Mesrith

I started playing again for the first time in two years and have yet to see any familiar faces, although I've been scrubbing around at low tier. I wonder how many 2015-2017 players are still doing randoms.

Yes, that's obvious. What should also be obvious is that, after playing thousands of games, a player's ability will influence the game in one direction or the other. If a player is bad enough, they will be an active detriment to their team, causing the team to lose more often than not. Likewise, if a player is good enough, they will tug the team upward enough times that some extra games will land in the win column. This is no different than any other human endeavor. Adding a stellar baseball player to a mediocre team isn't going to make the team go undefeated, but if he gets on base more, hits better, and defends better than who he replaced, the team is going to win some number of extra games. Many games are won or lost by tight margins, and improving overall team performance by any amount will affect which side of the margin a team falls on. Video games basically have "wins over replacement" as well. You're not trying to win a 1v12, although in some matches it feels like you have to. You're just trying to do more than your share, so that you pick up the slack for the other, worse players on your team. If you're constantly doing more than your share's worth of kills, damage, defense, etc, then you're not only doing better than an average player that would have taken your spot, you're also compensating for other teammates that are average or worse. If you're a better-than-average player, you will win a better-than-average amount of games over the long run, which is why win rate is the best indicator of overall player skill. If you're a completely average player, then you will win an average amount of games, and it will always feel like you're at the mercy of the matchmaker. That's because you are; being average means that you're not affecting the outcome any more or less than most other people in the queue. Stop being reflexively defensive, and choose to improve. It's always a little shocking seeing how far someone will go to type up a long article trying to debunk this thread, when you'd be much better served by simply reading this thread (or others) and learning from it. This is a fairly simple video-game. Most players are only average because they either A) don't care about improving, or B) stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that they can improve.

This goes for individual ships as well. I think some good players stall out at certain points because they get very good at playing a certain way, but are slow (or unwilling) to adapt to a ship or line of ships that requires a different style of play. Play the game (and the ships) for what they are, not for what you wish them to be.

My Roon was like that. My personal performance in the ship seemed to be pretty damn good, but I wound up with a 52% win rate when it was all said and done. I think everyone is going to have "that ship" if you play enough different ships with relatively small sample sizes.

I didn't feel like making an entire thread about this, so I'll just make this small post that maybe 5 people will ever read. Any time I play one of my tier 10 battleships, I can easily spot the players that are more concerned with padding their personal damage score than they are with actually winning the game. When I'm 14-18km away from a Khabarovsk or a cruiser and they're spamming my full-health battleship instead of shooting at the cruisers and destroyers on my team, it's pretty obvious that damage is their goal. It's fine (I don't mind the Dreadnought flags, thanks), but when I notice that behavior and then look at their profile after the game, I can't help but think that they could turn that 56-58% win rating into a 60+% if they'd just focus on eliminating ships from the game instead of meeting some arbitrary damage threshold.

That's absurd.

Yes, MM charts were changed quite awhile ago.

Yes, I'm very aware. Have fun and good luck in battle.

Not really. I can't speak for everyone, but more than a few of us on these forums and in this thread actually try to be helpful. Unfortunately, you're overly defensive and reacting to condescension that isn't there, while overly inflating the actual abilities of you and your partners. I'm sure you have fun with your friends, but your performance in randoms and in team battles doesn't support anything you've said. I'm done talking in circles to try to get through. If you ever decide you actually want to improve, or just want to prove me wrong by pointing out which stats you think make you an above-average player, I'm still willing to take a deeper look or even watch some replays to give constructive feedback.

The only way a single, misunderstood statement would invalidate the entire thread is if you're already inclined to disagree with it, and just jumped on the first thing you could find. That comment has already been explained in multiple posts, including a direct reply from LWM to you. You've played 49 games in a 3-ship division and have only won 35% of them. You've played 783 games in a 2-ship division and won about 50% of them, which is slightly better than your solo record. You're right in the middle of the player population in terms of skill, along with whichever friends you normally division with, although your 3-ship division needs work. It could be the people, it could be the ship composition, but it's a small sample anyway. You're at the mercy of your team because you're an average player. Most players are average by definition. You'll have good games, you'll have bad games, but most games will be no better or worse than another average player. It's the players that are better or worse than average that pull their team up or down, and you're currently at the mercy of who matchmaker puts in your game. A quick skim of stats is a bad way to judge a player's ability, I agree. I could go into detail about your strengths and weaknesses based on your stats if you wanted real feedback, but at this point I suspect you're being too defensive about the whole thing to be interested.

You're reading it too literally. The point is that if something needs to be done, it's better that you be the one to do it, rather than counting on your team to do it and being disappointed. By all means, communicate with your team, hit the focus fire button, etc, but don't ignore the threat to your base because you think someone else will handle it. Don't leave that battleship alive at 4k health because you think someone else will kill it. Know what needs to be done, and do it yourself. You're not bad, you're currently pretty average. There are things you could do to improve and become a better player, which would have a direct impact on your win rate. Blaming bad luck and your teams, which are no worse than what every other player deals with, just lowers your chances of realizing that you are the biggest factor on how well you play this game and win. If you don't want to be helped, that's fine, but this thread is for people who do.

After 40 games in the Nikolai, I finally did something that I thought was impossible: I shot down a plane!

Max dispersion is 219m unless you have a different Warspite than I do.

Minor correction, but it's a 7% reduction from 13.44m/km at max range. I'm not sure that listing it as such (m/km) is even valuable, as I don't think that dispersion being purely linear has been proven. Max dispersion is the only value we really know, so I'd just list it as dropping from 219m at max range to 204m at max range.

Bump to remind you of needed updates. The faster rudder shift and addition of the heal have made it even better. Nice thread though, I like your review series.