World of Tanks

[Gets]

Have you checked out http://www.planetwot.com? Worth a look for daily stats.

Yeah, I've studied some of the high XP replays there and submitted 2 of my own in return. It's too bad old replays are not compatible with the new client and I suspect it will be the same for current ones once 8.0 comes out.

But remember many statistically challenged individuals in-game are histrionic in pointing out that "stats dont matter bro its all random"

I noticed daily quintuples did not end today. Oh dear.

[Sir T]

Darnit why did you show me that. After going on a bit of a WOT binge I now find I'm at an impressive 40.17% win rate. :P

I also see I think I should change what tank I'm driving. I want to get the Lepord so I've been driving the Luchs a lot. but its by far the worst win ratio I have at 18%. A PzKpfw III Ausf. A gives me a 75% ration from 4 games.  

Dammit

[Gets]

Winrate is relevant after a 100 matches, really. Got conned into getting the M4 and the Jumbo and it seems I'm awful in anything but a heavy since my Sherman experience so far has been absolutely

[Amarr HM]

I just researched the T110E5 but not the cash to buy it, need another 1.8m. I found the T32 to be the most solid tank I've played, the only tank I was able to maintain 1k+ average experience over 100+ games. Skipped the M103 wasn't liking the look of it.

[Amarr HM]

But remember many statistically challenged individuals in-game are histrionic in pointing out that "stats dont matter bro its all random"

I saw that bandied about when I used to read the forums, I haven't read the forums in about a year, nasty place.

[Brolan]

Winrate is relevant after a 100 matches, really. Got conned into getting the M4 and the Jumbo and it seems I'm awful in anything but a heavy since my Sherman experience so far has been absolutely

With the Sherman you need to avoid nose-to-nose gunfights and stick to opportunistic attacks on other tanks sides and rear.   I like to hide in bushes and fire until they see me, then rush out and hit them in the sides and rear.  Otherwise follow the light tanks or other mediums so they can spot for you and take the first shots.  If you do get in a gunfight turn the front so you get the max chance to bounce shots off the nicely slanted front.  Once you are spotted keep moving until you get into heavy cover, stopping with the Sherman is dangerous because it is a large target. Good luck.

[angry.bob]

But remember many statistically challenged individuals in-game are histrionic in pointing out that "stats dont matter bro its all random"

The Quintuples end when the next day starts, so in about 2 hours here. This one started later so it may end later too, about 10:30am EST.

I agree stats do matter, just not "win rate", it's completely useless bullshit for a number of reasons. Until XVM only uses a stat like K/D ratio it's just a tool for wankery. Especially with people in clans gaming XVM to improve their win rate. Win rate would be a decent stat for rating an entire clan's overall skill, but for assessing an individual person on a random, public game it's about the worst stat you can use.

[Kageru]

Win rate with random teams seems pointless. I've often had a pretty good match until I realize there's me and a lonely arty left.

[Merusk]

Win rate is an especially fucked stat during bonus Xp specials.  I don't know why the morons crawl out of the woodwork, but boy howdy do they.  It took 6 matches to get a win on my M26 last night.  Some of them I was in the situation Kageru just mentioned. "Hey I'm doing awesome, we must be winning!  Newp, the entire other flank is dead so now it's me and lower-tier med lights vs. all their heavies.  Whoopiee!"

[Amarr HM]

One of the problems with the MM is balancing the players, it sucks if one team is a bunch of morons and the other is competent. The competent players get very little value from the game cause the morons just implode and the decent players who are lumped with the morons can't even get a shot off cause they end up outnumbered. Everyone gets stuck in this low XP vortex caused by an influx of morons.

[Nebu]

The MM needs a statistical tuning system.  It should lump poor players together and good players together.  That way everyone has more fun.

[Sir T]

How would you set up such a system though?

[Nebu]

How would you set up such a system though?

I'd start with number of matches played.  More experienced players tend to be better players (notice that I used 'tend to be').  Then look at win %, Damage per match, and matches survived. 

I'm no expert, but that's a suggestion.  The stats mod considers me a 'below average' player, but I often do better than players with a much higher ranking.  I think it has something to do with my preference to play lower tier games (thus doing less damage permatch and having a more random win %).

[Ginaz]

Its getting increasingly frustrating getting into games with truely horrible players.  Tier 5 and under I can live with because many of those people may be fairly new to the game but once you get to tier 6 and above you really should have at least some fucking clue how to play.  As for stats, they start to matter after awhile.  I have around 9200 games played with a 53% win rate, which isn't bad considering its been 99.99% solo pub games (the rest of my stats are fairly decent too, 1490 xvm rating for what its worth).  Yet I've seen people with as many or more games than me with a win rate around 40% and when I check after the game, their stats are awful.  I don't understand how people can play so many games, platooned and in clans to boot, yet be so bad.

Switching topics, is the British tank tree coming soon?  If not then I'll just burn my free xp and get the new tier 10 US TD with the turret.

[Merusk]

The truly bad players are what I console myself with when I do something that gets the lone teammate who sits around after they're dead trolling to call me "a fucking awful idiot."

Yeah, My sole T32/34 ass is going to totally take out the Maus your terrible Tier 9 driving skills did no damage to whatsoever, fuckwit.

"Fucking Type 59, why didn't you stay in the cap. Coward! Can't even take out a Tiger2!"

Yes, I ran.  Why? Because your terrible Pershing-driving ass got destroyed by that same Tiger II that's bearing down on me, the only guy on the cap.  Fuckwit.

Stop making me relive the anger! 

[Ginaz]

The truly bad players are what I console myself with when I do something that gets the lone teammate who sits around after they're dead trolling to call me "a fucking awful idiot."

Yeah, My sole T32/34 ass is going to totally take out the Maus your terrible Tier 9 driving skills did no damage to whatsoever, fuckwit.

"Fucking Type 59, why didn't you stay in the cap. Coward! Can't even take out a Tiger2!"

Yes, I ran.  Why? Because your terrible Pershing-driving ass got destroyed by that same Tiger II that's bearing down on me, the only guy on the cap.  Fuckwit.

Stop making me relive the anger! 

Staying on the cap when you're being shot at usually results in you being destroyed.  Its often better to leave and find some cover or a better position to fire back than stay there and keep taking rounds up your ass.  However, most people see you leave the cap and shout "WTF you moron!!! Stay on the cap ffs!!!  FAIL!!!"

[Merusk]

Yeah, tactical retreat doesn't enter in to the minds of the guys who troll you.  I've begun counter-trolling by offering decent tactics.. which usually gets me "stfu noob, camping sux" on defense maps.   

[Tmon]

I'm on a break until the British tree drops.  Part of it is GW2 taking all my game time but most of the reason is 11000+ mostly pub matches.  Like I told my clanmates the stupid finely beat me down.

[Sir T]

Well, I got a Leopard. And now the game seems to be "I start, I see an enemy tank and I explode" Thrilling. I feel myself starting to get a little bit better though, Even though I have no idea what I'm doing.

I seem to be a rather scary guy when it comes to artillery though. I got a mastery badge on my Sturmpanzer II 

[Gets]

I agree stats do matter, just not "win rate", it's completely useless bullshit for a number of reasons. Until XVM only uses a stat like K/D ratio it's just a tool for wankery. Especially with people in clans gaming XVM to improve their win rate. Win rate would be a decent stat for rating an entire clan's overall skill, but for assessing an individual person on a random, public game it's about the worst stat you can use.

The only common denominator through all your battles is you, so winrate is the best statistic right now to determine a players general skill level. I recommend reading Echelon's winrate study that proves this. Clan wars battles are much less frequent than random battles and if you're on the map you're fighting other teams of equal competence, unless you're in a clan dedicated to clearing landing zones and getting no gold, which is hardly glamorous. K/D ratio isn't a good metric, because a veteran player can inflate it in low-tier matches, like an efficiency rating in reverse, and is dependent on the tanks you mostly play. If I'm in a T30 and have a choice between shooting a 1% HP tank and a 100% HP tank I'd likely not waste my DPM just to get a kill. Unless I'm using glorious soviet artillery and can splash damage both of them 

Win rate with random teams seems pointless. I've often had a pretty good match until I realize there's me and a lonely arty left.

Again, same point as above. We've all had those games.

Win rate is an especially fucked stat during bonus Xp specials.  I don't know why the morons crawl out of the woodwork, but boy howdy do they.  It took 6 matches to get a win on my M26 last night.  Some of them I was in the situation Kageru just mentioned. "Hey I'm doing awesome, we must be winning!  Newp, the entire other flank is dead so now it's me and lower-tier med lights vs. all their heavies.  Whoopiee!"

This is a common myth as well, that special weekends lure out the worst of the worst and somehow most of them always end up on your team probably because you broke a mirror not too long ago or simply out of a hateful god's spite.

Well, I got a Leopard. And now the game seems to be "I start, I see an enemy tank and I explode" Thrilling. I feel myself starting to get a little bit better though, Even though I have no idea what I'm doing.

I seem to be a rather scary guy when it comes to artillery though. I got a mastery badge on my Sturmpanzer II 

I recommend reading Tazilon's VK2801 Guide. He's had nearly 14k battles in his and put everything he knows down to 128 pages, pictures included. It's pretty amazing and helped me get out of the same rut of being terrible at scout tanks (I lie, I'm still awful).

[Sheepherder]

Scout tanks are frustrating and probably not the best vehicles for the casual player, because it's all about combining your vehicle's traits and the terrain.

For example: the normally suicidal trench run on Steppes can be done in a scout tank going south -> north if you take it at high speed in a fairly squat tank and clear the tracks at the north, which gives you cover against the enemy camping line and lands you deep in arty country.

[Sir T]

Hmm... Looking at the various tanks I think I might leave the leopard for a bit and head for the medium tanks instead. Might enjoy that more. Plus I already got a lot of the research done on the 5X weekend.

Of course it does leave the problem that I cant hit the broadside of a barn made of magnets but hey...

[angry.bob]

The only common denominator through all your battles is you, so winrate is the best statistic right now to determine a players general skill level. I recommend reading Echelon's winrate study that proves this. Clan wars battles are much less frequent than random battles and if you're on the map you're fighting other teams of equal competence, unless you're in a clan dedicated to clearing landing zones and getting no gold, which is hardly glamorous. K/D ratio isn't a good metric, because a veteran player can inflate it in low-tier matches, like an efficiency rating in reverse, and is dependent on the tanks you mostly play. If I'm in a T30 and have a choice between shooting a 1% HP tank and a 100% HP tank I'd likely not waste my DPM just to get a kill. Unless I'm using glorious soviet artillery and can splash damage both of them 

Well, me and the fourteen other people on my team, the 15 people on the other team, and the fuckhuge random combinations of those people, the tanks they have, what tiers are involved, and what coonsumables they're using. Echelon's study is terribad horseshit designed to prove an outcome he wanted to be true. He spends the rest of the thread defending it by telling people the maths are to hard for haters and by page three it's completely discredited and he's abandoned the thread. The fact that he insisted that every single variable except win rate be exactle the same should have been a giant red flag. Read it again, especially page 3. It proves even less now with the addition of the map modes, since they use the same maps and they are very clearly not balanced for attacker and defender.

K/D ratio isn't a perfect indicator but it's a hell of a lot better than team sin rate. It's been the standard in the FPS community for over twenty years now and it's a hell of a lot more susceptable to shenanigans there and the community is considerably bigger.

[WayAbvPar]

Yeah the Leopard fluctuates from 'barely tolerable' to 'borderline unplayable'. I still haven't finished grinding mine- don't think I have played match in it after a daily double for months. Slower than it should be, bigger than it should be, and does dick for damage (if it can even penetrate). It is an awful tank.

Switch German lines and grind up to a PZIV and then the VK3601H. Both are excellent. Or go down the American heavy tree. Everything past the Lee is playable, with the T29 and T32 really shining. I loved my T1HT and M6 as well, but those aren't as well thought of among most.


e- bob posted while I was posting, so to address his post as well:

K/D doesn't take into effect things like damaging many tanks, spotting/scouting, capping points, and defending the cap. Winrate covers all of the above- those who do the above better than others will have a higher win rate in the long run. Quality of teammates will balance out over same said long run. Always playing with a platoon will have a large effect on win rate as well- you are guaranteed that there will be at least 2 less complete retards on your team every match.

[Kageru]

That linked article doesn't really change things as far as I can see. Yes if I'm a really good player teams I am in are more likely to win, but that doesn't change the fact the statistic still has a lot of "noise" in it especially because the number of samples is often quite small.

Focusing on Win/Loss in a non-controlled environment is a disease. It leads to people gaming the system rather than playing it. Go and stomp noobs in tier 1 in a premium tank, locate other skilled players and platoon, play a premium tank with gold ammo and your W/L will improve with no change in your skill. Your also being an arse, but hey, look at the W/L rating!

[Amarr HM]

If we eliminate the noise we see that good players win matches, bad players lose matches. I've definitely won matches in the last week that would likely have been lost if I was a terrible player. I can send you some replays if it will help convince you.

[Amarr HM]

Patch notes for 0.8 are up, looks like a really big patch this one, loads of cool changes including the new physics engine.

http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/157929-080-public-test-preliminary-patch-note/page__fromsearch__1

[Sir T]

Yeah the Leopard fluctuates from 'barely tolerable' to 'borderline unplayable'. I still haven't finished grinding mine- don't think I have played match in it after a daily double for months. Slower than it should be, bigger than it should be, and does dick for damage (if it can even penetrate). It is an awful tank.

Switch German lines and grind up to a PZIV and then the VK3601H. Both are excellent. Or go down the American heavy tree. Everything past the Lee is playable, with the T29 and T32 really shining. I loved my T1HT and M6 as well, but those aren't as well thought of among most.

The Leopard is actually very fast (68 kph), its just that the acceleration is utterly shite. You stamp down on the accelerator and you start off puttering along at a whooping 25 kph or something. that slowly increases up to 68 over the course of a minute. That means that if you get the tracks blown off, even if you use a repair kit to get moving again you are stuck crawling and are probably dead anyway. And forget about going up hills. And its turret speed is utterly shite. And and and...

But the big problem is that its rated for battles from tier 5 to tier 9. That means that you are suddenly thrown into going up against heavy tanks of far more than your weight class. By contrast, the PzKpfw III has a battle tier rating of 4 to 6, so you are at least fighting tanks of your range class. And it has pretty much the same radio range. Once you have a lot more experience you could make use of the Leopard's better view range, but seriously for a first tank dream on. I was actually in a battle where there was no artillery at all and I was basically a cheerleader.

So yeah,  PzKpfw III and up for me for a while I think.

[Merusk]

Switch German lines and grind up to a PZIV and then the VK3601H. Both are excellent. Or go down the American heavy tree. Everything past the Lee is playable, with the T29 and T32 really shining. I loved my T1HT and M6 as well, but those aren't as well thought of among most.

I'll second this.  I also enjoyed the M3Lee but I'm a rarity.  It was like a much faster TD with great elevation/ depression when I played it, though, and they've nerfed that pretty heavily.  Still, with the rejiggering of the matchmaker I might pick it up again as they've been tough when I'm grinding lower-tier tanks.

Speaking of lower-tier the T1HT got a bad rep a while ago for being paper.  I think this is largely due to the matches it was being stuck-in, as it would more-frequently be in Tier 7, 8 and even 9s because they didn't go below 4s with the tier 5's .   After coming across a few as I'm leveling the German TD tree and I'm now in the Hetzer.. those fuckers are wicked.  Bounced a few shots of his side of all places last night and he then oneshot my ass when I was head-on.  

The M6 was always fun, it just needed to be played more conservatively than other heavies in its tier.   That was the first tank I got Elite Mastery in, goddamn great vehicle.


Also: You can only game win/ loss so much without being a player of that tier.  I have 3k matches and a 49% win 49% loss rate.  It would take me hundreds of matches at low-tier with no high-tier matches to elevate that.  (unless you're assuming nothing but wins.. which is lulzworthy) At that point I'm a tier 2 player, not a tier 8 player.  Additionally my skills will suffer because tier 1 & 2 players SUUUUUCK.  You don't realize this until you go back and play 5-10 matches in a row then try and play a higher tier again.  You've gotten used to some of the mistakes and stupid play and expect it, only to find it's not there anymore.

Premiums are also NOT the winmobiles people think they are at the low end.  The pzf3 was a great little tank vulnerable to little but itself a year ago.  However, it's pretty vulnerable to a number of the Tier 2 tanks that have been introduced since the French went live.   Even if you're speaking of tier V (which is mid, not low) the Church is pretty damn vulnerable and by that tier people have learned to focus the premium.

[Amarr HM]

Another marker is the lower the tier the more difficult it is to drag out wins due to being outclassed. In T10s you are always one of the most important tanks on the field, perhaps the most, at any given time. So your ability can wholly dictate the outcome, especially the matchups where you are mainly up against lower tier opposition.

My IS7 and T-62-A both have 76% / 73% win rates cause I'm highly proficient with those tanks, but my batchat alas only has about 55% win cause I'm admittedly average at playing this tank.

[Ginaz]

I wonder sometimes how much higher my win% would be if I platooned on a regular basis instead of playing solo since I've managed to get a 53% win rate on my own.

[Amarr HM]

Just played 8.0 on the test server, the physics beds in quite well and doesn't break anything. Maybe except the T-50-2 can now pull handbrake turns, which is kinda nuts. The tanks pushing each other feels quite nice and jumping works well but isn't that common. Another thing they've added is a post match breakdown which will really benefit us 'stattos', you can see how the rest of your team or enemy persevered in full detail.

The new Russian TD, Object 263 is currently kicking ass. It's a TD with 250mm armour that moves around the place like a medium (55 km) and dishes out 550 damage every 6 seconds. I expect that to get hit with a nerf bat at some stage.

[Sir T]

Well yeah because the T-50-2 desperately needed an increase in its maneuverability disadvantage. 

Oh my Win ration has been steadily increasing. I'm at 47.6% now. Would probably have been higher apart from 2 days of wretched games.

[WayAbvPar]

Dear god, the pubbies.

Playing Mountain Pass in my T32- multiple Tier 9 match. My team starts in the South, and XVM says we are 76% to win this match. I peel off to defend the 1/2 line assault, with an IS-8 and a lower tier TD of some flavor farther behind me. The rest of my team goes up the 8/9 line (toward the ice road). First tank I see is a T20. I put 3 holes in him and he hides to my south with about 100 HP left. I then see a T30, an IS-8, and a JT 8.8 in front of me. I play peekaboo and put holes in a couple of them, then get shot from the back by the T20, who has flanked me (not sure WTF my IS-8 and TD backup are doing yet...things are hot and heavy).

I turn around and dispatch the T20. Turn back and start fighting the other 3. Get hit from behind again- this time it is a VK4502 who has come from under the bridge to flank me. Still no sign of my backup. I have a little hill between us, so I advance toward the trio I was originally fighting to get some cover. Soon the 4502 is joined by another tank (can't remember what it was), and I eventually go up in flames without another kill.

 I make a sarcastic remark about all the wonderful support my team provided, and someone on my team points out that most of the team is dead. I look up to see it is 1-9, then 1-10. We lose 1-15. I fought 6 fucking enemy tanks ALONE, and my team of shitlords can't even eke out a single kill among the rest of the them. Unfuckingbelievable.

Crossposting this to SA, so Gets can read it twice 

[Ginaz]

I've been in a few 15-0 wins.  I feel bad for the other team and winning curbstombs aren't very fun, either.  I've also been in more than a few 1-15 and 2-15 losses, often with the only enemy tank being destroyed by myself.  Those are even less fun.