The potatoes guide to doing better, part 4

You can find part 3 here

And I'm back, with some more hints to either play better, or make your life easier in World of Tanks.

• Server Reticle, is your best friend.

If you go into settings, in the General tab (because logic is hard for WG so it's not in the Reticle tab), under battle interface, you can find the "Enable server reticle". This will make your game show you the server side reticle, insted of the client reticle you usually see.

Now what does this actually do? Well it shows you where you're actually aiming, which makes you question the sanity of the people involved in not making this standard. The client reticle looks smooth and nice, but every so often it will simply BE somewhere else, causing shots to miss.

I would much rather actually know where I'm shooting, than have a nice smooth reticle. It takes a few games to get used to, but after that you won't notice it much, and your game will improve.

• Minimap transperancy.

Again we go to Settings and the General tab, under battle interface, and we find Minimap Transparency. About 50% is what I use, but you can experiment until you find a good setting for you.

It should be just transparent enough to see something going on through it, but not transperant enough to make it hard to see the actual minimap.

This allows you to avoid many collisions caused by not being able to see through the large minimap, and it should be large, and the sneaky light parked on your side won't be invisible for the crucial few seconds that allows him another shot in your flank.

• Ban the battle types.

This might not be for everyone, but if you want to learn the game, you should start by limiting the amount of knowledge you need to play well.

Now in Settings again, in the General tab, you can find the Random Battle Types. Encounter, Assault, Grand Battle, and Standard Battle. Now turn of everything except Standard battle.

This means that all your battles will be standard battles, which means you have 1/3 as many positions to learn for your class. In every game the maps, optimal positions etc. will always be the same.

Now this might be boring, but it's also a LOT easier, and when you have a solid grasp of all the maps, you can turn on one mode at the time, giving yourself time to learn.

• Ban the right maps.

Most people tend to ban the maps they hate, but that's not always a good idea. While grinding light tanks I had Himmelsdorf and Paris banned, and then when I had to grind heavies I changed the bans to Malinovka and Prokhorovka.

If you're just playing a bunch of random tanks, then of course this won't work well, but if you're grinding a specific types of tank, this can MASSIVELY change your game for the better.

This also requires the former advice of turning of the different battle types, as map banning only works for standard battles. It's absolutely worth it, to get rid of the two worst maps for the class you're grinding, and will up both WR and WN8 noticeably.