The Bane of Rank 11

[tank276]

Hello fellows.

First day of Ranked I did pretty good 70% WR in 20 matches, reached Rank 10 starting from Rank 16 pretty easily.

The second day was a total disaster with 40% WR in 25 battles.

Third day today. doesnt look very promising.

All 3 days mostly played Destroyers (Farragut, SheNoKnowMe and Anshan).

With a total of 52 battles so far I feel that there is a particular curse around Rank 11. Seems like I have been stuck there (1 star win, 1 star loss , repeat).

Am I losing patience too early?

Never been higher than Rank 9 and I would like to know if things are like that or worse in the R10-R6 and the R5-R2 bracket.

If the answer is yes, I would consider dropping it all together to preserve my sanity.

Was pretty hyped for this season due to the IMO "fair for all" tier 6, and was thinking of trying this time more seriously to obtain the Jolly Roger or at least make it to the big League of R5 and above.

Cheers

 

[KaraMon]

Yeah there is something with R11 , i am stuck there with 45% WR :D . In previous seasons i had around 55-60% WR , now i simply can't carry enough

[kfa]

Yes its a whole new world between the brackets. R10-R6 you wont be able to just cruise around shooting stuff and earn stars anymore. Its much more team focused, more communication going on, more planning, reacting together. You have to adapt your playstyle as well, its hard at first.

R5-R1 is even more harder at first, cause you will be heavily punished  (or even lose the game) for every badly timed turn in your BB or wrongly placed smoke cloud. Still, you can adapt to it as well.

Oh and as the time goes on and more and more potato potatoes up the ranks, it will be a lot softer almost to the point that in the last couple of days of the ranked season the Rank5 bracket becomes casual sailing as well...

[Juanx]

Well, player quality has gone down, a lot, so you will need to carry a lot more this season.

Maybe in a few weeks it will get better, probably not...

[eliastion]

15 minutes ago, kfa said:

Yes its a whole new world between the brackets. R10-R6 you wont be able to just cruise around shooting stuff and earn stars anymore. Its much more team focused, more communication going on, more planning, reacting together. You have to adapt your playstyle as well, its hard at first.

R5-R1 is even more harder at first, cause you will be heavily punished  (or even lose the game) for every badly timed turn in your BB or wrongly placed smoke cloud. Still, you can adapt to it as well.

Oh and as the time goes on and more and more potato potatoes up the ranks, it will be a lot softer almost to the point that in the last couple of days of the ranked season the Rank5 bracket becomes casual sailing as well...

Well, you're exaggerating a lot, but yeah, the difficulty does change with time. And the most difference there is in 6-10 bracket. For now it's still a bracket not everyone has managed to get to. But lower ranks (with irrevocable rank at 12 and all that stuff) can't maintain their "filter" status, they are something everyone can breeze through within a week, meaning that pretty much anyone who really wants to play some Ranked is going to be able to reach R10 no problem while those who are now in R10 will almost all proceed to 5+ and then out of the system. It will keep getting easier after that (as the best players are filtered out) but these changes aren't going to be nearly as fast or dramatic as what we're going to witness in r6+10 in the next few days.

 

Although, regardless of all of the above, I think OP meant that they generally keep sitting in R11, not that they keep getting pushed back from R10.

[tank276]

3 minutes ago, Juanx said:

Well, player quality has gone down, a lot, so you will need to carry a lot more this season.

Maybe in a few weeks it will get better, probably not...

There was a guy who had Ranked out 3 times I think, he had an interesting post in Reddit " Non unicum's guide for Ranked" or something.

 One of the points he made is to try to progress fast up the Ranks so you keep up with playing with the good players. The longer you drag it, the longer your bracket gets populated with less valuable players that rank up meanwhile, so you play with lower level team mates.

It made sense but dont know really.

I mean in that sense , apart from your team mates also the enemy level drops statistically, so that make things easier.

Guess there are many approaches.

 

[eliastion]

1 minute ago, tank276 said:

There was a guy who had Ranked out 3 times I think, he had an interesting post in Reddit " Non unicum's guide for Ranked" or something.

 One of the points he made is to try to progress fast up the Ranks so you keep up with playing with the good players. The longer you drag it, the longer your bracket gets populated with less valuable players that rank up meanwhile, so you play with lower level team mates.

It made sense but dont know really.

I mean in that sense , apart from your team mates also the enemy level drops statistically, so that make things easier.

Guess there are many approaches.

 

Well, that guy might've reached R1 a couple times but sadly, his advice isn't really valuable. You advance through Ranked due to combination of two things:

1. Your teams are better than enemy teams (victories) and

2. You earn more XP than your teammates (lets you save a star sometimes)

So, now let's assume you have some arbitrary skill number at 66 (on 0-100 scale where 0 is AFK and 100 a super-unicum-bot-that-never-does-any-mistakes). And let's assume you somehow advanced fast and you're in the 2-5 Rank bracket and the median level of players there is 80. What happens then? Well, on average you get enemy team with around 80 average skill and a friendly team and a friendly team with 78 - which team is more likely to win? And you're in a team with 6 players whose average skill is at 80 - how often your defeat will leave you as #1 in XP to save a star?

In Ranked you're 1/7 of your team's strength. What propels you forward is, ultimately, a mix of being persistent and slightly better than other players around you. Being too much ahead might be frustrating, mind you: a Unicum could probably carry a good team against good enemy just as easily as bad team against bad enemy while avoiding the frustrating WHAT ARE THESE IDIOTS DOING moments. But it doesn't change the fact that your gains are always at expense of other players and for these gains to be somewhat consistent, you need to play better than them. There are some rare cases where people manage to get R1 with (slightly) below 50% winrate, but it generally takes over a thousand battles AND they still need to end up #1 in team pretty regularly to make up for the win-defeat difference and come out on + in stars in the end. And, quite obviously with that may games needed, they tend to get their R1 late in the season - so with lowered overall level.

[iJoby]

56 minutes ago, tank276 said:

There was a guy who had Ranked out 3 times I think, he had an interesting post in Reddit " Non unicum's guide for Ranked" or something.

 One of the points he made is to try to progress fast up the Ranks so you keep up with playing with the good players. The longer you drag it, the longer your bracket gets populated with less valuable players that rank up meanwhile, so you play with lower level team mates.

It made sense but dont know really.

I mean in that sense , apart from your team mates also the enemy level drops statistically, so that make things easier.

Guess there are many approaches.

 

Surely both sides would have that same problem, which means your chances of winning are the same as they was early in ranked battles.

[Skyllon]

2 hours ago, tank276 said:

With a total of 52 battles so far I feel that there is a particular curse around Rank 11. Seems like I have been stuck there (1 star win, 1 star loss , repeat).

Curse at R11? Brace yourself for rank 6 and 2...

[tank276]

1 hour ago, eliastion said:

Well, that guy might've reached R1 a couple times but sadly, his advice isn't really valuable. You advance through Ranked due to combination of two things:

1. Your teams are better than enemy teams (victories) and

2. You earn more XP than your teammates (lets you save a star sometimes)

So, now let's assume you have some arbitrary skill number at 66 (on 0-100 scale where 0 is AFK and 100 a super-unicum-bot-that-never-does-any-mistakes). And let's assume you somehow advanced fast and you're in the 2-5 Rank bracket and the median level of players there is 80. What happens then? Well, on average you get enemy team with around 80 average skill and a friendly team and a friendly team with 78 - which team is more likely to win? And you're in a team with 6 players whose average skill is at 80 - how often your defeat will leave you as #1 in XP to save a star?

In Ranked you're 1/7 of your team's strength. What propels you forward is, ultimately, a mix of being persistent and slightly better than other players around you. Being too much ahead might be frustrating, mind you: a Unicum could probably carry a good team against good enemy just as easily as bad team against bad enemy while avoiding the frustrating WHAT ARE THESE IDIOTS DOING moments. But it doesn't change the fact that your gains are always at expense of other players and for these gains to be somewhat consistent, you need to play better than them. There are some rare cases where people manage to get R1 with (slightly) below 50% winrate, but it generally takes over a thousand battles AND they still need to end up #1 in team pretty regularly to make up for the win-defeat difference and come out on + in stars in the end. And, quite obviously with that may games needed, they tend to get their R1 late in the season - so with lowered overall level.

Very solid analysis dude, my regards.

Maybe will take it more laid back and not care too much about victory (I dont mean doing [edited] moves, but play in a cool and not too tense manner).

Sometimes when I am 1 star away from - say - Rank 9, ,y hands get a bit shaky. :)

[tank276]

50 minutes ago, Skyllon said:

Curse at R11? Brace yourself for rank 6 and 2...

Loool. I am begining to doubt I will progress that far my man.

[tank276]

57 minutes ago, iJoby said:

Surely both sides would have that same problem, which means your chances of winning are the same as they was early in ranked battles.

Indeed, first days did play with player likes Flambass from OMNI, Corvi from the forum (!) and generally people whos' names you have come across a way or another if u watch competitive, live streams of tubers and follow the forums.

Much fun

(If they  are on your side that is....)

[eliastion]

52 minutes ago, tank276 said:

Very solid analysis dude, my regards.

Maybe will take it more laid back and not care too much about victory (I dont mean doing [edited] moves, but play in a cool and not too tense manner).

Sometimes when I am 1 star away from - say - Rank 9, ,y hands get a bit shaky. :)

There is one good advice that isn't always easy to follow, but that helps tremendously. Ok, two pieces of advice, really:

1. If you feel like you're not at your top game (say, you feel that you're too stresses, or you wonder if you slept enough etc.) - it's best to not play Ranked.

2. Even if you feel like you're doing good but the results don't show it: cut your losses and take a break, perhaps give up on Ranked for the rest of the day. If you start with 3 defeats, it's very likely that the 4th match will be a defeat too, because you're inevitably stressed and angry at that point - and stressed and angry people make mistakes. In fact, 2 defeats in a row are usually a good moment to hold back, play some other type of match and make sure to readjust mentally: even if you were already at, say, Rank 2, after 2 defeats you HAVE to force yourself to accept that you're now at 3*** and THAT is your starting point. Otherwise you're playing with the baggage of these "missing" stars, making each defeat that much more frustrating and each victory unsatisfying because you're in the catching-up mentality, hindering yourself unnecessarily with the extra stress of being behind of where you "should" be.

 

I won't lie, I sometimes fail to follow my own advice and - more often than not - I pay for it. Last season I dropped a whole Rank because I first got 2 defeats "hey, I didn't do badly, if the monkeys were as good as the enemy team average, we'd have won". Then I played the third match and I I screwed up because I was too aggressive. Then I wanted to make up for it and played a fourth match, dropping to 4****. And I just couldn't stop myself, I had to at least get back to that R3, right? And so I started the session at 3*** and ended with 4*** and I was having a TERRIBLE time - and yet I had to consciously FORCE myself to end it and give up for the day - instinctively I felt like I had to keep playing to get back what I already had, what I deserved! But I'm pretty sure that continuing that gameplay session would lead only to frustration and, likely, some more stars lost. If you want to get through Ranked successfully and as painlessly as possible, this is the crucial ability to work on: to stop playing when it's going downhill. Because losing streak almost always make you play worse. You NEED to be able to kill them when they're still young, before much damage is done 

 

Even, if this means that sometimes you'll stop playing despite actually still playing objectively well and just having rotten luck with a couple teams in a row.

[tank276]

5 minutes ago, eliastion said:

There is one good advice that isn't always easy to follow, but that helps tremendously. Ok, two pieces of advice, really:

1. If you feel like you're not at your top game (say, you feel that you're too stresses, or you wonder if you slept enough etc.) - it's best to not play Ranked.

2. Even if you feel like you're doing good but the results don't show it: cut your losses and take a break, perhaps give up on Ranked for the rest of the day. If you start with 3 defeats, it's very likely that the 4th match will be a defeat too, because you're inevitably stressed and angry at that point - and stressed and angry people make mistakes. In fact, 2 defeats in a row are usually a good moment to hold back, play some other type of match and make sure to readjust mentally: even if you were already at, say, Rank 2, after 2 defeats you HAVE to force yourself to accept that you're now at 3*** and THAT is your starting point. Otherwise you're playing with the baggage of these "missing" stars, making each defeat that much more frustrating and each victory unsatisfying because you're in the catching-up mentality, hindering yourself unnecessarily with the extra stress of being behind of where you "should" be.

 

I won't lie, I sometimes fail to follow my own advice and - more often than not - I pay for it. Last season I dropped a whole Rank because I first got 2 defeats "hey, I didn't do badly, if the monkeys were as good as the enemy team average, we'd have won". Then I played the third match and I I screwed up because I was too aggressive. Then I wanted to make up for it and played a fourth match, dropping to 4****. And I just couldn't stop myself, I had to at least get back to that R3, right? And so I started the session at 3*** and ended with 4*** and I was having a TERRIBLE time - and yet I had to consciously FORCE myself to end it and give up for the day - instinctively I felt like I had to keep playing to get back what I already had, what I deserved! But I'm pretty sure that continuing that gameplay session would lead only to frustration and, likely, some more stars lost. If you want to get through Ranked successfully and as painlessly as possible, this is the crucial ability to work on: to stop playing when it's going downhill. Because losing streak almost always make you play worse. You NEED to be able to kill them when they're still young, before much damage is done 

 

Even, if this means that sometimes you'll stop playing despite actually still playing objectively well and just having rotten luck with a couple teams in a row.

Thnx a bunch.

In the breaks I will play some World Of Tanks instead of random battles WOWS.

Daaang! They have put Ranked to that too in the evenings.

[Leo_Apollo11]

HI all,

2 hours ago, eliastion said:

Well, that guy might've reached R1 a couple times but sadly, his advice isn't really valuable. You advance through Ranked due to combination of two things:

1. Your teams are better than enemy teams (victories) and

2. You earn more XP than your teammates (lets you save a star sometimes)

So, now let's assume you have some arbitrary skill number at 66 (on 0-100 scale where 0 is AFK and 100 a super-unicum-bot-that-never-does-any-mistakes). And let's assume you somehow advanced fast and you're in the 2-5 Rank bracket and the median level of players there is 80. What happens then? Well, on average you get enemy team with around 80 average skill and a friendly team and a friendly team with 78 - which team is more likely to win? And you're in a team with 6 players whose average skill is at 80 - how often your defeat will leave you as #1 in XP to save a star?

In Ranked you're 1/7 of your team's strength. What propels you forward is, ultimately, a mix of being persistent and slightly better than other players around you. Being too much ahead might be frustrating, mind you: a Unicum could probably carry a good team against good enemy just as easily as bad team against bad enemy while avoiding the frustrating WHAT ARE THESE IDIOTS DOING moments. But it doesn't change the fact that your gains are always at expense of other players and for these gains to be somewhat consistent, you need to play better than them. There are some rare cases where people manage to get R1 with (slightly) below 50% winrate, but it generally takes over a thousand battles AND they still need to end up #1 in team pretty regularly to make up for the win-defeat difference and come out on + in stars in the end. And, quite obviously with that may games needed, they tend to get their R1 late in the season - so with lowered overall level.

Nice analysis!

 

BTW, here is my experience in Ranked #7

 

I was lucky to have last day of old vacation (i.e. it must be used by 1st of July) set for Friday so I was able to play ranked when it opened...

In 30 games I reached my usual goal of Rank #10 (from starting Rank #16) - and I am finished (I never ever go above that because rewards are not that great and I simply have to time to reach #1) !

I played my initial game with "Cleveland" believing that I will play here exclusively - but I then quickly switched to "Fuso". I did it in order to tank for the team and serve as a anchor on which my team can rely upon (almost every game "Fireproof" and "Dreadnought" with 2.000.000 - 3.000.000 potential damage). Also there was heavy smoke meta - with "Fuso" and spotter plane you can really punish the ships that think that they are invincible inside smoke...

 

 

I have XVM running (MatchMaking Monitor) and in every single game I played all players on both sides were either "Purple" or "Blue" - in other words they were all most excellent on both sides (in all those 30 matches I played there were just a handful players that were not great in the ship they had)!

I am sure that this was because all good players wanted to quickly "escape" the lower ranks and accelerate towards higher ranks immediately at the start of the season... also I must say that I never ever seen such thing in my playtime... it was awesome sight...

 

For me that was a true blessing... it was my best single day of gameplay in "World of Warships" ever in 2+ years (fantastic cooperation and communication in teams - DDs spotting and smoking the fleet - BBs angled and holding ground from close - CLs raining HE from cover)!

 

The reason I lost games

• enemy was better (as simple as that)
• our CV had "wrong" loadout - this was the most common cause for defeat because it means lost game from the start
• selfish friendly DD - this happened just once or twice

 

All other games were absolutely fantastic nail-bitting combat that I wish all should experience!

 

Leo "Apollo11"

 

P.S.

I never ever disclosed to anyone that I was using XVM (MatchMaking Monitor) and therefore I haven't added a single gram of toxicity to the game...

[Humorpalanta]

Yeah, I love this player quality is better at lower ranks bullsh*t.

This ranked is much more RNG focused than anything ever. Perfectly angled? Yeah. Getting citadels? Why not? *Boom*

Perfect broadside curiser grunded? Totally. All missed from 3 shots? Totally. *Boom* Why? Cos f*ck you, that's why.

[22cm]

Yesterday I played arround 30 games at rank 15...

[Horin728]

The levels of idiocy and frustration that ranked causes is beyond belief...

[tank276]

1 hour ago, 22cm said:

Yesterday I played arround 30 games at rank 15...

39 battles at Rank 11 and counting...Seems like a bad joke. The morning of the second day I was 1 star away from Rank 9. Be going up and down at Ranks12 -10 since then....

[tank276]

1 hour ago, Horin728 said:

The levels of idiocy and frustration that ranked causes is beyond belief...

Just played a match in the Anshan. Teams composition 1 DD, 1 BB and the rest cruisers (rare and strange mix) .

We were at the lead mid game 3-1 kills, and controling both caps. They managed to throw it ,was the only survivor, loss.

My monitor imagined pictures of its life passing in front of it as a motion picture as I was ready to smash it.

Thankfully ,I came to my senses and written this post......

#"Rank11 for a lifetime"

 

[eliastion]

2 hours ago, Humorpalanta said:

Yeah, I love this player quality is better at lower ranks bullsh*t.

This ranked is much more RNG focused than anything ever. Perfectly angled? Yeah. Getting citadels? Why not? *Boom*

Perfect broadside curiser grunded? Totally. All missed from 3 shots? Totally. *Boom* Why? Cos f*ck you, that's why.

 

Isn't it funny how people tend to have good or bad luck so reliably? How is it that these poor guys that struggle to keep above 45% WR in Randoms go to Ranked and - gasp - they keep having bad teams and bad RNG there too! And these goddamn unicum luckers? They just go to Ranked and seem more lucky than ever, hitting R1 in under 100 battles! 

[iJoby]

19 hours ago, eliastion said:

 

Isn't it funny how people tend to have good or bad luck so reliably? How is it that these poor guys that struggle to keep above 45% WR in Randoms go to Ranked and - gasp - they keep having bad teams and bad RNG there too! And these goddamn unicum luckers? They just go to Ranked and seem more lucky than ever, hitting R1 in under 100 battles! 

Those goddamn unicom players know how to play, something i dare say we all strive to do, and it is not by luck they achieve Rank 1, you have to be disillusioned to think so, they use their skills to tank, angle their ship to take as little damage as possible but doing as much damage as possible. I would love to be as good as these guys one day.

I watched a Flamu video this morning giving solid advice on how to be at your best in a ranked battle using the Arizona, he turned a losing game into a won game, you should watch it and then wonder if you think Unicom players are just lucky. Link is HERE -> Ranked Commentary #1 - Arizona

 

[Humorpalanta]

22 hours ago, eliastion said:

 

Isn't it funny how people tend to have good or bad luck so reliably? How is it that these poor guys that struggle to keep above 45% WR in Randoms go to Ranked and - gasp - they keep having bad teams and bad RNG there too! And these goddamn unicum luckers? They just go to Ranked and seem more lucky than ever, hitting R1 in under 100 battles! 

Unicum players are unicum because they don't need luck. If RNG goes crazy on them, it's rare and they still can profit from it. But potatoes, like me, with my 57% WR and lame rating, we need RNG much more because when we tend to have a chance to cause real pain and manage to outplay someone (maybe an unicum) and RNG says no, it has a bigger impact on our matches and statistics. BTW this game is unbelievabely built on pure luck.

[tank276]

4 minutes ago, Humorpalanta said:

Unicum players are unicum because they don't need luck. If RNG goes crazy on them, it's rare and they still can profit from it. But potatoes, like me, with my 57% WR and lame rating, we need RNG much more because when we tend to have a chance to cause real pain and manage to outplay someone (maybe an unicum) and RNG says no, it has a bigger impact on our matches and statistics. BTW this game is unbelievabely built on pure luck.

"Potatoes like me" ? With 57% WR?

Dude you really make me feel like a plebe, 53% currently, working on the 54%.

And I thought I was above average to good.

[Humorpalanta]

1 minute ago, tank276 said:

"Potatoes like me" ? With 57% WR?

Dude you really make me feel like a plebe, 53% currently, working on the 54%.

And I thought I was above average to good.

Sorry mate. I don't consider myself such a good player and i don't like to grab about things, so I used potato. BTW you can always check my stats on the correct webpages, it isn't a problem. You may be better than me, stats lie a lot. Especially in a game fueled by RNGesus :D