Original date of blog: December 3rd, 2015
So, a while ago, back when I was still in loca, I blogged about statistics. I’d like to revisit that now. My main point in case at the time was that winrate only told part of the story and that the stat to watch really was average damage. And that I was proud of my platoon rate.
To be sure, I’m still very much proud of my platoon rate, which hovers somewhere about 79.26% these days. This is helped by my reroll, as that satisfies the urge to solo, so I can devote my main account fully to platooning. I really like platooning, most of the time. The game is just that much more fun if you’re driving with a friend and sharing laughs together, win or lose. So my platoon rate should always stay at around 80% – or higher.
Since I came home, my view on platooning and on statistics has changed quite a bit. Back where I was, I was the underdog, and I really didn’t know all that much about the game yet. There were people in my then-clan that didn’t want to platoon with me because I wasn’t good enough. They didn’t say so to my face, of course, but I’m not deaf, blind or stupid. To be fair, there are also people I don’t (want to) platoon with, but that’s due to personality/attitude or a clashing tanking style. But anyway, in Phoenix, I’m one of the topdogs stats-wise, to use the opposite term for underdog. It’s a very big change in my role, and it’s also majorly affected my tanking. I’ve grown up, tanking-wise.
And that’s basically why I wanted to revisit this topic. Lately, there’s been two more hypes. First and foremost: the rerolls. People that make a new account to try and see how good they really are. But it’s not just that. Some claim it’s their first account, too. Most of them buy a high tier premium tank, and mostly play just that, along with a bit of sealclubbing at the lower tiers. I know one clan who’s top 10 mostly exists off rerolls. But despite their supposedly amazing stats, when I meet them in battle, their performance is meh. They can’t play serious battles, and because they get so hooked on playing their is6 (most of the time the choice of tank), they basically have no clue how to play any other tank, or how to play tier X battles. So come clan wars, these players look daunting, but will be absolutely useless.
There’s only a few rerolls I know that actually grind on their rerolls. That’s when it stops being just a reroll in the negative sense and becomes a proper new account. It’s still a reroll – as it’s not your first account – but you’re putting serious effort into it. At the same time, I don’t quite get why people would do that, when they have their main account, even if just to see how well they’d be able to do. You’d be leaving your entire history behind, after all. And with all the falling down and getting up I’ve done in my main account, it’s all my own, and every stat is hard-earned.
The second hype is letting other people play on your account. I seriously do not get people doing that, and I doubt I ever will. I have played on the accounts of exactly two other people. The first time was to try the is6, because it would be quite the investment to actually buy it and since I had absolutely no experience with turreted tanks back then, I wanted to know what it was like. I felt bad doing that on its own already. It felt dirty. The only other account I’ve been on that’s not been my own was someone else’s reroll. Again, to try a tank. Then I was told to stat-pad so I aced almost all his tanks for him. I didn’t mind, because said reroll is hardly ever played and was never meant to be a serious reroll to begin with.
But I would never even consider letting anyone on my own account. Or on my own reroll. All the stats I have are my own. I’ve earned them all, good or bad. But by letting someone else on my account, it means those stats would become distorted. If they did good, the winrate they’d earn wouldn’t be mine. If they did bad, the loss of winrate wouldn’t be mine either. It would be even worse if they aced a tank that I hadn’t aced yet – it wouldn’t be my ace and it wouldn’t have been earned by me. Basically, my stats wouldn’t reflect me or my skills anymore.
Aside from that, in my case, I know a lot of clans and people in the game. I greet them all when I meet them. People expect a certain kind of behaviour from me when meeting me in battle. I know people who have been on other people’s accounts and felt they had the liberty to be incredibly rude to people they met. Aside from that kind of behaviour not being acceptable in my eyes to begin with, that’s even less the case when people you meet expect you to be someone else and you ruin the respect the player whose account you’re on has earned over time.
Then there’s the people who start flaunting battles and stats that aren’t theirs. They’ll pretend that the games played were played by them themselves even though that’s not the case and that the amazing stats they have on tank x was all their doing. In my opinion, that’s just as unacceptable, because on its own, it’s just as rude, if a little less offensive because there’s no cussing involved. And there’s another problem with that kind of thing. When you drive the tank you were in those amazing battles with, people will expect you to be able to be, in fact, amazing in that tank. But there’s nothing you have to show for it, because you do not have that skill level in that tank.
It’s just like those rerolls with their is6’s. Despite having amazing stats and seeming to be incredible, they can’t perform and have little clue as to what they’re actually doing in serious battles. So, come clan wars, these statpad-my-account-please-people (smapps, I’ll call them from now on, as it sounds kind of similar to smuck) can be just as useless, as unless you know them and their weaknesses for yourself, you will expect something from them they can’t live up to. As the internet says: “the cake is a lie”.
So, no one will ever get to play on my accounts and I will never seriously battle on anyone’s account but my own, and that one reroll. I get people going on other accounts to try a tank to see if they like it. Especially premiums, because they can cost a lot of money. I think it’s brave of those people to just let other people on their accounts, as it can seriously affect their stats in the tanks that get tested. But people letting people on their account to seriously play on them, grind for them and everything? No. Never. I can’t understand it, and I can’t respect it. It distorts the stats, and anything special you earn, isn’t yours. I can’t help but lose respect for those players and I find I can’t compliment them on some things because of it – it wasn’t their accomplishment I’d be complimenting, so the compliment wouldn’t be theirs.
It’s two very strange hypes, to be sure. They both make stats completely useless, each in their own way. The only stats that you can count on are your own, as long as you haven’t let others on your account, that is. To look more properly at your own stats, there are two sites for blitz stats around.
The first is Wotbstars
It looks crisp, and clean, and allows you view your stats and everyone else’s. It developed a useless stat called Star1 and it likes to make sure you use that to compare your stats to whatever. But it also has WN7 and WN8, which are much better stats to monitor. These two look at what you actually do in a battle. When these two turn dark purple, you’re a unicorn that facts rainbows.
Wotbstars lists clans, which have to be updated manually, and it tracks the top 100 of every tank, which you can order by any kind of rating. It also has a hall of fame, where people can upload the battles in specific tank with the most damage, and compare who has the biggest. For a quick view of how good someone is, it’s an excellent website and I like the clean look of it.
On the other side we have Blitzstars
Blitzstars uses a lot of different colourschemes, which, to me, makes things look a bit chaotic. It’s very mobile-device-friendly though, which is something that makes browsing your stats on the go a lot easier. It lists clans – and takes the data straight from the server. No manual work for clan leaders involved. It lists top players too, and it does so across all four servers, not just one, though you can pick one if you want. Looking back at your own stats, it lists your WN7 and WN8 along with your regular stats. It has some spiffy graphs to show your stats in specific nations, and your periodic winrate. Now. This is why I’m mentioning these sites to begin with.
Blitzstars is what makes your own stats useful again. It allows you to view your stats of the last 30, 60 and 90 days. And that is what makes rerolls irrelevant, really. Because looking at those, you see exactly your player level of now. You see your winrate, your battles, platoon rate, damage ratio, kill ratio and how well your spotting is. David (the creator of the site) has even seen fit to allow everyone to put the data of their last 30 days into a signature. I love that.
Those are the stats I look at these days. It’s a lot more useful than my own service record, and tells me a lot more than my wotbstars stats do. And because it looks at how well you’ve been doing recently, you no longer need a reroll for that, and have less need to throw away your history throughout the game. At least, that is what it is like for me. My main account will always be my main account, and it will always be the one I grind on. My stats are clean, and I’ll track them using Blitzstars to see what my level is at at that moment in time. And when I boast about reaching some new percentage, I’ll at least know that it’s what I did myself, that I earned it. =)
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