong and I finally felt some clarity. A long and dark path, probably lonely too. Perfect for me. I am going to be the best at this video game. Period. I decided this in high school. Hellcat spamming was a great teaching tool for understanding vision that I still appreciate today, even if I refuse to play anything below tier 9. My high school years were spent producing beats and sampling old disco songs into EDM, honestly a very simple thing to do if music theory is something you master. I was really going my own way and already carving it out before adulthood. However, this game. World of Tanks… Something about it made me always want to play.. Eventually I started playing over composing in my free time instead of balancing the two. Seeing one’s work come to life is something truly special - but WoT filled another void within me that I honestly liked better. I had fun, was confident and started to make sense of it all. Streams like EJs and advice from the many players on here (X3N4, _KT, Patient0, Poltto, Kewei + plenty of other of you) really helped me grasp the more difficult parts of the game and as such, I started improving rapidly. My period as Unicum before Super Unicum was the shortest between the cutoffs on the spectrum, and I really started liking the game. I played well, got into some stronger clans at the time (KITTY and S3AL) where I could regularly play with players of the same caliber and continue evolving. Then WoT introduced Marks of Excellence. I was still on a shitty MacBook Pro using a Wine wrapper that couldn’t load 4 maps at all and crashed every 3rd game, but I managed to 3mark the E 50. That was a very big milestone for me, but I felt that my PC really kept holding me back. My parents were nice enough to support me in gaming as my diagnoses hadn’t been discovered yet (although they were most definitely there and parents were aware) and that doing something I simply genuinely enjoy might be worth spending some money on. My parents were musicians growing up so they always supported that path. Gaming was new and something my mom especially had trouble seeing as anything more than a time-sink until I got good and showed her my Paypal after 2 months of non-stop boosting later on .I’m jumping forward in time here but I don’t think family stuff has a place here, but I’ll at least say that this was eventually resolved. I got a decent PC, a GTX 970 which was brand new at the time and other fairly solid components making the game suddenly run very smoothly on high quality. It took me a few days but past that? What an improvement. I went from barely being able to mark the “easy” marks to doing moderately hard ones in 75 games or less. The jump in DPG went from scratching the 2K region to reliably hitting the 2500-2800s in tier 8s. I felt ready to move up to tier 10 and get good there now. I spent most of my time with tier 8 as it was so much easier, and I liked marking premium tanks for their income during the challenge. I was never much for skirmishes until I actually joined S3AL a while later. During this time I had just left KITTY to join WaterWar’s clan LAVA and this is probably where I had the most personal growth as a player, KITTY’s Commander (GetLucky) was also swedish and liked playing with me a lot, as he was a 4k player and I was hovering at 3k wn8, I paid a lot of attention to his play. He played very passively to my surprise but eventually explained that patience tends to lead to better decisions as long as you don’t take too long. In LAVA I started playing Ranked TBs and skirmishes as they were so good for credits, and I also got the hang of organized play. Randoms were still the thing I enjoyed most until I joined S3AL after LAVA died and we were doing T6 fastbois. So much banter, soundboards and genuine fun on the TS that included a social aspect of the game I didn’t really experience until very late in my career. I found it fun, but randoms were still my jam. We had tons of fun with T-22 memery, tons of top clans coming together to.. Uh… complete missions, and all that stuff. At this point in time I was very much a platoon player, me and Constie (remember him?) pretty much played everything together As I was now drowning in credits, I could finally buy and play tier 10s without issues. I really liked the BatChat, and spammed it until I 3marked it (1700 games.. lol) until I moved to the next. I realised that mostly what I was searching for was a challenge, more particularly one that fell in line with something I’d taken interest in. The 3MoE hunting ensued. After having done one tier 10, I believed I could do them all. That’s what I set my goal as, the DPG hunt got pushed aside in favour of marks. I think this would be late 2016, as I started topping DPG charts on tier 8s and finally hit the 7k combined recent/overall cutoff FAME had to get into the clan. I asked X3N4 and he sent me an invite. I felt like I made it first time I joined FAME, best clan in the world so I am one of the best players. It wasn’t until here I discovered ESL and found that super interesting. After a few months in FAME I got a Whatsapp message from Knäckebröd asking me to try-out for their team mid-season as genghiswolves had been accepted to his uni and couldn’t play anymore. Placing wasn’t great either as they were already so behind that we couldn’t get back into the league despite having a positive record past my joining. In this environment I was still pretty new, everyone was a better player than I was used to so the tricks to beating bad ones didn’t work since they wouldn’t fall for them. Cohesive gameplay and real time strategy became the big thing to focus on as flawless mechanics should be a no-brainer here. Boosting became a thing and I really went in for it to provide some extra value to my team, we were 8 and 7 people could play so as the new guy I’d have to fight for my spot if I didn’t do well. Luckily I never had to. But the boosting (climbing) times, me, Xaneleon and Failware (all on Knäckebröd, now Xane works for WG and Failware is considered FAME 1st team) and one of the best players in the world in organised play) were all spent on Steppes and Mines to figure out new stuff for strats for the map. I really liked FAME. The motto of “it’s not personal, you’re out if you don’t have what it takes.” really groomed me. I wound meeting some of them in Katowice during the -16 EU playoffs, had a great time and I think there’s still some legendary clips from Dakis stream from when we were there. I graduated high school around this time, and started boosting on my free time. WGL training + boosting was basically what I spent my day on, earning enough to get by and fund my music stuff (studio time isn’t cheap) and we set our eyes on playoffs in KB that’d mean a decent piece of prize money. We trained 3 times a week, sometimes against EU or RU teams in 3 hour blocks of perfecting strats, after they had their turn trying their strat - we had ours. Sometimes the team would want us to adjust strats to counter to see if we could beat it and sometimes they just wanted a standard defense to fight against so in general the training varied heavily from team to team. The russian teams always went full yolo every single game no matter what so you barely gained anything from item if you didn’t just crush them in fighting them before they started applying any sort of strategy, funnily enough the EU silver league was MUCH better training partners than the russian ones, even some RU WGL teams were a complete mess to talk and organize with. We weren’t a top team even if KB placed 5th the season before so we mostly got practice times with EU teams and silver RU/EU teams as the top EU teams trained vs eachother and russian top teams most of the time. As I joined, the relegation was already dangling over our heads so I could pretty much play without pressure. I really liked the 7v7 7/68, the attack defense + boosts made it all about strategy and very little about RNG as the better team actually won most of the time compared to randoms. My very first ESL game was against KAZNA, the #2 team considered by pretty much everyone as DiNG was stomping most teams. I played out of my mind, and we were up 4-2. Sadly they were prepared for our Ghost Town strats (4th map) and we found ourselves in a tiebreaker, here the stakes were insane. We were expected to lose this match and even had a W/L route planned to remain in the WGL if we did and we went in kinda uncoordinated as I had only been practicing the game-mode for a week and was pretty fresh. If we won this match we would surpass The Lucky Bunch, putting us outside the relegation risk zone. KAZNA sadly had a better Cliff strat than we did and won the game 4-5. As my first WGL game, the comeback really made a dent in my confidence. After that loss, the team sort of lost its charisma and the rest of the season was depressing. After the relegation there was a major league in between silver and WGL where we played, but most players moved on after KB got relegated. I focused on streaming after this point. 3MoE hunting was my jam, and I was getting good at it. Aim_Drol eventually released a spreadsheet of the top 100 markers on the servers and I found myself on the top 10. I decided to mark every tier 10. That was my goal. So I did. It was a long grind, the STB-1 especially almost broke me. Once I had hit that, I felt completed. What now? I was already good at the game, with Daki and Jostra shaping me competitively and much of the WGL training made me a much more consistent player. However, I didn’t really know what to do. Quit playing? I have completed what I set out to, but I’m too good at this to quit. Then I remembered; I want to be the best. I looked at my service record and saw the demise that the play4fun me caused before I started taking the game seriously - so I sent a ticket in and resetted the account. I got to keep all rewards so I had a 260, 907, T-55A and all my premiums along with enough 907 ammo/consumables for 1K games. Account was resetted, and I wanted to wait for the right time to start playing randoms on it. I grinded regular TBs and Skirmishes to get a good enough crew for the 907 in randoms. I had already marked it twice before so I wasn’t too worried, but I need at least 3-4+ skill crew if I want to challenge the top DPG players. On this account, every game mattered. I could not autopilot or not take it seriously, so I invested very heavily into performing. I was streaming most of this and it grew a bit, and the 907 grind was kinda funny. Reserves or FL didn’t exist then so you had to actually grind the crew you wanted from scratch, otherwise I had to complete the first set of Stug missions to get a female crew - which would require playing random battles. I wound up starting my 907 grind with a 100% crew at 80% on BiA in randoms once the reserves came as 50 games let me hit 3 skills if I used x5s and boosters right. Still, the first 150 games got me to 94% on the mark. I thought to myself that hmm.. Maybe it’s just really OP? But then I had 1k games straight of bullshit where I fluctuated between 80-90 and just couldn’t get a good enough streak of games to complete it. But I wouldn’t give up. I was the number one 907 player on Hall of Fame 4 months in a row, without the third mark completed. That really frustrated me. I was the fucking best player of the tank, how can I not get it? The mark req was at it’s peak (6600) and I was playing out of my mind. There were like 2 players on the server at the time with a higher DPG and they didn’t have anywhere near the battle count (100 vs 1K) so I couldn’t fathom how I couldn’t get it. I decided to put it off after hitting 1k games and started playing other stuff and really saw how much that I’ve improved. I had gone from a typical 3k 50B player to topping the DPG chart with zero time on it in between, and the same applied for many other tanks. Tier 10s were getting marked before 100 games. I was really peaking. At least I thought so. Carbon was basically the only guy who reliably beat my DPGs at this time and as Luna (not Wotlabs Luna) knows Carbon, and me being in the same clan as Luna both in S3AL and FAME, I got some advice and replays to learn from. I inspected them very closely and learned a lot. Carbon’s greatest strength that I gathered from his replays was that he always knew what was going to happen and positioned in time, in every tank. Timing and gameflow became something I inspected more closely and I really developed in consistency even if my median game went down slightly, my average went up because of the insane carries coming more consistently once I had Carbon’s mindset down - coupled with my own. This is also when I started boosting a lot. I had been boosting 2016-2018 and faired well, but when I really competed for the top is when I got a lot of offers. I made a living out of boosting after having rerolled, some stream donations and the boosting money was enough to pay for the crucial stuff. I didn’t mind gaming all day, I still liked the game. I still do. This meant that I drifted away from music, lost touch with a lot of my friends in the business as I dove into gaming. I wanted to be number 1. This account was a fresh start and I was going to make sure of it. At 5K games it would show up on the leaderboard, so I needed a 5500WN8 overall to take the spot. I didn’t want to cheat my way there by abusing light tanks, or cheat WN8 by the tier average bug so I went straight for the tier 10 DPG tryharding again. I watched some movie, can’t remember which (sorry), as I was trying to fall asleep but couldn’t. The day before was awful as I had gone from 93 to 82 on the 907 mark. Something there just really inspired me. I went for a walk at 4:30 in the morning for about an hour and then just got to it. I decided that this is it. I’m completing this right now. I turned on the stream, feeling torn if I should stream it (I always play like 5-10% worse on stream, never been able to shake it) or just grind without viewers over my shoulder. I decided to stream it, and my god if that wasn’t the best session I ever had. 7,2k average combined across 25 games. The most tilting thing happened though, as the game that shaved off before apparently was a big one meaning I had to do 7.8k to get mark from a 94.95 across the finish line. This was the third time I had the mark in the 94,9X range, and I wasn’t going to choke this time around. Incoming triple arty full tier 10 Karelia. I was so tilted as it’s one of the worst maps to get the REALLY high results on even if it’s decent at getting adequate ones - especially the three arties. Luckily the enemy team just runs into my gun and my team doesn’t do much but take damage for me. The mark mod told me I was across the finish line, at 8AM I could finally let this challenge go. The rest of the game I played out perfectly with the pressure gone, wound up turning it into a 95,7 percentage once the mark actually completed. With it, I also went over 5K games and finally took first place on the WoTLabs WN8 leaderboard as the only 6K WN8 player on any server at the time. This was also during the time I boosted 3MoEs for days on end, getting into it eventually lead me to just watching movies on a second monitor and autocompleting everything non-tier 10. The last thing I did was join Majstoras silver team FAME 7x7 where we literally crushed everyone and still stomped WGL teams in the qualifier - but as Majstora (our FC and a WoT mastermind) was moving to England with his brother Maresca (also on our team) our team started falling apart. We still had the WGL slot, and some players decided to stay and formed a new team, Savage Squad. I decided to leave because without Majstora I didn’t think we would compete with the top teams. We were scrimming them and going evenly, but doing some trainings without voicecoms (training personal decision making - it’s a trick to make players better on initiative so the FC has to micromanage them less and can focus more on big picture) Now I felt burned out, that grind really took a while and our effort into the ESL kinda was the last I had in me. 6month hiatus ensued where I got back into music again as it’s a hobby I felt I had neglected for so long. I quit boosting too so I could distance myself from the game. Coming back to WoT casually afterwards, the game changed a lot. Maps were remodeled much to my dismay and so many gimmicky things made the game harder to play. Coming back I definitely felt washed. Playing on cygaN_’s account as I didn’t have my own, a great polish friend of mine from S3AL. I also used User’s account for some challenges, like the ISU-130 (also almost broke me) and the T-44-122 to complete some of the rarer marks in the game that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. After that, cygaN_ gave me an account from a great friend to play on. Wujaszek, an account that had ground out everything, 500mil credits and about as much invested into consumables. He said that he was done with randoms and that I was free to use the acc as I wanted as long as I just don’t log in when he’s online playing FL or skrims (having to check the clan website page before logging basically). I was really happy he’d just give me the freedom to use his acc for whatever I wanted. I missed out on all the ranked stuff but he didn’t, so I had 4 full sets of improved equipment I could put on. I also had every tank in the game available outside of the low tier premiums, and nothing was 3marked. This felt like a really nice time-sink, but the game changed so much that I had to relearn much of what I already knew. Tempo sped up a lot and lights were figuring out better bushes and I had to adjust. For very long I wasn’t anything special, I could still 3mark any tier 10 with ease but the reward tanks kept giving me trouble. 121B wasn’t more than 100 games to do after the buff, but the rest took a while. It was my first M60 attempt and while I had the M48 playstyle down the mobility really changed the way to play the tank. 800 games later I took it and wound up really liking the M60. High mobility, high pen and a strong gun felt like the perfect combination to me. I wanted to repay him for letting me use his account, but as I’m marking pretty much everything I play - he considers that enjoyment enough since he can only play on weekends anyway. Great guy, we can’t communicate very well as he’s polish and can’t speak english but nevertheless he is one of my best internet friends anyway. This meant I had to change the way I played the game, from a more aggressive approach to map control to a mistake-capitalising once. Surprisingly this came very naturally, and once able to combine the two I really started having pop-off sessions like never before. 4K+ing tier 9s, nearing 4500. At this point I kept feeling burnouts after 2-3 weeks of playing the game, realising the fun only lasted for a week or two. So I modeled my gameplay after this. I decided to play casually, but well. Plenty of breaks in between, playing mostly once every other week if at all but I was still able to showcase some good gameplay. I started the engineering programme at uni at this time, so now I had studies, WoT and music to juggle. WoT just fell short of the other two at this point my life, so I barely played at all during 2019. Studies came first and music was finally going well again, started doing live shows (DJing) and having fun without gaming. WoT slipped further and further away. Whenever I wanted to waste time, League was my choice of game - or I’d go back and speedrun Mirror’s Edge (still top 20 on two maps xD) rather than having to learn the changes of WoT. But every now and then, I pick WoT back up - generally for a challenge to see if I still got it. This is how I play the game now. I spam games under a short time period and put it off afterwards, it works for me but I’ll definitely admit that playing WoT is freshware, you need regular exposure or you’ll drop in skill. I like WoT now. Wheelies and arty can still suck a dick but I am having fun playing this way, trying hard enough I am definitely able to keep up, but there are no stakes - I have other things I should be doing if WoT goes poorly, so I can quit without anger and move on to the next thing right away. I managed to 3mark the Chieftain which was the last very, very hard reward to do for me. I enjoyed the grind, even though it was 300 games long between 85-90 until the 90-95 happened right away with perfect maps and not a single game drop. Past that I also felt it left some void, DPGs on this account doesn't matter because these tanks have all been played by someone before me so it’s not something to shoot for, but I think that’s a good thing. No pressure. I can play the game, have fun and not care if things don’t work out. I am very willing to admit that I am washed up from my prime (I’m a 4800 player now, not a 6k player) and recent CWs with FAME have shown that I really got more to learn. I missed Daki flaming me in some weird way so feels good to be back in something recognisable. 3 weeks ago however I broke my hand, initially it looked very very bad. Right hand too so no mouse use. This also meant I’d miss the campaign which I only joined because there’s just so few things to do in Sweden during COVID that I found it to be something I might enjoy. I missed the FAME guys anyway after meeting them in Katowice. (70% of the WGLEU was FAME, and all playoffs teams had at least majority FAME players + one or two russians so it really was just like meeting the best players of the best clan). Most of them are really nice, Barry and Skarium especially were super fun to meet and hang out with. We did a smaller S3AL meetup in CPH a while back too, but it quickly turned into a who can beat Fosco in a drinking contest that the weekend is a bit of a blur Luckily my hand is healing well, I played again yesterday and with a brace I can use a mouse to about 90% accuracy which is enough for WoT. Also had my first tier 9 10k game, super rusty.. Oh the irony. Now I just play to perform, and when I don’t.. I just quit. I feel like I’ve escaped the clutches of this game's addictive lure. I’m really happy I can still perform, and I’ll keep trying until that’s no longer an option I think. But now I am in charge, not the game. There is no “go next” after dying early, that is an ALT F4 and I can leave WoT behind without dwelling on it. This may just be pointless rambling, but I thought I’d write it up. As I said, there is absolutely zero gameplay advice here, simply my story on how I got to where I am right now. I’m still not peaking I believe, as I’m reaching higher highs than when I literally played this game for a living well over a year tryharding my ass off. Development really is a fickle thing and I really do think peace of mind and critical thinking is a bigger part of improvement at the top than anything else. I’m going to end this on a more sombre note. I was genuinely addicted to WoT. I never got help, but I valued games over things like sleep, food and socialising. That was a big mistake I made, and the one bit of advice I’ll give in this thread is to not let the game take you over. Yeah, you will likely be great if WoT is all you ever think about - but then the game is really just playing you. Improvement is slow but concentrating it into shorter timeframes really doesn’t do you any favours. Taking things from past games is what helps you improve, and a replay review will give at least 10x the information that just “going next” will in that game. Today I like WoT, I have fun playing on my own terms and I can look back on my WoT days as something I enjoyed. There’s no hatred, but the game really didn’t do me any favours outside of the game. I have many regrets and going down this path is honestly one of them, even if I achieved what I wanted in the game I think pursuing other goals outside of it would have made me happier. I’ve accepted this though and it’s not bothering me. I don’t know where I would be without WoT though, it really ignited the grinding and improvement spark that I think can be well put to use if you find something interesting enough to keep it alive. I haven’t found that IRL yet, but I’m gonna keep looking. It also showed me how an elitist attitude necessarily isn’t a bad thing, and that competition means making hard decisions and having a strong mental. There are definitely things I can take with me to help me in other areas. The strive for being the best, actually getting there and feeling the relief of completion is honestly astounding. When that endless drive is fueling you, why pump the brakes? Take your shot. I’m conflicted about what happened when I did mine, but talent/hard work pays off if you lean into it so I think it’s a good idea to shoot your shot when you finally see an opening. I'm especially thankful for knowing that I am able to power through no matter how bad things feel, the 907 really had me in shambles but sheer will is enough to set things straight sometimes.

get good nerd, it's relaxing to squash peasants

Didn't read, but good for you. If you replace wot with something else life becomes a bit more enjoyable. It sucks when your hobby is rage inducing and rarely fun or relaxing.

Fellow purples, I decided to uninstall WoT, for me uninstalling isn't something I do lightly. It made me sad which is why I'm writing to you about it. I feel by doing so I can put this game behind me. Also not sure if some of you know me or have played with me but if you want to keep in touch and/or play games together message me and I'll shoot you over my steam ID. Let me apologize for this long post, I will try to make it as small as possible whilst getting my point across. A few things happened today which are in essence a summary of my pains these past 2-3 months. With the corona virus going on and my (sadly) reduction of hours, I've had more time to play and with that I've realized some pretty big issues not only with the game, it's playerbase, but also myself and how I interact with games. Today: 1. Tier 8 Heavies (played a variety) shelled constantly by arty. Generally one arty doesn't bug me. Two, depending on how accurate they are starts to cross the line. Three is unbearable. Luckily today I haven't had 3 arty hit me but I've had x2 M44s chip away at my health. In a slow heavy being perma stunned is itself the worst goddamn feeling in this game. No matter how good your crew, food, bounty equipment, whatever... it renders your tank useless. Equivalent of playing with a handicap, forcefully. How is that in any way / shape / form remotely "fair" ? I started to really challenge this game's ability to be fair in just the basic forms. Arty is by far the best example of how fractured the logic of this game's tank classes are. People don't use arty for what it's meant to do. Why would they? Humans don't act like binary robots. They see a target they shoot at it, what's worse is RNG rewards those who take impossible shots, because luck sometimes plays a role and rewards players for doing so. 2. WoT playerbase, I struggled with this one for a long time. I had always thought I was being some sort of prick. Last months through various posts / threads on the forums and in-game toxicity I've come to realize how daft the NA server overall player base really is. I say NA because I spent 3 months in Germany and started an EU account and you don't see half the shit in EU than you do in NA. I really don't know why. Maybe its the language(s) diversity? Most bad players really believe they aren't the problem, conversely to them, it's everyone else's fault, always, every time, with any and every excuse imaginable. What's worse is how this is portrayed in the forums. When someone decides to complain about arty, I've seen that person met with overwhelming toxic banter from players who CLEARLY have absolutely no idea of simple game mechanics. Further, when you try to explain to them just that, you are now suddenly arguing with several others who are all in the same boat. This has pissed me off more than anything else the game had to offer. 3. "Bad" Teams, to simplify this, it ties in with playerbase but it goes deeper. I look at my Wn8 and sometimes I'm baffled. How can I be over 3k when I feel the games are too quick and 80% of the time I don't do well (enough). Yet you look at some of these players on these teams and you can't stop to wonder... WTF do they do in a match? How is sitting in the back for 14 minutes, then doing 1 shot of damage fun? Or inversely, YOLOing, doing no damage and dying in 2 minutes. How do people continue to do this time and time again over several thousand battles? I played a string of games today where I died mid-way if not at the tail end of the game, majority of those games, I looked at what I did in terms of how bad did I cripple the enemy, and assess the likelihood of winning based on my team's position and tanks remaining. I called a win 6 times. 5 out of 6 were losses. I had to look at the replays, it is mind blogging how bad people can play this game. I really feel my 7 year old nephew could play better. 4. The big picture. Looking at the equipment 2.0 system just hit the nail on the head for me. WG doesn't seem to understand it's playerbase, either that or worse, the majority of the playerbase are feeding WG "mis-information" of what is truly needed. Hence, since the majority are just shit, WG will implement ideas which the majority will either appreciate or benefit from. I can't fathom the idea of arty being MORE accurate than it already is. It really saddens me to leave especially when I think of how great this game is, it's ruined by it's playerbase. This is a complicated game, one that really forces you to use your brain, but the majority don't either because they can't or worse they are too lazy. Thus you get this toxic community of 45%ers who blame the team for a loss each and every time. I can't do it anymore.

IMO if they made the wheels part of the hull hitbox and they took HP damage when hit in the wheels, the tank would be almost balanced. I actually agree with that. Mine has ~450 VR, that's too high for something that does 95kph with more reliable damage blocking ability than the E100, not to mention how it spits in the face of the laws of physics when it turns.

First 3 mark! (that I actually tried for) I'm really thankful to the WoTLabs community for giving me the resources to improve myself, especially @kolni for his statement of trying for 'non-losing' gameplay, which helped me get my mindset into staying alive ^^

Some People here like cars right? Taken today at a car meet I went to Annd the last one there is my car idk about the blue tint in some of those, brand new phone with new camera and still working out the settings lol

The Skoda T40. Such a meh tank; and a fantastic Char Futur 4 game, and one of the incredibly rare occasions where I get to carry @CraBeatOff and @1stTanks

LMFAO WG random player names

Hold RMB while pressing Shift to prevent the re-aim This happens when you aim at terrain that is poorly modeled (near corners usually) and zooming out makes it spaz out, turrets with guns mounted elsewhere than dead center get this much more often

WG's new monetization plan should be to show every one a new idea like this one and then put up one of those giant charity drive thermometers. If the players donate enough money to reach the threshold they don't implement it.

2015 WG - Vision and camo mechanics are too difficult for the player base to understand and are being exploited by a small group of high level players 2020 WG - Fuck it, here's a cloaking device

Udes 14.

lol http://wotreplays.eu/site/5453974#prokhorovka-yung_xd-leopard_prototyp_a free real estate

I have been playing WoTs for years and knew all about the Stats portion of WOT Labs but not the forum. I love the resources that a forum provides for hobbies and things like that. Unfortunately I found very little legitimate, constructive conversation at the official forums. I was so relieved when I saw this. Thanks everyone for having me.

Finally broke purple WN8 recent yea WN8 is dead and my WR is still behind but im happy to reach a milestone

Tried this bushes now several times. And they work great on both sides. Unless you have some mad EBRs running around. K line there are also some trees you can knock over and sit in it. Nice passive spots, but very risky as you sit in the open and it usually hurts when you get spotted.

pretty okay considering i did it aiming with my left hand

Yea well that's my view really, I hate the bastard thing so much I'm just happy to see the nerf bat hitting it. At this point I don't really care what they do to it, just so long as it gets a good beating with the bat. It has completely broken the other LT gameplay entirely.

Nah I legit think the EBRs are more broken than arty, and Id legit remove both them and the STRVs before I removed arty if I was running it

Interesting tiers. I think all tanks should be ranked as is - i.e. if you fire 100% gold that's fine, rank it with no asterisk. Even with that, i'd rank like this (order of priority on each tier being indicative that it is better): S - Pta, Standard B, Kmp 50t* (not played), 430, Type 61 A - E 50, T-55A, Char, Skoda T50, Udes 16* (not played) B - M46, T-54 C - Cent 7/1, Amx 30 D - BC AP* (not played), 430v2 The list is based on damage farming capability, which is similar to carrying but slightly different (damage farming does not always = carrying, but there is a strong correlation). Reasons for rankings: Tier 9 meds are a sweet spot as the best have tier 10 guns with very little drawbacks. It's why the Type 61 is S tier - it has insane DPM and muder-HEAT ammo. It has 5k DPM potential for the best players. Any gun that doesn't have 330ish prem pen can't be in S tier, hence the E-50 falling down. Platform is still important, and tier 9 also works really well for flat track bullies. I included the 430 in S tier for this reason - in a tier 10 game, I would pick other tanks in lesser tiers over it, but all in all I think it belongs there. I don't rate the T-55A that much. I want to like it, but the shitty hull armour and no gun dep and shitty standard pen makes it feel like either a shit 430 or a shit Kmp 50t. Either way, it isn't up there in S tier. There are a few tanks i've not played and the opinion is based on playing against them/watching other people play them. Also, some I played years ago (Amx 30, Cent, 430v2), so maybe I'm wrong.

Finally 3 marked the tank that trolled me so damn hard. Leo you low roll machine. I love u even if u hate me

I just accept the shitters and the toxicity they cause and click battle. For catharsis play an alt. Beyond that best of luck finding a new hobby. I'm told there are many rewarding ones out there.

that looks so fucking ridiculous, if they put this in, its gonna make every open map unplayable...

The same way(s) i told you 5 years ago. Or whenever it was. Certainly been a minute.

The new equipment items that they've shown so far actually seem pretty cool. The problem is all of these weird rules restricting items to certain classes or giving particular slot bonuses. For one, makes it hard to test if the new items are well balanced with the slot rules in effect. And secondly, the whole idea of diversifying loadouts is contradicted by trying to motivate particular slots to use particular items. As of whether the typical rammer/vstab/optics meta loadout will ever be unseated, I have my doubts. But that of all things isn't the major problem here. The real question is why all these other equipment items just aren't as good as the previous three. Long story short, the typical tank in the vast majority of typical scenarios just doesn't benefit much from most of the other items. Looking at something like the newly buffed wet ammo rack for instance, let's even take a hypothetical situation where they buffed the item even further and it made your ammo rack entirely invulnerable. Even then, it would only be situational. Any time that your ammo rack isn't being hit, the wet rack wouldn't be helping you. But on the flipside, the few times that we do see the meta loadout being changed, its because a particular aspect of a tank is so outstanding by default that the relevant item just isn't needed. For instance, running an M48 with vents instead of optics or a T92 light tank without vert stabs. The big takeaway being that for the vast majority of tanks, fire rate, gun handling, and view range just aren't sufficient as-is and simply adding new alternatives isn't going to fix that.

Yikes, seems like a similar reload time to the Somua SM but only 2/3rds of the clip potential. Wait that actually might mean its balanced.

My take on the whole EBR situation (because IMO its the EBR's that primarily are problem) stem from several things. Start by buffing the tier 10 lights so most of them actually feel like actually tier 10 vehicles (and this can mean improving their "medium" tank characteristics too). Even if its perfectly balanced as a tier 10 vehicle, it will be seen as either unbalanced or dominating when the only similar vehicles are notably worse. Reduce the on the move accuracy. They nearly or feel like a tank that is just as accurate on the move as they have while stationary when playing against them, something that holds true for no other tank in the game. Have a consistent number of wheels-to-destroy-to-immobilize across the line. I'd recommend 4 wheels for complete immobilization (but practically less than that). Wheeled vehicles with more wheels seem significantly harder to effectively immobilize currently than those with fewer wheels Increase how much losing the first wheel degrades the mobility of a wheeled tank, and in general make the initial wheel loses have more of an effect. A single wheel right now can feel more like a slight impediment as opposed to something notable. Reduce mobility slightly, but generally just bring them in line so they play like a slightly more mobile light tank as opposed to something which is relatively removed from other light tanks.

None of this addresses the fact that it will still outclass regular LTs in almost every way. You still can't passive scout against EBRs because of map design.

What about real "shit just popped a wheel on a multiton vehicle going 90" physics? I want the fucker to flip and burn

Bump, they added some changes, it looks fairly decent actually. The ``improved configuration`` seems quite usefull: Combines the bonuses and effects of the following existing equipment: Cyclone Filter—all 4 effects added and combined with other effects "Wet" Ammo Rack—all 3 effects added and combined with other effects Fill Tanks with CO2—both effects added and combined with other effects So its wet-ammorack, cyclone filter and fill tanks with Co2 in 1, a tank which burns a lot is usually risky with food, but now it may be worth it, especially because it also reduces chance of ammorack and engine break downs (T62a perhaps? frontal fuel tanks + i remember a lot of broken ammo racks, or is that obj 140?) Same turbocharger is also strong, 10% more engine power and better top speed (and higher reverse speed), perhaps on something like T110E5? These changes seems soso at best, at first, but slowly it looks like they atleast have some clue (perhaps they hired again)

PITY!!!! I haven't see you in a LONG time

Not spending time on tanks has paid massive dividends for me. Overall enjoying the days I'm off work much better now.

Go outside, gaming isn't a healthy hobby. It's for killing time.

Based on what others have said it will be the best credit earner but probably not that exciting to play. Slow, no armor, and need to sit in a bush basically.

In sniper mode, to the sides of the center of the aiming circle, there are "lines" that look similar to this: ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ I try to align those with the ridge line when I am looking at the opponents, and this is a quick way to get a decent hull down, when you don't have time for micro adjustments.

someone doesn't know about the building gap in abbey

Ehhh, im not sure about that. It seems to me that the average player has indeed gotten worse the past year or so. I even have (anecdotal, but still) evidence for that: So, a year or so ago (right at the time the Chieftain was introduced, I was like fuck this shit) I uninstalled the game and havent touched it for a looong time. Since I don't care about anything below tier 8, I played a lot of tier X tanks and most of them were at around 80-90% mark of excellence. So, I take a long break, start playing again and gradually get the courage to start playing tier X again. First game with E5 - went form 92 to 97%. Cent AX went from 87 to 92%, M48 from 77 to 85%, 5A from 85 to 90% and so on and so on. Not a single tank increased its expected values, and some actually got laughably low (S Conq now requires only around 4,3k dmg to 3 mark, which is ridiculous for that beast of a tank). Of course, its not just skill level (I believe its mostly cuz of ebr spam and lower HP pool but still), but i believe it has something to do with it...

Just wait until you see his arty build.

Panther? What is that? Is it those two tanks before the E50? You know, the ones that don't even have 240 alpha unless you fit a gun that you really shouldn't, on the TechTree-T8? You know, the heavy mediums, that have no armor, no health, no mobility, no alpha, no DPM, but superb accuracy that they can not use, because their soft stats are garbage?

https://youtu.be/iWmTs2iPHr0

I mean... I play light tanks 100% to get Campinovka, sit in one bush, and laugh at dumbasses blowing up like it's the 4th of July.

messing with other tanks' numbers through messing with your own really doesn't sit well with me.. if my hard stats in game were nerfed (camo rating shredded>i get spotted and die despite not moving in solid foliage and closest enemy is 300m+) and I didn't get to see why then i won't learn how or why i died as it couild just always be that over and over.. camo shred is a really bad idea because it'll just nullify the entire skill on large tanks (that still can run it) and hardly affect the vision bullshit we have already in wheelies. there's too much vision atm, ppl cover too much ground and play too safe as a result, you can't do this or this or this because if an EBR comes and lights you, you die.. end of innovation cycle i think making 445VR much harder to achieve is a place to start, not considering all the buffs that upping the crew with improved stuff would further boost it - at least for higher tiers, td's capped at 400, 435 with binocs, 420 with optics, they still have render obv but their VR circle'll just be smaller, not able to run both binocs and optics at the same time - gives light tanks more wiggle room in dealing with said bushwanking when you have physical space you know they can't use against you unless they come closer, raise avg HP of TDs by like 5-10% lights - basing the VR stat on performance and nothing else so it just gets tweaked between the tier 10 lights as the weakest one in performance will have the highest VR of next balance cycle and just tune them all into they feel fine against the field> hard nerf EBR > nerf T-100 VR, give it a high pen AP gold round (280 or so) and a 1,1x modifier for lights to how damage translates (not assisted) to compensate the already other shitty T10 lights and how they perform, it's an outside the game buff to all tier X lights in XP/credit/whatever gains people think are important. now as the only class able to stack vision the old way > lights are relevant again, but confined to the very small specific role the light tanks should have in game. More similar to the tier 8 LTs belonging to tier X days of actually focusing on recon rather than being first to the place on the map you want to fight. could also buff their HP but i think that's counterproductive no matter how you slice it when it comes to actually balancing them combat ability wasn't a big thing in lights until they started becoming better at it, and if you funnel lights into similar areas of a map like normal they will still mostly just fight.. themselves anyway.. as long as all the lights take part/gets buffed/nerfed unbiasedly no one will gain an edge on another there, but the light vs rest of the tank classes dynamic isn't good now and was imo much better when lights were intendedly weaker than now, back then WN8 farming was their only real purpose so if you want to be viable within the game created then I doubt we share views on the rest, but back then playing a light tank meant you had to do recon, while i don't like the ridiculousness of not being able to fight back at all the light tank aspect of the game still worked better in 5-X than 357.. lol... meds -> lower VR cap by 15m, lower either mobility or armour if the tank has that + good gun, raise HPs 10%, +10 points added to every statistical piece of data for the E 50M to make it less weak heavies -> superheavies +10% HP - hybrids no changes - hulldown heavies +10% HP and more hatches/cupolas to deal with the imperviousness of hulldown tanks, post 2018 releases all VR nerfs unless they follow the nations general trend regarding the topic also no JoAT tanks, E5 in 2016 was the first to do it and just nooope make camo more reliant on the base camo of the tank and not so much the crew,: buff to everyone playing without camo skill and nerf to everyone who uses it on everything, vision needs to be given more room to play around or it's eventually (like seen here by WG themselves) going to die if it's not kept as a core foundation of the game mechanics - tanks intended to use vision can do it, but stifle that element from everyone else not intended to to breathe more life into it in game open topped vehicles recieve automatic ventilation bonus (5%) as compensation for taking the VR advantage from them, give them at least some edge for being pennable to arty and everything else that sets their sights arty capped to 1 lights capped to 2, LT MM along with SPGs get separate queue for a map pool where they aren't fodder just for choosing to play a role, nobody in their mind would send 5 EBRs total from both sides to recon Himmelsdorf in a whiplash until you RNG them down.. doesn't mean the overall map pool still won't be adjusted - increase bans to 3, include assault/encounter and balance team starts gathering information on the most banned maps to rework/remove what isn't working HP buff is to inflate gametime, making steamrolls more tedious but close games much more thrilling and down to the wire - consider upping max game time to 20min and 15min respectively if it doesn't slow the game down by force rework how capping works, unless you need the game to end - nobody wants to cap over taking the drive for damage, and almost all good players have this in common: they don't use the mechanic. needs adjusting to have some sort of value that isn't just "oh, forgot to check the cap" when the clock starts ticking sandbox mode with shooting range and proper game guides on mechanics, basically just tanks.gg. wotlabs and customiseable practice rooms along with making sure the player understands the underlying objectives of what the game is intended to be about, incentivise influencing the game positively (permanent top tankers contests with in game rarities or something, idk) no gamebreaking climbs (out of bounds) but reinstall shortcuts that reward you for being familiar with the environment ESL 7/68 back on, use pro players' strategies to solve map problems > more clever map design Tuning RNG by nerfing it to 15% on HP rolls and 10% on penetration rolls, there's no point in adjusting the spread if you are just going to slap another "what if?" on top of that before it actually connects, having very little to do with any decision made by anyone other than that some numbers have to come out. 0 RNG would make the game very predictable, the point of a large HP pool is to dissuade this from being such a big problem, a 390alpha gun firing at your 400HP tank will always feel risky, as it should. fixing the game isnt very hard when every exit feels like a solution

We have two fantastic threads about this already:

I have some free time, and I think this will get buried in status pretty easily so I'm making a topic that I will remove once this has settled. I'm going to make some content. Video or in text here on WoTLabs, but I'm drawing a blank on the content I actually want to write up, so I'm leaving the question to the floor and letting you decide the topic(s). What part of the game do you want more information of? There are no wrong answers, it can be simple or very very meta, that's up to you. I'm down for a good writeup once you decide. I feel like a poll might be in order but then I'd have to add the topics, so I'm just going to do it this way: the two answers that get the most upvotes are the ones I will write up. Upvotes are green, not blue (see below), I'll count blue too but make it easier to see thank you I am open to doing replay analysis and map analysis, but keep in mind that I have zero editing skills and will be keeping most of the content purely theoretical. If that's what you want then so be it, but I won't be doing too many reviews in that case as they generally only seem to help the individual unless there are some universal problems. I'll try to answer anything asked here too, but focus will be on the topics at hand. There might be a chance I end up doing some of it on video to simplify the explanations. Some examples: MM reading (prediction) Decisionmaking processes Off Meta gameplay Inner workings of specific mechanics (autoloader, italians, siege, vision and so on) Micropositioning (plsno) Troublesearching gameplay flaws and fixing them Tryhard stuff Adopting an improving mindset and the list goes on, I'd rather the community that's still alive thinks of something on their own but there are no wrong topics, whatever the community feels the area that needs improving in content is the most is the ones I will do, so up to you. Shoot your ideas friends

jaeckefa is op stanlock is still probably the best streamer out there gameplay wise that still plays regularly barry and niall have really good gameplay too, they play super different from me so it's always refreshing for me to view because i actually learn stuff pretty reliably FeLi is also super good, the only player to legitimately 3mark a 279 as far as I can remember.but I think he started getting really good during my hiatus so I only knew him from the GO-IN campaign where we were the 2 BC players normally. He was by far the better one haha id say thats the 5 streams i tune into the most when i want to watch good players do good things

ima be honest, this is one heckin tricky thing to explain, spent maybe 3 hours trying to formulate how i do it and got nowhere

No need, I'm here and will crack the whip. I'm also hiding all irrelevant posts in this topic. Putting on my mod hat now.