World of Tanks Mark 2

[Nephtys]

I was platooning a low tier match and saw the most horrific thing. Tier 3-4 game, with 2 Tier 5s on each team.

Most of the teams were stuff like T2 Lights, AMX40s, and Pz3s... except my platoon had a KV1. They had a crusader or something. And even a tier2 with the BESA Machine Gun.

It was hideous. KV-1 had 8 kills, and took something like 120 non-penetrating hits. Little dings all over the guy, who still had full hitpoints.

[Imperial528]

Victory!
Battle: Cliff Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:56:38 PM
Vehicle: T14
Experience received: 1,058
Credits received: 30,754
Battle Achievements: Steel Wall, Mastery Badge: "Ace Tanker"

Very good match other than this M4 that kept bitching at me because I decided to try and cap* and he wanted me to kill their grille after it killed him. Our arty got the grille but he kept whining while I then sighted the remainder of their team and myself and our KV-1 capped their base.

*Note that I had committed myself to this about three minutes earlier when I started moving towards their base. T14 has such a slow acceleration that if I'd gone to go kill the grille KV wouldn't have had any support and could've been killed by their remaining tanks, and I wouldn't have been able to get in range in time.

[Imperial528]

Victory!
Battle: Highway Thursday, January 10, 2013 7:13:04 PM
Vehicle: M5 Stuart
Experience received: 1,260 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 13,797
Battle Achievements: Master Gunner, Lucky, Mastery Badge: "1st Class"

Thanks to that Lucky (from a KV-1 no less) I was able to kill a Hetzer, damage a T-28 (which the KV-1 killed, hilariously they were platooned) and almost kill an M4. All while at their base, having killed their arty.

We won with a PzIII/IV capturing their base and them having two KV-1s almost at ours.

Also last match in this little junk heap. M7 here I come.

[The Vortex Empire]

Victory!
Battle: Cliff Thursday, January 10, 2013 8:23:07 PM
Vehicle: IS-8
Experience received: 5,306 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 89,206
Battle Achievements: Steel Wall, Confederate, Sniper, Spartan, Mastery Badge: "Ace Tanker"

And that is why I love this thing, did 6,423 damage.

[Broken]

Victory!
Battle: El Halluf Friday, January 11, 2013 12:51:08 PM
Vehicle: M103
Experience received: 4,130 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 75,123
Battle Achievements: Steel Wall, Confederate, Spartan, Mastery Badge: "Ace Tanker"

Nice battle finally in this beast; missed finishing off 2 arty since I was down to literally 100 health and they were avoiding me.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Victory!
Battle: Murovanka Friday, January 11, 2013 6:21:45 PM
Vehicle: Churchill VII
Experience received: 1,622 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 18,477
Battle Achievements: Master Gunner, Mastery Badge: "2nd Class"

Very first game in my Churchill VII, too. Trudged into the center of town and bam, I ran right into a Cromwell, an SU-85, and an M37. After making short work of them, I got the drop on a StuG III who was too preoccupied with the enemies in front of him to pay any heed to the guy putting holes in his side.

[Alkaloid]

So I'm back into this after a few months of not playing it. My thoughts. The Valentine is fun, the covenanter the least fun tank to play. Not the worst, but it is not fun at all.

[Mr Bean]

Playing the T29, it's one of the funniest Tier VII's to load up with stuff. Compare the American T-29 to the T25/2 I've never bought, one's a heavy tank with a Tier 8 gun and a shit ton of armor and a decent climb rate. The other is a turreted TD with Tier 4 armor and a Tier 7 gun and worse agility than the Hellcat. I want the tanks beyond the 25/2 but for fuck sake I can't put up with driving a worse tank with the same armament and worse matchmaking it makes no sense.

[PainRack]

Damn if this isn't going to be a trend. Played 4 matches, and I had xp/creds cut off because other tanks rammed me and lost HP..... Now, I don't fully blame them(hey, its not the first time I accidentally hit someone going backwards) but I AM pissed at the pointless loss in xp.

[Vendetta]

Finally, finally after 550 matches, got the Ace Tanker for the Cromwell. 1304 experience with no premium, 3000 damage out.

[Nephtys]

Playing the T29, it's one of the funniest Tier VII's to load up with stuff. Compare the American T-29 to the T25/2 I've never bought, one's a heavy tank with a Tier 8 gun and a shit ton of armor and a decent climb rate. The other is a turreted TD with Tier 4 armor and a Tier 7 gun and worse agility than the Hellcat. I want the tanks beyond the 25/2 but for fuck sake I can't put up with driving a worse tank with the same armament and worse matchmaking it makes no sense.

The T29 is probably the most disproportionately powerful vehicle in the hands of a good tanker compared to what it's contemporaries are.

I mean. It can do the job of every other Tier 7 tank if it had to. It's fast, good armor, powerful gun, amazing soft stats. It has no weaknesses what so ever at Tier 7. And that ungodly hull down strength. It's got such a great skill ceiling.

I'm shocked really, that the baddies who drive it and fail are able to keep it's win rate down, more than those who can slaughter with it can keep it up.

[PeZook]

Well, there's SO MANY people who drive the T29 poorly that it's really no surprise. They probably heard about the amazingness of that tank and ground it but don't know the first thing about using it properly, and thus they get pasted all the time. I've seen so many T29s leave excellent cover and go charging at snipey heavies or zippy mediums that I've lost count. Killed a few myself here and there, too.

[Skywalker_T-65]

There are so many bad T29 drivers that I only really fear the things in my T-150, when I can't flank them. And that's mostly because their top gun is a monster at its tier, and makes it difficult for the slow T-150 to flank it.

[Imperial528]

Well, there's SO MANY people who drive the T29 poorly that it's really no surprise. They probably heard about the amazingness of that tank and ground it but don't know the first thing about using it properly, and thus they get pasted all the time. I've seen so many T29s leave excellent cover and go charging at snipey heavies or zippy mediums that I've lost count. Killed a few myself here and there, too.

I can attest to this. I was in my M6 and near-death in a Tier 7 match, and our T29 was facing their T29.

All they did was keep firing at each others' frontal turret armor. And I mean ALL they did.

I sat their repeatedly pennetrating and damaging the enemy T29's front armor, and only once did it turn its gun towards me. But then it realized that it exposed its turret's side armor and it turned back to the other T29. Eventually it got smart and our T29 started taking some damage.

Fortunately what I got out of it was killing a T29 from 100% and our T29 got steel wall I believe.

Though I am not the most stellar drivers of the T29 and will be the first to admit that. My biggest problem with it is that A. I don't know the maps as well as I should to take advantage of the good hull-down positions. B. I have a hard time determining when I am hull-down or not. Though when I am I act as the tank-god I have become and I stay there until it is time to move up to the next good position.

More recently I saw a T34 and T29 both leaving their rear treads exposed behind a rock. I was in my T29 and took full advantage of it. Luckily I was mostly hull-down due to the height difference and by the time they killed me it was only the T34 left at 4% health and our team was capping their base, and the Tiger that was with me killed the T34 after it got me.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I feel as if the Jumbo is the best way to train for the T29. If you keep the original turret, the front mantlet reaches over 300mm for much of the surface, with the rest 152mm and sloped. The turret's also tiny compared to the hull (whereas for the T29 it's almost the opposite) so you have to pay more attention to whether or not your hull's exposed. It also doesn't have a great gun for its tier so you're forced to rely on your armour rather than brute forcing your way through engagements. The M6 on the other hand has a fairly decent gun you can rely on and the turret is in fact weaker than the hull, meaning it can sometimes be better to expose more to lure shots into your front plate.

[Nephtys]

Going through Jumbo though doesn't give you the 90mm, unless you already had it unlocked from another tank. And that means that your T29 is going to be using the 76mm M1, which is an abomination against humanity when it's on that tank. It just makes me want to cry whenever I see a T29 that not only doesn't have the 'soup can' barrel of the 105mm, but a gun that's also teenier than the 90mm M3.

Baddies play that tank with the 90mm for the 'cost savings', and it hurts so much. The only thing worse I've ever seen was an M26 with the 105mm low velocity howitzer...

[Mr Bean]

Baddies play that tank with the 90mm for the 'cost savings', and it hurts so much. The only thing worse I've ever seen was an M26 with the 105mm low velocity howitzer...

The 90mm on the T29 penetrates 160mm the 105mm penetrates 190mm, but it fires half as fast. Both can penetrate 240mm with special ammo which means it's quite possible to run the 90mm with a few special shells to fight front to front tanks you can't hurt otherwise and rely on your fire rate to come out on top. If I can fire two 240 damage shells for every one of your 320 damage shells I'll come out on top VS 80% of the tanks out there.

[Nephtys]

The extra pen is absolutely needed. That extra 30 turns 'possible frontal bounce' on your likely opponents into 'virtually assured pen'. Gold reduces your profit substantially based on how expensive a gold shell is (4000 creds) while doing 2/3rds the damage of a 105mm.

Alpha is also more flexible than DPM is. While DPM is important if you're able to stick around and blast away, Alpha is vital to engaging targets most of the time where you only have brief windows of vulnerability. Even with the DPM advantage, the other perks of the 105mm win out.

[Zinegata]

A note on the T29's 105mm gun - it gets an RoF boost with the second turret, so the damage is virtually at par with the 90mm.

That being said, after seeing how good the 90mm can be in the T20, I'm more forgiving of those who decide to go 90mm on the T29 for the cost savings.

[PainRack]

How is the 105mm Howitzer on the Sherman, or the Hetzer 105mm L/42 gun compares to the AT gun then? It seems to me that they're both..... valid on the battlefield, with the only problems being accuracy at long range.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

It's a matter of playstyle. The Sherman, Panzer IV, and KV-1 all manage to be about equally viable with their AT guns and the HE ones. The Sherman and P4 have the additional advantage of relatively cheap HEAT: 2800 per round means you can toss one or two even in a losing match and come out ahead creditwise.

Even if you ignore the ability to run HEAT when the situation demands, the howitzers do have their own niches. You will almost never have to worry about not doing damage with a shot (if you hit) and you can ignore sloping and stuff like that at the expense of somewhat lower DPM. This matters less if you can use cover such that it's all about alpha damage, where the HE can match or sometimes beat the AP rounds. And if you manage to find weak points (or unarmoured tanks in general) the HE can do astounding damage when it penetrates outright. HE also can break modules like no one's business.

I prefer using the howitzers on those tanks, but you do have to remember: do not sit in the open trading shots with anyone who has armour, especially at range. You're going to lose out in the end. If you use them well, though, they're still viable into tier 6.

Edit: With the P4, I'd recommend using the 105 in general, as if you don't use it, you end up with a Panzer III/IV with less mobility and sloping.

[Zinegata]

How is the 105mm Howitzer on the Sherman, or the Hetzer 105mm L/42 gun compares to the AT gun then? It seems to me that they're both..... valid on the battlefield, with the only problems being accuracy at long range.

The accuracy issue is less pronounced if you lead your shots properly. I'm really of the opinion that the 105mm is the best Tier 5 gun.

[DrMckay]

Just had my 5th or so battle in the T29 and I think I'm in love! (and starting to get the hang of the tank)

Victory!
Battle: Port Monday, January 14, 2013 10:06:32 PM
Vehicle: T29
Experience received: 2,462 (x2 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 30,827
Battle Achievements: Sniper, Mastery Badge: "1st Class"

I shot an IS down to half health, and then got hull-down on a high overpass and soloed a Tiger and a Tiger P while armed with a 90mm. Turret hatch, reload, turret hatch!

BOOYEAH! (Also, any hints for this puppy would be appreciated)

[Nephtys]

Tips for the T29:
Hills are your friend. If you're in a game with 1 or 0 arties, Park on a hill all day, hull down and smack the shit out of enemies with your 105. You can tell you're well hull down when you're just BARELY over the ridge in sniper mode.

Try to avoid cities if you can help it. You're not terrible there, but you're not any better than other Tier 7 Heavies there. Unless you can find a car or wreckage to hull down over of course.

Learn weak spots. Shoot people in the sides, especially the weakspots of Tier 8 vehicles you occasionally see. Usually, side armor is a good target, especially the lower side hull right behind the track. From the front, machine gun ports and the lower front hull plate are always good weak spots.

Did I mention to hull down?

[Broken]

M4 Sherman with the 105 heat gun is one of the most OP tanks in the game right now, if you use all gold rounds. Its only real contender for that title is the SU-26 which is just insane for a tier 3 arty.