I play Soviet ground forces and no matter how many hours I dump into this game, I don't seem to improve in any notable way. My performance in a match is entirely up to luck. I know there isn't a concrete answer to my question, but rough estimates would be appreciated.
Came into the comments just for this one lmao
No britan Sad
Same
Hey I was gonna say that
I only looked in the comments, to search this exact comment
I wanted to say the same but with meme but I can't paste images in comments. Idk if you can on PC but for some reason not on mobile.
you will start getting decent when you focus on consciously improving.
like stop just playing and consider why you are doing what you are doing. look at replays if needed to understand what happened.
watch/read guides if needed.
when you die consider why you died and how to avoid doing that again.
learn the maps and where people often are.
learn the vehicles (yours and theirs) and consider their abilities and how best to use and counter them.
learn about the different shells and their usages.
slow down and be patient.
watch and listen carefully
etc etc.
Patience is my biggest problem. I have enemy engine volume at max and my own engine volume at min for the sound settings, so I can already hear enemies from pretty far.
Boredom and impatience are very dangerous. When you get on a losing streak you keep trying to prove to yourself you can win and become reckless
That’s your main issue then, you need to know when to stop pushing and when to start hunting. You can also look around corners/hills when you move slowly. Another tip I have is that when you die to a tank, go look at it in the other tech tree and use the protection analysis. That way you can figure out how to kill it in the future.
I know it sounds contradicting, but just mute the game or at least lower volume and listen to your favourite music. Focusing too much on sound will do more harm than good.
Just pay attention on whats happening on screen and improve your spacial awareness in matches. Knowing from where you could possibly be shot is better than trusting sounds. With time, youll be able to tell where enemies might shoot from and youll unconsciously pay attention to those positions, even when not hearing a thing.
Learn the capabilities of your vehicle, the ballistics of your shells and how to guesstimate ranges quickly. Its stupid how often a wild guess at range can grant you a kill or two.
And lastly, play what is fun, dont rush to top tier and take a break every once in a while. This isnt your job, youre not getting paid for it. If its not fun, do something else.
thats the worst advice ive ever heard
Works for me though, Im much more aware of the overall battle than if I would just sweat for sounds, and I have actually fun playing.
At the end of the day, its a game, we arent getting paid to play. My advice might work for some, it might not for others.
I just dislike being overly dependent on sounds, thats it.
You’re probably the deaf mf who I ‘sneak’ up to, even though my loud ass tank just drove right next to you.
For the first part; I already do but I have the music at 1/3 of the game volume which works for me as I can still hear enemies easily.
This is a great example of what not to do. Audio can be incredibly useful, in fact in most cases I know where an enemy is before an encounter just because I can hear them. I’m sure I’ve been reported for cheating before because it looks like I have wall hacks, when in fact I’m just listening.
Don’t become reliant on sound
I use it more as a tool to hear which way an enemy is coming to prepare for it, I don't think I'm very reliant on it though.
Just don’t. Like, don’t even use it. Really.
I mostly disagree. On larger maps, sure it’s pretty useless, but on close-quarter maps with a lot of buildings, sound is an important factor to tell whether that enemy tank is in front of you, behind you, or on another side of a building.
Weird. Whenever i tried consciously improving my performance worsened. I guess each player has their own way of learning.
Everyone learns from consciously improving. The neat part is you can eliminate certain mistakes you make after you manage to generalize the way you play and realize the problems with it
Very similar to League, on the short term you might lose a few matches, but overtime the performance jumps
i got about 2k hours and i think im starting to get good ,i can relieably get atleast 1.0 kd in any match
Better late than never
Since you stuck in low tier it best to enjoy and learn your lineup, and the enemy.
Cap zones when air is up are big targets beware of that.
Russia 4.7 is a great all around br to play (it one of my favos)
Learn how to angle, where to shoot to disable the enemy's ability to either fire back or stop them from moving.
Dont stay in 1 spot to long cuz angry space bar warriors will find u.
And iknow haha funny, but learn how to have fun with your vehicles, dont play tanks cuz they meta. Play what u like.
I for example like the isu 152 at 4.7 (it my baby from wot days, bl10 supreme)
RP will come in when u enjoy what u drive/fly.
General advice:
Take it easy, and don’t worry about the grind. Enjoy your BR. My main source of fun isn’t from high level vehicles, but from owning my “childhood legends” like the T34, KV1, KV2, Spitfire, M4 Sherman, Tiger, IL-2, P-51, F4U, FW190, and so on
As for improving, the main tips I can give are:
Awareness of the size of your vehicle. Knowing your strong and weak spots, and angling appropriately. Knowing enemy weak spots, although that shouldn’t matter too much in BR below 4.7 (just aim for the side or the rear of the tank whenever you can, but there are still plenty of enemies whose front you can penetrate)
TAKE. COVER. ALWAYS. Always try to either be concealed by vegetation, or have solid cover like the crest of a hill or the wall of a building. Hold C on your keyboard (for free view) and use the third person view to your advantage to get a corner peek.
Keep your distance, and flank. Soviet ground forces have good penetration at range, particularly the SU/ASU/ISU line.
The T34 is fast and very good all around, use it to flank the enemy.
In my experience as a British main, if u create a custom match against like 1 other country and fight bots, you can learn where to shoot to do the most damage against a slightly wider variety of tanks then compared to the test drive which always helps. U can also learn some map positioning so u know where to drive and where to look. A good map to start on is probably cargo port as it has some urban environment and open area get comfortable with that then find another map with similar environments. If u wanna work hull-down (tho the gun depression on Russian vehicles is abysmal), feel free to message me, and we can chat about maps
Some never, I've saw plenty with 40,000 matches or clocked 12,000 hours still remains mediocre with all their vehicles barely hit 1.0 KDR, bunch of CAS mains who played grb has this horrible ass stats on most of their ground vehicles. I mean you look at things this way, some 48 years old still working a minimum wage job and living in their parents house, some 26 years old already figured out and become a millionaire. I've seen good players who has 2.0 KDR with barely 5000 matches, their most played MBT has 3.0 KDR, I don't think time matters, it's more about having talent.
not to mention good connection and reason for playing, some people might just like tanks without caring to become good at the game
It feels like I have a reverse talent or something lol. I can't think of a single leisure activity that I'm atleast decent at.
Where can i see the total time spent on war thunder? (I don't have steam)
I play on Playstation so I used the Playstation app on my smartphone. I don't know what platform you play on though.
I play on pc
350 hrs in playing Germany and USA at 6.7 and USSR at 4.0 with some air upto 3.7 and still inconsistent some games 9-0,7-3, 5-0 and others 1-3 and even 0-2 but I felt I gotten better after trying different trees and learning more about my main opponents USA and USSR and always trying not to rush but calm down and move while looking around me and checking the usual camping positions and then get overconfident and rush at every enemy and get killed again and again until I humble myself to moving slowly and not rushing I would also recommend getting a comfort lineup where you know that you will perform just to restore your confidence and return to the grind mine is either American 3.7 Russian 4.0 and German 3.7 where I enjoy with usually 7-3 and once got 15-2
I don't have a line-up that I perform in consistently. I'm currently working on a Soviet 5.7 line-up. I don't know how good it will be, but I think it will be a good BR for learning mid-tier ground combat.
Then you should just keep on playing and always don't rush mindlessly àà!8>
From my experience, just keep playing and try to have fun. Don't insist in strategies that clearly aren't working and don't try doing things too above your current skill level. Making it short: play intuitively/instinctively. Don't overthink it.
If you dont play with veterans and try to get better as a lone wolf, it will take ages.
If you play with veterans from the first hour and teach yourself gamemechanics you can be quite good in a very short time.
My friends don't play this game unfortunately.
Your friends arent wt veterans if they dont play - i am speaking about getting in a squadron and play with people that have several thousands of hours ingame.
I honestly performed better as soon as I started playing faster and more aggressively. Felt uncomfortable to me but it made me overwhelm enemies lots of times.
Getting better? good joke.
I have 3k+ hours in this game and can barely keep up a 1,3 K/D in Ground RB
Phew, you got a LONG way
Hallo mede nederlander
At lower tiers the biggest advantage is knowing the tanks in the game reload speeds armor and pen of course you don’t need to memorize the exact values but having a idea is good
What country do you play
I know the weakspots of the common tanks at the BRs that I play.
What country do you play
And br?
4.0 and 5.7
That’s peak fun when it comes to br
I agree that those BRs are some of the more fun ones, but I'm bad with even the KV-1S.
So you play Russia good choice to start with
Could change, because I don't know which nation I want to main.
I Stick with the main nations I started with th Germans and switched to the Russians
The kv-1s are good tanks there a bit over glorified tho sometimes there volumetric armor stops everything even tiger rounds and sometimes they get shot trough like rubber
USSR
We hace been playing since 2013.. Me personally I started in 2017, and I'm still learning new stuff every now and then, that's the fun part
Nee, Je zal precies evenveel Skill Issue hebben als de 80% van de Playerbase.
I feel you man, I have 400+ hours in the game and I'm still ass
Ive got worse though probably because im going up in BR maybe I dunno , think my best games are when I found a good spot n blew loads of people up when I’m driving around I just die
When you get to rank 7 and then only play 1.0 br😎
20000 more hours
I’ve been playing since this game launched on consoles years ago. I’m only okay.
if you're a german main
i can advise you to calm down
dont be overly paranoid and avoid tunnel vision when possible
About 1000 hours in you start to regret , and the snail already done consuming your soul
Nobody can escape The Snail.
not even 1k 2k 5k hours
Not by playing Soviets
1600 hours in, probably chump change compared to some and some matches I do great in, some matches I get absolutely rolled in. You don't get better at the game, you get better at the cope.
IMHO the ground battles are the hardest without a doubt, I’ve gotten much better at AB but GB I’m still horrible at, naval battles is where I go when I need to relax 😂
Most likely emn NEVER
Watch good content creators
Ha.
Reaching LVL 100 is the tutorial.
The best way to improve your matches, at least in Ground RB, is to learn the maps and where ebenies are going to be. If you learn where the enemy is most likely to be, you can flank or ambush them. The person who shoots first in War Thunder, most of the time, wins the engagement. If you can put yourself in those positions, you will see your kill count go up. If you just drive towards the enemy without much thought or planning, you'll often find yourself in too much of a fair fight.
The second thing you can do to improve is learn about the tanks you commonly fight. The armor viewer and tester in the hangar can be incredibly helpful, and I often re-check different shots that i think should hit (usually when I get volumetric'd on a panther mantlet). The best way to learn about the tanks you fight, though, is to play them. Having the weak spots and stat card memorized (something I have) is well and good, but if you actually PLAY the tanks you're fighting, you will find new ways to counter them. For example, the Tiger 1 (the 5.7 one) is listed as having 8 degrees of gun depression, but over the front corners there's smoke grenade launchers that are in the way. That can be taken advantage of if you have to fight it.
These are the two main things that have raised my skill level. In tanks I enjoy, I can average or exceed a 2.0 KD and 60% winrate, and on tanks I don't enjoy (Leopard 1, I'm looking at you) I can still average around a 1.3-1.4 KD and around a 53% winrate. Like anything, these take time. I've been playiing on and off for a couple of years now, and reached rank 100 a couple weeks ago, but I've ALSO watched hundreds of hours of WT videos for fun, and have an unfair advantage (tanks are one of my special interests). Everyone learns in their own time.
Oh, also. Some tanks just won't click for you and you will struggle to do well in them. I struggle to play the Leopard 1 (based on my own standards) well. I also struggle with, of all things, the Tiger 2's (but that might just be a result of the bad teammates).
I don't play RB yet so flanking is difficult. I will switch to RB when I have my planned 5.7 line-up unlocked and spaded.
Gotcha! I can't speak for ground AB, really, as I have maybe 4 hours in it total. Ground RB has a higher skill floor, from what i understand, but also a much higher skill ceiling, allowing for much more improvement. If you're interested in Ground RB, I would start at low BR instead of your 5.7 lineup. Low BR will give you more chances to flank, as well as (usually) give you more time to spot enemies. If you jump in at 5.7, ESPECIALLY in Russia 5.7, you will struggle a lot. Panthers are annoying to fight, and you'll have to get used to both spotting them and aiming without the marker.
Additionally, around 5.7 you start to fight more people who are professional seal clubbers (or good players grinding out a minor nation, like I am), and 6.7 uptiers can be a bit rough. If you don't want to play reserve vehicles, then I'd suggest getting into RB with your 4.0 lineup, as they're all fairly forgiving vehicles.
I tried RB (at 4.0) once and I was too slow with spotting the enemy before they spotted me which resulted in me not doing anything usefull in that match.
Reserve-tier is probably the best place to learn. The average player skill will be low and, with your experience using and driving tanks, you should have the edge. You WILL run into stat-padding losers there, but if you want an easy entry into RB, that's the best spot. I'd use the BT-tanks, they're fast and APHE will one-shot everything you face, more or less.
There's some pointers I can give on spotting tanks, if you're interested. For starters, use your binos. Should be bound to B. I spend so much time there, constantly looking around me. Tanks also have a unique shape and look to them, and their render in-game is slightly different than the non-tank things (it might be because the player vehicles need to have their positions constantly updated by the engine, while the rocks and stuff generally don't? Maybe?) That can let you spot them in third-person.
But, honestly, I learned how to spot tanks by watching videos to see where better players were looking. Not necessarily looking at the tanks, but looking at WHERE they were looking on the map. If you know where tanks are likely to show up (like the northeast ridge on Sinai), you can learn what tanks look like. Videos might be the biggest help for you there. OddBawz (or PhlyDaily, if you want more humor) are good creators that you can watch for fun and learn a thing or two about map placement.
Like everything else, though, it'll take time. I taught a friend how to play a year or so ago, and it took him about a week to be able to identify a tank. So, start low, look at well-traveled areas, and see if you get better. But also, have fun. It's just a video game, and if you don't enjoy playing it because you aren't improving, or it takes too much effort, there's no harm in playing something else!
I play with controller so I can't bind many things but binos are luckily binded by default. As for spotting, I know how the common tanks at my BR look its rather that I am too slow.
I get that. I started on controller, decided I hated it, and got a keyboard and mouse plugged into my xbox. The setup was scuffed, but it works, and it's what I reccomend most people do (unless you can't for accessibility reasons). Even a cheap M&K setup will give you more buttons and versatility. I totally get that might still not be in your budget, I'm a college student and frequently have no money.
Look at common enemies in the armor viewer and simulate your shells against them to figure out where you should aim.
Practice shooting in test drives or custom battles against bots.
Time gives experience, experience takes time… you will die A lot and you will improve every time. Maybe you shouldn’t go into that same place where you keep dying… maybe there is a capture point that is losing teammates, go there and defend.
Keep an eye on the minimap, it has a lot of useful information especially when someone pings enemies.
Don’t just blindly follow teammates, have a plan and go with it. But don’t be afraid to change it if the location you were going to is occupied.
Remember a clump of tanks is an easy Close Air Suport target.
Learn what the different ammo types do, penetration is not everything. USSR APHE shells have less penetration but way more post penetration damage.
While APCR shells have a lot of armor pennon flat armor… they have basically no post penetration damage.
There is a good video by skDoger about ammunition that is up to date. (12 days ago)
I have already watched his ammo guide.
Pray to the snail
hm
I found when I hit about 250 hours I suddenly got better personally
Got my first nuke today after 8+ years of playing and over 400+ hours on PC (originally xbox player) you'll get there eventually just pay attention study the enemy tanks youre fivht learning the weak spots and of course praise the snail
Map knowledge. Study maps and how to play them and you’ll see a vast improvement
Trust me it won’t matter when you get to high tier Russia
I’ll give you some tips. 1. Don’t play rushed take your time. Be smart about where you’re going and think like the enemy and anticipate where they might be. If you’re in a dangerous spot just back out of it. Getting killed is worse than not getting kills for 2 mins. 2. Try to play for the enjoyment and not the grind. I used to play solely to grind out the whole tech tree but once I stopped caring, I started getting way more kills for some reason and I don’t know why but it works 3. Learn your opponents weak spots and use the protection analysis. Always choose the round with lowest pen to do your analysis since you’ll always aim for the weakest areas
Playing ground, you have no excuse, you have at your disposal some of the most overperformant vehicles ever.
I dare you to play all other nations to rank 3, preferaby 4, to really commit to your statement.
All I can say is, you don't know the maps, you don't know the possible oppostion, and you do not care to learn.
Caffeine, knowledge, and patience. If you play ground or air, patience is extremely important. Don’t try to just hold w and push. Know what, when, and how to engage. And the caffeine is the best part.
When you start actually learning the game mechanics and taking time to study the vehicle characteristics. WT is not a pick up and play game.
There's no magical point at which you "get good" if you don't take meaningful steps to actually improve your performance.
I follow Commander Tyrael on YouTube and he once said the best way to with is map knowledge, your equipment knowledge, and patience. Or something to that effect. Remember it's war, not a ballet, and the best you can hope for is a quick death so you can spawn back in.
Never!
Affirmative!
Just wait for BR10+.
There is always a Russian side that wins.
But for real: there are many Good Tips in the comments but since you play one of the two Nations with the most Players it could Really be some Kind of luck.
At least thats what i can observe in my few Russian Rounds: you join in the premium newbro team and lose because they all Rush in. Or you join a Team of vets that know how to play russian Tanks.
I got more luck with british or American teams.
Whenever u realise u dont need to grind.
Then there are 2 options. Get bored and quit or play the things u truly enjoy
Too bad I'm mostly interested in Cold War stuff, especially IFVs.
Never
Never. Unfortunately.
Rookie hours
That's the neat part. You dont
Well, luck's never going to not be a factor, but outside of that it really depends on your learning speed? WT can be surprisingly mentally taxing, which, I guess, is what makes people vent their stress by shooting each other at spawn X_X
Of course, one can always just roll the dice and hope whatever they do next works out because the guy on the other side also yolo'd, but if you want to skew the outcome in your favour, that's a lot of map layout and timing memorization (Stalingrad gives me trauma with all the trick shots through the tiny gaps in debris), field of view awareness, tank knowledge (I think the most glaring difference between my personal experience and WT vids is the sheer number of one-shots the latter feature by consistently going for vulnerabilities), etc.
Never but atleast you'll realize "maybe I'm not the dumbest person in this world" after a while
I hate dutch its so unreal
same. (am Dutch)
The Almighty Snail, Dutch tech tree when?
Honestly, at least when talking about ground forces, war thunder takes very little skill to play, what really matters is experience, knowing every single map, every flanking, camping, sniping and popular spot on every map. Knowing how people play and behave at different battle ratings with different nations and different vehicles. Once you master all of this, you'll get the ability to predict the outcome of a match within the first 3-5 minutes with a high certainty. Of course this will take a LONG time, but you don't need to master it to become good, just having basic knowledge in all of these fields will grant you an already huge advantage over other players in the game.
I'd say it takes at least 1-2k hours to get the basics down. There are a lot of maps, over a thousand vehicles and 12 whole battle ratings to learn, then the million of different playstyles from different people, although they could all pretty much get grouped into larger generic playstyles ranging in the triple digits which with several thousands of hours isn't impossible to learn and adapt to.
It's a long ride, honestly I don't think it's worth it. Just play and enjoy the game, tryharding to win every match and ending on top of the leaderboard isn't as satisfying and fun as just meme'ing around.
As someone close to 3000hrs I can say it won't get better. The best way to have fun is building lineups in brs you like and playing them don't race to the top it breaks you
Never
“I play Soviet ground forces” my brother in christ, you have russian bias on your side, you won’t improve because your skill stays the same from the bias to your own side the whole tech tree.
Never. The game is not like a typical shooter like CSGO or Call of Duty where good players are impossible to touch, in WT its based on luck. For example you and the enemy sit in a T-80BMV you shoot his breach and bounces, he shoots yours and destroys it because the APFSDS went 2mm to the left even tho both of you aimed at the same spot. And it doesn't matter if you are Lvl 100 with 5000000hrs and he is just a lvl 30. I have about 3000hrs in this game and i encounterd so much RNG based bullshit, me and my friends often make jokes about it beeing like Baldurs Gate 3 were you need to roll a dice every time you shoot and hope it doesn't just disappeare and makes the crew yellow after beeing hit by hundreds of pieces of spall.
Sure all those Youtube Videos look cool and all but they also need to cut out all trash rounds where they die nonstop.
You're kind of shifting the goalposts of what it means to be good in WT with that reply. 'Untouchable with 100% pen rate' is something so far out of context that it has no relation to the matter of being decent. Everyone is supposed to get shot up at one point or another, the 'good' part is in how much SP and tickets it took the enemy team to kick you back to hangar.
That's the Neat Part, You Don't