1. Use the Minimap
Good players see the flow of the battle. Where their team is and where, as they're spotted, the other team is. They can use that information to make decisions about where they should be next and what threats and opportunities they have. If 13 of your team all went east, for example, you'll want to know that before you decide if you're going to get on that lemming train, or if you and the other tank are going to try and hold down the western flank by yourselves.
The minimap is also helpful as the battle develops in informing you what you're likely to face. If those 13 tanks have swept around the east and only found 7 enemy tanks...that should warn you that you likely have 8 enemy tanks in front of you somewhere and you might want to either pull back, or get hull down in a defensible position and hope the cavalry shows up.
On the other hand if all enemy tanks are accounted for on the minimap then you have a lot of confidence about where you can go and what you'll find there.
When you watch replays of good players you may notice that they often have their minimaps enlarged so they can see them better. You can do that too by pressing the = key on your keyboard during the battle (the - key makes it smaller again). There are 3 or 4 levels of zoom and I tend to use mine on the middle level.
You can do it too
Make your minimap a little larger and try to get in the habit of looking at it often during the battle. Especially before making a decision about which way (or when) to go.
2. Watch Their Replays
Good players often watch their own replays to see what they did right, and more importantly, what they did wrong. By learning where things went bad you can learn to not make those same mistakes again. The beauty of the replay is that you can slow it down, or speed it up, move the camera around to see it from different angles.
A loss is only a failure if you don't learn anything from it.
You can do it too
Your replays are located on your computer in C:\Games\World_of_Tanks\replays. With the game client closed, double-click on a replay to launch it in the replay console.
Note that by default the game only keeps your most recent replay. If you'd like to keep more of them go to the game client, click the gear button at the top left and choose "Settings". On the General tab scroll down to the bottom and under "Enable Battle Recording" change it to "All".
The replay files are not very big but they will eventually build up and if you want to save storage space you'll want to occasionally clean that folder out.
Site Recommendation: Want to watch other people play a particular tank on a particular map? Go to http://wotreplays.eu and you can search for replays of particular tanks (or kinds of tanks) or particular maps.
3. Really Know the Tanks
Virtually every time you see a great player play, they can tell you exactly what they're in and exactly what they're up against. They know how much armor their enemies have, what kind of guns their enemies have and what the strengths and weaknesses are. They know to shoot that tank instead of the other tank because that other tank can't pen them at that angle and the driver of that other tank is near-sighted...ok, maybe not that last bit but all the rest of it.
If you approach every red tank as just a red silhouette, then you're not going to be as good as you want to be. It's very helpful to know how many shots it will take to kill a particular red tank and whether it's better to shoot them in the lower glacis or the upper part of the side hull or...
The good players make it look easily because they instinctively know what kind of ammo to shoot, when to shoot it (and when not to) and what parts of that other tank to shoot.
You can do it too
Well...o.k., I'll be honest. Having an encyclopedic knowledge of the tanks you're facing in the heat of a battle is kind of a big ask if you don't have thousands of battles of experience. But maybe start with one piece of that. Pick 3 tanks a week and study their armor weaknesses so you know where it's best to hit them. Practice that in battle as often as you can. In time you too can have a good understanding of how to best attack those other tanks.
You can look those weaknesses up at: http://www.worldoftanksguide.com/cgi-bin/tank_analyzer.cgi
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