Two weeks into the 3 months of the Battle Pass event in World of Tanks, I just finished stage 20 out of 45. In other words, I am advancing much faster than I need to just finish the event with full rewards. And no, I am not playing World of Tanks all day. The reason why I am advancing much faster than at the start is a change of strategy: I am playing the lowest tier of tanks eligible for the event, tier VI.

While World of Tanks has no strict classification what skill level of player can play in what tier of tank, the best players often play in the highest tier, tier X, just because they don't have any progress on lower tier tanks left to do. And maybe because they like the challenge. In tier VI there are some top players trying to farm the less experienced players, but there are also a lot of mid-skill players like me. Which means that I am not totally outclassed right from the beginning of a battle.

For the Battle Pass event you only get points if you finish in the top 10 of your team, regardless of whether your team wins or loses. I heard an explanation that this is to prevent bots from farming points. However in a typical tier X game there are so many players that are way better than me, that it takes me on average 16 games to get points 10 times. And not only do I not get any points in the other 6 games, I also never get the additional 2 points for finishing in the top 3. When I play tier VI, it takes me on average only 12 games to get points 10 times, and I sometimes get maximum points for being in the top 3.

Now the tanks of tier VI are limited to how many points they can earn, each tank only 100 points, or two stages of the Battle Pass. However, once I get to the 100 point maximum, I get another 15 bonus points, so I need to play only 20 tanks to make it to stage 45. Including those bonus points, on average I get about twice the points per game on tier VI than on tier X. And the tier VI games, where I am basically playing in "my league", are a lot more fun than the tier X games, where I am "out of my league" and frequently am not able to achieve anything. So even if I don't have enough tier VI tanks that still need to gain xp for the next tier, I prefer to play at that tier.