Best tier to play

[Marmmadog]

What is the best tier ship to play for making credits, XP and half decent matchmaking? Also does it matter if the ship is a premium, or special ship? I have for instance the Musashi but I also have the Izumo with perma camo and bonus package. Will one make me more than the other?

Thanks everyone 

[HogHammer]

Prior to the introduction of Superships, I would have said Tier 9.  Now, and just my opinion, I would probably say Tier 8 from an "overall" MatchMaking perspective.  Would love to hear other's thoughts on this.  Good question.

Also, see this regarding Premium and Special ships > Premium ships - Global wiki. Wargaming.net

[Marmmadog]

Thank you for the link. That has helped me alot. I am thinking now I should just be playing premium ships and to heck with tech tree ships. 

[HogHammer]

Premium ships definitely have advantages (earning/moving captains). However, there are some very good ships in the tech tree that are well worth the grind and having in your port.  Just a tip: It's always good to do a little prior research on the ships and seek out reviews - written or video.

 

[pew_pew_magoo]

Having played just one line to tier 10 I have to say I enjoy tier 10 much better than the rest. Tier 8 was very painful and I just used free Xp to pass that after only a few games. 

[Wulf_Ace]

Tier 7

[Wolfswetpaws]

Whatever Tier I feel like playing.
I like all of them.

[Verytis]

All tiers suffer from ups and downs related to them.

 

Superships

• Expensive and unsustainable unless you're an exceptional player with premium time and credit boosters. But you can access special tools gives major advantages in the right hands and situations. (eg. burst fire/accuracy boost/tactical plane squads)

T10

• Best sustainable performance with some income if you're good, economic bounses or premium time will greatly help.

T9

• Considered best for income due to being high tier and there are premium ships with both innately reduced service cost and increased credit earnings. But most T9 techtree ships suffer major deficiencies that makes the ship insufferable or otherwise inferior to T10s. I never enjoyed this tier, partially because I don't buy T9 premiums.

T8

• Lowest of the "high tiers", they suffer slightly in dmg output due to lacking slot 6. Usually the tier where you get a proper full taste of a techtree line. Also you get to seal club dumpster on T6-7.

T7

• The high "mid-tiers". Most T7s are a terrible match against T8+ due to armour and concealment differences. You will notice WG has, been giving T7 ships much more readily than T8. This is why. Don't expect to carry in randoms.

[palestreamer]

For gameplay T8-10. The players are generally, but not always, more experienced, so the play is a little steadier and your good efforts seem to more often result in a win. T5-7 has fun ships, and some good battles, but lots of new players, so sometimes your team can be spectacularly bad.

I find I play T8 a lot. 

 

[Utt_Bugglier]

17 hours ago, Marmmadog said:

What is the best tier ship to play for making … XP …

Depends on the type of XP and purpose of the grind you’re talking about…

For ship XP, the best tier is in the tier and specific tech tree ship in which you’re grinding.

Same if you’re grinding a particular captain.

For event-driven XP, (dockyard stages, combat mission completion, etc.), read the mission tier guidelines, and pick ships you perform best in. It’s ideal if a ship that fits those criteria is also a ship you’re grinding. If you have a choice of such ships, bias your selection toward the ships of higher tiers.

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

2 hours ago, palestreamer said:

For gameplay T8-10. The players are generally, but not always, more experienced, so the play is a little steadier and your good efforts seem to more often result in a win. T5-7 has fun ships, and some good battles, but lots of new players, so sometimes your team can be spectacularly bad.

I find I play T8 a lot. 

 

I find it's just easier to straight carry in T5-7, at least on NA. Even in a 'bad' ship, the talent on both sides in terms of captains is just appallingly bad.

[Verblonde]

17 hours ago, Marmmadog said:

What is the best tier ship to play for making credits, XP and half decent matchmaking?

My personal answer FWIW is whatever tier Ranked is at the moment, although I tend to prefer 8+ as the higher tiers tend to have more interesting and diverse ship options.

If you're focusing on rewards, it's worth reminding yourself on what drives rewards (generally, it's damage) and focusing on ships that allow you to make most use of those drivers. Exactly which ships are optimal picks will vary from player to player, depending on what works for you. If you haven't already, have a butchers at the wiki page that covers the economy (and also links to pages about earnings, costs and so on): https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy

MM is a perennial gripe for a lot of folk, but it could be a lot worse (at least you can generally do something to a +2 tier opponent in WOWS, unlike in WOT where you're quite often Doomed, unless you're exceptionally good). The MM you get tends to vary a bit over time, as it's impacted by who/what else is in the queue (and can get *really* weird at odd hours when there are few players about); the precise ship you're playing will also colour your view of MM e.g. most T7s don't get access to the concealment upgrade, which puts you at an immediate disadvantage when uptiered; however this will matter less if you've picked something that views concealment as being for wimps. T9s face superships, which can be a bugger; a lot of DDs uptier well (at higher tiers, T8 can have the best concealment in the game), and so on.

Edit: it's already been mentioned, but premiums and special ships - all things being equal - tend to make a lot more silver than tech-tree ones do. That said, you need to be able to take advantage of whatever the premium ship in question is (e.g. I won't make much silver against real people in something like Mainz, because I'm rubbish in cruisers...).

Edited September 1, 2023 by Verblonde

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

19 minutes ago, Verblonde said:

I tend to prefer 8+ as the higher tiers tend to have more interesting and diverse ship options.

I find this not really to be true for me. Tier 8+ meta is much more rigid than Tiers 5-7. Sure, the ships on paper may appear to offer more diverse options...but I find you can't actually use most of that because the meta forces everyone to play much more static than in lower tiers.

[Verblonde]

29 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I find this not really to be true for me.

To be fair, I do mostly play DDs, and they (for me, anyway) tend to get more opportunities to do their 'thing' whatever it may be. I can see that some other classes might be a bit more constrained by the camping meta (and, I do acknowledge that submarines have made things a lot worse for anything that made use of being sneaky).

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

Just now, Verblonde said:

To be fair, I do mostly play DDs, and they (for me, anyway) tend to get more opportunities to do their 'thing' whatever it may be. I can see that some other classes might be a bit more constrained by the camping meta (and, I do acknowledge that submarines have made things a lot worse for anything that made use of being sneaky).

I can do a lot more interesting things in a DD at tier 7 and below than I can at tier 9 and 10...

Less radar.

Slower planes.

Cruisers that don't have such high damage output.

[Verblonde]

12 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I can do a lot more interesting things in a DD at tier 7 and below than I can at tier 9 and 10...

Less radar.

Slower planes.

Cruisers that don't have such high damage output.

Perhaps it's to do with server differences? Although the environment is a bit more hostile at higher tiers, you also get some interesting new tools (and - generally - better concealment) to do horrible things to the opposition with. For example, better hydro, and your own radar, and so on.

Mind you, I'm merely average, so it may well be that a better player can wreak more havoc than I can in the less constrained environment of lower tiers?

[Kynami]

Depends on the matchmaking a lot, but I've been able to do some absolutely wild things with tier seven premiums. And yes it absolutely matters if the ship is premium or not once you are looking to farm for credits at tier eight and above because of how service fees scale. Also depends if you have premium time or not! The tier nine premiums show their real value when you throw premium time on top of their bonuses.

And being good with the ship you are farming with also helps. I personally like taking the Toulon out for a spin and making 400-500k credits in a match pretty frequently with a service fee depending on amount of ammo used usually around 37k. With a detect of 10km and eight 305mm guns it lets me absolutely catch people by surprise even when up-tiered. It also helps its one of the T7 cruisers with a heal. 😀

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

21 hours ago, Marmmadog said:

What is the best tier ship to play for making credits, XP and half decent matchmaking? Also does it matter if the ship is a premium, or special ship? I have for instance the Musashi but I also have the Izumo with perma camo and bonus package. Will one make me more than the other?

Thanks everyone 

Musashi beats Izumo 100 times over. If you wanna make a buck it's best to have a really strong T8 or T9 premium that can shit on T10´s. For example, my T8 Premium Asashio can abuse T10 all day and earn a boatload of credits. So it's mostly up to what class you are good at and find a Premium there.

Edited September 1, 2023 by HogHammer
Descriptive language