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World of Tanks - understanding the mentor skill v1.3 (Excel file in the end!)
This work is aimed towards the console community, both Xbox and Playstation.
Author
Black RL
TLDR
if you don't want to spend 10 gold (0.04$) on this game you can safely ignore mentor.
- Don't use mentor if you don't want to spend 10 gold
- Don't use mentor if you only need a couple of skills, for example 4, or, use it but do understand you're only saving a couple of hours
- Use mentor if you want to reach a certain number of skills faster, note that during that period you are behind in 1 combat skill, when you swap you automatically get on front by number of skills and saved time
- You can use mentor as a mean to train the first skill faster, for example sixth sense, train mentor first then swap it for sixth sense
- Training mentor and then swap it is the quickest way to train a skill, you can do it as many times as you want, this is perfect for perks
Definition of mentor and BIA according to the official PC wiki
Mentor is a skill in world of tanks that grants an additional 10% crew xp per game when completed, in the official wiki you can read:
"For every 1% of the Training Level of the Commander's Mentor Skill, all crew members except the Commander himself, receive an amount of 0.1% additional experience at the end of every battle, up to a maximum of 10% each when the Mentor Skill reaches 100%. If the Commander's Mentor Skill Training Level increases during the battle, the crew will benefit from the increase."
BIA improves the mentor skill by 5%, in the official wiki you can read:
"The Brothers in Arms (aka BIA Perk) increases by a fixed 5%, the Training Level of each one of the crew members in their Major Qualification and in any of the common Skills (Repair, Firefighting, and/or Camouflage) they may have acquired. It also improves the Commander's Mentor Skill by 5%. The BIA Perk does not have any effect on other role-specific Skills or Perks, and provides no benefit whatsoever unless all of the crew have it trained to 100%. It does stay in effect if a crew member is knocked out during battle. The effect of the BIA Perk is cumulative with that of any installed Improved Ventilation equipment and with any purchased crew Skills boosting consumables such as Extra Combat Rations, Case of Cola, Chocolate, Pudding and Tea, Strong Coffee, and.or Improved Combat Rations."
Source: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Crew
Assumptions in our example (can be changed by you in the sheet "Tables" )
- 100k crew xp to reach first skill
- 1k crew xp per game
- 5 minutes time per game
- First trained skill is sixth sense
- Third trained skill is repairs
- Second trained skill is mentor
- Fourth trained skill is BIA
- Goal of 8 skills
You can change assumptions in the yellow boxes in the sheet "Tables", you might have to wait for changes to take place, it's a huge Excel sheet.
Disclaimer
Gold cost, number of skills and other metrics might change but conclusions are the same.
Analysis and conclusion
There's a lot of confusion regarding mentor, I hope this analysis ends it once and for all.
First let's discuss the important notion of combat skills, mentor is not a combat skill because it doesn't improve your tank combat performance in any way, it only accelerates crew xp earnings. If you choose to train mentor instead of another skill you will be behind in combat skills until you swap mentor, let's imagine that you have 2 crews, one has mentor and the other doesn't have it, both have a total of 8 skills, the result in combat skills is:
No mentor: 8 skills total, 8 combat skills
With mentor: 8 skills total, 7 combat skills + mentor
To have the same number of combat skills mentor needs to train an additional skill:
No mentor: 8 skills total, 8 combat skills
With mentor: 9 skills total, 8 combat skills + mentor
If you check table C) in the "Tables" sheet, you can clearly see that the crew using mentor will always need more time to reach the same number of combat skills, this is because it has to train an additional skill when compared to the no mentor crew.
With this out of the way let's dive deeper in the matter at hand, you can see in the table A) of the "Tables" sheet that in order to make all 32 skills you have to do 102,000,000 xp, with the above assumptions this equals to 102,000 games and 8,500 hours, something like 354 days playing, this is not realistic. Because of this in our analysis we're going to talk about reaching 8 skills, so let's see what mentor can do for us, checking the table B) we can see that mentor trains 8 skills in 91.75 hours vs 100 hours no mentor, this saves you 8.25 hours and 99 games.
But what about the total number of combat skills? Since mentor is no combat skill in reality you have 7 combat skills + mentor, checking table C) you can see that mentor needs an additional 21.92 hours and 263 games to reach 8 combat skills (7 combat skills + mentor = 9 skills total).
So is mentor useless? Not really, mentor does in fact train skills faster as you can see in the table B), but in order to take advantage of this you have to change mentor for another skill using gold when you reach your goal. This is because mentor helps train the total number of skills faster and not the total number of combat skills, In this example if you swap mentor for another skill the moment you reach 8 skills, you save 8.25 hours and 99 games compared with no mentor. After the swap you will be forever in front of the no mentor crew both in combat skills and time, you can check the graphic below to see it better (handmade, sorry).
Ultimately it comes down to a simple question, is your time worth 0.04$?
World of Tanks - understanding the mentor skill.zip (choose to proceed without making an account)
Edit: v1.3 is up!
v1.3 - typos corrected, added clarifications, table B) and C) expanded
v1.2 - separated sheets, many added explanations, supported minimum crew xp is now 700, mentor benefits while training mentor are now included, mentor can't be changed, formula optimization, table b) now shows saved xp with mentor, table b) now shows minutes and hours, table c) now shows all the lost time if mentor is never swapped, BIA benefits are included
v1.1 - assumptions can be changed, crew xp (500 minimum), time, mentor %, mentor train and skills goal
v1.0 - release
Edited by Black RL, 26 January 2017 - 12:13 PM.
