In Depth Look : Crew Skills - Common

So it has been a very long time since I've made a public post, mostly due to me being very lazy along with the progression of updates slowly nullifying my older posts. So I've decided to start from the ground up and do a small in depth series on different things such as crew skills, consumables, maps, etc.

Starting it off I'm going to start with Crew Skills and go on specifically about the common ones that every crew member can use. Please note this will focus primarily on the first three or so crew skills, all skills and perks are useful at some point but certain ones I'd only get when my crew reaches 7 or so crew skills.

Repair

Value - Extreme


Type - Accumulative Skill
If your crew has 0%, 0%, 50%, 100% then the effective repair would be  37.5%.

Description - The repair skill decreases the time it takes to fix destroyed modules.

Suggestion - All tank roles besides artillery should get this skill very quickly and your priority on getting it depends on your survivability when getting tracked.

Why Use It -  In essence; survivability. When tracked you have two options, to repair it with a consumable or wait for it to come back. With a decent repair level you'll burn less repair kits on tracks so you can use them for more important things like ammo racks.

	With Repair	Without Repair
Tracks	3~ seconds	10~ seconds
Gun	7~ seconds	15~ seconds
Turret	7~ seconds	15~ seconds

The worst scenario to be in without the repair skill is getting tracked right before your gun rounds a corner meaning you can't shoot back. I personally do this every chance I get in my tanks and if I'm in a tank with a 7 second or faster reload (auto loaders and mediums mostly) I'll have at least a 50% chance of destroying them unless they burn a repair kit. If they had repair at 100% only very fast reload tanks like auto loaders can keep them permanently tracked.

Camouflage 

Value - Extreme


Type - Accumulative Skill
If your crew has 0%, 0%, 50%, 100% then the effective repair would be  37.5%.

Description - Improves your camouflage value decreasing the chance of  being spotted.
Because of an increased camouflage value, enemy tanks need to get closer to detect your tank.

Suggestion - All tanks should eventually get 100% camouflage, Tank Destroyers / Lights / Mediums should get them very early on as it compliments their play styles while Heavies and Artillery would benefit from them later on as both of them should use objects for cover instead of view range as their primary form of protection.

Why Use It - Camouflage improves one of the core game mechanics of the games meta, view range. The time you are visible to the enemy tanks the more your survivability will go up, and in a lot of cases it is by a huge margin. It improves sniping from range, advancing on a position, and so many other scenarios that it is hard to appropriately explain why it is so useful. However in random battles where you have to rely on your own ability to spot tanks before you're spotted, this is a life saver.

Firefighter

Value - Very Minimal


Type - Accumulative Skill
If your crew has 0%, 0%, 50%, 100% then the effective repair would be  37.5%.

Description - Decreases damage and duration of fire damage.
Fire damages your tank over a set time and deals a percentage of your health with each hit.

Suggestion - Since fire extinguishers are very cheap and automatic ones can be bought for credits, compounded with the fact that you rarely see double fires makes this skill relatively useless. I'd pretty much only put it on tanks with 5+ crew skills due to lack of useful options.

Why Use It -After you've collected all the very useful crew skills you'll eventually reach a point where the options become mostly perks, at this point giving a crew member firefighter becomes a valid option. If it decreased the chance of being caught on fire then it may gain a better standing on those tanks with very weak engines and fuel tanks however in 99% of cases you are better off with an extinguisher, let alone the alternative crew skills you could be using.

Brothers in Arms

Value - Debateable


Type - Special Perk
Your entire crew must have it at 100% and after an upcoming patch none of the crew members can be injured or else the effect is removed.

Description - Increases crew effectiveness by 5%
This is a buff to crew training and in effect influences everything from rate of fire to turn speed, camouflage value to view range, however the effect is closer to 3% when translated to actual effectiveness.

Suggestion - Because the commander has to learn it 100% aswell and it offers such a low buff across the board I only recommend it for artillery until you have a multiple crew skill crew. Probably around 4 or 5 skills each.

Why Use It - In the beginning of my tanking carreer I believed that BIA was extremely valuable for my tanks, and on certain ones I still hold that notion. However as I have matured as a player I have noticed the impact of getting crew skills that enhanced role specific functions over a uniform buff. My tank destroyers live longer and get greater damage with camouflage as their first skill while my brawling heavies stay alive in a brawl longer when I don't have to burn a repair kit to fix their tracks when I need to dodge in and out of cover or angle my armor for a greater chance of bouncing shots.

In such tanks as artillery it is indeed useful as a first crew skill since you don't really need any other crew skill to preform your role well since your primary concern is with accuracy and reload rates which none of the other crew skills usefully influence as much. None of my recent crews minus my new artillery crew will have BIA until they have around 4 or 5 crew skills since the commander has so many important skills to learn that it is just not useful to waste a crew skill slot on it.

Conclusion

Repair - First or Second skill on almost any tank.

Camouflage - First or Second skill on any tank.

Firefighter - Only get it when you run out of skills.

Brothers In Arms - Only useful early on for an artillery or a very select few tanks.

World of Tanks: Crew Skills

For many who are new to World of Tanks you'll probably not know a lot about how crew skills work and what ones to get for your tanks. Hopefully this guide will help educate most of you on what the different skills actually do for your tank and help you prioritize the order you want to achieve those skills. So without wasting any more time let me start. Some small single sentence things before I do though. Use gold to drop skills, the battles it takes to catch up isn't really worth it. Also when you drop a skill it will reset all of your skills so you can switch their order around or pick completely different skills to take their place. This is good to train perks when you have more then 2 crew skills since you can use a normal skill up to 100% and then switch it out with a perk so you're not wasting those thousands of battles.

Types of Crew Skills
The first thing I should talk about is the different types of crew skills, which there are three. The first type of crew skill is a skill which take effect when you have at least 1% training. So if you have a skill that increases your guns accuracy by 10% when it is fully learned, at 25% training your guns accuracy will be 2.5% better. The second type are called perks and they only come into effect when they reach 100%, so if you have a perk that makes you reload 10% faster and the perk has only been trained to 99%, you'll reload speed will still be the same until you reach that last percent. The final crew skill is Brothers In Arms, it is defined as a perk in the game however due to special rules I classify it as its own type. BIA only takes effect when every crew member has it trained to 100%, so even if a single crew member has only 50% BIA it will NOT WORK.

How long does it take!
The second thing to consider is how long it takes to get each skill. If you get on average 700 experience for each battle it will take you 300 battles to max out your first crew skill, 600 more battles for your second skill, and 1,200 more battles for your third skill. So reflectively to get 100% on four crew skills you'll need about 4,500 battles at 700 average experience (not including the battles it takes to finish your Major Training to even pick your first crew skill). Technically you can get every single perk and skill your crew member can learn 100%, however the amount of battles it will take is makes that goal unrealistic to most crews so the best idea is to plan for your first three / four crew skills. I'd also never train a perk that I wanted from 0 to 100% unless it was one of my first two crew skills.

Default Layouts
These will go up to the 3rd skill since beyond that is mostly situational.

Brawlers

1. Brothers in Arms
2. Repair
3. Smooth Ride / Off Road, Snap Shot, Sixth Sense / Jack of all Trades
4. Camouflauge / Fire Fighting

Your goal is to increase effectiveness of moving and shooting, most of the time you wont have the luxury to take aim while wiggling your hull or peek-a-booming around a corner. Because being tracked in the open can mean a death sentence for you since most of the action you'll be facing involves having multiple tanks within spitting distance. A single tracking can allow a tank to get behind you or allowing multiple tanks to hit you while your exposed (mostly because you poked out of a corner to get a shot before backing up to reload). For me I usually save repair for my 3rd skill and my commander / driver train something different.

Snipers (TD's)

1. Camouflage + Sixth Sense / Brothers in Arms
2. Camouflage + Sixth Sense / Brothers in Arms
3. Clutch Breaking, Designated Target, Repair
4. Off Road, Smooth Ride, Snap Shot, Dead eye

Your goal is to stay hidden and increase your accuracy and damage. Since you'll mostly be sitting behind the front lines and with tank destroyers camo bonus you'll want to take full advantage of it. A TD in the woods is a scary thing to face since you'll have to be practically be on top of them before they are spotted. For the 3rd and 4th skills you'll be focusing on things like dealing damage and turret-less weakness, not having a turret. Off Road and Clutch breaking on TD's since you'll want to turn as fast as you can to shoot that guy circling you in the ass. Dead eye and Designated Target are also nice editions since you'll be able to keep that guy who was spotted lit two seconds longer and that 3% better chance of dealing critical damage is especially nice when considering that is per each module your shell hits, which can be more then one!

Artillery

1. Brothers in Arms
2. Camouflage + Sixth Sense
3. Clutch Breaking / Off Road, Repair
4. Off Road / Clutch Breaking

So besides that sexy increase for Reload and Zooming in from BIA you'll want to increase vehicle rotation rate / movement. Everything else is kinda moot as you'll probably die in the first shot anyway. Turning the tank faster though means you can start zooming in at a new location faster. I might say smooth ride and snap shot would be interesting too, especially with an SU-26. Just remember that things like Dead-eye and Designated Target do not work in Strategic mode.

Scouts

1. Camo + Sixth Sense / BIA
2. BIA / Camo + Sixth Sense
3. Repair, Recon + Situational Awareness, Designated Target
4. Off road, Call for Vengeance

You want to spot and know when you've been spotted. To this end anything to help you keep spotting is great! I say camo fast because light tanks keep their camo while moving so with a 100% camo crew they'll be able to spot a lot more often without being shot at. Call for Vengeance and Designated Target are just little bonus things to help prolong spotting since those two extra seconds can mean the difference between an artillery / sniper getting a shot or not. Sixth Sense is a god send since knowing when you're spotting means you can turn your ass down that cliff, get an idea where tanks are even if you didn't spot, and if you are seen while passively spotting behind a bush with binocs means the difference between being killed and living long enough to help your team even longer.

Situational / Other

• Preventative Maintenance if you get tired of being set on fire.
• Safe Stowage and Adrenaline Rush are both decent loader skills, I don't list them as they are more a preference but I do have one or both on most of my brawlers in the 2nd slot.
• Eagle Eye is just a waste of time since it doesn't add as much benefit as most of the stuff a commander can get. It can be cool to use to see if someone's ammo rack or turret is busted so you know you have more time to work with between him shooting you, but it is just a gimmick really.
• Recon and other signal and sight boosting things unless on a scout doesn't really need it unless their signal or sight is naturally too low for you. Boosting your snipers view range can make you hit people sooner or when you normally can't see them, but it is more of a 4th / 5th skill.
• I think Intuition is pretty rubbish since I don't want to try switching a round and losing my loaded one in the process. It might be worth it in an auto loader if it reloaded all the shells in a clip at once from a half empty one but other then that...
• Controlled Impact, Sexy on a KV-5 but the conditions are kind of obtuse.

Too Long; Didn't Read

1. Plan for your first three / four crew skills, everything after that is unrealistic on most skills.
2. Perks only work when they are 100% trained while skills work the second they are 1% trained.
3. Pretty much the holy grail is BIA, repair, camo
4. Sixth Sense is amazing, and Jack of all Trades is my next favorite for a commander
5. Snap shot and Dead eye are my defaults for my gunner if I don't use repair first
6. For my driver usually Smooth Ride and Off road, controlled and clutch breaking usually takes second place to camo and repair for me.
7. Radio guy gets situational and that is about it, generally I don't care about radio range since I'm brawling most of the time and I'm close enough most of the time.
8. For my loaders I just pop on safe stowage just to drop that chance of being one shot and then go straight for repair and camo and fire fighting before bothering with a 2nd loader only skill.
9. I'm going to be adding more to this post later.