WOTBB 40 – All by myself

Original date of blog: September 22nd, 2015

One of the reasons my WN7, WN8 and Star1 (useless though it might be) ratings are so low, is the fact that I platoon a lot. My platoon rate is near 80% now, and I’m actually quite proud of that. I love tooning with all the wonderful people I know in the game. But recently, those ratings have been climbing steadily.

The drive to want to play solo started a few months back, when I started to feel less than happy and didn’t feel like being social in the clan and didn’t feel like tooning because of it. But at the same time, I didn’t want to stop tanking, because I still loved the game. I wasn’t good enough to solo at the high tiers and carry games there on my own, and let’s face it, no one likes losing a lot.

I had just gotten the E4 and needed to decide what tank I’d want next. The decision took me several weeks, because I couldn’t get myself to move forwards. Having had some really awesome battles tooning my E3 or E4 with an E5, I figured that that might as well be my next line and objective – it’d give me the complete American E-collection.

So, for lack of being social, I started grinding the line – on my own. And discovered something really weird – I was doing really good in the low tiers for some reason. I was doing massive damage – for the low tiers, anyway. I earned aces left and right, which shocked me even more.

It made playing fun though, because those golden little M’s always make me feel proud. It’s done wonders for my confidence in my tanking. And I realised that this must be why people like sealclubbing. Because that is what it is. Of all the people you meet, 90% is just starting the game and doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Like the name suggests – they’re little baby seals, all cute and fluffy and white, flopping about on the ice, needing their mommy to feed them. And you’re basically a yeti with a big spiked club, who knows the tanks, the maps, the different kinds of ammo, sidescraping, circle of death, etc. They’re innocent, and your mission is to completely bash that innocence.

And as the babyseals bleed to death under the swings of your club, they won’t even blame you or notice just how evil you are. They won’t understand what’s happening to begin with, and will just drive into battle again, hoping for a different result while doing the exact same thing.

I solo’d most of the line, all the way upto and including tier VII, only tooning at all come tier VI, really. I needed some help with the M6 and I didn’t like it enough to do it all on my own. I kind of figured it would be like that with for the rest of the line. But it turned out I could sealclub very effectively in the T29 as well – even though technically you can’t call it sealclubbbing anymore then.

I changed clans when I already had the M103, and for a time, I mostly solo’d that too. But by then, I was starting to relax and unwind, and didn’t feel the need to solo as much anymore. Which was good. I’m still not good enough to carry games in the high tiers on my own, and it’s just so much more fun with a buddy on your side.

Overall the E5 line has given me a lot of confidence in my own skills, and has taught me a whole lot about my own tanking-style, and what works in what tier – most of the time. And it’s given me a new mission. I have a lot of low tier tanks with absolutely awful stats – the AT-1 for instance, has a winrate of 30%. Well, had. It’s at 34% now, and I aced it, lmao. Those poor little things need a lot of love though. So I intend to sealclub them, get all those ratings up to or above 60%.

It doesn’t always work, mind you. I have bad days too when I can’t really play anything, and even sealclubbing doesn’t give any solace then. The mission is fun though, and I’m steadily increasing my amount of Aces while I’m at it. Not even really trying for that, but they happen a lot more down there.

And because I’m more confident, I solo in the high tiers too. It scares me some time, because I don’t recognize myself as that kind of a player. I still work better in a toon though. I’m a support player. I like either supporting someone (which is how Xenodium got so many Ras’, lmao), and I like having someone support me.

It’s funny, really. I care less when I lose a match or two now (as long as I did well myself), and don’t mind it much when my winrate drops, but overall, I still want to make myself a unicorn. The big difference? I’m doing it for myself now, and no longer to proof anything to anyone.

You could say I understand the people that sealclub now. But only up to a level. I don’t understand the players that have thousands of battles in the lower tiers, and next to none in the high tiers. Both sides of the game are so much fun, but so very different. The higher tiers are so much more exciting and serious. It takes a lot more there to win.

When I get an ace in the low tiers, I chuckle, and feel like I’m less of a noob than those playing the low tiers too. When I get an ace in the high tiers, I feel really proud and feel like I actually earned something incredibly special. I can’t imagine myself playing only one side of the game.

Gold-noobing in the IS6, or the Jagdtiger 8.8, feels much like sealclubbing in tier VIII, because of the preferential matchmaking and the awesome guns and armour. But at the same time, driving the E25 into any battle at all feels like a challenge, because anything and everything can hurt you and kill you so incredibly quickly. My point is that at some point you get more confident in one or more tanks, and you will lose track of what you do in a game. You’ll feel like you did decent, and then turn out to have done by far the most of everyone, despite being bottom tier.

But you have to be careful not to get blinded by the love you feel for that particular tank. Because then you could end up playing only that tank, and that would in turn make you a lot weaker player in other tanks. I know a guy with 20k games in the T62a. He has some great stats, but I’m pretty sure that any other tank he drives won’t have results nearly as impressing. The bond between player and tank would be so great that you’ll forget you’re driving something else then, and will thus expect your tank to behave in a way that it simply won’t.

It’s one of the reasons I dislike selling tanks. Each tank has something unique, something special that makes it worthwhile. If you stare yourself blind on one, you’ll miss out on all the others.

To me, that is part of the reason I’m loving the whole sealclubbing. It makes me rediscover tanks that I didn’t like before, that I even hated before – like the D.W.2. I’m actually quite liking that tank now. And it’s really good for me to realise that, because it means I have an open mind towards the tanks I drive.

It might even mean that someday, I will revisit the T95 too. At one point or another, I’ll have to ace that godawful tank as well…. But that’s a long way off.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t decided what line to grind next. I don’t know what tank I’d like as my next tier X. So for now, I’ll happily bash in some white fluffy babyseal brains, and harvest them ratings in the lower tiers.