Advancing Tiers

Following Dannyboy's post regarding his specific stats relating solely to the T18, amongst other things, the thread moved along to advancing tiers.

Firstly before we start I just want to say that everyone has their own opinion, there is no right or wrong way (ok thats not quite true  ) in how you decide to progress via the tiers.

So anyways after starting to play this "weird tank" game for a laugh, I realised there was a lot more involved than just driving around blasting my gun at everything that moved. Like most people I wanted to drive tanks that blew up tanks in one hit from 500 metres away, as opposed to the rat a tat oh look I've hit a tank for 8 hp at level 1 , so I decided quite early on that I needed to set myself some goals, before moving up the tiers, if I wanted to have a chance of being halfway decent at the game.

So how did I do that, be the thorough person I am, I didnt set myself one goal, I set myself a number of goals, that I had to meet before I could research the next tank in line.

Firstly I decided that not knowing the style of play that suited me best, and thus not knowing which nation I should concentrate on, I made the decision that I would not advance any line beyond tier 5, until I had researched every line of every nation (other than artillery) to tier 5.

Secondly I decided that I had to play at least 10 games in a tank before advancing to the next tier (obviously this is a fairly irrelevant target after tier 2 or 3, if you intend to research modules without using free xp). In addition for research purposes I decided that I would not use free xp, and also I had to research every module before moving onto the next tier. (The release of the MT25 recently caused me issues here, as I had just researched the IS, and was close to researching the KV-13 from the KV1S when the MT25 was released, meaning I had to research that, before I could move from the KV1S to any of the tier 7's, lets just say I was not happy with Wargaming at that time  )

Finally I needed to have a 50% win rate in each tank before I could move up the tiers.

The idea behind the above was to help me to improve in learning about the game in general, allow me to judge the various classes, and also giving me plenty of time to learn the maps, at levels where I could make mistakes, and get away with them.

Tier advancement came up in another thread, and various people offered advice on how they had advanced, and to me there seemed to be no method at all. Now whilst I am not saying that everyone should follow my goals (they are quite stringent and even I skipped a few on occasion), I think having a goal to aim for will help people focus on what they are doing with any particular tank.Now these goals may just be as simple as play xxx number of games in a tank, get your crew to 100% , gain a certain amount of xp, anything you like at all, something achievable that focusses your mind on how to progress and improve your game.

So here's the challenge for you all, whilst I am by no means advocating that everyone should have the same goals as me before advancing (they would need the patient of a saint to do so  ), I'd be interested to know how others decided to move up the tiers, be it "I just wanted to get tank xxxxx as quickly as possible", " it just felt right to move up" "tier xx was no longer a challenge" or whether others have some sort of measurable methodology that newer players can consider.

I personally picked a line after prior enquiries and decided to go there. Good tanks are keepers, bad or boring tanks are sold. I always elite all tanks prior to selling them. 

Up until recently I played only German tanks (I started the french autoloader light/medium line) because I wanted tanks with similar characteristics while advancing in the game.

I am in no rush to go up the Tiers, since with 6k battles I still don't have a Tier 10.

I also have at least one tank of every tier.

Intitially I also went down the TD line, as well as the SPG line but I stopped midway and most likely will not resume.

My way of moving up is elite the previous tank, buy the next ASAP, keep the previous tank if I have nothing better in the same Tier, spending free exp. on modules, never to unlock a tank. I grind slowly, mostly using my daily doubles.

I therefore played quite a few games on Tier 5 on my Pz IV, pre-nerf, despite having researched and bought the VK 3601H, I still play some games in my VK3601H, despite having reserached and bought the Tiger, I still play with my Tiger, despite having reserched the KT. This one is the only one I don't play as much despite having kept it, since I have the Lowe for the same Tier, which I honestly prefer, despite the fact that the KT is a somewhat better tank. I have the E-75 now, all modules open, grinding is done "automatically" as I mostly do battles because I like the tank, and not because I want to research or buy the E-100.

I also went down the two german med lines and am currently at Tier 8. Will slowly progress to Tier 10, no rush there neither.

Therefore I am taking it slowly, but will buy the next tank when I have the opportunity to do so. On the other hand I never played 10 battles in a row in order to "grind" a tank. I will play 10 games in a row in a particular tank because I like it. therefore, if I like the tank, the gring goes fast, and then I keep it, if I dont like it the grind is limited to daily doubles and I am just patient.

I have a "rule of thumb" that I must have an Ace tanker badge and a +50% win ratio in a tank before I sell it and get the next one. This can be relaxed for tanks that make me mad, that list includes M3 Lee, GW Panther and Tiger II. I have only ever spent real money once to use free xp and that was to get the top tier gun in the Tiger 2 and I regretted that as well. For me the game is about learning to play different types of tanks, the tanks I have felt most comfortable in have been the Russian meds, but even the T-44 was a trial initially and took a long time to learn how to play. I really don't understand why you would want to skip any tank except to protect your stats...

Crew is always the issue for me when buying a new tank at a higher tier. Is the crew from the previous tier going to move up or can I leapfrog a crew from the tier below that? Taking a tier 6 or above tank out with a stock crew is unpleasant, I have just bought the IS-8 but don't want to move either my Sporty or IS-3 crew so they are moonlighting in a Churchill 3 until they have some skills (I need a B2 for my E100 crew really). Grinding crew skills is, in my opinion, probably more important than grinding tanks. In fact "grinding" sounds awful, I break up my "grinds" with small milestones of achievement, like crew promotion or badges. If you are "grinding" it doesn't sound like you are having fun. I agree with Sapaki, I play tanks for fun not to collect the highest level ones, if you keep playing and enjoying it, eventually you will get a tier 10 if you want it, there is actually no hurry.

If you don’t like or do not have patience to grind, don't go arty line. It is same tactic in all lines. Stay behind, get in range, wait for reload, fire, relocate. The tiers or nations only differs in range, dmg, aiming time, accuracy and reload time. Sparing free exps for modules works sometime, as you usually need suspension for top gun (and that is often 1/3 of the other tier tank research cost).

Otherwise, my personal goal, when I started, was T-54. For which I went almost straight forward (with exception stop on T-34-85, used a bit in TCs). After that tanks used and wanted in TCs ... Kv-1s, Is-3, T32. But I still prefer arties, which fulfills Kokotni main wish:

Kokotni wrote:Like most people I wanted to drive tanks that blew up tanks in one hit from 500m away, ...

and I like to rain hell on my victims

Edit: also arty is the most “map dependent” and "team dependent" type of tank, on both ally and enemy side. So if you tend to be aggressive or choleric player, I don't recommend arty. As you will get games, where you simply can't do anything useful because enemy shrugs in streets or smartly uses slopes on map. Or games, where you will be unable to do anything, as your team rushes over map like frighten chickens and leaves enemy scout (light or medium) to drive in your base and spot/kill you early.
On other hand, arty is justly feared and hated, as with your ability to reach enemy on most places of the map (not from one spot, learn to relocate) and deliver huge alfa-dmg in one hit, you can allow your team progress faster or hold longer, by binding enemy in cover. (And you can eat ice-cream or cookies, while still playing it well.)

Edit2: And don’t get turned down in early games, as it is T6 (after patch 8.6) when real fun with SPGs starts.

Daeworn wrote:If you don’t like or do not have patience to grind, don't go arty line. It is same tactic in all lines. Stay behind, get in range, wait for reload, fire, relocate.

You missed the "eat ice cream, make a cup of coffee bit". Arty; the only tank you can play and eat an ice cream at the same time.

I started by playing the tanks that were fun to play for me. Slowly progressed and got my first tier 10 with ~ 10k battles.
That changed a bit in the last half a year and I went to get myself some more tier 10s, basically because Mad already had like twenty when I only had one or two  

For new players I would advise to get to tier 5 and 6 pretty fast and then slow it down. Learn and practise techniques alot and after you got the basics done start to move on.

The "Waffelträger" will be Nr. 20 noob bitch
It carrys at least 6 "Waffeln"! So "Waffeln" for all!  

My first 5k battles i rushed tiers like there was no tomorrow.
I wanted to play with my rl friends and they had T9 and one even had the Maus.

Luckely i hoard tanks so i can now get to know every kind and make progress in playing tanks as they should.
Now I have IS-4 & 7 and further I am just advancing slowly into T8 (AMX 50 100 & VK4502A, ISU-152) the rest (all lines except SPG which is at T5/6) are on T7 and slowly gaining xp towards the next tier.
I now only advance when my crew is at least 100% and I now even use my premiums to train crew instead of having a premium dedicated crew.

I found out that I am improving and am having more fun in the progress, should have done that after 1k battles (hind sight) but find it rather motivating to see myself crawling (like a snail) out of my own hole i dug in those 5k battles.

I like the extra learning motivator to have a wr ofat least 50% for each tank before moving on, might implement that one into my persuit off a filled up garage. It feels right to play a tank to its fullest and shine in them.
As the autistic dude I am would mean I have to rebuy some tanks but maybe I can get myself to negate T1-T4 for the tanks wr and start doing so at T5.

With regards