TL; DR: How can I improve my ability to control not only my engagements, but also when and what engagements I get myself into?
Warning: This will be a long read. However, I hope a few generous unicums will help me and all the other people struggling on the path to the top.
Recently my winrate has been decline. My recent winrates has dropped from 73 to 66 to 59 to 38%. A few weeks into the update I started losing more and more. I dropped down to tiers 4-6 and still had trouble winning, a mixture between my teams failing me and myself not performing well enough. I was super close to 59.0% so I just wanted to get my winrate 1% closer to blue.
However, after checking out Discord and seeing all the players with their 80% winrates in Dragons and 75% recent winrates, I stopped trying to sealclub my way to 59% and realized that I just wasn't good enough to be consistently winning 65+% of the time. So I decided I start looking up how to improve on the forums.
I found this website and I started exclusively playing mostly solo in my tier tens.
The result was nasty. Sure, I started to play smarter and be more aware of the bigger picture, which ultimately led me to having a 2550 avg damage across 30 battles (my overall avg dmg in tier ten is ~2350) and improving in just one single weekend. However, my winrate was 38% over those 30 battles. 38%. I was winning less than a noob who does 500 avg damage in tier ten.
A few of the losses were close and I realize my mistakes in them, however, I think it's pretty clear that a lot of the games I lost were not my fault as I was carrying 125% of my weight. However, the fact that there were so many games where I just had no clue what I could have done, where I could have been, and how I could have done better to win those games really bothers me.
One game there was an enemy unicum toon in heavies on Fort Despair. I was able to predict what they were gonna do fine, but I just didn't know how to counter it (I was in 62A). I ended up going to cap, spotting a couple of the enemy tanks as they headed down that brawling corner, landed a few shots on the enemy tanks hanging out in the middle, and then realized I had to go back as the unicum toon was pushing. I made my way back and we lost a tank in the process. I flanked the two heavies, but one of them just turned towards me while the other kept killing our friendly heavies. Our team started to die at that point. I did some more damage to that enemy unicum, trading shots as I didn't know what else I could do, and we ultimately lost 0-7.
What was there that I could have done? I can brawl in that corner with the heavies, so I have to flank. If I flanked behind the enemy team I would be isolated from my team and swarmed by the enemy tier nine mediums. If I flanked through the middle id have to deal with the enemy mediums by peekabooming, which would make me lose a lot of health and allow the enemy unicum toon to destroy my team. I just don't understand what I can do in some games that would help my team win. I did 2000 damage, but that damage was useless in helping the team.
Another game I was in my T-62A on himmelsdorf and my team had four mediums, and the enemy had three. The enemy team had more armor so i decided to go rails. I went down the middle of the rails and spotted an E3, an E4, and the three enemy mediums. I started shooting at the enemy mediums (I didn't have line of sight on the TDs) and maybe did 1400 while taking 600. However, I wasn't able to do enough damage and the TDs combined with the enemy heavy tanks that flanked had now taken out most of my team. What could I have done? Moved back and flanked to deal with the TDs? If I flanked to my right I'd have to deal with an enemy medium tank and relocating would take me around a minute. If I flanked to my right I would have to deal with the two heavies who were blocking that other. I understand I probably went to a bad starting position, but what could I have done differently after getting myself in that situation?
The problems I have and many others I believe are how I can position myself to counter the enemy teams movements (I also can't read the enemy teams movements very well either), what I can do to stop my team from being completely destroyed (when we are starting to lose), and just in general how I can find positions where my damage is most useful and where to go when there seems to be no where that I can help.
There really hasn't been any guides to help people at my level to get any better. Is it really just that you are born with it? Is there anything I can do to improve this? Playing tier tens as suggested in the guide may help improve my skills over time, but it will take me a long time and by then my battle count will be very high, making it hard to improve my stats that suffered from playing tier tens all of the time. What is it that I can do to pass this plateau I've reached? How can I improve my ability to control not only my engagements, but also when and what engagements I get myself into?
Edited by OronSonon, 10 February 2016 - 12:45 AM.