World of Tanks

[Highlord Laan]

I have to admit, Wargaming has outdone itself this time around. The reworking of the Soviet heavy tree has been great. The KV-1 and T-150 are fun tanks to play...or they would be if Wargaming hadn't -in their infinite so-called "wisdom"- put the T59 back on sale. Apparently, the matchmaker being glutted with even more cheap, easy to acquire and very solidly capable tier eight medium tanks with high penetration guns and piloted by every kid with his mother's CC number and their goddamed dog is totally what the game needed.

The 107mm armed T-150 and 85mm armed KV-1 would both be a blast to play were it not for the constant presence of five or more Type 59's on one team in every single motherfucking match. "Working as intended" as only a vodka-drunk, retarded, inbred dipshit could call it. I'd like to know what moron gave these bedammed idiots the idea that they actually knew what the fuck they were doing.

[Simon_Jester]

A Type 59? Man, maybe I should get me one of those...

[Zinegata]

I really enjoy my Type 59, especially when I'm fighting higher-tier enemies.

[Broken]

I have not played my Pershing in a bit, but IIRC it does have a very strong turret like other high-tier American tanks (well, until you get to the M103 anyway). So rolling hills that you can peak over and use to cover your hull are great. You are also relatively fast and tough as a T8 mediums, so sweeping up French light tanks that try to do end runs is always needed until you are in a position to do your own flanking of enemy positions. But you have run into my biggest complaint about this game; if you try to do something like a real tank and act tactically, such as going hull down to protect your less armored body and deflecting hits with your heavily armored turret while taking advantage of your accurate gun, the game via artillery will punish you for it. There is no real solution for this other then staying in hard cover or staying extremely mobile and hoping no one tracks you (which high-tier artillery can easily do with a 500 damage, gun knocked out, both tracks damaged "miss"), since a tracked medium is always a massive "focus fire me" sign.

[Vanas]

The Type 59s are back? Happy to be away for the weekend, hopefully the moron rush will have slowed down when I get back.

[xthetenth]

It's a 5x experience event. Of course the morons are about. Of course people are driving their premiums to get money to grab modules while they're on sale. Highlord's getting unlucky and blowing things out of proportion. I haven't seen nearly as much in the way of Type 59 horde as he seems to have.

[Marko Dash]

I've been seeing about twice as many 59s as since their removal, but not the hordes that used to run around with 5 to a side per match

[Zinegata]

I very rarely see more than 3 per side, and again I generally feel that their effect on the game is overblown.

[Marko Dash]

they became balanced when their MM spread was changed, used to be there would be 2-4 per side at the top with tier 6s and 5s below them and those tiers were outclassed in every aspect without being able to do much in return.

[Simon_Jester]

I think it also helps that seem to just be... more people who have Tier 7 and Tier 8 tanks than when the Type 59 was introduced. I think a lot of people were buying Type 59s early on and they weren't matched against comparable numbers of T29s and IS3s and so on- things that can actually fight back against them.

[Zinegata]

I've honestly never had a huge issue as a Tier 6 or even Tier 5 against the Type 59. Tier 5/6s can barely hurt most Tier 8s anyway, and to deal with more powerful tanks you need to either stick to the stronger tanks on your side or evade like mad.

[Simon_Jester]

Put it this way. Imagine that the matchmaker has to form teams out of a (statistical) pool of 100 Tier 5 tanks, 100 Tier 6 tanks, 60 Tier 7 tanks, and 40 Tier 8 tanks. Only good players consistently make credits off of Tier 7 tanks (OK, maybe premium users do), so on average the higher-tier tanks are on the field less often.

The typical "Tier 5 through 8" match will assign each team about 5 Tier 5s, 5 Tier 6s, and two or three each of Tier 7 and Tier 8.

Now, factor in the Tier 8 premiums. Unlike normal Tier 8 tanks you can actually make a reliable credit profit off of these, so people play them a lot more often. Suppose everyone who owns Tier 7 tanks gets Tier 8 premium for the credits: now the matchmaker has 100 Tier 8 tanks to assign matches to. This means that a couple of Tier 8 premiums get salted into each match- which means that the guys in the bottom tiers see fewer things they can actually hurt, and a lot more things that blow them away easily.

At the peak of their popularity, the Type 59 was far and away the most common Tier 8 premium tank on the field. So it got the brunt of this effect- there were so many Type 59s that nearly every match would contain at least one or two of them. Moreover, being medium tanks they profit from a wolf-pack effect, so people would form platoons out of them and otherwise act in ways that led to even more Type 59s showing up in certain matches.

Today, with each of the Big Three trees getting a Tier 8 premium heavy, the combined numbers of the Tier 8 premium heavies have a similar effect... but they're less homogeneous, which makes them stand out less. Also, people expect a heavy tank to shrug off their gunfire and blow the crap out of them. If I take on a Tier 8 Heavy head on, I expect to die unless I'm driving another Tier 8 Heavy.

But the Type 59 is also armored well enough to be able to do pretty much the same thing to any Tier 7 or lower tank*. A tank like the Pershing is less able to do that- it can't laugh off 88mm, 90mm, and 107mm fire to the frontal armor. A Pershing that tries to go nose to nose with a Panther or a pre-7.3 KV-3 is going to get hurt (although against the KV-3 it'd still win). A Type 59 will tend to win those fights; to beat it reliably you have to get around it and hit its vulnerable, rackable flanks. That isn't always possible if the enemy driver knows what they're doing and tries to stop you.

*Unless you are very lucky or good, which normal people are not almost by definition.

[Thunderfire]

But the Type 59 is also armored well enough to be able to do pretty much the same thing to any Tier 7 or lower tank*. A tank like the Pershing is less able to do that- it can't laugh off 88mm, 90mm, and 107mm fire to the frontal armor.

The Type has 100mm frontal armor. Even a M1A2 is able to penetrate the upper frontal plate. Several lower tier tank are able to do more damage over time.

Type59 1725 dpm
Su152 3151 dpm
Panther 1958 dpm
KV3 1857 dpm
M4A3E8 2118 dpm
Jadgpz.IV 2310 dpm
M6 1891 dpm
Su85 2046 dpm
Pz IV 1773 dpm
T1 heavy 1910 dpm

[Scottish Ninja]

That 100mm frontal armor is dramatically sloped; the M1A2 only stands a chance of penetrating it under the most ideal circumstances. I'm not sure that you really have any idea what you're talking about. DPM is worthless if it's not getting through the target's armor; that's why, despite its high DPM, the Jagdpanzer IV is often considered the worst tank in the game (for its tier) because 132mm pen is laughed off by the fronts of so many of the tanks it has to face, and as a TD it's not exactly suited for flanking.

[Simon_Jester]

Let me introduce a RL concept: "Line of sight" measurement of armor. That factors in slope- so a 100mm plate sloped at a sixty degree angle has a LOS thickness of 200mm: that's the amount of material a shell would have to penetrate to get through the plate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloped_arm ... osine_rule

Because of its low-slung body and domed turret, the LOS thickness of the Type 59's frontal armor is very high- guns of its own tier might penetrate, but guns of lower tiers almost never will, and the Type 59's front armor will block a significant fraction of 88mm, 90mm, and 107mm rounds fired at it. Saying "but there's a weak point fifteen centimeters high where the armor is weak!" doesn't invalidate this: yes, most tanks have weak points even from the front, but they are points: you cannot hit them unless you're firing at a stationary target with an accurate gun at fairly close range.

If you're in, say, an M6 Heavy dueling a Type 59, you're going to lose. Which is not unreasonable, it's still a tank two tiers higher... but whereas against a Pershing you'd have a pretty good chance of getting some effective shots in with your 90mm gun, against a Type 59, the enemy tank can almost afford to just park in front of you and trade shots until their D10T pounds you to bits. You'll penetrate them less often than they penetrate you.

I think that contributes to the frustration of the Type 59: that unlike most other mediums (but like the Soviet high-tier mediums it's modeled for), the Type 59 can fight like a very agile heavy tank when dealing with lower-tier opponents, in a way that a Panther or Pershing or Lorraine/BatChat cannot.

[xthetenth]

Frontally, I'd say the type 59 is the best armored. Those tier six 160 pen guns can penatrate the T34 if it's square or the KV-5's R2. Same for the Löwe actually, but you want 170 for reliability. 200 is going through any of those tanks though. 200 mm is actually marginal against a Type. It can bounce up to about 175 square, but because of its agility, it can reliably angle well and only show itself to one enemy at a time, so the 200mm is in many ways a more accurate upper limit, and being rather agile, it gets much better use out of it.

The weakness the Type 59 gets is a slow aiming gun with low pen and low HP for its tier. When it's bouncing everything from a lower tier the HP doesn't matter and the low pen is sufficient. That's the real thing, it's a traditional premium in that it's a bully tank in some ways, but at tier 8 it's a bugbear for a long time. Something else that makes me really look forward to warplanes, there's little that's as cut and dry as fighting something you can't pen. It's a lot more about pilot skill.

[Thunderfire]

That 100mm frontal armor is dramatically sloped; the M1A2 only stands a chance of penetrating it under the most ideal circumstances. I'm not sure that you really have any idea what you're talking about.

Not all parts are dramatically sloped. I am talking about the green part shown in this thread.

[Alkaloid]

It is still a tiny target that is almost impossible to hit except at close range while stationary directly in front, which is exactly how you never ever want to fight a T59 because is reduces the problems it has with low pen and takes advantage of it high ROF. For lower teir tanks of any class the thing is a nightmare, I would rather go up against a Lowe or KV-5, much more dangerous tanks on paper, because they at least have weaknesses that are easy to exploit. The 59 has its weaknesses too, but they are much harder to exploit, namely in that it can nearly always out brawl what it cant out run and out run what it can't out brawl.

[Simon_Jester]

Because of its low-slung body and domed turret, the LOS thickness of the Type 59's frontal armor is very high- guns of its own tier might penetrate, but guns of lower tiers almost never will, and the Type 59's front armor will block a significant fraction of 88mm, 90mm, and 107mm rounds fired at it. Saying "but there's a weak point fifteen centimeters high where the armor is weak!" doesn't invalidate this: yes, most tanks have weak points even from the front, but they are points: you cannot hit them unless you're firing at a stationary target with an accurate gun at fairly close range.

Practically every tank in the game has some weakness that can be exploited when the enemy has their act together. The problem is that gameplay... let's say that gameplay 'exists' on two tiers.

One tier are the 'pro' players- obviously not actually doing it for a living, but these are the ones who are good at it. Thrown into public matches they persistently do well above average. They are more likely to be in a clan. They are more likely to have win percentages significantly higher than 50%.

The other tier are the casual players. Some of these people own high-tier tanks, others don't. Some of them are pretty good; most of the rest aren't and make up the sea of "average" players. Some of them are downright incompetent; others are just... not all that good.

[This is where I am- I don't think I'm actively incompetent as a WoT player, but I'm more likely to make a boneheaded mistake than I am to perform brilliantly in any given battle, and my kill:death ratio is pretty damned unfavorable except in a few specific tanks where it's at least close to 1:1. So maybe I am actively incompetent.]

The 'pros' are the kind of people who basically have the weaknesses of every tank memorized, who play particular tanks often enough to really get the hang of appropriate styles (if you're not driving better in a given tank on your 200th match than your 10th or 50th, it's not good). Or maybe they're just naturals. I don't know. I don't really care, either, because I'm not one of them. I play the game because it amuses me, not because I like huffing and puffing about how great I am at driving tank X.

For me, the fact that there's a narrow band of armor where I can crack the armor with about half the shots I take is not that helpful. With many guns, I cannot hit that weak spot except at point blank range, because the gun is inherently inaccurate enough that many shots will scatter above or below it. I can aim for the turret ring too- I just can't bet on hitting it unless both I and the target are parked.

Also, and this is specific to my own situation... I play the game on a fairly anemic computer, to the point where lag and frame rate actually impair my ability to take high-precision shots. And I'm not about to go buy a new computer just so I can be marginally better at World of Tanks.

The fact remains that the Type 59 is a pretty damn impressive tank when you encounter it in the mid-tier tanks, especially to casual players who can't reliably pull off gambits like xthetenth's "shoot it in the tracks from in front, then batter in its sides once it spins out of control."

And unlike many other Tier 7 and Tier 8 mediums, in a lot of the tanks it fights, you'll be hard pressed to even do meaningful damage to it if it comes at you head on. That is, I think, what really impresses people. When a Pershing attacked me in my M4A3E8, I could at least give it a few holes to remember me by before getting blown to bits by the 90mm gun. When a Panther (1 or 2) attacked me, I had a fair chance of being able to outmaneuver and put some shots into the flanks, as I remember it.

When a Type 59 came gunning for me, there was less I could do, as a limited-talent casual player. And I ran into a LOT of Type 59s.

[xthetenth]

The fact remains that the Type 59 is a pretty damn impressive tank when you encounter it in the mid-tier tanks, especially to casual players who can't reliably pull off gambits like xthetenth's "shoot it in the tracks from in front, then batter in its sides once it spins out of control."

Note, this is my best advice. This does not make it particularly good or easy to do. The alternatives are just worse. Really, the best way to deal with the things with lower tier tanks is to pincer them. Two easy eights can split their attention so one gets easy track shots and then they can get the other on the guy's side and start permatracking it. That can be funny as hell but is hard to make work. Still, two tanks can easily give the Type holes to remember them by and the Type isn't exactly overburdened with armor. You can only point that armor in a relatively small arc.

[Simon_Jester]

OK, true.

Still, though. You I can believe doing it. Me? The only time I ever lucked out enough to pull something like that...

...There was this asshole in a Stuart who had decided to try and team-kill me. Unfortunately for him, my tank's armor was effectively immune to 37mm fire at nearly all angles, so his shots kept bouncing off. After the third ricochet when he refused to knock it off, I got mad and started chasing him around our base in my (slightly slower) tank.

This culminated in me taking a lucky shot, tracking him, and putting another round into him as he spun out. I shouldn't have done it, but I think it definitely made an extra impression when I said "Seriously, knock it off."

He didn't try to shoot at me again, anyway.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Type's are a pain in the ass. Luckily, it appears that most who own them have little to no clue how to actually play the game instead of relying on simply trying to bully their way through everything they come across while relying on their speed and armor alone to carry the day. One such believer came across me today on Lakeville while I was heading through the town with mah T20. He got the first round through, after which I started backing off since the hostile team's axis of advance seemed to be concentrated on the town. I pulled the Type along deeper to the town and ended up dueling him at point blank in one of the intersections. On close range it became quickly obvious that the other guy seemed to have no patience whatsoever in taking his shots and ended up missing at point-blank three times in a row. I dropped the Type to 17% and was about a second away from blowing him away with a well placed ass-shot when a Panther rolled up behind me and finished my already badly damaged T20.

Head on dueling against the Type 59 is just about pointless in anything short of a T8 or T9, but thats why you go for the flanks

Oh, the T-20 is concentrated awesome and murder in a small, angry package.

[Zinegata]

OK, true.

Still, though. You I can believe doing it. Me? The only time I ever lucked out enough to pull something like that...

...There was this asshole in a Stuart who had decided to try and team-kill me. Unfortunately for him, my tank's armor was effectively immune to 37mm fire at nearly all angles, so his shots kept bouncing off. After the third ricochet when he refused to knock it off, I got mad and started chasing him around our base in my (slightly slower) tank.

This culminated in me taking a lucky shot, tracking him, and putting another round into him as he spun out. I shouldn't have done it, but I think it definitely made an extra impression when I said "Seriously, knock it off."

He didn't try to shoot at me again, anyway.

I wouldn't say that tracking a Type 59 is all that essential (although it helps). What I generally do is to wait until the Type 59 engages a Tier 8 or Tier 7, before zipping in with my Tier 5/6 on the flank and rear to pour as much damage as possible on the Type 59.

I also usually don't do it stationary - I try to maintain a parallel course with the '59, and aim using 3rd person view. While not as accurate, not having to deal with tunnel vision is very important when maneuvering and shooting at the same time.

The 59's lowish HP is actually a pretty significant weakness if it has a Tier 5/6 nipping at its sides and rear.

[DrMckay]

So I've been playing for a bit, and have got the first turreted American Tank Destroyer, the m8a1, but am a bit annoyed at the gun on the SU-5 spg which even at 152 mm barely touches the t6 and 7's i am constantly thrown in with. Are the Russian SPG's worth sticking with? And is the KV-1 worth saving up for/playing (I just got enough experience with the t-28.) I am also thinking about trying to get up to the Pz IV, (Currently on a pz 38t)

The game is fun, but I am currently unaware of the various strengths and weaknesses of most of the nationalities' tanks. I also know I despise the french tanks. Especially the AMX 38.

But yeah, this game is very fun.

[Simon_Jester]

The AMX 38 is pretty lousy. I consider them meat on the table in any other vehicle. Arm them with the 25mm AT gun, it doesn't do much damage but at least it penetrates reliably, and you can grind past it without taking too much time.

The AMX 40 can be fun when it's in the top tier- I got a 7-kill Top Gun out of it once on Steppes. But while the AMX 40 is basically immune to any weapon of 50mm or lower caliber, it's not invulnerable and can get chewed up by artillery or 75mm gun rounds. Although even those can bounce if they're not aimed well, because the AMX 40 has some of the best sloped armor in the game.

The AMX 12t and on are a totally different game experience, because your gun is firing from a six-shot revolver magazine with individual rounds that have real damage and penetration. So you use speed to dart up to someone's flank, unload several rounds into them in a hurry, then dart back into cover and reload the revolver magazine, which takes a long time. So you can play them like most other fast light tanks except that unlike other Tier 4 and 5 lights, they have a real gun that does serious damage to strong opponents if you use it cleverly.

The SU-5 gun can, in my experience, do real damage to Tier 6 and 7 tanks. What it can't do is kill them in one shot- you need to recognize that your role is to chip away at the enemy tanks, damage their systems and immobilize and weaken them for the kill. You'll still get kills of your own if you do the job right, though. In my opinion, what's really unsatisfactory about the Soviet 152mm mortar is the short range of the gun.

The T-28 Soviet medium was a lot of fun for me, especially because it was my first introduction to the 57mm ZiS-2 gun, which has insane rate of fire, high accuracy (almost unheard of in Soviet guns), and enough penetration to break any other tank of its own tier, most tanks of Tier 5, and even to threaten a lot of Tier 6 and 7 opponents if you can get a good firing angle.

---

The KV-1 is good, although not as kick-ass as it was back when you could mount the KV-2 turret on it and put a giant 107mm supergun on it. The 107mm is, by the way, not out of place on Tier 7 heavy tanks, so you can imagine how dominant it was on a Tier 5 heavy: it could one-shot many tanks of Tiers 4 and below, and reliably penetrate almost any tank of Tier 6 or below from almost any angle. Very nasty. Back then, you saw a LOT of KV-1s, because they were dominant tanks in a lot of Tier 5 and 6 battles.

Playing it is very different from the T-28 or almost any other low-tier tank you might play- except maybe the AMX 40. Because the KV-1 has relatively strong armor and hit points, it can shrug off most weapons of below 75mm caliber- but it's penetrable to the bigger guns on same-tier vehicles (although 75mm guns are mostly marginal against it), and on the higher-tier stuff it fights. And it's MUCH slower than anything you've played except maybe the French tanks. So with the KV-1, you need to get the hang of trundling out into a good firing position, blasting the crap out of things, and trundling back into cover before the enemy can draw a bead on you, because your gun will take long enough to reload that you can't afford to sit out in the open except when you're a top tier tank and the enemy's high-end TDs and SPGs are busy elsewhere.

You may have started to get the hang of this kind of 'peekaboo' warfare if your T-28 was equipped with the big heavy 85mm gun...

Hm. likewise, The Panzer IV is a very different experience from the 38t, because it has guns that can really hurt most of what it fights. Especially if you go for the big boxy Schmallturm turret, which can mount a 105mm HE-thrower or a long-barreled 75mm gun that can crack about five and a half inches of armor plate.

In both cases, as with the late-tier French lights, the gameplay is totally different.