I apologize in advance for the long post. Tried to shorten it, but I’m an admittedly long winded writer and I wanted give some good background to this situation. First of all, I am not a hard core gamer. I’m a 46 year professional who enjoys playing videos games when I have time. I had no clue WOTB or WOT even existed until just a couple months ago. When I first started playing WOTB, I didn’t do any research online, read any articles or forums, or watch any YouTube videos. I just downloaded the app and started playing. At that time I had no clue how serious many players take this game nor did I understand that new inexperienced players should start out and stay in the lower tiers until you learn to play the game and can contribute and hold your own in the higher tiers.
So I think it was probably my first or second time playing, I noticed that the more powerful tanks were in the higher tiers. I had no clue of the protocol and I figured why would I want to drive a weak crappy tier 1 or 2 tank, when I can buy and drive a much more powerful high tier premium tank. So of course, I bought the IS-6 and the JagTiger premium tanks and proceeding to start playing the game. And of course, I had no clue what I was doing and I yolo’d pretty much every match. At that time I wasn’t even aware of the chat function in the garage, so I wasn’t reading all of the nasty gram chat messages that I was receiving from my teammates after I yolo’d and we lost the match.
So I proceeded to play hundreds of matches in my tier 8 premium tanks, totally ignorant and oblivious, while racking up a sub-40% win rate. Eventually I discovered the chat feature in the garage and found all of the hate mail and at that point I figured I better start reading some articles and forums and watching YouTube videos to learn strategy, tactics, and overall how to play the game. I also went down to the lower tiers 1-5 to learn and avoided the higher tiers like the plague.
Slowly but surely I’ve improved. I now have 2,200 games under my belt and I’ve scratched and clawed to improve my win rate and other stats. I am by no means a great or even very good player, but I feel like I can hold my own. In my last 50 games my win rate over 55% at tiers 5 & 6 and at tiers 7-9, I’m just over 50% WR. My overall win rates aren’t there yet. These percentages are for my last 50 or so matches. At tiers 5 & 6, I’m now pretty consistently scoring top damage and kills and almost always in the top 3 on my team. My overall win rate is now up to 45% and climbing little by little every day, but I really dug myself a big hole early on by posting so many games with a really low sub-40% win rate that it’s taking me a long time to get my overall WR over 50%, but my overall win rate is definitely trending up.
Last night was my first time playing at tier 9 and I was driving the Conway. My team won 7 matches in a row and we lost the 8th. Overall last night playing in tiers 7-9 tanks, my team won 17 out of 20 matches (85%). Including today, I now have 12 matches at tier 9 with a 67% win rate. Granted this isn’t a huge sample size and I know that I won’t sustain WR’s this high over time, but I definitely feel like my game play is moving in the right direction most recently. Per my profile on the Blitz website, my win rate for my last 100 games is exactly 50% and all of those games were at tiers 5-9 and the majority at tiers 7-9.
So last night after winning 7 matches in a row in the tier 9 Conway, I lost my 8th match. I was low tier, but it was a really close match and it came down to 2 tanks left on my team ( I was one of them) and 2 tanks left on the enemy team. The enemy tanks were very close to completing the cap and my teammate and I were trying to reset the cap and kill them. I had low HP and I knew if I took just one hit I would be dead. There was a tier 10 TD with insane frontal armor sitting in cap with his sides and rear protected fully by cover. So I made a stupid move while trying to get a shot on him to reset the cap, and I exposed too much of my tank and I got taken out and we ended up losing the match.
So then my wonderful teammate looks at my profile and sees my 45% overall win rate and he sends me a hate message calling me a “useless 40% er noob” who should only play in tier 1, and I should go jump in front of a bus and die. He blamed our loss entirely on me, even though I was the 2nd to last tank alive on our team, contributed the entire match, didn’t camp, didn’t yolo, and racked up respectable stats, finishing 3rd on our team with 2K in damage and 1 kill. Meanwhile there were 3 guys on our team with less than 600 damage and no kills and this wonderful teammate who nasty grammed me, only had slightly better stats in the match.
This happens maybe once a night or every other night when I’m playing Blitz at tiers 7-8, and most recently tier 9. I’ll have a really good win rate for the night, finish top 3 for damage and kills on my team in most my matches, but sometimes when my team loses a match in the higher tiers, I’ll get a nasty gram because of my 45% overall win rate, even though I was a solid contributor during the match and in the final stats. Don’t get me wrong. I have more far praises on my Military Honors page than I do complaints. Overall I have 227 praises and only 3 complaints for unsporting conduct and all those came in my first few weeks playing when I was ignorant and started out at tier 8.
I admit I’m still not a great Blitz player and I’ll probably never be one, but at this point I have a pretty good understanding of how to play the game. I’ve invested a ton of time reading this forum and watching YouTube videos to learn strategy, tactics, and how to play the game, and playing over 2K games. I definitely still have a lot to learn and I’m still a very average player at the higher tiers, but I feel like I’ve definitely started to turn a corner with win rates for my last 50 and 100 games and I can at least hold my own now. Of course I still make mistakes and do some inexplicable stupid things in matches on occasion, but I’ve seen plenty of 60% WR players make stupid mistakes as well. No one is perfect in this game.
Honestly I feel like the best way to improve at this point is by playing against good competition in tiers 7-9 because the lower tiers are a frantic mess. Even in tiers 4-6, there is very little teamwork and very little strategy. You basically have 14 tanks frantically rushing out at the enemy as fast as they can and most of them yoloing. Teammates won’t listen to any plan and most matches are just an absolute free for all with half the tanks sitting in the open without any cover and bum rushing each other. I still play tiers 5 and 6 to earn credits, but the style of play is very different from the higher tiers. The style of play that works well in tiers 5 & 6 will get you killed quickly in the higher tiers and if you use the tier 7-9 style of play in tiers 5 & 6, half your team will dead while your still maneuvering to get into a good strategic position.
So at what point are players “allowed” to play in tiers 7-9 and not get attacked, noob bashed, vilified, and cursed at? Are only 60%+ overall WR players with 10,000+ games “allowed to play” tiers 7-9?
What about the fact that the overall win rate on a player’s profile doesn’t accurately reflect their recent level of play, especially for someone who sucked for a lot of games, but has improved their more recent win rate pretty significantly? It can take a long time to get that overall win rate up.
I definitely think that new players should start at the lower tiers, but at some point you have to start playing the higher tiers.
Am I out of line playing tiers 7-9 at this point? Should I wait until my overall win rate is over 50% or even 55% or until I have 5K or 10K games played?
I really feel like the noob bashing and hate messaging is out of hand. Any time a team loses a match, some players place all the blame on teammates simply because their overall win rate is below 50% overall win rate. Granted sometimes it’s well deserved when a teammate is an absolute train wreck and they should be reported for inactivity or unsporting behavior, but there’s no place for the personal attacks in nasty gram chat messages.
I really would like to get some opinions other than those of a few of my irate teammates who occasionally send me nasty grams via chat. Thanks.