World of Warships Blitz, especially since the 1.0 release and opening up to a wider group of players, has gotten much more difficult than in the beta days. This is due to a number of factors:
- more human players means less (relatively stupid) AI players to farm on
- human players increasingly know what they're doing
- new branches on the tech tree mean more experienced players grinding at low levels
- AI got better (especially in terms of avoiding torpedoes)
- ranked battles mean you're quickly up against top players
I'm seeing signs of frustration in my fleet chat, with people "just not winning anymore".
Back in the beta days, if you had a destroyer or light cruiser, and had a halfway decent idea of how to actually play the game, you could absolutely dominate. Enemy ships would sail at constant speed, in straight lines, obliviously close to islands. Battleships would blindly attack into close quarters against destroyers. Battleships would fire HE shells at your battleship, and AP against your destroyer. Stuff like that.
I've clocked in battles where I single-handedly wiped out the complete enemy fleet in my Nürnberg class light cruiser:
Not getting these kind of results anymore - even an Iron Fortress medal, which I used to pick up in pretty much all battles, is not guaranteed. More frequently, I end up spending 3/4th of a battle duelling with a single enemy player, defending a flank or sneaking a cap to make it to - less glorious - victory.
Strategy
Since it's quite hard to carry a game on your own, working in a team is becoming more and more important. Unfortunately, unless you squad up with other players you know, you'll be on your own with a group of random players, with limited means of communication. Let's take a look at how to make the most of this situation, and keep coming out on top. I'm flying the "Battle Star" nick in-game for a reason - and modesty isn't one of them :)
This is me in my "Admiral Hipper" class tier 8 German heavy cruiser. Not one of my favourite maps, too much open space, and these icebergs are too large to use as quick cover. So, what do we have to consider at the beginning of this battle.
First, fleet composition. We've got one battleship, three cruisers, and three destroyers. The enemy fleet has one more battleship, at the cost of one cruiser. Battleships are deadly on this map if played right, due to the wide open spaces. Let's look at the map a bit closer.
This is close to a minute into the battle, and you'll notice two things: most of our fleet is heading straight south towards that narrow channel. Spawning points are cross-position, and the enemy fleet is likely do do the same thing on their side. If we were all to follow, one thing is almost a certainty on this one: A destroyer will sneak up close to or behind the icebergs, and try to win by capping. You'll almost certainly lose this way, I've seen it happening many times.
So with the lemming train heading south, if the enemy battleships have even the slightest idea of what they're doing, they'll position around their cap circle, angled forward, and welcome them with blistering fire, while the destroyers will scatter them or drive them against the icebergs with torpedoes, where they don't have space to manoeuvre.
There isn't much I can do to communicate with my team, so I'm heading straight east to defend the eastern approach. The "Hipper" has sonar, so I've got a decent chance to detect enemy destroyers or cruisers when they're inevitably heading up these lines. I'm making sure not to get too close to the icebergs, so I have range to manoeuvre against torpedoes.
The "Hipper" also has six torpedo launchers on each side, with a range of 5.4km, giving me something to deter enemy ships from going in a certain direction. Once I've intercepted whatever comes sailing up that side, I'm turning back north to defend the cap.
You'll also note one of our destroyers going straight through the centre to spot for the rest of the team. He has to be careful, since there's no concealment, and once he's spotted, he'll have the entire enemy fleet shooting at him. But at least we'll know what's coming.
In this particular game, I had a destroyer and a cruiser sailing up the western line, and another destroyer sneaking up the eastern line. I did manage to sink both destroyers, but got taken out eventually by the cruiser, but I prevented them long enough from capping that we were able to win on points (and I would almost have taken the cruiser down with me). I managed two kills, about 40000 damage caused, which didn't get me any medals, but at least our team won.
Communication
In this next scenario, I'm in my Aurora, a premium tier three Soviet cruiser. She's not particularly fast, but sturdy, and has mean, quick-firing high explosive shells, which do over 400 points of damage. Setting battleships on fire while dodging their return shots is great fun, and she can do some severe damage to destroyers at close range.
As before, let's look at our disposition of forces. We've got a carrier (I'm bottom tier in a tier four match), three battleships, two cruisers and one destroyer. The enemy fleet has two destroyers and an additional cruiser, at the cost of battleships. They have the mobility and torpedo advantage, we have more powerful guns. The map is tricky, though.
We have three cap circles (this is a very common map in these lower tiers), and plenty of covers behind islands, especially around A and B. This map favours mobility. Again, consider that the enemy team is going to cross-spawn on the south-eastern corner.
The most important decision in this situation is made at the opening. With our fleet vulnerable to destroyers, we need to control and defend two of the cap circles, while keeping each other in supporting fire range. Our destroyer spawned on the western end of the map, and my Aurora barely does more than 20 knots. We couldn't go for caps B and C, since we didn't have the speed and mobility to hold these plus defend the battleships from being flanked by destroyers.
So what I did here was trying to "pull rank" (again, flying the "Battle Star" nick helps, especially in lower-tier games) and get the team to take A and B. This worked reasonably well. The destroyer capped A, I positioned myself near the islands north of A to cover him against enemy cruisers, and to intercept enemy destroyers, and the other cruiser capped B, with fire support from the battleships against the main enemy thrust.
Of course, things went messy quickly after that (it's a lower-tier game after all, players mostly don't have the experience for discipline), but we managed to keep their destroyers in check, and our battleships made short work of the enemy cruiser force. We ended up holding all three caps, and won by sinking the enemy fleet.
When I play lower tier games, I usually hold back and leave kills for the more junior players, if possible. Or hunt down other higher-rank players.
Summary
With the game becoming harder, you can't easily carry it by your own, you need to work as a team, and communicate. A couple of things to keep in mind:
Not getting these kind of results anymore - even an Iron Fortress medal, which I used to pick up in pretty much all battles, is not guaranteed. More frequently, I end up spending 3/4th of a battle duelling with a single enemy player, defending a flank or sneaking a cap to make it to - less glorious - victory.
Strategy
Since it's quite hard to carry a game on your own, working in a team is becoming more and more important. Unfortunately, unless you squad up with other players you know, you'll be on your own with a group of random players, with limited means of communication. Let's take a look at how to make the most of this situation, and keep coming out on top. I'm flying the "Battle Star" nick in-game for a reason - and modesty isn't one of them :)
This is me in my "Admiral Hipper" class tier 8 German heavy cruiser. Not one of my favourite maps, too much open space, and these icebergs are too large to use as quick cover. So, what do we have to consider at the beginning of this battle.
First, fleet composition. We've got one battleship, three cruisers, and three destroyers. The enemy fleet has one more battleship, at the cost of one cruiser. Battleships are deadly on this map if played right, due to the wide open spaces. Let's look at the map a bit closer.
So with the lemming train heading south, if the enemy battleships have even the slightest idea of what they're doing, they'll position around their cap circle, angled forward, and welcome them with blistering fire, while the destroyers will scatter them or drive them against the icebergs with torpedoes, where they don't have space to manoeuvre.
The "Hipper" also has six torpedo launchers on each side, with a range of 5.4km, giving me something to deter enemy ships from going in a certain direction. Once I've intercepted whatever comes sailing up that side, I'm turning back north to defend the cap.
You'll also note one of our destroyers going straight through the centre to spot for the rest of the team. He has to be careful, since there's no concealment, and once he's spotted, he'll have the entire enemy fleet shooting at him. But at least we'll know what's coming.
In this particular game, I had a destroyer and a cruiser sailing up the western line, and another destroyer sneaking up the eastern line. I did manage to sink both destroyers, but got taken out eventually by the cruiser, but I prevented them long enough from capping that we were able to win on points (and I would almost have taken the cruiser down with me). I managed two kills, about 40000 damage caused, which didn't get me any medals, but at least our team won.
Communication
In this next scenario, I'm in my Aurora, a premium tier three Soviet cruiser. She's not particularly fast, but sturdy, and has mean, quick-firing high explosive shells, which do over 400 points of damage. Setting battleships on fire while dodging their return shots is great fun, and she can do some severe damage to destroyers at close range.
As before, let's look at our disposition of forces. We've got a carrier (I'm bottom tier in a tier four match), three battleships, two cruisers and one destroyer. The enemy fleet has two destroyers and an additional cruiser, at the cost of battleships. They have the mobility and torpedo advantage, we have more powerful guns. The map is tricky, though. The most important decision in this situation is made at the opening. With our fleet vulnerable to destroyers, we need to control and defend two of the cap circles, while keeping each other in supporting fire range. Our destroyer spawned on the western end of the map, and my Aurora barely does more than 20 knots. We couldn't go for caps B and C, since we didn't have the speed and mobility to hold these plus defend the battleships from being flanked by destroyers.
So what I did here was trying to "pull rank" (again, flying the "Battle Star" nick helps, especially in lower-tier games) and get the team to take A and B. This worked reasonably well. The destroyer capped A, I positioned myself near the islands north of A to cover him against enemy cruisers, and to intercept enemy destroyers, and the other cruiser capped B, with fire support from the battleships against the main enemy thrust.
Of course, things went messy quickly after that (it's a lower-tier game after all, players mostly don't have the experience for discipline), but we managed to keep their destroyers in check, and our battleships made short work of the enemy cruiser force. We ended up holding all three caps, and won by sinking the enemy fleet.
When I play lower tier games, I usually hold back and leave kills for the more junior players, if possible. Or hunt down other higher-rank players.
Summary
With the game becoming harder, you can't easily carry it by your own, you need to work as a team, and communicate. A couple of things to keep in mind:
- be aware of fleet composition, and try to plan accordingly
- be aware of your role. If you're in a Japanese destroyer, you need to torpedo-snipe from long distance, and not get into gunfights. If you're in a battleship, stay in open waters, cover your flanks, and stay in range to concentrate fire with other battleships. If you're in a light cruiser, escort battleships and knock out destroyers. If you're in a carrier, scout early, disturb enemy air attacks, and take out low-health ships.
- try to communicate with your team in the opening stage, especially on cap circles.
This way, you can still pull off a decent win rate, and keep competing. By the way, if you're wondering how top players (e.g. pretty much all of FND) are having win rates in the 70 or 80% ranges, I can almost guarantee you that it's down to using external team communication.
