World of Tanks

[xthetenth]

Part of the equation is likely premium. Also, a good scout that lights targets that get rocked gets a share of the proceeds, so lighting up an enemy gunline with good tanks looking at it is hilariously profitable. So's getting a bunch of damage in. The 2k+ match I dropped a pershing from full health to 300, killed an Su-85, lit a gunline for my tanks, did about 50% to a T-44, and some other stuff. Being used to dodging fire in a 50-2 in clan wars where there are good drivers chucking shells that'll kill you in two shots really makes things that do 100 damage with mediocre gunners seem unthreatening. Their rate of fire is annoying though.

[Nephtys]

Only a few tanks are capable of really insane XP pull-ins. High speed, high firepower vehicles count, such as very well piloted french or high-tier American/Russian Mediums, or extremely well placed TDs. Alternatively, vehicles capable of soloing large numbers of enemies in very good circumstances, particularly the T29 and T32.

I think my highest was ~2500, but that's with premium, with 9 enemy kills in one game. That was a T29 match, with the enemy team rushing the dunes on Sand Dunes, and nobody else there. So call it ~1600.

[xthetenth]

My best is actually my Tiger (P), a tank I wasn't endlessly fond of, in a tier nine match. Although I'll admit killing a Löwe from full health without taking any damage by shooting his exposed drive wheel from cover till he died of it helped a lot. I have a relatively balanced cross-section at the top of the max xp per match, although it is biased towards faster tanks.

http://wot-dossier.appspot.com/dossier/1608344#xp is my uploaded dossier in case you're curious.

[Scottish Ninja]

By the way, x, I've got a friend who's just getting into the VK4502(A) and he's pretty sketchy on it so far. Do you care to suggest how to play it well? Whatever it is you did in that tank appears to have worked.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Victory!
Battle: Arctic Region Monday, June 04, 2012 8:30:06 PM
Vehicle: VK 3001 (P)
Experience received: 3,422 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 38,416
Battle Achievements: Mastery Badge: Ace Tanker

I didn't get a single kill that match, but I shot the everloving fuck out of a KV-5, Kingtiger, regular Tiger, and a SU-152

EDIT: I'm getting to really like this tank.

[Skywalker_T-65]

EDIT: Actually, it was this:

Victory!

Battle: Karelia

Vehicle: BT-2

Experience Recevied: 966

Credits: 11,813

Battle Achievements: Mastery Badge: Ace Tanker, Master Gunner, Sharpshooter, Top Gun

[Xess]

I was in a Sherman with the 76 M1A1 and managed to ammo rack a 50something percent Panther from the front today. That was nice. Got booted from the clan I was in since I didn't play the game for about a month and I couldn't care less.

[xthetenth]

By the way, x, I've got a friend who's just getting into the VK4502(A) and he's pretty sketchy on it so far. Do you care to suggest how to play it well? Whatever it is you did in that tank appears to have worked.

Some of it is trying to fight tier 8 mediums, some of it is the product of a verifiable shitload of driving experience in mediums and heavies, strangely enough especially the Type 59. The 4502 A is in many ways a bully much like the 59, but it has the hp, pen and maneuverability to play maneuverability games with heavies. It handles well enough on hills that if you're good you can get some nice hull down, and do popout attacks great. I wish I had replays to really show what I mean, but I hope that helps. You have more maneuverability and speed than other heavies, so use it to avoid facing theirs head on.

[xthetenth]

Hells yes. We won our E3 Tourney Thingy™ match. Delightfully enough almost immediately after we'd gotten in a perfect position to ruin their tanks, they got hit by bad connection issues. They were down a Persh in return for my 50-2, and their T29 and IS-3 had each eaten an S-51 shell. We got a Type 59 squaring off against their IS-3 doing damage (firing gold didn't exactly hurt, and with 25k gold per player on the line you're stupid not to run it) while a Lorraine and AMX 50 100 drove up behind it. We got a good arty hit and quick mop up on their T29, and their AMX 13 90 was just starting to engage when their IS-3 lost connection right as it got a Frenchie behind it, and the AMX got the other in the face. They were hosed for sure. Not bad considering that they changed their loadout to try and counter ours when they saw us hop in the training room we were using. Was an amusing match.

[Zinegata]

Woo, a tourney that's not all-Tier 10?

[xthetenth]

A decent number of them are. That was tier 8 top, 42 points total. A good number of those AM/PM challenges and stuff are tier 8, and there's some other ones as low as six. Now granted, Forge is going to put a team in each of them and put on their try pants, but they're good fun regardless.

There's video of some of that match online, but I'm too lazy to dig it out of the stream archive. There's only half the battle too, think the "cameraman" was connected only about half the battle.

[xthetenth]

They took Komarin and Swamp out of the random rotation on the test server. Swamp is take it or leave it, it's not good but it's not actively bad.

On the other hand Fuck Komarin. After playing Clan Wars for a week on that horrid map at the very least, I can feel very confident when I say it's the worst map in the game and I hope it's gone.

[Vejut]

What exactly makes it such a horrible map? I notice when playing it it tends to be a bit of a slow camp/grind forward thing, and it's certainly not my favorite, but that does it have that say, El Halluf or swamp doesn't?

[Simon_Jester]

For me, what's annoying about Komarin...

Well. For one, it's a very constricted map, more so than most of the city maps in some ways. On most open-field maps, tanks fighting separate battles 200 meters apart can support each other, so doing well in one place helps you do well in other places. At Komarin, the terrain blocks this- there are big ridges and hills that block line of sight, and bodies of water that prevent movement. Your forces get split up into three groups that can't support each other at all.

Now, Komarin isn't unique in this way, but the other problems it has make it worse than other maps (like urban ones) that have the same problem.

The big one is the way that you have to choose consciously between attacking the enemy base and defending your own. On nearly all maps, if both sides attack the enemy, they run into each other. The battle may be won or lost depending on who committed how much force to which of the possible attack routes, but at least you don't have to worry that by choosing to attack at all you left the enemy an opening to nip in and capture your base with a handful of scout tanks.

But Komarin doesn't work like that. The only asset a team has that can shift quickly between "attack" and "protect the base" mentality is its artillery (which is strong on this relatively flat, open map that lacks steep hills and hard cover). And since the natural preference of most WoT players is to attack, that results in a lot of really messed up battles- one side forgets to leave an effective defense force to cover its base from across the river, or the defenders get too bold and are wiped out by the attacking force. Or you send too much to defend your base and hit the center, and the enemy base defense force gets through their base and starts nipping into your rear to wreck your artillery- and this is a hard map to win without artillery.

At the same time, the map is quite punishing to light armor. The bridges act as chokepoints where light armor has to move through narrow spaces exposed to close range fire from lots of strong enemy tanks. The 'directional' nature of the fight makes it hard to find opportunities for flanking shots (not impossible, just hard). And the generally poor ground (lots of mud) limits the areas light tanks can cross without getting bogged down and targeted.

[Nephtys]

Komarin is also uniquely the only map where 15 people derping to one side could actually win the game.

If you can shift quickly though (like the overpowered awesome of M18 Hellcat), then you can really do well though.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Oh man, I HATE that map. Probably because all I have are light tanks at the moment since I haven't been playing long enough to get much else, especially considering I avoid arty. I'm always the first to die, since no matter which direction I go I get shot by bigger tanks, and a light isn't much good for defending the arty. All in all, the only map I really dislike.

[Simon_Jester]

Light tanks can do decently as artillery defenders on open maps, because they can intercept enemy scouts (or fast lightweight mediums/turreted TDs) short of the base and start chewing them up, hopefully cutting down their mobility advantage and either killing them or leaving them vulnerable to point blank shots from the artillery. It's not perfect, but it's better than being totally defenseless and naked from the artillery's point of view. And it's often more useful to the team than suicide scouting.

On a map like Komarin, with limited cover and relatively confined space, the odds of an enemy scout actually getting past enemy lines and into your artillery park is not good. So the real threat to artillery is when several enemy tanks bull through the line and go on the rampage- and lights can't do anything about that.

[Nephtys]

The main job of a light on Komarin are either to advance slightly ahead of the attack wave to the objective base, to spot for them around the hill (and likely die), or to stay alive and just run on to cap the point once a cap attempt is being made, to speed it up. That's about it.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Yeah, and I've had to learn that the hard way. Now whenver I end up on Komarin I just camp with the arty and hope that nothing gets through. And on the rare occasion when I can help capture the enemy base I use the speed my tanks (especially the BT twins) have and dash to the base. Not perfect, but it works better than trying to be a kamikaze and scout the enemy across the bridges.

[xthetenth]

My view of Komarin is as follows:

It actively punishes attacking with the ridges that prevent aggressive forces from supporting each other and the open areas meaning that campers can pool their firepower thereby making the most aggressively anti-offense map in the game. Fuck Komarin.

It concentrates most of the cover so that once you leave the camping positions, the next available cover is the enemy's camping positions so most attacks get torn to shreds. Fuck Komarin.

The cover actually doesn't have that much depth to conceal artillery and the caps themselves are relatively well hidden. This means there's three strategies available. Hard camp, works great against anything aggressive. Derp rush. Works great against anything but hard camp. Form a defensive line, scout and let the arty do the heavy lifting. Kills hard camps. If that sounds suspiciously like I'm describing a map balanced so that clan wars matches are an overly elaborate follow on to a game of rock paper scissors, that's because they are. Fuck Komarin.

Part of this may be sour grapes after fighting clan wars on the damn map half the time for about a month. I prefer to call it in-depth knowledge.

[Nephtys]

I'm gonna leave this here.

[weemadando]

I just started in the past few days (just got my first Tier III - a Marder II) and have been enjoying it.

But it seems that if you actually want to get somewhere, premium is the only way to go due to the XP, cash and other bonuses, not to mention actually being able to have access to things.

How many of you "high tier" guys can give me an estimate on your costs thus far and whether or not there's certain things I should look out for if I want to maximise return on investment?

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, if you downloaded it (not sure if this is the case with storebought) then you should have had an option for a tutorial, at the end of which you get a Premium Stuart. That's how I've already reached Tier 4 tanks on mine, considering those tanks cost upwards of 100k credits.

As for how that helps XP wise, I can't comment since I haven't spent a dime on the game. Nor can I comment on anything above Tier IV.

EDIT: Since you need gold to exchange normal XP into free XP. And gold costs money...that's what I meant above.

[Nephtys]

I just started in the past few days (just got my first Tier III - a Marder II) and have been enjoying it.

But it seems that if you actually want to get somewhere, premium is the only way to go due to the XP, cash and other bonuses, not to mention actually being able to have access to things.

How many of you "high tier" guys can give me an estimate on your costs thus far and whether or not there's certain things I should look out for if I want to maximise return on investment?

The game's 'frustration curve' is uneven.

Tier 1-3 are fun without Premium.
Tier 4 is a nightmare. Unless you really KNOW how to play, which isn't likely at that point in your game if you started.
Tier 5-6 are a sweetspot of fun.
Tier 7's pretty fun, but you won't make money without Premium.
Tier 8s can be fun, but you'll only make money with Premium after a win.
Tier 9+ will cost you money, except on a good win.

If I were you, I'd stay down one tech tree. Go for a Medium tier 5 or 6, before you branch out into other trees. This is because Medium Tier 5/6 vehicles have the best profitability for the most part, and are also usually fairly well matched against their opponents, so you rarely feel helpless.

Since you're starting german TDs, it's generally accepted that the Marder is super fun. The Hetzer is difficult (you don't really have any armor, and are somewhat less gunned than the Marder), but the Stug is good if you get the hang of it. The JP4 is... bad. The Jagpanther is good though. Ferdinand is alright, and JTiger is quite scary, with possibly the best gun in the game.

If you want to go down other trees, I'd suggest aiming for Panzer III/IV in the German Mediums, or KV-1 in the Russian Tree, or M4/M4A3E8 for American Tree.

[Marko Dash]

they announced what they've picked for the tier 10 meds and TDs

http://worldoftanks.com/news/1346-tier- ... announced/