Breaking your own "glass ceiling"?
Disclaimer: I'm an average player (not in terms of WN8 labels, but how I actually affect the game's outcome). I'm around a 53% WR, my WN8 fluctuates but is currently averaged around 1580. I'm 7k battles into the game. I've done some CW with decent results, but by no means am great at that style. I do use XVM and some of the mods that show your dealt/received damage. I don't completely rely on the XVM win rate because I've seen high WR games lost to YOLOing by blue players.
So myself and some fellow clanmembers (and apparently some other Redditors) have experienced a rough few weeks in terms of WR and high damage/****/WN8 games that are losses. It's caused some ragequits for others, and at least one rage-uninstall. What I'm trying to figure out is where that break in gameplay comes in breaking out of being a 50%er to the blues and purples in terms of WN8.
The first thing I know I need to fix is doing "stupid things". This means going for stupid rams, chasing kills and in return getting myself ******, etc. I think if I can limit this, then my surviability should be improved, which means I'm in the fight longer and therefore can contribute more in terms of damage/kills, which should lead to more wins.
Whenever I can get rid of stupid mistakes, the next thing I though of is map positioning. After watching lots of different streamers, it seems that reading the minimap and knowing where and WHEN to position yourself somewhere is key. I have a bad habit of either seeing my idiot team going all one way and trying to solo an entire flank myself, or not looking closely at the minimap and forgetting that various TD's or mediums were spotted in a particular area (who then **** me). I've typically played Heavy and TDs, so moving into more mediums I think has helped a tiny bit at teaching me to relocate based on the map situation, but not enough.
After that, I'm not sure what else I need. I've picked up more medium tanks like the Centurion 7/1 (which I love and it's still pretty much stock!), E50 (also pretty much stock), and the Ind Pzr. I'm hoping that driving more mediums might teach me to relocate and play fire-brigade more, perhaps exploring the maps more will lead to me learning better locations for my heavies and TDs? I'm also going to force myself to go back to driving lights and grind some scout tank lines. I'm thinking the US light tanks, German (because I favor German tanks), maybe the T71 as well. Also looking at adding in the Japanese line someday.
My other train of though has been working on taking enemy guns out of the fight. I was thinking that just because you might have high damage in a game, you may have left a bunch of tanks on low health that your terrible team mates just couldn't finish off. I know sometimes you just have to take the shots you have, but it seems like focusing on killing tanks regardless of how much HP they have would result in less enemy tanks, and therefore an increased chance the random pubbies with a 500 WN8 might actually survive. We've lost some stronghold games recently against teams with red WN8 because we didn't get guns off the field. I feel like the same thing applies in random games.
So Purple and Blue players out there, what are your top tips to breaking out of being an average 50ish%er, and getting the grasp on the game's mechanics that allow for 60% or better WRs? I know some of those high WRs come from platoons with other unicums and such, CW, Team Battles, etc. but not all blue/purple players are in CW.
**** Responses **** 1) BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS. Watch the map, decide if you can help break the flank you are on, or if you need to stall a collapsed one. Don't try to solo a doomed position, a dead tank can't do damage, reset, or get kills.
2) Get enemy guns off the field. Don't rely on someone else to finish the job. Be smart about it, and don't YOLO just to get a ****.
3) Learn the maps, Learn your tanks. Know where you can hull down, hide, spot, where you can be spotted from. Know enemy tanks. Can you absorb a shot and out DPM them, circle them?
And after reading on WOTLabs.net, I found a profound quote by MaxL_1023 when talking about the separation between Blue and Purple:
"Overall, you are trying to be purple before you have really mastered being blue"
I'm going to take that and try to be a CONSISTENT green player. Hopefully that leads to opportunities to step up my game and start seeing some more light blue in my life!
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