Deliberate Practice, How to?

[Johnny_Wishbone 12]

Deliberate practice being the foundation of all skill growth.

So, what to practice, and how to practice it?  I'm fairly good at gunnery, but what are the other aspects of proficiency at this game, for of course there are others, and how best to practice them?

[Krollin 28]

Situational awareness: you have to be constantly aware of how things are developing, where you team is, where you enemies are/might be

Planning: things happen relatively slowly and because of that you need to know where to go next before you need to go there: make a short term battle plan and execute it

Know your ships: if you don't know what ships are capable of you cannot take account of this when you a) try to coordinate your team b) avoid the ships you are weakest against in the beginning/mid term.

Be prepared to abuse the current meta: BBs sitting back? Take advantage of it. Heavy smoke? Team with radar/hydro ships to make their lives a misery or make best use of your radar/hydro are examples.

[bathoz 107]

I'm no expert but:

Gunnery is more complicated than it looks. Without prejudging, go beyond just hitting the ship and move on to working out what you're shooting at every time you fire. It's not just "at the ship", but consider where on the ship you want to hit. Below the waterline? Above the main armoured belt, the turret faces, the unarmoured prow.

[Jaegaer 180]

As in WoT you need to practise having a mental map with all the opponents positions, facings and their los/lof (line of sight/fire). Update this mental map constantly.

If you can do so you will not:

- be surprised by torpedoes or radar

- point your squishy side towards an enemy on accident

- be suddenly alone and without support/without targets

- be accidently the primary target for many opponents

- be unable to use your ship to it's strengths (unless the strengths are long range sniping Yamato style) 

In other words - your game will improve a lot. Unlike WoT the pace and limitations of the single ships make it actually quite feasible to paint such a mental map and be mostly correct about it without too large a margin of error.

[Mesrith 356]

It's not difficult to get used to judging the proper lead and firing your shells.  One thing that many players aren't very good at is predicting turns, and firing into the turn path, instead of hoping that the enemy continues sailing straight.  I enjoy seeing an enemy begin a turn, because once that rudder is committed, I usually know where that ship is going to be once my shells arrive.

Map awareness is very important.  Pay attention to where the enemy is, where they're not, and decide what threats and opportunities exist both now and 3 minutes from now.  Try to plan your movements ahead of time (especially in battleships and things like Moskva) instead of merely reacting to whatever is in your target scope for most of the battle.