War Thunder Skill Cost for Expert and Ace Upgrade Guide

War Thunder Skill Cost for Expert and Ace Upgrade Guide by Shred

I have made this guide to help you to estimate what skills to invest in in order to meet the qualification upgrade requirements as soon as possible.
All the while considering their ingame significance to a certain amount, depending how much XPs are needed to boost those skills.

[Note] As all the numbers and skill dynamics are sill probably a subject of change due to gameplay balance, the developers “finance plan” or for whatever reasons, this thread is meant to provide you an general overview on skill investment rather then a rock-solid guide that has no flaws as there is still uncertainty regarding the gameplay impact of the skills and how much each skill level improves a skill. Heck, we don’t even know if 100 skill points (Ace upgrade) in fire accuracy makes the gunner shoot twice as well or only 50% better.

For instance, we don’t know what the base level of the gunner’s shooting performance is (maybe 20%) and we don’t know how much those 100 skill points will add to his performance (maybe another 50%). So, to make it short, we don’t know at this point if its actually worth it to invest Eagles for getting the extra 20 levels from the ace upgrade or what big of a difference it makes to the Expert qualification. The developer should give us more info on the skills along the way, so we can make wiser decisions on how to spend our hard earned XPs…

~ happy flyin’ ~

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XPs required to max the skills
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Example: 1626 (= XPs required to max this skill) 50 (= 50 levels at this skill)

pilot
——-

keen vision = 1626 50
visibility = 1626 50
g-tolerance = 5620 100
stmaina = 1300 100
vitality = 1300 100

gunners
————

number/gunners = 6120 10
fire accuracy = 1626 50
fire precision = 1626 50
g-tolerance = 1050 100
stamina = 1300 100
vitality = 1300 100

ground service
———————-

repair speed = 2138 50
repair rank = 2189 20
reload speed = 5441 50
healing speed = 1300 100

qualification
——————

[Expert] for the cost of lions it adds +30 skill levels to

-> keen vision, visibility, fire accuracy, fire precision, repair speed, reload speed

-> crew needs 100 skill levels + 10x plane rank as skill levels

(tier 10 plane needs a crew with 200 skill levels)

[Ace] for the cost of eagles (for > tier 2 planes) adds + 20 skill levels to (see Expert)

-> crew needs 400 skill levels + 10x plane rank as skill levels

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# cheapest skills to allocate skill levels required to be able to upgrade qualification #
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[skill] = [average XP/skill level]

1. g-tolerance @ gunners = 10,5
2. stamina, vitality, healing speed = 13
3. keen vision, visibility, fire accuracy, fire precision = 32,52
4. repair speed = 42,76
5. g-tolerance @ pilot = 56,2
6. reload speed = 108,82
7. repair rank = 109,45
8. number of gunners 612

[NOTE] XP costs will grow the more you boost a skill

This means, to use up your precious XP pool in order to meet the requirements for the Expert/Ace upgrade in the most efficient way,
you should pick a few significant skills and boost them alongside until the point where it gets too expensive to advance them any further.
At this point you could begin to improve another low cost skill that still has a noticeable impact on gameplay.

[NOTE] a bomber crew is easier to get to the ace upgrade crew level as you can also put many skill points into the gunners skill tab.
Therefore, invest in stamina and vitality for both, the pilot and the gunners. Don’t forget to boost the gunners’ g-tolerance skill as well!

Beside [stamina, vitality, g-tolerance @ gunners (if its a bomber crew) there are almost no cheap skills left to choose from other than [healing speed].
And healing speed would only be of big importance if it heals your crew all the time and not only when you are doing ground repair.

But i have heard people saying in their youtube guides that the healing speed somehow affects the repair speed of your plane in the hanger
(when auto repair isn’t ticked, off course). So after all, this skill may be worth to boost so you can meet the upgrade requirements as soon as possible.

[NOTE] The extra 20 skill levels from the Ace upgrade are certainly a big deal, considering how costly each level gets the further you get down the road.
Looking at the steep average XP cost of the reload and repair skill, its even more obvious how of a big deal the ace upgrade is.

Although the expert upgrade is a better deal, i wonder what effect it has on actual gameplay if you bring the extra 20 levels from the ace upgrade with you.

For an example, maybe the developer decides to make the ace upgrade more meaningful by only making the gunners perform very well (or useful at least) when
the player has reached a certain level in a specific skill.

And if that level can only be reached by getting the ace upgrade, then i would say, it would make even more sense to invest into this upgrade.

Literally speaking, as without spending the 100 Eagles for the extra 1500 XP it would be a longer way to meet the ace upgrade requirement.
I can only speak for myself, so in my opinion it’s totally ok to spend 100 Eagles to reach your crew upgrade goal sooner.

The cool thing about it is, that at lower plane tiers you can unlock your Expert upgrade qualification as soon as you get those very needed extra 1500 XPs.

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# skills with the consideration of their gaming impact ranked as followed #
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for a bomber crew
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-> first invest in required amount of gunners as soon as possible!
-> bring the repair rank to the plane’s tier rank as soon as possible to benefit from the repair speed skill!
-> then i would suggest to invest in:

1, 2 (gunners tab: stamina, vitality), 3 (fire accuracy +
fire precision), 4, 6 (the sooner you reload the greater your team support),
2 (pilot vitality, cause even the B17 with its platoon of gunners is useless if the pilot got killed),
7 (add some points to repair rank to cut your repair time even more)

-> i would suggest to max repair speed first but do not know if putting points in repair rank would more effectively cut repair time at a certain skill level than just boosting the repair speed skill.
Can someone confirm that maxing repair speed is the more effective way to shorten repair time then investing in repair rank after it has been matched with the plane’s tier.

[Note] not sure at what progress of invested skill points repair rank has a bigger impact on decreasing repair time than the repair speed skill

Depending if the bomber has main/front weapons:

I am kinda unsure as i don’t know how much stamina and g-tolerance affect the pilot’s ingame performance apart from the visual effect of the screen going black to simulate a black-out.
As for stamina, if it directly impacts the pilot’s ability to control the plane and the overall aiming/shooting performance, you would want to invest in this field to be more competent at attacking targets beside the bombing part.

Healing: if this skill is only active with the plane on ground, i would rather invest in keen vision + visibility (although for a bomber to stay undetected for enemy fighters i would prefer visibility to keen vision)

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for a pilot only crew with no active gunners
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-> Important: do not spend any points in the gunners tab!
-> bring the repair rank to the plane’s tier rank as soon as possible to benefit from the repair speed skill!
-> then i would suggest to invest in:

2 (stamina, vitality), 3 (keen vision more important than visibility to be able to detect bombers more easily),
6, 4, 7 (beyong the plane’s tier rank after repair speed has been maxed),

~~~ Depending on which game mode you play ~~~

[Arcade] skill set as suggested above. As the nature of the arcade mode is, you probably would want to be able to reload more often
then focus on repair proficiency as you will most probably get owned on the ground more often
than you would be able to make proper use of the repair skills ingame

[Historical Battles] As you only have one plane in this mode you would want to keep it running as long as possible.
Therefore repair skills come in handy and should be more important than putting points in the pilot’s performance or the reload speed skill.
Although i would rank the reload skill as the second most important skill.
Some players like to boost the pilot’s skills to be able to better out maneuver their opponents and compensate their reload time with their flying advantage.

[Note] i am still kinda new to this game regarding the ability to properly control a plane and be able to pull of those special stunts as i still have to study them.
So this skill guide is not supposed to be the holy grail of how to invest your skill points but rather a basic guide what skills may be more important when it comes to their actual ingame impact.
There are those specific skills like repair rank and number of gunners that are a no-brainer and then all the other skills that have lesser importance regarding ingame performance.
Although all the repair skills and the reload skill have top priority in my books. After them come all other skills.
With a bomber crew, you also want to put a focus on the gunners’ proficiency as they can save you from fighters once in a while (depending on your luck ^^).
If you only want to repair your planes as fast as possible in your hangar just to save repair costs, i would say that this only makes sense after you have reached a tier at which the planes are quite expensive to repair and you are not able to cover those costs with your average income from the arcade battles.

If you don’t mind waiting for a plane to get repaired for free and do something else meanwhile, maybe take a flight with another plane, then invest heavily into the repair skills. Its also imperative if you want to get repaired effectively in the historical battles.

I have chosen to put at least 20 points/levels into the repair speed rank and the needed amount in the repair rank skill to be able to repair my plane faster in the arcade battles but have come to the conclusion that the repair skill looses its significance when you just don’t repair your plane that often in the arcade mode when you have 6 and more planes to your disposal in a battle. You just fly it until it breaks and hop right away into another plane. Maybe its only my “bad” playstyle and i should treat my planes better but to be honest, if i find the time to actually land and start repairing my plane, the chances are very high that the enemy will target me and have a easy kill. Therefore i kinda avoid to repair my plane in a arcade battle and only do it if i am nearby my air field and don’t need to fly all the way back to it…