World of Warships – Tips for New Players

In this guide I will tell you the most basic tips and tricks you need to know to make your first steps in World of Warships.

Tips & Tricks

All credit goes to Moristopheles!

• The firing range of a ship ≠ to the range that ship is most effective. There is no such thing as “snipers” in WoWS. 

• Use the mini-map. Don’t just glance at it, actually use it – it’s the most useful tool in the game. Also use the “+” to make it larger. 

• The most dangerous torpedos in the game have white triangles (meaning they have been fired by friendlies). Torpedos don’t know which team they are on, they kill both sides without discrimination. 

• Sometimes you need to attack, sometimes you need to capture a point, and sometimes you need to retreat and hide. Pay attention to points, ships remaining, and time remaining. 

• Learn when a trade is advantageous vs not. Trading your 1/4 health ship for their full health higher tier ship is usually a good trade; trading your full health ship for their 1/4 health lower tier ship is usually not a good trade. 

• Be patient. In your first few (hundred) games focus on learning, and staying alive. You will learn a lot more slowly and get frustrated if you charge in and die early every time. Even if you are not the best player, you are WAY more useful alive. 

• While you might be tempted to go full broadside so you can aim as many of your guns at the enemy as possible, don’t – in this game, doing so will just make you an easier target to shoot at. 

• Try multiple ship lines. You will learn new play styles, AND the weaknesses of other ships. 

• Use chat. Pay attention to chat. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice. For all the salt in chat, the community can be pretty awesome at times. 

• Don’t worry about premium ships for a while. And for the love of God don’t buy a premium at a tier higher than what you have played. 

• Don’t grind. Don’t try to race up lines. Enjoy the ships. Enjoy the trip. A lot of decent low tier ships can be a lot of fun and have bad reputations because no one bothers to try and actually learn them. Tier 10 isn’t the promised Land you think it is. Basically, have fun!

Bonus: shoot at the enemy destroyers. If you don’t like being permanently spotted and torpedoed by them, then take every opportunity you have to eliminate them.

Battleship Fundamentals

Your only goal is to establish and maintain a crossfire with teammates and thus map control. You want to be forcing the enemy to choose between showing broadside to either you or your teammates.

Survival in a battleship comes from maintaining the angle of your main armour belt (30 degrees or tighter for regular AP; tighter still for AP with improved pen angles and SAP); and from range management.

Optimal range for a battleship is “as close to the enemy as possible without: Entering torpedo threat (if the gap between them is so tight you end up eating more than one when trying to slip between them, you’re too close); without showing too much broadside angle against incoming AP (and SAP to a lesser extent); without entering HE spam from ships you cannot see and thus cannot shoot back at. Any further from the enemy than that, and you are making them safer from your guns without gaining appreciable safety for yourself.

As long as you are taking shots in your main armour belt (big thick orange strip down the length of your ship in the armour viewer – sometimes have to disable view of torpedo bulges in the armour viewer to reveal it), they’re going to bounce and shatter.

For the German BCs you generally want to build secondary spec, which is very CO points intensive. It’s not essential to do this, but it’s kinda their unique selling point – secondary specs work best when 1vs1ing so you have the time to out-trade the enemy with all that extra gunpower, ditto for kiting where you can survive long enough for the secondary battery to do its job.

They’re a bit squishy when focused, and the icebreakers can be a bit hit-and-miss if surrounding plates can be easily overmatched – so knowing your match-ups is a bit important, but they’re pretty powerful – especially given their solid torpedo armaments.

As for not getting reliable cits – part of it is a numbers game, it’s always possible for dispersion to troll you.

Part of it is how citadel protection works

Does the target have turtleback that you cannot overmatch? Does it have angled plates as part of its citadel armour that you cannot overmatch? If so, the ricochets will mean shells fail to pen the citadel and end up detonating for normal pens, or exiting the ship for overpens.

Neither of these apply to a Helena.

• Is the target’s armour too thin to arm your AP? Is the section of citadel the shell penetrated too thin for the shell to explode before exiting?
• Is the citadel below the waterline and thus very hard to find an exposed section of?

Any of the above can, depending on stuff like range and angle of impact, etc, apply to a Helena.

If you’re firing particularly flat fast brutal AP (search as Germans, French, Italian) at close range against a light cruiser, it’s often a good idea to try and arm the shells on the water just at the waterline, as this can negate some of the above issues. But generally speaking dispersion makes even this inconsistent – which is why you need to optimise play and thus have more bites of the cherry until RNG gives you what you need.