If you have clicked on this page you already know that World of Tanks has crew skills in it, but you may be wondering what they do, what ones are the best for you to take, and what are the exact mechanics behind each one? Well, stay tuned and I will give you all the information you could possibly want on each crew skill in the game.
Before we jump into talking about each crew skill, click here if you are unaware of what each crew member affects in World of Tanks. This is important background knowledge for discussing crew skills.
Alright, now that you are all caught up with the duties of each crew role in World of Tanks, let’s get started. The first thing that you will need to understand is the difference between skills and perks. Both skills and perks are trained up in the same manner-clicking on the plus icon next to the qualification of a crew member-, and require the same amount of crew xp to unlock, but there is one fundamental difference.
Skills become effective as soon as you start training them and reach full effectiveness once the skill reaches 100%. So a 40% trained skill will have 40% the effectiveness of a 100% skill.
Conversely, with a perk, they only become active once the perk reaches 100%, and WILL NOT have any effect on the stats of your tank until then.
Before we dive into talking about each of the skills specific to an individual crew member, let’s discuss the common skills and perks that every crew member can train.
Before we dive into talking about each of the skills specific to an individual crew member, let’s discuss the common skills and perks that every crew member can train.
This skill does exactly what is said on the tin. It decreases the repair time required for critically damaged modules, this WILL NOT repair modules to their undamaged state, only to their partially damaged state. This skill works in conjunction with a toolbox and can increase repair speed approximately by 50%. As with all common crew skills, the proficiency is averaged across the entire crew, meaning on a 4 man crew with one crew member trained up to 100%, the average effect will only be 25%. This skill is especially important on tanks that tend to get shot at quite a bit as they will lose their tracks often. Light tanks and mediums that rely on mobility will probably get more use out of other skills, although repairs is never a bad skill to have.
Concealment is a common crew skill that increases the camo value of your tank. A higher training level decreases the distance at which an enemy tank will be able to spot you. This works in conjunction with any camouflage or camo nets you have installed on your tank. As with all common crew skills, the proficiency is averaged across the entire crew, meaning on a 4 man crew with one crew member trained up to 100%, the average effect will only be 25%. This skill is a must have on any light tanks and tank destroyers, and really useful on your medium tanks.
This skill increases the crew's ability to put out an engine fire. The higher level the skill the quicker the fire gets put out, as well as the damage taken during each tick of the fire being lowered. This skill DOES NOT reduce the chances of a vehicle catching fire. As with all common crew skills, the proficiency is averaged across the entire crew, meaning on a 4 man crew with one crew member trained up to 100%, the average effect will only be 25%. Running with a fire extinguisher on your tank is a more sure way to stop fires destroying your tank, but if you wish to run with a premium consumable instead of an extinguisher, this skill is a must have.
This is the only common perk in the game, but it is also one of the most powerful. EVERY single member of the crew must have BiA trained to 100%, but once they do you gain a +5% to each crew member's major qualification level. This works in conjunction with vents and your premium consumables. This skill is one of the absolute must-haves no matter what tank you are in, although as it is a perk, I would recommend training a SKILL to 100% before resetting the crew skills with either credits or gold, to get BiA at 100%.
So that is it for common crew skill and perks, let's move on to the Commander. The commander has some quite powerful skills available to them, but when the commander is also your radio operator, you may have to choose other skills, than just what you would normally choose.
This skill increases additional experience to other crew members during the battle, up to a total of 10% when the commander has the mentor skill trained to 100%. If the mentor skill increases during a battle, the other crew members will benefit from this increase. This skill is really only useful in tanks you plan on keeping in your garage or if you already have a very skilled commander.
The recon skill increases your view range, up to 2% when trained to 100%. The only time that changes is when your vehicle's observation device is damaged it increases your view range by 20%. This skill is one of the more important skills in the game, as increasing your view range allows you more options to beat other players by staying out of their spotting range while having them still within yours.
This skill enables your commander to replace any knocked out crew members during a game up to 50% when the skill is trained to 100%. The effect diminishes with every knocked out crew member from 50% with one crew member knocked to 25% with two members knocked out and so on. This skill is most useful on tanks that take a lot of hits and could lose crew members often, not as useful for tanks that rely on not being shot to not take damage.
This is a perk that informs you that you have been spotted. There is a 3 second delay from the moment you have been spotted to when the sixth sense perk is activated. This is the single most important commander skill in the game. EVERY tank needs to have this skill.
This is a perk that allows you to see damaged modules on enemy tanks. The only catch is that you must be able to spot the tank yourself for this perk to take effect, it does not take effect for tanks only spotted by friendly tanks. This is a nice skill to have, but there are far more important skills you can get on your commander.
That is it for commander skills, next up will be the driver, some important skills that can really make your tank that bit better than your opponent.
This skill increases your hull traverse speed by up to 5% when the skill is fully trained to 100%. This is cumulative with the effects of grousers, turbo, and any engine power modifying consumables. I recommend using this skill on any turretless tank destroyers, slow lumbering heavies, or fast tanks with poor track traverse speed.
This skill reduces the gun dispersion while moving the hull of your tank up to a total of 4% when fully trained. This does not affect dispersion while turning the turret. This skill is especially important in your mobile vehicles, but it is still useful on all different tanks, as it allows you to more accurately fire while on the move.
This skill increases the terrain resistance of your vehicle, up to 10% on soft or wet terrain, and up to 2.5% on all other terrain. It has no effect when driving on roads or cobblestone. This skill is cumulative with the effect of grousers. In my opinion, this is a nice skill to have, but you shouldn’t sacrifice other important skills to get off-road driving.
Controlled Impact decreases the ramming damage you receive and increases the ramming damage you deal, provided you are moving at the time of impact. The effectiveness goes up to 15% when fully trained and cumulative with a spall-liner. This is not a skill I would necessarily recommend, with a few exceptions that I will not go into here.
This is a perk that decreases the chance of fire by 25%, cumulative with an automatic fire extinguisher. This perk is extremely useful if you wish to drop having a fire extinguisher on your tank, use it in conjunction with firefighting.
That is it for Driver skills, there are definitely some very useful skills there, but also there are some that are nice to have but not worth dropping other important skills for. Next up is the gunner.
Armorer reduces the negative effect of having a damaged gun by 25% when fully trained, cumulative with vert stabs. This is a nice skill to have, but in a time when repair kits have multiple uses, probably not worthwhile unless you are in a tank that gets shot at a lot.
Snap Shot reduces the dispersion values when turning the turret up to a maximum of 7.5% when fully trained, cumulative with vert stabs. This skill works with turretless vehicles as well but is not as useful. This is one of my go to gunner skills, I use it in almost all my tanks and I think you should too. Helps reduce the amount of RNG in your game and that means your results are more up to player skill.
Deadeye is a perk that gives you 3% increase to deal damage with AP, APCR, and HEAT shells. This does not have an effect on HE/HESH shells. Good to combine with Eagle Eye, but definitely not one of my top perks to go for, still useful though.
This perk keeps enemy vehicles with in 10 degrees of your reticle targeted for 2 more seconds. This will benefit all of your allies but DOES NOT work in SPG top-down view. Another one of those nice to have skills, I feel like other skills make your tank better, but it is definitely useful.
There are not too many gunner skills, but all of them are decently useful. That all changes with the next crew member, the radio operator. There is one radio operator specific skill that I would say is useful, the rest are meh at best.
Increases radio range, less said about it the better, it is basically useless as radio range at high tiers already spans the whole map.
This skill is the only really useful radio operator skill as it increases your view range up to 3% when fully trained, if you get any other skill first, you are just simply doing something wrong. It however does nothing to counteract damaged observation devices.
Increases allied radio range, again the less said about it the better, it's useless and a waste of xp.
Allows a radio operator to continue reporting enemy positions for two seconds after your tank is destroyed. Really not that useful, except maybe for scouts.
Like I said before, most radio operator crew skills are useless in the grand scheme of things. The final crew member to talk about is the loader and they do have some useful skills.
Perk that increases ammo rack durability by 12.5%. Very useful for tanks that have their ammo racks get damaged often and works in conjunction with wet ammo rack equipment.
This perk enables a loader to shorten the reload of your tank by 9.1% if your tank has less than 10% HP remaining. Cumulative with gun rammers. This perk is most useful in your heavily armored tanks that will be able to take a hit even when low health.
This is the most important loader skill, it allows you to switch between shell types quicker, down to 1s for cyclic guns or 2.5s for magazine loaded guns. This is the first skill you should go for as it allows you to choose the right shell for the job with basically no penalty.
That is a quick overview of all the crew skills in the game. If you are looking for in depth recommendations for each tank line, consider hopping over to the Tank Encyclopedia and I will put out what I think are the most important skills to have on each tank.
I hope you found this very informative and are going to be able to use this to help make yourself a better player in World of Tanks. Good luck and Happy Tanking!