I think I've hit the wall, could use help

[Psycodiver 101]

I think I've hit my wall at, I can't seem to get better on my own and I'm not sure what I could do better other than playing in divisions (99.9999% solo player). I'm attaching my stats page along with 5 random recent replays, I'm not sure how the games went honestly but I hope that would give someone a better idea how to help me. I'm just not sure where to focus on right now

 

Stats:

https://na.warships.today/player/1006723548/Psycodiver

 

Replays:

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39426-Psycodiver-Colorado-New_Dawn

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39427-Psycodiver-Iowa-Warriors_Path

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39428-Psycodiver-North_Carolina-Loop

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39430-Psycodiver-Bismarck-Trap

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39431-Psycodiver-Scharnhorst-Estuary

[cheereereerios 44]

<-- not the best

Haven't watched the replays yet, got em downloading. One thing stands out looking at your stats - you are pretty much a BB main. Maybe it's time to go play some DD lines (while still playing a couple BB matches per session). Get some fresh perspective from the other side, eventually branch into some cruisers.

Will check out the replays after dinner and see if anything is greatly obvious. As overwhelming as a good BB can be to the red team, they are still dependent on friendlies. Finding that line between too passive/aggressive is just as much a talent with them as the other classes.

edit - both my main and alt accounts have similar numbers, and I'm leaning towards cruisers in both:

[Psycodiver 101]

Yea I keep coming back to BBs, I started with cruisers, then BBs, next to DDs, back to BBs, back to cruisers and finally back to BBs. I kinda have been messing with CVs on coop lately also

[cheereereerios 44]

Yeah, I was looking at the numbers for the timeframes, only 32 cruiser games and 1 DD game in the last 90 days for you. Playing the different classes helps me fight them usually. Well, that and RPF on my DD's. 

edit: loading up replays now

[cheereereerios 44]

Okay, took some notes on three replays, the other two crashed repeatedly. Just running through the analysis, which is always easier in hindsight.

First a couple of questions: do you run any mods, which crosshair do you use, and do you use MMM? For mods, the navigator angle mod, and running lights mod, are really helpful. I endorse the dynamic crosshair. The wowreplays matchmaking monitor program is nice for a quick check before the match.

Iowa match: Pretty good to start. Heyyyy land a shot on a DD 13.5km out! Too bad it was a light cruiser named Kebab who bounced your 16" shell. Frackin noob firing HE...against angled BB's...massive damage, fires. Hmmm. Maybe not so noob. Fast forward a bit. Down 3 DD's, enemy team full strength, and you are practically down 5 ships because you also have an FdG and Iowa yanking it in the SE corner. So, yeah, this match was going to hell pretty quick at this point. You went to get some fire onto the Khab, ended up giving a perfect broadside to the Izumo. You escaped that time, but at the end you had a bit of tunnelvision for a couple salvos, and ended up showing side to 3 BB's.

Bismarch match: Supporting C on Trap. So far, fine. I would suggest being more definitive on which side you are shooting from. Started to see a lot of left-right-left, with back turrets out of action. Going into the cap, Nurnberg was becoming a clear tard. So be careful trying to back them up. You had a shot at a Gneis over islands, pretty sure with the navigator mod you would have seen the turn beginning. Just as I was thinking "head towards B" you start making that turn. However, the Fubuki had not been sighted again, the Kagero hadn't been spotted yet, and you were leading the way. Didn't use fighter or hydro...and ate torps. 9.7km secondaries on a Bismarck? Team is steadily falling at this point, and then the Hood rushes the CV. While you did head back, you kept the fire up on B, and didn't get positioned to get all 8 guns onto the Hood, using only bow guns on a broadside target.

Scharnhorst match: tldr - classic overextend. Detail - Move to support east side on Estuary. Have to notice that the friendly Budy is yoloing, your only DD on that side had their thumb up their aft in the middle of the map, and as soon as the Budy went down, one big inflammable German target was going to be the next course on the BBQ. Gotta be careful, watch the map/minimap, trust no one, especially friendlies, etc.

[Psycodiver 101]

Bismark was a 50% captain, I actually this that was my first match or 2 with it. Looking at the Schornhurst battle again I remember that was a bad night and pretty much had it with the night so I was determined to ruin those 2 battleships night

 

The 2 battles that won't load are from last patch, apparently I haven't played much since then other than messing around in low tier

[cheereereerios 44]

I'll check them out tomorrow then, I have most old clients. 

[publord 20]

I don't feel like watching those right now, but I have a few tips that are more "meta" than anything else

1. Its probably time to div with better players. You'll learn a lot.

2. Choose an optimal time to solo. Prime time weekday is the least derpy that I've seen. Weekends are iffy, but doable. Late night queues have extreme RNG due to the smaller pop, with wild swings in skill level. Do not do them. Too often it will be a question of who gets the NADO fishing div. Or you get matched against a uni CV while your team has WARBEASTY. Stuff like that. You already have enough things fighting against you when you're solo.

3. Manage your enthusiasm. If you can only muster a "eh I guess I'll play", don't fucking do it. I've never had good experiences from playing unenthusiastically during a grind. This goes for long term too. Just quit and come back later, you'll probably play better. We experience mental fatigue in anything that we do repetitively 

 

 

[Birkovic 135]

53 minutes ago, publord said:

3. Manage your enthusiasm. If you can only muster a "eh I guess I'll play", don't fucking do it. I've never had good experiences from playing unenthusiastically during a grind. This goes for long term too. Just quit and come back later, you'll probably play better. We experience mental fatigue in anything that we do repetitively 

 

 

All good points from publord

To build on the last point: Try playing shorter session of 1-2 hours tops.

I've recently put this to good use, and finally pulled my solo win rate past 58 %. It had been hovering at 57,xx % for a very long time. When doing long sessions, I would at some point get a string of bad teams, go full tilt and end with a win rate below 50 % over a large amount of games, which would set back the efforts from the previous weeks. 

Furthermore, like in WoT, learning when a flank is crumbling and beginning the retreat can work wonders. BBs steaming away are hard to kill and often provide a nice distraction to help your team mates, while you get decent damage. Yoloing in when the flank is lost often does the opposite. Back when I played WoT WaterWar at some point while in toon brought up the topic of running. At first I was quiet reserved, but as he demonstrated it and I began to find a balance of not just running like a headless chicken, it began to show in my stats.

Last suggestion: I don't know if you are that type of player, but having a yellow legal pad next to your computer, and after every battle writing down three things, which you could have done better (i.e. angling, overextending, not realising team mates left the flank), is a very nice way to define frequent errors and thus areas of improvement. This also helps take the focus way from the eff'ing team mates, if you have a tendency to rage (like I have), and instead provide a constructive outlet.

[ncc81701 152]

I've only had time to review your Iowa replay. I chose it cuz it worked and I also had an Iowa on the same map that you can watch for reference. 

Before I start I'm going to preface your game w/ the fact that it was mostly BB & DD which is not the ideal kind of match up, and you had a useless FDG and Iowa doing nothing over by J-9 area of the map for 1/2 the game. It was probably an uphill battle from the start but there were a few things that could have been done better.

Positioning and Map Strategy:

Below was roughly your route w/ some annotations. You spend a lot of time doing that loop along the 6-7 line. What I want to emphasize is that while you are there your FoV is roughly the area shaded in Red, and typical enemy approaches are in the green arrow. That island on F-6 is blocking out a sizable swaths of the crucial middle part of the map shaded in white. Your FoV  is also severely limited toward the East with the Island in F-7 blocking most of the approaches to B cap. This is a fairly poor position of the map to hold for a BB since you only have good shots into A cap and south of C cap if the enemy decides to sail right through it. You further compound the problem by primarily focusing on the Kab in the B-C cap area. By ignoring what is going on in A Cap, you deny yourself the best opportunity to blunt the enemy's drive toward A where the majority of them are. In your game IMO this was really the only place where you could have made a difference given how bad your teamates were over in the eastern side of the map.  A side note: while hitting DD is important, a 10+km Kab (and only a Kab) should be fairly low on the priority target list. You are wasting our time try to hit one at that distance unless it's the only target you have since Kabs are ridiculously maneuverable. If that is the case, you should move to some where else with better targets. 

 

Below, the dash line would have been my opening move given your starting position. From that position I can cover most of the approaches to A & B cap and I have options to maintain a favorable bow tank angle while covering these approaches regardless of whether the enemy team decides to  go A-B or B-C. My typical opening move in a BB is get to a position that I can effectively cover 2 caps, it gives you more control of the maps, and more firing opportunities and gives you options on how to flex as the match unfolds. This also illustrate why I <3 the Iowa. With the 33kt speed, I can overcome a poor starting position and get into a fairly decent one pretty quickly.  

 

 

To compare and contrast, i've uploaded a replay of my Iowa on the same map

https://wowreplays.com/Replay/39487

In my game, my opening move was to the east of that island on G-4, with the FoV roughly in the red shaded area. This lets me cover most of the approaches to A and B. I was expecting most of the enemy to go toward B with some light forces toward A. Given how our team deployed I expect to need to focus less on A and more on B. This was what I was thinking from when the game started to when the first few contacts w/ the enemy was made. 

What developed was that I noticed that the majority of the enemy team was instead headed toward the west side of A (solid green arrow) and a slightly smaller force heading for the B cap (dash green arrow). This is what prompt me to make a port side turn toward the west and completely a loop. I was too close to that island at G-4  given the speed and the angle at which the enemy was coming through towards A and that island is blocking my firing line at the enemy's heaviest concentration. I also did a loop instead of slow to a stop and bow tank by that island because I wanted to put some distance between me and the Benson that was capping A. While this was going on, I always had an eye on the B cap and was ready to switch focus in case my team needed help there. By the time I completed the loop, the enemy team was more or less in a full retreat from A, and the rest of the game was just pushing the advantage in terms of map positioning and strategy.  If they didn't retreat, I would have been in a fairly strong position to bow tank and stop the enemy's heaviest concentration in A. 

 

 

This is more or less what I want to cover in terms of map strategy and opening movies, there were a few other things I'll add to this post later but I need to hit the pause button as it is s very late at the moment I made this post. 

[Psycodiver 101]

I rarely play more than a hour any night, depends on how the night is going. I hate grinding so I spend allot of time in each tier and ship

 

Thanks NCC81701, you really went above and beyond, I'm seeing my piss poor position decision thanks to everyone pointing it and I see what I should have done.

[ncc81701 152]

17 hours ago, Psycodiver said:

I rarely play more than a hour any night, depends on how the night is going. I hate grinding so I spend allot of time in each tier and ship

 

Thanks NCC81701, you really went above and beyond, I'm seeing my piss poor position decision thanks to everyone pointing it and I see what I should have done.

You're welcome .

Shooting Techniques

There's a few things on shooting technique I didn't get a chance to get into last night. I notice that you have a habit of zooming in to aim and fire and then have a tendency to stay in the binocular view until the shell hits. I think you can improve on your situational awareness a bit if you can teach yourself to zoom out while the shells are flying towards your target. The only critical time for being in binocs view is when you are aiming to fire, and when the shell lands so you can adjust your aim. You can improve your situational awareness if you learn to zoom out between the time when the shell leaves your barrels, until just before the shell lands. I tried making a gif of this and you can see it in the link below but it's easier to see in the replay.  I have a habit of holding on to the RMB as soon as I fire, so the view zooms out and I and observe my surroundings. About the time when I expect the shell to hit, I release the RMB and observe where it ended up.  This shooting technique is 2nd nature to me at this point, and this is the reason why the replay zoom in and out very quickly and often (probably enough to give someone motion sickness), I don't want to be in the binocs view more than necessary.

http://imgur.com/vuWnoMK :\ forum won't display animated gif.

 

It's common to load HE and hit bow tanking BBs, but my personal preference is to keep AP loaded as much as possible. I'm always looking for a better target to hit and when I am in a BB I don't want to commit to shooting HE unless a close range DD and bow tanking BB are the only targets I am likely to have for the next 2+ salvos.  Against bow tanking BB with AP loaded, I typically aim high, so that I can lob my shells over the turrets and into the super structure behind them (see image below for aim point). You can do a surprising amount of AP semi-pen damage to bow tanking ships this way.  

 

 

With that I bid you good luck and good hunting. I hope some of this is useful to you and that you'll become a better player because of it. 

[SoliDeoGloria 417]

I actually prefer AP over HE when shooting DDs. Overpen damage is devastating as well, if you can hit, which you should, as its a DD at close range against one of the most accurate BBs. You also get the chance for normal pens/multi-pens. The latter being when a shell does damage to more than one compartment (like when you see 1 overpen ribbon pop up, but you deal 5k damage, when it should've been 1k). Many a DD have taken 10k+ salvos from my BB AP, especially if they try angling, as that just gives me a higher chance of penetration damage.

 

[Mesrith 356]

This game doesn't actually have that many applicable skills, so it's pretty easy to narrow down which you need to improve upon.  Since others have already provided replay review I'm not going to do that, but analyze yourself and determine which of these you're lacking, then focus on it.

 

• Shooting skills.  Beyond just hitting straight-lining targets, you need to be able to predict player movements.  Most players won't pull a 90 and sail away at any sort of angle, instead they'll pop a 180 behind their team and hope that enemies will just shoot something closer.  I get a lot of my devastating strikes by waiting until I see the rudder commit, and then shoot into the turn, landing shells on them at their most vulnerable.
• Target prioritization.  Make sure you're shooting the right things instead of focusing on raw damage.  I run into quite a few good players on the server that seem like they're playing for WTR and just padding damage all game instead of making harder shots to damage or kill destroyers.  They'll happily ignore that dancing Udaloi at 12km in order to fish for another fire on that full-health Yamato at 15km.
• Map awareness and positioning.  It's almost never worthwhile to go to a flank at the start of a match; you're hoping that the enemy chooses to go there and gives you something worth shooting at.  Start off in a central location so that your guns can always be firing.  Pay attention to the map and what both teams are doing, and react to it early enough that you're in the right position to deal with it 3 minutes down the road.  If you're kiting 2-3 enemy ships and they start turning around, you're going to be out of the fight for 5 minutes unless you've paid attention and turn to chase them in time.  Always keep your guns engaged.
• Kind of minor, but make sure you're maximizing consumables.  Don't use Damage Control on a single fire, make sure you're getting a full Repair Party, make sure a destroyer isn't already exiting your radar circle when you pop it.

 

To be a better player, you have to consistently contribute more damage and kills than the red guys.  It's an oversimplification, but you really do just need to shoot more often than them (positioning), sink them faster (target prioritization), and hit more often (aiming).  This game doesn't have a gaggle of weak spots or counters to memorize.

[Birkovic 135]

6 hours ago, Mesrith said:

• Map awareness and positioning.  It's almost never worthwhile to go to a flank at the start of a match; you're hoping that the enemy chooses to go there and gives you something worth shooting at.  Start off in a central location so that your guns can always be firing.  Pay attention to the map and what both teams are doing, and react to it early enough that you're in the right position to deal with it 3 minutes down the road.  If you're kiting 2-3 enemy ships and they start turning around, you're going to be out of the fight for 5 minutes unless you've paid attention and turn to chase them in time.  Always keep your guns engaged.

This is really the tricky one, which differentiates the good from the great. I'm an OK shot, and WoT taught me target prioritization to a decent level, which quiet easily translated to this game. However, getting good at especially map awareness but also positioning, is just hard work when the adrenaline starts pumping. 

@Mesrith, would you mind expanding your thoughts on the quoted point?

[MntRunner 223]

Mesrith listed the primary skills that will make you better than 95% of the player base. There are also some minor skills that if mastered can help you be better than 99% of players. Things like angling/tanking, and repair management.

[Mesrith 356]

15 hours ago, Birkovic said:

This is really the tricky one, which differentiates the good from the great. I'm an OK shot, and WoT taught me target prioritization to a decent level, which quiet easily translated to this game. However, getting good at especially map awareness but also positioning, is just hard work when the adrenaline starts pumping. 

@Mesrith, would you mind expanding your thoughts on the quoted point?

You want to be where the enemy ships are, not where you hope they're going to be.

For example, look at the map North/Northern Lights.

Most players with a clue will agree that going to D is a bad idea.  There's a long island chain that completely isolates you from the rest of the map, so even if you win a local fight there and sink 1-2 ships, you're cut off from the rest of the game for the next 3-5 minutes.  It's a complete waste of a top tier battleship, and players routinely get mocked for doing that.

So why do good players continue to go to A?  It feels more open, and is slightly more connected to the rest of the map, but it's the same basic concept.  If you commit to an early A push and the enemy sends nothing there, you're not firing your guns for several crucial minutes while your team dies elsewhere.  Sometimes the enemy sends an equal amount of ships there and you're able to beat them, get the cap, and win an early advantage, but by pushing a flank position early in the game, you're gambling that the enemy is going to reward your poor decision with a poor decision of their own.  The only time I like doing a flank push like this is if I'm in a destroyer + radar murder division that is almost guaranteed to net 1-2 destroyer kills.

It varies from map to map, but you typically want to start in a central location so that you can take shots at people streaming to the flanks, engage whatever remains in the middle, and then be able to react to whatever happens on the minimap.  It's a constant balance between "having enough targets" and "being the target of too many ships".

 

[ncc81701 152]

On 6/25/2017 at 6:50 AM, Mesrith said:

It varies from map to map, but you typically want to start in a central location so that you can take shots at people streaming to the flanks, engage whatever remains in the middle, and then be able to react to whatever happens on the minimap.  It's a constant balance between "having enough targets" and "being the target of too many ships".

 

Sooooo much this; the sooner people realizes this, the sooner they'll become better. 

[Rodrigopine 184]

For DDs the issue of map positioning is a bit more murky because your opening moves will also depend on the composition of the enemy team. if there's one or two DDs per team then your team is going to rely heavily on you to scout, screen, contest caps, not die immediately. Caps that are centrally located are desirable in that scenario because you can flex to a flank as needed. The presence of CVs also changes how you deploy. To use North as an example a lot of CVs will send planes to B or C to scout you, in which case making a straight line into those caps isn't a good idea. Sometimes I'll loiter at the edge of the cap circle behind a piece of hard cover to give the CV captain time to get bored and shift his planes elsewhere. There isn't anything preventing you from contesting a cap a little bit late especially if it means evading detection. If I'm in the shimakaze for example, I'll send torpedoes into B from outside the cap circle at likely approaches that DDs like to use. These hopeful torpedoes can be surprisingly effective.

Now on the other hand if I'm one of 4 or 5 DDs and I'm Russian (44+ knts), sometimes it makes sense to speed to a cap like A or D and just take it to get the points advantage early. Slower ships, including DDs, you're best not to wander off like this because you will be out of the fight 3-5minutes plus you probably won't get the cap easily if someone else decides to contest it. The other thing about fast Russian DDs is let's say team red sends like 5 ships to D, you can easily disengage and flee or kite which means keeping 5 of their ships tied up for the cost of just your ship.

Hope this helps.