World of Tanks

[haard]

That TDs win a lot and HTs not may very well be due to the pack mentality - a team with more TD:s than the opposition tend to play more carefully, and groups of HTs often wander of together in one aggressive push that has too little support or is just too slow - every victory I have ever 'stolen' was in a pack of fast tank that bypassed a gaggle of heavies to cap behind their back.

[Rogue 9]

Do you guys have any videos of this game on youtube? I'd like to see what some of those tanks can do.

[Thunderfire]

Huh, I'm wondering how much of that is that the T29 starts with the 90mm and keeps it for a long time.

It is hard to master the T-29. Your typical Joe Average sucks driving them.

[Hawkwings]

Dear god I finally got enough XP for the upgraded M7 gun and suddenly I can play arty! No more of this stupid "shorter range than tank cannons!" crap.

I also just got the 105 for the M4. Looking forward to what it can do...

[Slacker]

Still the tank I own with the most games played. God I love that tank.

[Broken]

Panther II is pretty much fully upgraded after the awful 100,000 xp grind to get the good weapon, the cannon remains awesome and it is fairly mobile. Too bad it is currently a tier 9 medium so most battles have 3 or 4 high tier arty per side so I end up trying to organize a medium rush early in the game to kill off artillery. Sometimes it works and we paste the enemy arty and other times I end up charging alone or my support decides to all dogfight a lone heavy we pass by. Or the maps just don't allow a rush at all. Which leaves me with a high value target that is too thin-skinned and big to fight in the front-lines and if played to its strength (epic gun and enough mobility to support where we are weakest) becomes an arty magnet on par with IS-4's.

On the other hand, next patch I get a free E-50 and my Tiger II has enough xp saved to immediately research the E-75 which is getting epic reports from test-servers. I also just bought a hummel, played a dozen games or so and little has changed since beta. I still have 75% crew and no rigs mounted yet. Artillery remains occasionally completely random, slow to load and target, and hugely powerful. I would like to grind up to a GPanther just to see how silly arty truly gets but I just feel bad playing it, it's so easy and there are so few defenses for the aggressive players that push (who should be rewarded for leading) and so many more protections for campers (supposedly one of the reasons arty is so stupidly powerful).

[White Haven]

Arty was well-balanced in the days of counterbattery fire. Artillery players could kill other artillery players, fire had to be interrupted to jink and avoid CB, and if one side managed to finish off the others' artillery, they bloody well deserved to be able to rain high-explosive death from the sky on the other team, because they'd won their battle, and could now focus on helping the tankers out. The day CB was taken out due to ridiculous hack-mods was the day artillery became a problem. It was also when artillery stopped really being fun to me. Rods from God Online isn't enjoyable, there's precious little thought involved, which is why my M41 is gathering dust halfway to the M12.

[xthetenth]

Huh, I'm wondering how much of that is that the T29 starts with the 90mm and keeps it for a long time.

It is hard to master the T-29. Your typical Joe Average sucks driving them.

That's real weird, because yeah, sure the hull is comparatively weak, it's also just about as strong as that on the IS and relatively low silhouette. Actually come to think of it it may be somewhat how hideously vulnerable most hull down positions are to artillery, and people get caught up in the mystique of the impenetrable turret and get hypnotized until they get artied. Target fixation is bad, and ping noises make it all too easy.

Dear god I finally got enough XP for the upgraded M7 gun and suddenly I can play arty! No more of this stupid "shorter range than tank cannons!" crap.

I also just got the 105 for the M4. Looking forward to what it can do...

The M7 is a fun vehicle with the upgraded gun. It can be an obnoxious permatrack machine, and the disadvantage of tracers isn't in (although even then they're skinnier and hard to see). The 105 sherman can win furiously. That's what it does. If my Pershing weren't so hideously profitable it'd still be a main credit grinding tank for me.

Panther II is pretty much fully upgraded after the awful 100,000 xp grind to get the good weapon, the cannon remains awesome and it is fairly mobile. Too bad it is currently a tier 9 medium so most battles have 3 or 4 high tier arty per side so I end up trying to organize a medium rush early in the game to kill off artillery. Sometimes it works and we paste the enemy arty and other times I end up charging alone or my support decides to all dogfight a lone heavy we pass by. Or the maps just don't allow a rush at all. Which leaves me with a high value target that is too thin-skinned and big to fight in the front-lines and if played to its strength (epic gun and enough mobility to support where we are weakest) becomes an arty magnet on par with IS-4's.

On the other hand, next patch I get a free E-50 and my Tiger II has enough xp saved to immediately research the E-75 which is getting epic reports from test-servers. I also just bought a hummel, played a dozen games or so and little has changed since beta. I still have 75% crew and no rigs mounted yet. Artillery remains occasionally completely random, slow to load and target, and hugely powerful. I would like to grind up to a GPanther just to see how silly arty truly gets but I just feel bad playing it, it's so easy and there are so few defenses for the aggressive players that push (who should be rewarded for leading) and so many more protections for campers (supposedly one of the reasons arty is so stupidly powerful).

The E-50 is dirty. It's got actual front armor. I'm all jealous in my eventual Patton, which can only bounce with the turret and dosn't have a demonstrably better gun than the E-50. Sure it can crank more damage than the E-50, and should have awesome maneuverability, but that gun is painfully inaccurate.

The E-75 isn't dirty, it's downright obscene. You know how the US 105 has issues penetrating the upper hull of KTs? Try that setup except sub in 120 for 105. It's also got a stronger bottom in comparison to its top, so angling will do nasty nasty things. Finally, it can move and gets the Maus' gun. I'm currently loathing most of the forum goers who drive German tanks, because they seem to consider it so massively unfair that their tank, which can "tear the face off an IS-4" might be getting nerfed. You know, the same IS-4 that's getting a tier nerf? The same one that's likely to get a worse gun even at a higher tier? I can take one in my T34 but it isn't easy, and to be frank, I'd rate myself as a bit better than average US heavy driver. Long range, I'd want a height advantage to negate the armor's slope some before I'd try my luck, at the very least. I'm just looking forward to the M103. I want me some sweet sweet M58 loving.

[Broken]

The removal of tracers and thus counterbattery due to hacking has produced artillery that is basically immune to pressure until you get tanks in their base, which some maps just don't allow. And most of my problems are not even with the tier 5 and 6 arty we had in most of beta. Those were powerful and had to be respected, but you could deal with them. The tier 7 and 8 arty that one-shots my Tiger II and "misses" my Panther II but manages to take out 2 or 3 modules and a quarter of my health are the elephant in the room problem. Not to mention the fact that the match-maker weights those arty so heavily and the US server is so underpopulated that you often get mass loads of high-tier arty every battle at tier 9 and 10.

I know artillery defenders say they are needed to deal with the big tier 10 tanks like the IS-7 and Maus but how do you balance their ability to hurt T10 tanks and not be obscenely overpowered when they hit anything smaller? That is where the problem is and so far as I can tell the devs apparently don't think it is a problem worth fixing. It makes the game less fun and reduces my high end tanks to little more then glorified arty spotters or cowering in the shadow of a rock which sure as hell isn't an incentive to grind up more tanks or buy more gold.

I'm hoping the nerfs don't kill the E-series before they even make it to live servers. If they do I might have to grind up the IS line or finish off the American heavy line. I've got enough gold left for about 2 more months of premium. I hate to think of doing another high-tier grind without it and given the state of the game I'm certainly not buying more gold.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

The matchmaking needs to be fixed badly, my highest tier tank is an M-7 Priest, tier 4, and I consistantly get thrown into matches with IS-5s, King Tigers, and such. Things that, if I hit them six or eight times I might mildly inconvenience. This gets really annoying.

[Mr. Coffee]

The matchmaking needs to be fixed badly, my highest tier tank is an M-7 Priest, tier 4, and I consistantly get thrown into matches with IS-5s, King Tigers, and such. Things that, if I hit them six or eight times I might mildly inconvenience. This gets really annoying.

Artillery gets screwy matching to begin with and right now there's a metric fuckton of people trying to grind up things like IS-3/4s, T32/34/30s, and the German high-tier mediums and heavies for the up coming series of patches. One thing you might want to do is check out the public test server so you can check out various tech trees and see what's worth grinding and what isn't. Ya get handed 10k gold, whatever was in your garage at the start of the month, and you make xp and greats at 10x for every match. Useful for seeing what works,what don't work, and figuring out how best to go about demolishing the new German E-series tanks that are supposed to go on the live servers end of this month.

Also, speaking of the E-series, the 6.6.3 test patch slightly nerf a lot of aspects of the new German tanks. The E-50 isn't quite as beastly, the Tiger P and the VK45 Ausf A aren't quite as heavily armored,and the E-75 and E-100 toned down a bit as well. Interesting seeing how they're going about "balancing" stuff. Artillery is still broke as fuck (give us our goddamned tracers back so I can do countery battery fire again!), and the US medium and heavy tree Tier 7 and up is still pretty much the most well balanced tanks in the game (meaning a good US driver should be able to skullfuck an equally skilled driver in the same tree in the Russian and German trees). But for a few days the German tank drivers got their time to shine as being OP as fuck...

[xthetenth]

Dammit, ninjaed by Coffee. Oh well. There goes a Wall of Text. From what I've seen the German stuff is all really solid. Some of it was fanfuckingtastically OP. It should at least be good. Don't give too much credence to the German drivers on their forums, those guys are in overwhelming numbers shit at the game (except a few who take issue with the constant bitching) and have no idea what a balanced tank is (see: claims that an E-75 that can tear an IS-4 apart consistently is 'decent' rather than massively OP and obviously going to need a nerf).

The E-100 is such a purpose built tank it may be off, but it should be decent. Sure the pen's worrying, but in a patch or two you'll be the only tank doing 750 damage, and with good terrain screening you should get in pretty well, especially since you have more HP than any other than the maus.

[Mr. Coffee]

Anyone that claims an IS-4 is easy to take down is either fucking retarded or completely doesn't understand why it is that the devs are bumping it up to a tier ten. Even for a fully upgraded, max crewed and modded T34 using gold ammo in a dead on side shot it's still iffy if you can pen those motherfuckers. German heavy drivers are mostly whiny bitches that masturbate to poorly researched Military Channel "documentaries"about Napkinwaffe bullshit and probably can't get hard without a picture of Adolf Hitler glaring at them. Yeah, I know there's a few good German tanks, hell I used to drive them myself, but goddamn are the German fanboys fucking annoying as hell in this game... Odd, because most German medium and arty drivers are chill as fuck.

[Imperial Overlord]

The problem isn't that they're German heavy tankers, the problem is that they're heavy tankers. Too many heavy tankers are shitty drivers who are cowards who want to snipe and be safe behind a giant slab of heavy armour and a reach out and kill you gun. Now that certainly doesn't mean all heavy tankers are like that, but those kinds of assholes tend to gravitate towards the heavy tanks. Napkin waffe wank is just the icing on top.

[Mr. Coffee]

The big problem is that a lot of heavy drivers don't seem to understand that the whole peakaboo and shoot or camp and shoot shit only works in a few maps. Some maps you absolutely have to get up off your spawn, go to the other guy's cap and commit face rape on as large a scale as you can manage. Campinovka is a prime example of this. Everyone things taking the north west hill is the key to winning, but it really doesn't matter. The key to winning that map decisively is to get as many heavies and mediums as your team has fielded and rush right across that main field along the eastern edge of the map. Time the rush about two to three minutes after the start of the match and chances are half the other team is going to be way the hell out of position to react because they're focused on that stupid fucking hill. Keep your momentum going and mad minute every thing the other team left to defend and you can pretty much pick off the hill rush assholes as the wander back in alone or in pairs.

[Agent Sorchus]

Steppes in a KV, four kills, two T1 HT, a PZ3 and a Grille. Both the T1's were killed head to head together with the short 122 and I damaged another T1 at long range before the rest of the team killed him. Limped along until the end and killed the Grille that was just hiding out. Got a Steel Wall for bouncing shots on my side armor as I circled one of the T1's. I really did expect to die because I ended the match with basically no hp. A good amount of experience for a daily double. Now I have the xp for the KV-3 but no where near the credit.

[xthetenth]

The problem isn't that they're German heavy tankers, the problem is that they're heavy tankers. Too many heavy tankers are shitty drivers who are cowards who want to snipe and be safe behind a giant slab of heavy armour and a reach out and kill you gun. Now that certainly doesn't mean all heavy tankers are like that, but those kinds of assholes tend to gravitate towards the heavy tanks. Napkin waffe wank is just the icing on top.

NOTE: I'm talking about averages here, there are definitely some scary bastards who subvert these trends, and they'll occasionally put me in a world of hurt if I'm not paying attention.

Russian tankers generally have balls and/or are stupid in the aggressive direction, probably because they've been told their tanks are hot shit even though the shit really applies to their gun aiming and a decent number of their driving skills (Seriously, had a match where this IS-4 just wouldn't stop cresting a hill to attack our T34s despite me being able to plonk 2 shells into his lower hull for every one he got out, let alone Coffee's shells. Shame only their arty was paying attention, but that's another story.). US tankers generally tend to be pretty damn morbid sorts by the time they've gotten the high tier stuff rolling who are used to getting their face punched in but know when to risk it. I generally find them the least likely to make egregious cockups, probably because they picked the line where they have to grind the T34 for 100k xp with a 200 pen gun and the law of averages keeps them safe from the small stuff. I'd say they're probably the best at minimizing their tanks' weaknesses, but that's probably because it's so big and obvious. It's the german drivers who do the stupidest stuff though. If someone's getting circled and is relying on turret traverse, I'll lay down a tenner for a shot at a one that it's german, likely a Loewe. I won't even get into how much they love getting into peekabo matches even though they have low alpha and then take their sweet time about it rather than popping out, getting a shot in before the enemy can settle and getting back into cover like a sane guy. If I can do that to you in a tank whose gun requires 3 seconds to aim and yours needs 2, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! Seriously, German tanks rock at peekaboo, simply because if you're any good you can have your shell out and be backing up by the time his aim is settled, giving him a tiny window at you. Then the same folks bitch to the high heavens that their tanks aren't good enough and frame it so it's obvious they mean hideously overpowered. Among other things, you'd think they wanted the 88 historically modeled including damage even if no other gun was. They also have this lovely tendency to play up the most exaggerated bits of the Tiger mythos and then expect it to perform like that against much heavier opposition. They also tend to bring up Soviet tank issues as if that means that German tanks didn't have an an unfortunate tendency to ignite.

Seriously, read the German heavy tanks section of the forums, and know why I hate nine tenths of those spineless, intellectually dishonest imbecilic fuckwits with the passion of a thousand harlequin romances. I'm sorely tempted to cite examples, but this is enough of a WoT (Wall of Text, sue me) as is.

[Agent Fisher]

Started WoT and am grinding a M2 light tank right now.

[Zinegata]

I find it enormously funny how German heavies complain about burning when I seem to die by burning every other match in the KV-1S.

Granted, those big stupid exterior fuel tanks almost guarantee a barbecue, but I'm willing to pay that as the price of admission for a Tier 6 tank that's capable of damaging any tank it will ever face, even a bloody Tier X.

Finally, in general, I'd say that the most important quality of a tank is gunpower, followed by maneuverability, with armor coming dead last. American tanks however, present the best balance of the three.

[Hawkwings]

Had 5 kills in my M7 Priest the other day, and almost got a sixth. 3 of the kills were at close range, after our team had fallen apart and I was pretty much the only guy left at base. So the other team came rushing in to the cap, and I met them with some nice 105mm HE death. In the end there were only three people left: me, a Tiger, and some guy somewhere else on the map. I managed to bounce 3(!) shots from the Tiger off my front armor, while pounding him from 100% down to around 20%. He finally got me of course, but damn, that was a moment of sheer Priest badassitude. Even got comments from the other team about it.

[Mr. Coffee]

Go for six kills in one match with a Priest.Nothing makes people scratch their heads in wonder quite like an arty player with top gun medals on his SPGs. Or be a kill whoring douche like me and kill nine people in one match with a Priest and have everyone on both sides asking "WTF, over?".

[Zinegata]

The Priest's front hull is massively sloped. I make it a policy to side-shot Priests as a result.

[Highlord Laan]

On a whim, I snagged the Soviet Tier 3 premium, the T-127. it's a bit slow for a light tank, but holy fuck, 50mm of sloped front armor make this thing a damage sponge in tier appropriate battles, and the 45mm does good damage as well. I have a handful of gold rounds for when I get the shit end of the stick or have to pen the front of a low-tier TD, but overall its a fun little brawler.

And I am now around 5k XP short of the VK3001(H). Tomorrow, I should have it.

Also, as a moment of hilarity, I got Top Gun in a horribly skewed to the heavies match in my M4 on Mines. Absolutely hammered the enemy skirmishers, then went on to raise hell amongst their heavies as I've got to be pretty good at getting to the rear of Tigers and IS's and giving them a 76mm reaming. Then I went on to kill all four of the filthy artywhore pussies along the northern ridgeline. Ended the match with six HP left, all but my gunner dead, and all my modules hit at least once. Got a medal for that to.

I got called "OP" while driving a Sherman. By an arty bitch. It made me smile.

[xthetenth]

The Priest's front hull is massively sloped. I make it a policy to side-shot Priests as a result.

The lower part of the hull is equal to the slugger's I believe and equal to or better to the M6's as a result.

We've been making friends with the russian players on our massive skype chat of doom, it's been pretty funny tanking with two russians chatting in the background.

[Bluewolf]

I got called "OP" while driving a Sherman. By an arty bitch. It made me smile.

Please don't start any arty tirades like you used to, again.