The new Battle Pass. Flirting with a 48 pct win rate.

Battle pass missions are now separate from regular daily missions, and instead of 80 levels of battle pass missions,.there are merely 60. You get a set of 6 mission types every week, with each mission type having three “steps”. Most players I’m listening to are not terribly happy about some missions. One of the complaints is that “you need 100 tanks to have the types of tanks they want” on various missions.

Otherwise, systematic application of the “Minus 3 rule” has led to a steady increase in win rate. Back in December, I had a 48% win rate and played large numbers of games whether I was winning or not. It took about a week for it to drop below 47% and I’ve been working back ever since. To remind people, the idea behind the minus three rule is to play more on days you win and play less on days you lose.

It needs to be said that one day your WR can go up 0.2%, and the next it can drop 0.2%. WR improvements are an exercise in patience. But looking at Blitzstars, I have played 2399 games. My 30 day, as of today, is 53.1%, my WR is 48.1% and my WR in tier VI is now 47.9%.

In terms of tanks played and playing, I mostly play the Kryos. I play some 40 TP Habicha. I still touch the ARL-44 but I’m having some fun with the Hab. It plays a bit like an M6, but it is smaller and harder to hit; the gun is about the same as the M6. My success with the Kryos has me looking at other tanks (TDs) like it. My brother is currently playing the Tier 8 Chinese TD, the WZ-111-1G-FT.

In terms of other reads, Irma Becx has an article on the US Tier 8 medium, the Pershing. I recommend this article quite a bit.

Gravity mode and the superheavies

It was something I found out by being pounded by clanmates and their super heavies, usually VK 100s and VK 168s. These may not be very good regular mode tanks but they are very good in gravity. And we have had gravity for over two weeks and it probably will not end until the weekend.

So earlier in all this, using mostly free exp, I got the E-75 and the IS-8. It turns out the IS-3 is not a super heavy, but on its own it’s plenty heavy enough to grind out credits. And I played a fair amount of E-75 and IS-8 in gravity. The E75 is a better gravity tank, but in fairness the IS-8 is a heavium and doesn’t take being rammed by the Maus and Mauschen very well. My bro loves the IS-8, but mostly when it is equal tier or top tier.

Just an hour or so ago, I looked at my 350k free exp ticket and cashed it, and then bought the E-100 and the IS-7. These two can sit in my garage until a free mode comes along. I also picked up the VK-100, so someday on one of these long silver grinding moments I can pick up the rest of this tech tree.

In terms of games played and WR, I’m close to 2250 games and my 30 day WR is (rounded) 50.8% and my overall WR is 47.8%. My Tier 6 win rate is fluctuating from high 46s to low 47s and currently is at 47.2%.

The Minus 3 Rule

The minus three rule is something I came up with when dealing with a damage and power and win deficit I was suffering from from mid December to mid February. I need a mechanism to limit losses and keep me playing more when I was winning. So I came up with this. It’s related actually to a comment made to me by a Triarii clan leader, who said, more or less, if you’re not having fun, you should stop playing.

So this is the idea. A win is worth 1. A loss is worth -1. If your total score accumulates to -3, stop playing. So, three losses in a row at the start is a quit. 1 win and 4 losses is a quit. 2 wins and 5 losses is a quit. And so on. Obviously nothing stops you from using a -4 rule, or -5 rule, or stops you from continuing after three straight losses under special circumstances. I had three losses today but I needed to complete a clan weekly. I switched tanks from the Kryos to the 40 TP Habicha and started winning. The ARL was also successful and the day ended at 50% and the weekly clan mission done. But the essential idea is, stop playing when you lose, keep playing when you win.

I am over 2100 games played. My 30 day is 50%, my overall is 47.7% (rounded) and my Tier VI winning percentage is now in the high 46s. I’m beginning to wonder how much higher it has to get before testing Tier VII once again.

Just past 2000 games played.

Not much more to report; they have had 5×5 skirmish as the “fun mode” and it’s probably the best mode for learning a new tank or getting better with your old one. Like a tournament game, it’s played on a half map. I’ve tended to have good game play after skirmish and I hope that trend continues. My 30 day is 52.2% and my overall is 47.5%. My most played tank is now the Kryos.

Big Boss mode

Wanted to talk about this a bit because I’ve found the mode fun, and it wasn’t really what I expected. There is a tank, called the boss, with 5x the HP of a usual tank, and super powers. And the game has no points to capture, it’s all about killing tanks. Other non-boss tanks have more modest super powers. What most people don’ realize, though, is that the boss is not the predator, it’s the prey.

Killing a boss nets the same as 5 tank kills. A boss kill can completely change the dynamic of the game. So what I’ve been finding is that tanks with a good gun, high DPM, can hunt the boss (the Sheriff, the Kryos, etc). The death of your tank when playing Bog Boss mode doesn’t matter much. Just die a couple times and get the boss killed, it’s a net team positive.

Good bosses understand all the things that guys like Martin Dogger and Littlefinger say about good heavy tank play. Don’t waste your HP at the beginning, preserve it. Find a good spot where you are protected, hull down at least but better not seen at all. Snipe in the beginning and protect yourself. Let your team hunt the other boss. Once the game is settled, then hunt other tanks.

I’ve been having good luck with a Kryos because it’s a good tank to hunt bosses with. Again, take your time, watch the mini-map and try to get behind or to the side of the boss. You can pump out a lot of damage before the boss notices you. If you can get a fistful of shots in, it doesn’t matter if you die. 3 deaths in return for the boss dying is a net win. You don’t even have to make the kill, the team kills are all that matter.

As a boss, the Kryos isn’t ideal. The Tigers are ideal, in my eyes, with good guns. I’ve won matches when I was a boss in the 252u. The skill where you blow people away from you helps with the tanks with slow reloads. That said, if someone comes right at you when you are a Kryos boss, the rate of fire of the Kryos is striking, and tanks in front of you melt away. And God forbid it get into the enemy spawn.

Python code for simulating ‘you need to win X games’ situations in WOT Blitz.

I wanted to know, for specific periods of time (default 4 weeks) what a typical number of games played to reach X wins (for now, say 10) given a specific winning percentage. I wanted to record the shortest number of games to reach X wins and the longest for the period of the simulation. The code I used is given below.

#! /usr/bin/python

import argparse
import random
from random import randint

p = argparse.ArgumentParser()
p.add_argument("-w","--wins",type=int,help="Wins to achieve")
p.add_argument("-p","--pct",type=int, help="Pct of player")
p.add_argument("-t","--period",help="period in weeks")
args = p.parse_args()

def wingame(pct=50):
    q = randint(1,100)
    if q <= pct:
        return 1
    else:
        return 0

wins = 10
pct = 48
period = 4
if args.wins:
    print( "Wins to achieve: {}".format( args.wins ))
    wins = args.wins
if args.pct:
    print( "Pct of player: {}".format( args.pct ))
    pct = args.pct
if args.period:
    print( "Weeks to play: {}".format( args.period ))
    period = args.period

totwins = 0
days = period * 7
totgames = 0
shortday = 10000
longday = 0
for n in range(0, days):
    dailywins = 0
    gamesplayed = 0
    while dailywins < wins:
        game = wingame( pct )
        dailywins += game
        totwins += game
        totgames += 1
        gamesplayed += 1
    if gamesplayed < shortday:
        shortday = gamesplayed
    if longday < gamesplayed:
        longday = gamesplayed

effpct = float(totwins)/float(totgames)
avg_length = float(totgames)/float(days)
print("Games played: {}".format(totgames))
print("Tot wins: {}".format(totwins))
print("Shortest day: {}".format(shortday))
print("Longest day: {}".format(longday) )
print("Eff win pct: {:7.4f}".format(effpct))
print("Avg Games per day: {:8.2f}".format(avg_length))

Happy on heavies and the Steyr WT grind

The Youtube blogger Happy has a video on heavy tanks and I like it, because it more or less lays out which lines a beginner should pursue while trying to get to Tier 10. He also talks about other tanks I’ve not heard much of (T 57 Heavy), and then says his favorite Tier 10 is the French heavy. My bro says French tanks post ARL 44 have good guns and thin armor. Like many expert players on Youtube, guys like Happy seem to really want mobility in their tanks. Droodles, as an example, is fond of the WZ 111 5a.

There is ongoing a competition for a free tank, the Steyr WT. You can get it by spending 78.75 million silver (credits) to purchase the envelopes to get the tank, or you can grind the coins by winning games. 700 coins are necessary to get the tank, which is a Tier 7 autoloader. A win gives you 3 coins. An envelope, which costs 450k silver, gets you 4. The first three wins of the day gets you meat, which can be turned in for an envelope. In short, the first three wins, because of the free envelope, are worth 21 coins instead of 9.

Some easy calculations. If you win around 100 games and get 300 coins, then you lack 400 coins, or 100 envelopes. Those would cost you 45 million silver. If you get 500 coins and you lack 200, then you would need 50 envelops and would need to spend 22.5 million to compensate. If you get 600 coins, then you would need just 25 envelopes, and could spend 11.25 million to get those. Mad games is over, but a new fun mod will start Thursday, Big Boss. We’ll see how it goes.

Match Making notes, Jan 2022

I had been noticing that when I would play my Tier II Stuart, that I kept meeting a player with 42k wins. Not that I noticed too much, but was it the same player? And why was I being matched with this guy in more than one match, when I had played under 2000 games?

So just to get some real numbers, I looked at the ratings of all the players in 8 games. And these are some of the numbers I saw. Yes, it’s a small number but enough to identify trends. In theory, a player like me should never be matched with players over 5000 games played. In practice, it’s more like 6000 games played; there are typically a couple players with say, 5200 or 5400 games played on a “nub” match per side. But more so, in all my matches but one, there were a number of more experienced players. In fact, I was three times more likely to face a pair of players with 19k games played or more than actually have a balanced game.

The first game I looked at was a win. My side had no players over 6k but the losing side had a single 18k games player. A loss had two players on the opposing side, 25k and 38k. Another loss had a 49k player on our side and a 25k player on the winning side. Another game had no players over 6k on my side and the opponents had a 20k, a 7k, and a 7k player. Yet another had no players over 6k on my side and two players, of 19.1k and 31k, on the other side. Yet another game, where my Kryos was uprated into Tier VII with each team having an Annihilator, featured a 14k Anni on my side, and a 7k Su 152 on theirs, a 36k Anni, a 62k M6, and a 7k medium. In another game we had a 15k player, but the other side had a 44k Magnus and a 7k med.

I suspect the real issue here are numbers. WG can claim to match players well, but actually making that work would require more players than they have at the time. The fact that at least one game out of 8 was a fair match makes me inclined to believe they are trying to match beginners with beginners, but the games where nub less one face 4 experienced players also suggests that Wargaming have a long way to go.

Thoughts in the middle of January 2022

Martin Dogger has a three part series of tutorial videos. In order, the links are here, here, and here. It was the second of these that I found by accident and really liked. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched the first and third as well, but overall the second is the most attractive to a beginner like me. Martin talks about the various kinds of tanks in the US tree, and then says what you can learn from each of them. Then he takes out the Strv 42, which is a thinly skinned medium, with a good gun, and shows how he plays it.

The first video is largely about game settings, and has some useful advice. The third is about hull down positions, and compares and contrasts the play of the TD the Jackson to the JPz IV TD. The Jackson is more able to use terrain, while the JPz IV has to use traditional TD spots.

The fourth Martin Dogger video is a riff of the 10 rules for victory video by WOT Blitz. It’s still worth watching. At 1804 games, my 30 day is 44.2% and my overall is 47.2%.

Kryos

Getting this Tier VI TD broke a losing streak I’d been having, so I was grateful to get it. It was a clanmate, sachembrewer, who came out and said, “You must get this tank!”, so I accelerated my Premium Pass and got it. The Kryos is a Premium Pass tank, available at stage 35. The first day was a losing day, but with the Kryos I got all but 2 of my wins. The next day ended at a 59% WP, with a 1st class and a number of 3rd class wins in the Kryos.

It’s essentially a Jagdpanzer IV, with less of an engine and more frontal plate. It has a high DPM, and my damage output was an issue through December. I have zeroed this tank but more often than not I do reasonable damage and it was nice to see 1000 points or more of damage again.

In one game yesterday, a Dicker Max circled my tank and then said “cool!” It does have a futuristic look.

I’m still not fully recovered from the holiday losing streak, so my 30 day is 45.3% and my overall is 47.1%. I have played 1674 games.