World of Tanks Mark III

[Vendetta]

It's the medals listed under "battle hero" or "epic achievement" on your profile that will get you Courageous Resistance, at which point you get treated as if you were on the winning team for credits and XP.

Here's an example

[Skywalker_T-65]

Victory!
Battle: South Coast 10/26/2013 6:05:49 PM
Vehicle: ELC AMX
Experience received: 1,050
Credits received: 23,330

I do so love a good match in the ELC. Especially when an overconfident T34 lets me shoot him over and over again.

[Darth Yoshi]

Gah, what a horrible night. It's like the game is deliberately giving me nothing but the worst players for teams. I've had like 6 or 7 matches in a row of absolute shit teams, who either get themselves all killed 2 minutes in, or all pile one side of the map and get flanked to death. And then a victory, and another string of defeats, ad nauseum. Fucking ridiculous.

[krakonfour]

Gah, what a horrible night. It's like the game is deliberately giving me nothing but the worst players for teams. I've had like 6 or 7 matches in a row of absolute shit teams, who either get themselves all killed 2 minutes in, or all pile one side of the map and get flanked to death. And then a victory, and another string of defeats, ad nauseum. Fucking ridiculous.

My record loss-streak is 17. My lowest winratio for one tank in one night was 23 losses in 30 battles with my IS3 last year.

[Simon_Jester]

Statistically speaking, you should expect that 1 out of every 32 strings of five battles will involve losing five times in a row. Play 32 battles and there are 28 such strings... so yes, you will lose five in a row at some point.

[krakonfour]

Statistically speaking, you should expect that 1 out of every 32 strings of five battles will involve losing five times in a row. Play 32 battles and there are 28 such strings... so yes, you will lose five in a row at some point.

I'd really want to know how you calculated that. For example, how much of a fluke is a 17 loss streak in a chain of 30 battles?

[Vendetta]

Depends how good you are.

The biggest influence on you winning or losing is how much damage you do and how many kills you get. If you consistently get a high damage number and kill enemies then you will consistently win, and it will take a really shit team to drag you down.

It's hard to run a probability analysis on whether you'll win or lose at tanks because whether you win or lose is directly related to how well you play as an individual.

[krakonfour]

Depends how good you are.

The biggest influence on you winning or losing is how much damage you do and how many kills you get. If you consistently get a high damage number and kill enemies then you will consistently win, and it will take a really shit team to drag you down.

It's hard to run a probability analysis on whether you'll win or lose at tanks because whether you win or lose is directly related to how well you play as an individual.

Umm. After 18k battles, I have 52% win rate overall.
My gaming 'career' had two steps. The first step, I had 49% win rate for 11k battles. I was new to the game, plus I had a crappy computer that could only churn out 14 fps max, and on top of that, the best connection I could get was 150ms ping. My efficiency was 980 (slightly below average).

Then, I bought a new computer. Still shitty for gaming standards, but I tweaked the game and overclocked the GPU until I got a stable 26 fps (capped for temperature reasons, otherwise it's 20-85 fps) and 50ms ping. My winrate jumped to 55% and my WR to 1550, which is very good.

I got my 17 win loss streak while I still had 49%. My IS3, which I got it on, also had 49%.

[Vejut]

actually, basic stats. Given a 50% average win rate over a large number of battles, its a 1 in 2 chance for a loss each battle. after that is all multiplication. five battles have 32 possible win/loss combos (2^5), only one of which is all losses. 17 battles straight would be 1 in 2^17 chance. Your personal win/ loss modifies the math a bit, but most are near enough to 50% as to make not alot of difference.

[Vendetta]

That assumes that the battles are independent events, but they aren't, the common factor is the player. Loss streaks are a self reinforcing cycle because as you lose more you get frustrated, that means you play worse, either turtling up and having no impact on the battle before it's too late or getting overaggressive and dying early for little benefit.

You want to know how you can reduce the chances of a 17 loss streak to actual zero? If you lose too many in a row, stop for a bit, do something else.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, that was hilarious. Playing my ELC and got two enemy ELC's chasing me across half the map. They keep missing me, as I charge at their one arty...my shot at said arty missed, but then one of the ELC's chasing me fired off a shell...and killed the arty.

[krakonfour]

Well, that was hilarious. Playing my ELC and got two enemy ELC's chasing me across half the map. They keep missing me, as I charge at their one arty...my shot at said arty missed, but then one of the ELC's chasing me fired off a shell...and killed the arty.

That reminds me. I should get an ELC back.... but why ELC when you can WZ-131, the most fun to play tank in the game?

[Skywalker_T-65]

I haven't gotten that far in the tree to get the WZ yet.


Nor do I really expect to. So far, the ELC is the only light I've enjoyed playing. I'm much more a heavy tanker.

[Zwinmar]

I think I am not getting the concept of playing a heavy down. TD's I'm decent with, heavies I lose more than I win.

[Vendetta]

The heavies you've played aren't exactly representative though.

The B1 is the most terrible tank in the game, as evidenced by it being the only researchable tank outside the newbie tiers to receive preferential matchmaking (can't get into tier 6 games).

D.W. 2 is almost in the same boat, it's got uninspiring gun choices and bad armour.

VK3001P isn't bad but it's not a "traditional" heavy. It's got weak armour for its tier, but good accurate guns so it's more of a support/sniper heavy.

T1 Heavy is closest to a traditional heavy in the bunch, but the armour is only useful from the front, the sides and rear are weak.

The most important skill to learn for this level of heavies (and german ones in general) is angling, you want to have the front of your tank at about a 25-30 degree angle to your enemy, which increases the effective thickness of your armour.

[Darth Yoshi]

You want to know how you can reduce the chances of a 17 loss streak to actual zero? If you lose too many in a row, stop for a bit, do something else.

Yeah, I noticed that. Go to sleep, come back the next day, and suddenly I start not losing every match again.

So anyway. I got an M5A1 recently, and have finally discovered scout matchmaking. My ability to passive scout is basically crap, even with binoculars, so I'm basically being thrown into a bunch of matches where I'm dead weight. Ouch. Maybe I should go back to the Chi-Ha and grind for free XP for the Type T-34.

[Vendetta]

The M5A1 is probably the least troublesome tier 4 scout, but scouting is the most difficult thing in the game to learn and putting tanks that are objectively quite bad at it in the path to tanks not related to scouting is one of the remaining problems with getting into the game.

My advice is to just make the best of it when you get tier 4/5 matches, the gun isn't bad so you can do a surprising amount of damage.

You probably can't active scout terribly effectively, but nevertheless try running ridges where you get a chance. Here's an example, not just me but the enemy T71 work our sides of the ridge, peek up and spot, turn back down, repeat in a different place. Tier 10 game and scouts come top XP on both teams. (Albeit WZ-132 is probably the best straight up scout in the game).

[Imperial528]

I'm sick of the nonsense that has spread throughout the pubies, though it's not a surprise.

Case in point: Pearl River, there's always one fuckhead saying "Don't cross the bridge guys!" as if it's some secret bit of lost knowledge that we must always follow.

Then they are so bewildered when they lose. Almost every fucking time it's the same story, either the most heavily armored enemy tanks poke out just their fronts at an angle and bounce just about everything, allowing their team mates to poke, or they only leave three tanks to keep the bridge occupied while the rest swing around back. Even in the cases when they don't sit around uselessly, the attempts to find a position before enough tanks actually push to sweep up the idiots usually results in the enemy securing the cover first.

[Vendetta]

It's generally a bad idea for south team on Pearl River to go into the valley, north team has much better cover for more tanks including devastating hull down positions, whereas south side's cover is much smaller and can be used by a much smaller number of vehicles.

"Don't cross the bridge" is almost always the right answer, unless the enemy team has basically no heavies.

[The Vortex Empire]

If the south side is at all halfway competent, holding the bridge is trivial. That pubs fail at it regularly is more of a comment on how bad pubbies are than on the merits of holding the bridge.

[Argosh]

EU gets the update tomorrow.
Update 8.9: Armored Spearhead release on Wednesday 30th October

Also, had a fun game in KV-1, we took the hill and never stopped rolling. That U-11 gun is a killer against lower tiers.
Victory!, KV-1, Himmelsdorf, 10/29/13 8:38 PM: 1,601 nXP, 1,743 dmg
Achievements: : Top Gun, Master Gunner, Reaper

[Imperial528]

In almost every match where my team has stayed at the bridge, we have lost. In the matches where myself and a few other tanks have actually taken the valley's cover despite the cowards at the bridge, we've won. The valley's cover layout is entirely adequate to push from either side if you know what you're doing, however the now-standard practice of bridge camping has distorted the view of the valley to most players, in my opinion, as when you camp the bridge or hesitate to push into the valley, they get your cover, too.

I've drawn a bit on the maps to illustrate my point. I've used WoT's default spawn colors, assume I am speaking from the standpoint of the red team.

This is what I usually see happen when pubs decide not to hold the bridge, but also can't be coaxed to actually drive to the correct positions:



Here I've marked what in my experience is the average player's idea of the valley side of the map, the yellow lines being stop/divider marks, the one closest to the red base the most common. I think this ends up the case because the distances appear to be equal, more on that latter. Most will hold back in the small bend with the rock in front, challenging only the enemy on the opposing ramp, and if they take the rock, both the ramp and the center path. However, from this vantage point the enemy gets good hull-down positions and we will not, with the possible exception of the rock. In addition some may seek to cover the enemy's bend as well, and will go up against the valley wall to hide from the ramp's fire, though they are still exposed to the center path and bend's firing arcs, and lack cover suited for poking or hull-down.
In some cases players will advance to the second yellow line, allowing them to work the ramp and the rock at the front of the green path's bend, but this position is still exposed, is very open to the center path, and can be overwhelmed quickly. Both of these positions are failures because they do not seek to divide the enemy, and only succeed in dividing the defending side. These cover positions should only ever see use in two scenarios: 1. if the enemy has much faster vehicles than you, in which case you actually have a reason to secure the bridge instead, as it is likely your team got stuck with slow but armored tanks. 2. Your initial push was blunted and they are fighting back, however at this point both sides will have been bloodied and you may be able to still come out on top, or simply use the defensive positions as a delaying tactic to allow the other side of the map time to overcome the enemy.

This is a much more ideal position:



From here you are taking advantage of hull-down cover on the ramp and the bulge in the center path, along with the bend's cover. Unlike the previous two positions here your team can easily retaliate at any positions that the enemy can attack you from, and you can do so from cover just as good as theirs. Additionally this position succeeds in dividing the enemy, and if you push them back they will be forced to rely on their side's defensive positions, which are just as dismal as the south's.

In most matches I play on Pearl River I do not see this position utilized, because people will actually stop at the less ideal cover, waiting for slaughter, or camp the bridge. I theorize that this is because their path on the map to the good cover seems longer, however when taking terrain into account they are about equal, unless one team has significantly faster heavy tanks than the other, in which case defending the bridge can actually work.

[Vendetta]

The thing is that where you've put the line in the second position is far closer to green's spawn than red's. So red team has to push to it in the open under fire from tanks that are already hull down.

Whereas one decent sidescraping tank at the left side of the bridge and the green team is fucked, because the curve of the bridge covers the lower plate and the bridge itself makes the tank arty safe. Park an E-100 there with a driver that's halfway capable and it's You Shall Not Pass time.

[Imperial528]

In my experience due to the north having to drive through the river it's actually not that much of a difference, unless one team has a majority of tanks that handle terrain significantly better/worse than the other. In which case, use different positioning.

[Zwinmar]

I love people being stupid:

http://wotreplays.com/site/406369#ruinberg-zwinmar-at_2