World of Tanks Mark 2

[Simon_Jester]

Only once have I ever shot back at a teammate firing on me.

His Stuart was harassing my medium, pinging rounds off me from various angles. I chased him some distance, tracked him as he turned broadside to circle, and said "KNOCK IT OFF."

He did.

[Alkaloid]

Apparently some of the russian clans have some thing where they try to harrass you into TKing them so they can reprt you and get you suspended.

On that note Aaron, if you see player with a blue name/icon in the team roster, feel free to blow him the fuck away, known team killer, been reported as such and theres no penalties for killing them. Plus its funny.

[Aaron MkII]

Yeah, Corporal_Duderino is me, to whoever it was that asked in the chat.

All my better names were taken.

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I think making the KV-2 a Tier 5 tank (in effect) did more to create the "Russian tanks are OP" belief than any other single thing the game designers did. Because everyone fought them in that thing, and everyone saw what a bad joke the idea of the KV-2 being 'balanced' with, say, a T1 Heavy was.

The thing was, in real-life the KV-1 and KV-2 were very early-period tanks, so the initial low-tier ranking does make sense. Early in the war, it was often literally Panzer-IIs against KV-1s and T-34s. The Germans wouldn't have done anywhere near as well as they did if not for horrible Russian tactics and training. But in the decades since WW2, this mythology has grown up about German tanks always being generally superior to everyone else in every way, and today the World of Tanks player community seems to think that any German weakness must be a sign of "anti-German bias". I don't see anyone whining on the WoT forums the way the goddamned German fanboys do. And they keep citing "historical accuracy" when convenient and ignoring it when it gets in their way.

And of course, since the game has Russians developers, the "Russian bias" complaint is inevitable. I don't see anyone whining about the ARL-44's long 90mm gun with its absurdly high 212mm penetration at tier-6. It's one of the most overpowered guns in the game for its tier, and no one says a word about it because it's French, so it doesn't fit into their "Russian dev have pro-Russian anti-German bias" expectations.

[xthetenth]

(xthetenth will probably now break in with a story about how he soloed four KV-107mm tanks with his T1 Heavy by creative use of the four-dimensional Möbius strip terrain on Ohgodno map. Because I just know he has such a story. Somehow )

Nahh, my best in that regard is how with excellent use of hulldown and dead on shooting I managed to take one down and only lose half my health. Only seems a strange word to use but it's appropriate. My general tactic in a T1 was kill everything else and let the KVs get mobbed.

Thing is the KV with that loadout was a fat wallowing pig that was slow, inaccurate and unnervingly high on the high tier tanks' target list as a threat that could be knocked out in two shots. I didn't much like mine because I kept ending up fighting things drastically superior to it with equal or greater firepower, actual armor and a bucket of HP that made mine look like a spittoon.

However, I do think the KV is a primary factor in the Russian tanks are OP meme that seems so worn out today, but a lot of it is frankly from the beta. The earlyish beta. Back then for those who don't know, tanks more than 50 or so meters started to stutter uncontrollably on all other players' screens and were nearly impossible to hit. Germans were and still are snipers. Knowledge of how to use the hull to increase turret traverse speed on a circling enemy wasn't widespread at all. Accuracy wasn't nearly as value, and even worse, Russian mediums could drive up really close to Germans and circle them to death. I picked apart a Tiger once in a T-34 doing that. The tanks would've been even, but the entire metagame drastically favored the Russians. I also hear that in closed beta the Russians actually were OP but with all that at the start, that's the sort of thing that sticks around forever if people haven't played a lot of tanks and want to use the easy explanation. The devs being Russian does nothing but help.

If you want OP in a wargaming game Germans in WoWP are ruinously OP. The usual suspects don't believe it, but it's true.

[Simon_Jester]

Personally, I think making the KV-2 a Tier 5 tank (in effect) did more to create the "Russian tanks are OP" belief than any other single thing the game designers did. Because everyone fought them in that thing, and everyone saw what a bad joke the idea of the KV-2 being 'balanced' with, say, a T1 Heavy was.

The thing was, in real-life the KV-1 and KV-2 were very early-period tanks, so the initial low-tier ranking does make sense. Early in the war, it was often literally Panzer-IIs against KV-1s and T-34s...

Well, tier doesn't just reflect vintage, it reflects some kind of firepower and balance. The French Tier 6 Heavy wasn't built until 1945, while the American and Russian ones both date to 1941-42... because what matters for tiers is quality, not age.

Qualitatively, firepower matters a lot, probably more than it did in real life because tanks in the game find themselves fighting enemy heavy tanks at close range much more often than in real life. It's very possible to have a match where the Tigers outnumber the Shermans, and the Type 59s outnumber both of them put together. So a tank with exaggerated firepower and adequate armor protection appears really powerful.

That's made even worse when people in-game have the experience of being one-shotted by the enemy vehicle. The KV-2 guns can obliterate pretty much any Tier 3 (or 4, for the 152mm) vehicle easily, so in the old days nearly everyone playing the game had the bitter experience of being easily blown away by a "Tier V Heavy" that often got matched as top tank among a horde of things with no chance of fighting it at all.

Setting it to Tier 6 and narrowing the range of matches has solved that problem; KV-2s now spend a lot more time picking on things their own size, against which their guns are powerful but not laughably so.

The Germans wouldn't have done anywhere near as well as they did if not for horrible Russian tactics and training. But in the decades since WW2, this mythology has grown up about German tanks always being generally superior to everyone else in every way, and today the World of Tanks player community seems to think that any German weakness must be a sign of "anti-German bias". I don't see anyone whining on the WoT forums the way the goddamned German fanboys do. And they keep citing "historical accuracy" when convenient and ignoring it when it gets in their way.

Personally I have no interest in anti-German bias. I myself suggested a fun 'realistic' game mode featuring one Tiger and a couple of Panzer IVs or Hetzers plus maybe a Grille if they're lucky... against ten Shermans or T-34s, with 3 or 4 SPGs in support.

That would be interesting to play as. I would enjoy watching the Tiger bludgeoned to death by half a dozen 105mm howitzers myself.

Though give the Tiger a Wittmann award if he wins, for sure...

And of course, since the game has Russians developers, the "Russian bias" complaint is inevitable. I don't see anyone whining about the ARL-44's long 90mm gun with its absurdly high 212mm penetration at tier-6. It's one of the most overpowered guns in the game for its tier, and no one says a word about it because it's French, so it doesn't fit into their "Russian dev have pro-Russian anti-German bias" expectations.

The thing that saves the French tanks is that they're hard to play well. Their heavies have fragile flanks, their lights have a very different method of operation from most people's tanks.

Russian tanks are relatively easy to play well, and are more popular on average (or that's my impression). I suspect most people's accusations of bias come from a lot of unhappy experiences bouncing shots off of IS-3s. And, of course, the KV-2.

[LaCroix]

Managed the painful grind for an AMX racecar. Turns out it usually gets matched with tier 8s. Nothing my gun can even scratch the back at point blank... (And I've tried..)

On the other hand, I'm very effective at interrupting enemy lines, for as soon as i show up behind them, they stop everything else and start shooting me out of fear I have the 90 installed...

Then I get myself the better motor, only to find out that once I now hit the pedal, my ping goes up to 200 and my framerate drops from 15 to 2. I'm moving too fast for my connection to keep up.

I'm feeling like one of those desert beetles that run so fast they have to stop occasionally to look around and find out where the hell they currently are...

[Nephtys]

And of course, since the game has Russians developers, the "Russian bias" complaint is inevitable. I don't see anyone whining about the ARL-44's long 90mm gun with its absurdly high 212mm penetration at tier-6. It's one of the most overpowered guns in the game for its tier, and no one says a word about it because it's French, so it doesn't fit into their "Russian dev have pro-Russian anti-German bias" expectations.

The ARL-44's a terrible tank, even with it's absurdly high pen gun. It has bad RoF, bad Aimtime, bad dispersion, bad everything EXCEPT Penetration. The ARL-44 has the worst soft stats in the game, and soft stats are as important as anything else.

This is why American tanks perform magnificently with skilled players. They have the greatest soft stats, that a skilled player can exploit to the highest potential of any vehicle. German tanks sadly have poor soft stats, and instead saddle the player with thick frontal armor and accurate guns, but without traits such as accuracy on the move, agility and gun depression.

Russian Bias does seem to exist, in the sense that many soviet tanks were given both good hard AND soft stats. Especially when the game favors what they do best: close range brawling. The old IS-4 used to be absurd in it's tier. Now the new TD is some sort of hyper-fast, well armored, stealth nuclear doomcannon. Meanwhile, the poor ol' T30 is being nerfed literally the 26th patch in a row, due to it's soft stat advantages.

Another reason for russian bias is that WoT is full of magical prototypes and one-off experiments. These generally are few on the American tree, as nobody went and said 'how about we put a giant trashcan launcher on a light tank?'. Instead, nearly every US Vehicle has historical equipment as it's final gear. Germans have a few high end items due to 'napkinwaffe' experiments, such as turrets that never made it to production and guns that were never fitted onto the tank (IE, PZ4 Vaderturret, Long 88 on Tiger I).

Meanwhile, Russians put tons of guns on tanks that'd either not work, explode, or kill crew members. While ignoring the downsides. The KV-2 couldn't fire while moving, and would damage itself if fired with the turret on certain directions. The IDIOT 100mm cannon was test fitted to a T-34-85, then found utterly impractical. Yet, was an upgrade option until this patch for the T-34, granting it very powerful alpha for it's tier. The IS-4 was inexplicably given a fantastic -8 degrees gun depression while it's predecessor had -3 degrees, and a fast loading gun. The problem? the only reason IS-4 'really' had -8 gun depression was that the cannon was so poorly designed, it had to be lowered fully to reload, and couldn't actually fire when lowered that much. Yet, these absurd, failure-of-engineering features became major in-game assets with no downsides in WoT.

[FSTargetDrone]

Woot! Bt2! I forgot to buy ammo though, so I hid behind a hill and tried to spot.

Much faster then the MS-1 as well.

Yeah, don't forget to tick off "Auto resupply" or whatever it's called for ammo and supplies. You have to do that with every new tank. Also for repairs.

[Darth Wong]

Ah yes, another objective analysis of "Russian bias" which goes on at length about the nature of the bias, but inexplicably fails to explain why competent players do as well in German or US tanks as they do in Russian tanks, or for that matter, why players who become skillful enough to overcome the Russian bias in their nerfed US or German tanks don't become Gods and pwn everyone if they go to the Russian tank line.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Personally, I've played up to T5 in all the tanks lines (Russian, Murican, Frenchie, German) and I've found the German tanks to be the easiest and most fun to play. I much prefer my PzIII/IV and VK 3601 to the Sherman/T1 or the AMX tanks (though the ELC is quite fun). As for the Russkies...the T-34 and KV are fun certainly, but they just don't appeal to me as much as the German tanks.

And I don't do anywhere near as well in them...aside from my great matches in the BT-2 anyway. I think the most kills (aside from aforementioned BT) I've gotten was in my 3601 actually. So if there is a Russian-Bias it sure doesn't affect me.

[Darth Wong]

It's always the same when you talk about German tanks; people give you all these reasons why they think the German tanks are "nerfed" or ill-treated by the developers, and yet, mysteriously, players continue to do well in them.

Complaining about Russian tanks or equipment which were never deployed is even sillier; the entire high-tier German lineup is all imaginary paper tanks.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I like to think I know my WWII history, and I haven't seen any reason to assume the German tanks are nerfed. A Tiger will tear clean through Shermans/T-34's...which is accurate to history. If you put it up against an IS or T-29, of course its going to not do as well. I think a lot of the problem is that German players (or rather, German FANBOYS) expect their tanks to be God's of death to anything and everything in their way.

Where in reality, they only start to show flaws when placed against tanks they rarely (if ever) fought. Like the aforementioned IS vs Tiger. Heck...even the PzII does better than it would have in real life. A BT-2/BT-7 should chew clean through PzII's or 35/38t's, but instead, the German tanks are quite capable of holding their own. I've actually killed a couple T4 tanks that didn't pay attention back when I was using the II.

The German tanks are perfectly fine the way they are, and if you know how to use them (like I do) you can chew through anything in your way (unless its much bigger...but that effects ALL the tanks).

EDIT:

Maybe it was actually T3 tanks I killed with the II...its been a while.

[Simon_Jester]

The analysis I saw seems to be complaining more about the US tanks being under-equipped than about the Germans.

If the US tree got treated like the Germans or Russians, there'd be some pretty strange refit options. For a long time, both Germans and Russians had the advantage of modules that represent strange one-off modifications that didn't work in real life. Like the giant turret for the Panzer IV (though that's going), or the T-34-100 (which went).

The US tanks are a bit less satisfying in this respect, although generally solid, powerful performers anyway.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I haven't played as much with the US tanks...but that howitzer on the M2 and M5 is a monster at their respective tiers...I've been one-shot in my Stuart by those tanks. I've also had to run away with my proverbial tail between my legs if I run into an M6 with the 90mm gun. Even my biggest tank (the 3601) can be seriously threatened by that thing.

But like I said...I haven't gotten above T6 in any line (and only reached THAT in the German tree) so I can't comment on how the bigger tanks work.

EDIT: M2 Medium tank rather...not the M2 Stuart.

[Nephtys]

Ah yes, another objective analysis of "Russian bias" which goes on at length about the nature of the bias, but inexplicably fails to explain why competent players do as well in German or US tanks as they do in Russian tanks, or for that matter, why players who become skillful enough to overcome the Russian bias in their nerfed US or German tanks don't become Gods and pwn everyone if they go to the Russian tank line.

Well. That stuff was how it WAS. Each of those cases got changed. And back then, the Russian tanks all had high winrates on all servers.

Another reason for the 'bias' is that they kept buffing RU tanks for a while, due to their (sometimes questionable) metrics. There was absolutely no reason for example for the old Tier 9 IS-4 to be continuously buffed in firepower, when it already had speed and armor.

For example, on the US and EU server, there's a pretty close balance between how many people play what tanks. There's actually more german tankers than US on the US Server, but it's really close. And win rates are generally pretty mixed evenly between each country at each tier and class.

On RU server however, there's something like 5 times more russian tank drivers than the other ones. And across the board, soviet tanks had the worst win rate for them. Since RU players outnumber US + EU players by some factor of like 10 to 1, Wargaming treats that data as more important, and continuously buffed Soviet tanks, while nerfing others. Some to utter uselessness (IE, German endtier heavies). This can be explained by most russian newbies flocking to Soviet tanks and sucking at it, driving down win rates. While other servers have an even spread of newbies and vets. This also leads to very very hard nerfs, like the M48 which had a shocking 56 percent win rate on RU server, but only 51 on EU and US being nerfed into the ground. While the T62, a vehicle as good as the pre-nerf M48 on the US and EU servers, being left exactly where it is.

[Imperial528]

Well, I recently started out. Tried to use the training match thing for, well, training. A nice fellow called Ninjakiller taught me the basics when he noticed I was new (most of which I had a sense of from lurking this thread.) He also stopped the other team from killing me, however I kept trying to shoot him until he talked to me. Must've been comical, a T1 Cunningham trying to track a much higher tier tank (It was T6 at least.)

Right now, I have an M2 light tank. However, I keep derping out and hitting reload (Damn you Mass Effect 2/3!) practically every shot I fire, only to be helpless for five (10? 20? I didn't count just how long) seconds, that feel like an eternity.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I'm starting to REALLY HATE the Churchill now. Keeps killing my KV!

[The Vortex Empire]

I'm starting to REALLY HATE the Churchill now. Keeps killing my KV!

In competent hands, the Churchill is a monster, especially considering it never even faces tier 7s. I run mine with improved ventilation, a gun laying drive, and a gun rammer, so it basically has a giant machine gun. The key when facing a Churchill is to ALWAYS aim for the turret, the armor on it is far weaker than the hull armor.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I know, and I do hit it in the turret...that stupid machine gun just kills me before I can do enough damage...

[xthetenth]

Stay in cover and make it about peekabooming where its reload isn't as significant as your alpha. Angling your armor to make bounces more likely should help as well.

[Zinegata]

The analysis I saw seems to be complaining more about the US tanks being under-equipped than about the Germans.

US tanks actually have the second best win rate; next to the French tanks (although that may have changed since the patch that moved up all the AMX-13s a tier). They didn't really need that much "help" to be awesome. Only the T32 has major gunpower issues.

The old KV-1 with the 107mm gun and the KV-2 turret was rather OP though. I like how it was rebalanced.

[Zinegata]

Right now, I have an M2 light tank. However, I keep derping out and hitting reload (Damn you Mass Effect 2/3!) practically every shot I fire, only to be helpless for five (10? 20? I didn't count just how long) seconds, that feel like an eternity.

WoT's pace is considerably slower than FPSs. Blazing away with your gun is generally a bad idea.

It really pays to learn concealment, positioning, and knowing when to shoot and and when to know you're overmatched and should run away.

[Agent Sorchus]

Yeah, Corporal_Duderino is me, to whoever it was that asked in the chat.

All my better names were taken.

Yeah that was me. I pop in and out and don't play for days at a times, but it's Sorchus here and there.

Another reason for russian bias is that WoT is full of magical prototypes and one-off experiments. ... Instead, nearly every US Vehicle has historical equipment as it's final gear.

I laugh. It isn't like many of the American high Level TD's weren't made up wholesale. The T28 prototype is based on naught but a random doodle that was in some tank design memo. This is just an idiotic argument, especially since the Russian stuff was built even if it never was deployed while we have doodles in the American tree.

KV versus Churchill goes to KV at range. The 57 is too in-accurate and looses enough potency at range that the KV is going to win even with bad sight distance and inaccurate soviet guns. In close, get real close, as in face-hug him. Parts of the KV turret is invulnerable (frontally the sides and top of the curve) and if you can spoil his aim on that it is unlikely he can hit your low hull. (And his turret in a face hugging has no invulnerable spots.) Of course it is easier for me to say to face hug than it is to get there, but the advice is still worth it.

[Imperial528]

WoT's pace is considerably slower than FPSs. Blazing away with your gun is generally a bad idea.

It really pays to learn concealment, positioning, and knowing when to shoot and and when to know you're overmatched and should run away.

Oh yeah, I get that. It's just that after I played through ME2/3 in a row, I got a reflex for hitting whichever key is reload the instant I stop firing. Which in WoT is just a source of endless frustration, well, when you have a semi-auto gun.