I have almost 800 hrs on war thunder and I still play like a beginner. I just lost about 10 matches in a roll as I lost count through the rage. One mode that I am bad in is ground RB. I am playing Sweden in rank 2 and it is so frustrating. Every time I thought I have a good spot, some guy flanked and one shotted me. Even if I knew enemy is coming, my tank turrent always got debuffed suddenly and turn as quickly as a pirate ship. Even if I am in a good spot, I canot aim and shoot. I just simply cannot spot enemy tanks. How are you actually supposed to spot a tank half a kilometre away in between the trees. Even with my binoculars it looks like a dot if not mistake for a dead tank. It looks excatly the same to me half a kilometre away but I guess I just don’t have the gifts. In a very rare ocassion, I do spot an enemy tank, I don’t know how to actually hit them. Some shots literally go straight, as if it is on the moon or something. Other times it drops to the ground literally the moment it leaves the tank barrel, as if Gorlock possessed the round itself. I just simply don’t know where the shell will end up and most of time, I get shot at first try by the enemy after revealing my position. Finally after all that, with one in a thousand chance, my shell do hit the enemy, the words of NON-PENATRATION in the top right corner of my screen still haunts me every hour of the day. There is a few scenario that this will go on: 1. I kept shooting at the enemy with my rounds not penatrating and desperately look at the turrent of the enemy tank turn until looking down my end of the barrel. (I think you guys know what happens next)
2. I didn’t panic and thought of the youtube tutorial I saw to become good. I aim at the turrent ring, machine gun ports or whatever, then before my gun stabilises the enemy sent me back to lobby. How is my gun being a toddler in a bouncy castle while the enemy barrel literally rotates so smoothly that I thought it transformed into an Abrams. It is ridicuous like I cannot kill tanks, literally. Every game my rank in my team is always double digits, with a 4 on the left of every stats box and the rest 0s. The only reason why my KD is still above 1 is because of my games in ground AB. I am tired of everyone saying that RB is the real skill when I am just trying to enjoy the game and grind for some tanks. There is not even a need to talk about air battles. I am already ass in air AB. When I get into my plane, I climb and do what everyone does. But when I get a kill, literally dozens of enemies will be on my tail and I’ll be instantly deleted to ashes. I always remind myself to stay within the range of teamates. However when I need them, they almost seem to disappear all at once. I also rarely land my shots. The plane wobbles so much and I can’t shoot at the circle in front of the plane properly. Even in AB I can’t land my shots, so I never tried air RB, which will definitely be a disasterclass for me, if not already called trash my everyone in chat. Please any comments will be super helpful as I am just trying to get better. Thanks so much guys.
Imho you mixed up the number of battles with your total playtime.
As you use German and Swedish hardware and you are rather new to the game it is always a good idea to look for external help in case things are not going according to plan👍
As a pure Air RB player with 20k battles at WW 2 prop BRs i can write now several pages about what to do and how to play - but i have done this dozens of times and i would just repeat myself.
In order to get better it is imho a matter of practice and your willingness to invest time in doing some research - either in this forum or on yt. Especially Air RB is no rocket science and rather easy to learn.
So my recommendation would be to look how experienced players act and behave in matches by watching some replays. I meet frequently an exceptional player using the BR 2.3 Bf 109 E-1 with great effect. Even as he might now grind now the US event pancake you can learn a lot just by watching a few of his replays.
All you have to do is open the server replay site and search for his replays - and use option 2 (=player view) to see how he fights. You can use this replay as an example:
Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
His name: Oskar_GD.
He is in the top 10 of players regard Kills-per-Battle. I meet him frequently in Air RB and he is a pain to fight. If he is not flying his German Yak-1B (in which i killed him a few days earlier) he flies the 109 E-1 to its absolute strength and i have to avoid any engagement outside a BnZ attack as his plane is able to kill my 3.3 Hellcat (which outturns the Yak-1B) rather easy.
But in this match i flew the French BR 3.3 MB 157 which is way faster but has an inferior turn rate so i decided to avoid any confrontation and played the long game - i has a clear ticket lead and had to survive 14 minutes 1 vs 2 preventing them from equalizing the tickets - a milk run if you have a faster plane.
Hope that helps a bit!
But do you enjoy playing the game?
Don’t worry about your stats. Not everyone is a natural borne Nintendo warrior. You have to “like” playing the game (to the degree of your tolerance for it), after that everything else will follow. If not, find something else to do with your time.
At ~800 hrs and 700 something games, you are still learning and in the steepest part of the learning curve. K Soze is right about needing to research how to get guder. If you don’t want to make that investment, then see first para above.
Also, your crew skills will be low, which are a built in handicap Gaijin put in the game. They make a big difference in how well the game lets you be. Consider spending money to buff them.
Let me tell you something man, I only started becoming good at the game around 1500 hrs 💀💀. Before that I was absolutely horrible, and I played countless horrible matches. (My M1A1 AIM is still top of my stats, even though I haven’t touched it in years)
My recommendation is really just keep playing the game and try to observe everything as best as possible. Over time you will overtly start understanding different tank’s armors, strategy, etc. But this doesn’t mean you’ll get better at the game.
Sometimes you’ll just get a horrible loss streak and ragequit for the day, just how it works. Heck sometimes I’ll quick for a month or even a year
Hey brother, don’t beat yourself up over it. I’ve got thousands of hours in this game and real-world experience watching how fast chaos unfolds when metal meets dirt — War Thunder isn’t far from that. It punishes hesitation, overconfidence, and bad positioning the same way reality does.
Here’s the deal:
- Don’t rush the frontlines. The first minute of every match decides who controls the angles. Move like you’re clearing a room — slow, aware, always thinking “where would I set up if I were the enemy?”
- Distance kills awareness. You’re not supposed to “see” tanks through trees. Learn shapes, smoke trails, and movement patterns. In real ops, the guy who sees first survives. Same here.
- Gun handling and reaction time are crew skills. They’re your “unit readiness.” Spend points there before armor or mobility.
- Map knowledge is your best weapon. Treat every loss as intel — where did they come from, where did they shoot you from, what you could’ve done different.
- And most importantly — stay calm. You can’t win a firefight if you lose your head.
800 hours in? You’ve earned your stripes. Now you just need to think less like a player, more like a commander. The more you plan your next engagement instead of reacting to it, the faster you’ll see results.
Keep pushing. Every defeat teaches you something no tutorial ever will.
Easiest way to instantly do better in air battles is just knowing the things your plane is good at, and then doing that to avoid dying. It’s as simple as that. The four main things are max speed, turn rate, roll rate, and climb/keeping speed. Being faster than someone is easy to take advantage of; only approach people when you are near max speed and just keep going in a near straight line when they turn to avoid your shots to quickly get to safety. With the turn rate advantage you generally just have to horizontally turn at the right time when they’re close to you(0.7km usually works), and the same applies with roll rate. For the climb rate planes a spiral climb can usually get the enemy to stall before you, and then you flip upside down and kill them. This one’s a little less consistent though.
Here’s some examples
High speed: f104
High turn rate: vampire/venom,
Spiral climbers: Mig 15
High roll rate: F86/g91
It’s pretty common to die to someone’s teammate after killing them in air battles. However, sometimes avoid “hard engaging” someone if they have a teammate near and you don’t. It is worth “suicide targeting” someone in a bad spot if they’re a plane who has been max downtiered in the match cause they’re a priority potent target and your sacrifice will help your team win.