Mouse's Guide to Stealing Kills

[LittleWhiteMouse]

With the advent of missions in World of Warships, more than a few of them have requirements to collect a certain number of kills of specific types in order to see completion.  For the Arpeggio of Blue Steel missions, for example, the first stage of each of the Kongo and Myoko missions require you to kill 30 cruisers and 30 destroyers respectively.  When you're trying to finish these missions, it can be infuriating to see a target you've been systemically burning down get 'stolen' out from beneath your guns between either a reload cycle or, even worse, as your shells are on their way.  Hopefully the following will soothe some of those ruffled feathers and give you a new outlook at how to secure kills like a boss.

 

The first thing we need to do, of course, is define what kill-stealing actually is.  Let's go ahead and look at some examples of what many players commonly mistake kill stealing for so we don't look like total boobs when we cry foul.

 

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The Handoff

Some players mistakenly believe that when engaging a target, you declare primacy:  If you're fighting someone, it's your target.  The extension of this is the belief that when someone has abandoned a target, even temporarily, they no longer have a claim on it.  It usually unfolds that two ships are dueling and one is forced to break off for a time.  They may have to dodge a new threat, navigate around obstacles or simply withdraw to lick their wounds.  It may be a case that the target is too much for them alone and they need to buy time until help arrives.

 

Whatever the reason, player two then engages the abandoned target and then feels slighted when the original player skulks back to steal the glory.  The feeling of the responsibility of killing a target being handed off from one player to the next is a fallacy.  Focusing fire is paramount in World of Warships to ensure that targets die quickly before they do significant damage to your team, or worse, sink some of your ships.  Think of it like this:  if one team held it's fire, waiting for the person who claimed the target to secure the kill, they might be waiting for a very, very long time if RNG isn't on their side.  So long, in fact, that a slippery destroyer might sneak away.  Or a Battleship might regenerate hit points back.  Or a carrier might launch another wave of planes.  The team that doesn't wait, that secures kills quickly and efficiently is far more likely to win.

 

The Race

There's nothing like competitive play to bring out the best and worst in players.  The Race is another commonly misconceived example of kill-stealing.  Two or more players target the same ship, focusing it down with a withering torrent of  fire.  It becomes less and less a contest about beating the enemy and more and more about beating their team mates in damage output to try and siphon off as much of the beleaguered victim as possible.  The  enemy ship visibly melts in huge glops of health points sloughing off like melted wax.  The poor sap under their guns can only try and flail back pathetically as they get repeatedly hammered under an incessant barrage until they're finally battered into submission.  The ribbon is awarded and it's almost guaranteed that someone cries foul.

 

Look, there's only one loser in the Race, and that's the poor sucker you guys hammered into that gooey slurry staining the ocean surface.  Good on you both (or all of you, if there's three or more) for making effective use of one of the paramount tactics in World of Warships:  Focusing fire.

 

Two Destroyer Hunters.  The Atlanta in this picture used the quick reload of her 5" guns to ripple fire at a destroyer while the Myoko with her long reload 8" rifles opted to volley fire at the same target.  Both stripped about 40% of the DD's hp from her, but it was the Myoko that got the killing blow, much to the indignation of the Atlanta that was firing a constant stream.

 

Le Half & Half

This is a very commonly mistaken form of kill-stealing, where someone believes that they have done the lion's share of the work in securing a kill.  This is especially prevalent when they felt they really had to struggle for their half of the damage, only to see the satisfying kill shot stripped from them.  The most likely scenario in this scenario is the following:

 

• Player One encounters said enemy and strips up to a third of the damage from the target and is forced to stop shooting at (or is unable to hit)  that target for a period of time.
• Player Two engages the same target.  Through this time period, which can be rather brief or extended for many minutes, only player two's attacks do any damage, stripping 50% of the target's max health.
• The ship is now on low health (as little as 17% left).  Player One is able to either re-engage or finally lands damaging hits, claiming the last of the health.

From Player Two's perspective, they were the only one doing anything to the ship, possibly landing even sizable damage in single crippling strokes (via torpedoes or citadel hits).  And just when victory looks assured, another player steals their glory.  This isn't particularly fair. Player One also took 50% of the HP off the ship.  They have an equal stake in claiming that they did a large amount of damage.  So again, it's not kill stealing.  Even if the split was 60/40m without the other player's contribution, there was no kill.

 

The Saviour

The enemy is on a fraction of it's remaining health but it ... JUST.   WON'T.   DIE.    Maybe it's a slippery destroyer, evading everything you throw at it, popping in and out of concealment.  Maybe it's a cruiser that narrow sails between torpedoes, swatting down planes sent it's way.  Maybe it's that battleship that combines bouncing and taking zero-damage hits from HE with that insane Repair Party cooldown always at the nick of time to claw back just enough health.  Whatever the reason, you just can't seem to land the killing blow.  And you've been trying.  Oh, have you EVER been trying.  You've worked for this kill.  You've bled for this kill.  You've seen the friends and division mates go down to this monster and victory is almost within your grasp if you could get in ONE.  MORE.  HIT.

 

And then, 'bloop', out of nowhere, your foe vapourizes from some unseen quarter.

 

No ranging shots.  No practice swings.  Just a quick blurt out their guns and it's gone just like that, as if it were no big thing.  Oh, but surely this is a kill steal.

Well, no.  No, it's not.  Think of it from your saviour's perspective.  You've been struggling with this target, haemorrhaging hit points and team mates left right and center.  At BEST, this one little target has locked your attention down and kept you from advancing and pushing on objectives and other damage for far too long. They're doing not only you but the whole team a favour knocking this very dangerous opponent out of the match.  This isn't kill stealing, this is saving you and the team from yourself.

 

The Wiener Block

Four kills and one to go.  You're hammering the last enemy with your team and politely ask if they'll let you have this last kill for your Release the Kraken achievement.  Several of your remaining team mates agree, hold fire and fall back, letting you go for gold.  Letting YOU be the champion.  Letting YOU get those nice Equal Speed Charlie London signals that are so much harder to come by these days!

 

Except one guy who maybe didn't read chat or maybe doesn't want to give you the achievement opens fire and down goes the enemy.  This isn't kill stealing.  It's not even a jerk-move.  No one has to give you the kill when you ask for it.  The damage and kills are worth credits, experience, stats and mission progress for other players too. 

 

The jerk-move version would be if they said you could have it and THEN shoot the enemy anyway.  And that's still not kill stealing. That's just planting false hope and it's plain rude.

---

 

Kill secured.  This low-health Ognevoi had more than it's share of luck.  Evading fire from four of my allied ships for several minutes, it continued to batter them and spot them for his long range allies.  I put him out of his misery with this Hail-Mary 18.2km one-off volley in my Kongo when I finally had gun angle.  People weren't happy, but I was doing them a favour.

 

Well, this has been pretty thorough so far, hasn't it?  A lot of kill-stealing accusations often come from charged emotions instead of looking at the event logically from a team-play dynamic.  But with all of these behaviours excluded from being true kill-stealing, there remains one that has to be, right?  What about 'That Guy'?  You know the one.  The one that appears to be doing nothing until someone's at low health?  Then they're all upons!  We know him as:

 

The Technique of Thieving all Things Perished

So, this scenario is so straight forward, it HAS to be kill stealing, right?  This is the guy that holds fire and waits for a target to be low health before engaging.  This is the guy that hides behind islands, waiting to ambush vulnerable prey.  This is the guy that wouldn't lift a finger to defend the base because there was a low health cruiser 15km in the other direction that no one was able to finish off.  This is the guy that only seems to be around when there's a kill to be had.

 

SURELY this behaviour is kill stealing.

No, it's not.  It's just being an unskilled player.

 

You can strip all but one of the hit points off a ship but if you don't take the last hp off them, it's not your kill.  You are compensated for all of the damage you do to an enemy and not a drop more.  The game does not recognize or reward "almosts". You don't get points for "almost" hitting someone's citadel.  You don't get points for "almost" managing to cap the base before the enemy caps yours.  If you're unable to pull the trigger and ensure a kill:
 

You didn't do enough.  You weren't good enough.  You failed to get the kill. 

No one can take from you something that you never had in the first place.

 

And if you think Johnny shark over there trying to sneak in his damage before a ship goes down is a winner, well, you've got a pretty skewed sense of victory and of risk assessment.  And it only takes a little thought to see how short-sighted attempts to race someone else to a kill can be for their success rate.

 

How to Get Kill Missions done Efficiently without being a Chowderhead

Accomplishing kill missions should not compromise your play style.  In fact, it should only improve you as a player as any challenge should.  If you find yourself doing poorly to get something done, you're missing out.  Realize that when you change your behaviours for the worse to try and shortcut one of these missions, you're not just cheating yourself but you're also harming every single one of your team mates by not playing responsibly.  In short, you're being a smelly, two-faced lummox.  Maybe you're comfortable with that.  Do you want to be thought of as an odiferous troglodyte with questionable morality and social skills? I certainly wouldn't. Your mileage may vary.

 

When asked to do something, like achieve 5 kills in a game or collect 30 destroyer kills or shoot down 150 planes, pay very close attention to what ship you're using to try and accomplish this.  Is it an efficient choice?  Is it the best choice?  What successes have you had in the past would make you choose that ship?  Are you choosing that vessel dogmatically? 

 

"Cruisers are best for hunting destroyers -- that's what everyone says, so I should play a cruiser!" 

 

Be careful of falling into thought-traps.  When in doubt, consult your statistics to see in which ships you actually make the most kills / light the most fires / shoot down the most aircraft.  Do some research before settling into your old habits.  These challenges should be thought of as exactly that:  a challenge.  Re-evaluate your playstyle and challenge yourself to do well.  Talk to some of your peers and see how they managed to do things.   See what frustrations they had an overcame in order to get things done.  In the wonderful age of the Internets, answers (along with pr0n) are just a click away!

 

Take, for example, my own efforts to the 30 Destroyer Mission done.

 

• My first choice was a cruiser.  I alternated between my Cleveland, Atlanta and occasionally my Myoko.  I found myself trying to chase down rumours of destroyers -- racing further ahead than I should and promptly getting myself blown away by the whole enemy team waiting for someone to pull a stupid.  It was dumb.  I was doing my team no favours whatsoever pushing ahead like that.  Though the cruiser was, on paper, an absolute nightmare for destroyers, it was contingent on encountering a destroyer in an area that wasn't going to get my face blown off by some enterprising Battleship.  If I wanted destroyer kills, I needed a ship that could run down enemy DDs without putting myself in the face of hungry battleship guns.
   
• So naturally, my second choice was to use USN Destroyers.  This HAD to be the answer!  I could race ahead to cap points where I would invariably meet an enemy destroyer and then we could duke it out.  With my superb knife-fighting capabilities in my Sims and Mahan, surely I could best any destroyer one on one.  This wasn't incorrect.  I could reliably maul a destroyer when I ran into them.  But quite often the cruisers on my team were all too happy to chip in secure the kill before I could land the killing blow.  And very often the enemy team was only too happy to farm a destroyer kill off my over-extended butt.  Yeah, this didn't work out so well.  I did get a kill here and there but it wasn't efficient.  It wasn't fast.
   
• And finally I found the perfect chariot of choice for accomplishing this mission for me.  My HMS Warspite.  This was a slow and steady battleship.  I wasn't first to cap points.  I wasn't going to be able to chase down any destroyer that didn't want to be caught.  But you know what?  They came to me.  I'm a very aggressive player in my Warspite and enemy Destroyers have always mistaken me for an easy kill when I sail the Grand Ol' Lady.  I'm very well practiced at managing to bullseye even an evasive destroyer at ranges up to 12km with her 15" rifles and her secondaries provide a constant withering hail of shells that can help secure a low health target.
  
  And the best part?  I could be a solid contributor to my team.  I could still secure objectives, help hold down a flank or lead a charge.  My gunnery preference switched to destroyers only when they became a threat rather than blindly flailing both shell and ship in their direction in the vain hopes of snatching up a quick kill and/or raging when one went down to friendly guns instead of my own.  It also let me complete the 30 kill Cruiser mission too at a faster rate.

 

There is no Spoon¹

There is no such thing as Kill Stealing -- only a mistaken sense of entitlement.  No, not even that reason you're thinking of -- that's not kill stealing either.  Get good.  Earn your kills.  When you get frustrated, realize that it's not because someone stole your kill -- the root of it is much simpler.  You're frustrated because you're not advancing or finishing the mission as quickly as you thought you might.  At it's core, this is a failing on your part.  You overestimated your ability to accomplish something, ignoring variables like the actions of your team mates.  Step back, re-evaluate your skills and take a breather.  Then hit it again with such fervour and precision that everyone starts accusing you of being a killstealer.

 

 

 

 

 1.)  There is only the Tick.

 

 

[J30_Reinhardt]

*OR* You could be patient knowing that this event lasts until March and there's no rush or need to alter your playstyle....

 

But that's just me. And Ive got the Kongo easily.

[715]

Good guide! I always remember that the best red ship is a dead ship.

[Jagd_Adler]

Top shelf write-up! I must say, I really enjoy the material you share - thanks for making the effort to improve the community! And your humor is spot on...."Don't be a Chowderhead" - haha!

 

This was the winner combination:

"In short, you're being a smelly, two-faced lummox.  Maybe you're comfortable with that.  Do you want to be thought of as an odiferous troglodyte with questionable morality and social skills? I certainly wouldn't. Your mileage may vary."

[StingRayOne]

Little White Mouse you rock

[pmgaudio]

best guide EVER

 

 

[The_GoDDfather]

This, actually made me laugh, so Haz eh ples oon.

[Wowzery]

I love the savior.  Nothing worse than that enemy who just won't die no matter how many shells you pour into it.  I've never had a problem with someone else finishing off that ship which has around 1k or less health when there is a full health cruiser/battleship asking for a full broadside.

[paradat]

There is no spoon

 

As always I Love you!

[cdnice55]

He dropped the mic on that one and waltzed off the stage.........

 

[Slammer58]

Good guide! I always remember that the best red ship is a dead ship.

 

+1

[Lert]

 

[Cruiser_Sendai]

Hmm...

 

What if it was an enemy carrier that had beached itself, had no planes on the minimap, and which you were firing your Atlanta guns at for the last minute, setting three/four fires along the hull and bringing it down to 2k HP (while it was still burning from 3 fires), and then your CV drops a TB spread on it for the kill? That's about the one case I might call "killsteal" on. 

[GhostSwordsman]

Another excellent write up Mouse. +1

 

[kerensky914]

*OR* You could be patient knowing that this event lasts until March and there's no rush or need to alter your playstyle....

 

Speak for yourself.  It'll take me months to fill the million damage stage 3, and I'm not even halfway thru the 30 cruisers yet.

 

I am, however, enthusiastically behind Mouse's original write-up.

[LittleWhiteMouse]

Hmm...

 

What if it was an enemy carrier that had beached itself, had no planes on the minimap, and which you were firing your Atlanta guns at for the last minute, setting three/four fires along the hull and bringing it down to 2k HP (while it was still burning from 3 fires), and then your CV drops a TB spread on it for the kill? That's about the one case I might call "killsteal" on. 

 

I would say said Atlanta should have closed the distance and switched to AP long ago and one-shot that mother with a broadside of 14 guns doing upwards of 29,000 damage in a single volley.

[Themothius]

Love the guide, so very true.

[Fletcher7_1944]

Great post!   Sums up my feelings exactly.

 

I love your sense of humor, as well!

[Giantsgiants]

Even though we have 2 months to do this, this is a nice guide nonetheless. Your writing about thought traps especially stuck out to me because I'm definitely guilty of falling into them. I'm on the third mission for the Kongo, and even though everyone says to use a BB, I found out I average more damage sticking with my cruisers.

[alexf24]

Excellent guide Mouse!

 

I can't do that in my Warspite. I am not good enough in BBs, but I will try next time.

I do it slowly, there's plenty of time, and am half done. Using Nürnberg, Mogami and Atago mostly, and also Benson and Blyskawica.

 

PS: You did get me in my Fujin with your Atlanta. I haven't forgotten.

 

[kougeru]

*OR* You could be patient knowing that this event lasts until March and there's no rush or need to alter your playstyle....

 

But that's just me. And Ive got the Kongo easily.

 

Lol I'm in a huge rush because until today a few times in alpha/beta, I only played Co-op. I have to re-learn aiming, apparently. In 2 days I managed to get 3 Cruiser kills (But I have definitely gotten better at aiming today). So for me, Getting the 30 cruiser kills, 150 or whatever airpline kills, and 1 million damage (this honestly seems to be the easiest..up to 600k with all my missing in only around 6 hours of playtime)...getting all that done in 65 days isn't easy for people who are more casual/don't have a lot of free time. (-7 days for me due to not getting an email about the event for some reason)

[aether_tech]

The best way to hunt destroyers? Let them come to you. 

 

I just load my battleship with HE and obliterate the TEA in one go and then wait for the next unlucky bastard to try and torp run me.

I'ts very satisfying to watch a destroyer just - vanish - when I plop a few high explosive rounds into their side from any of my battleships. Sure, you can get the fast firing low-damage cruiser guns and whittle a destroyer down.

 

Or, you can just kill it with a BB's HE in one go.

[Kosteo]

There is no Spoon¹

There is no such thing as Kill Stealing -- only a mistaken sense of entitlement.  

 

 

I simply do not understand how there are so many players berating their teammates for kill-stealing when all you need to play is two matches in order to understand the simple fact above ... win a match, and lose a match, that's it.  Maybe they are just going directly to port without even looking at the scoreboard?  Just don't get it ...

[aether_tech]

 

I simply do not understand how there are so many players berating their teammates for kill-stealing when all you need to play is two matches in order to understand the simple fact above ... win a match, and lose a match, that's it.  Maybe they are just going directly to port without even looking at the scoreboard?  Just don't get it ...

 

I stole a kill today (1-2k something health myogi), who was about to kill one of my teammates (~500 health karl). Dude raged hard. So I asked him if he wanted to have died instead. That shut him up. 

[Oberarzt_U511]

And here we can see the endangered species "Chivalrous Playerus" in its natural habitat - the savage wilds of the WOWS melting pot.