World of Tanks Mark 2

[Eleas]

I'm largely terrible at this game, but I do love me some sweet SU-85 action. I've only got the 85mm d5S cannon but am otherwise fully upgraded. What's the best strategy for a tank destroyer that wants to survive?

[Nephtys]

Get a Camo Net and Binoculars for your soviet TDs. They're all basically stealth submarines with giant cannons.

Sit back, just behind a bush along a major road where ideally, friendlies are about 100 meters ahead of you. Shoot enemies that come down it. If nobody shows, advance cautiously to another point of cover. In general, never let an enemy get closer than 100 meters

[Eleas]

Get a Camo Net and Binoculars for your soviet TDs. They're all basically stealth submarines with giant cannons.

Sit back, just behind a bush along a major road where ideally, friendlies are about 100 meters ahead of you. Shoot enemies that come down it. If nobody shows, advance cautiously to another point of cover. In general, never let an enemy get closer than 100 meters

I'm getting the binocs, but holy fuck are they ever expensive.

[Nephtys]

If you want, you can wait for the equipment sales. Those are the most valued of all sales typically.
But at least one set of Binocs will service all your tanks, since it can be taken off and put on another vehicle freely. Camo Net is just as vital though for a soviet TD.

[The Vortex Empire]

That whole line is amazing. I'm up to the ISU-152, and I can't even describe how godlike it is fully upgraded. Once you fire the BL-10 at somebody, you will never be satisfied with another gun again.

[Nephtys]

The ISU-152 and Obj704 horrify me.

As a normal tank of any other kind, you're happy driving around in your landship. Turning your turret and shooting at enemies, having a nice battle. Suddenly, you feel an itch. No, it's not the always looming sword of damocles that Arty represent. No, you know they're not focused on your sector as you're chasing down that pesky AMX50 before it reloads, or crushing some idiot Lowe player.

Suddenly, you're dead. Because an Obj704 appeared like a submarine 40 meters from you, and torpedoed you down 1000 HP in one terrible shot...

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

In the hands of a good player, certainly, but the few Object 704 players I've encountered in my admittedly brief time spent getting thrown into tier 8-10 matches seem to be utter idiots. Ran into one such player on Erlenberg while driving around in my AMX12t, in fact. Managed to empty all six rounds in my cylinder into his side without him even noticing, then he charges forward at a bunch of heavies and gets done in by an M46 Patton going full tilt into his other side.

[Thunderfire]

Get a Camo Net and Binoculars for your soviet TDs. They're all basically stealth submarines with giant cannons.

Sit back, just behind a bush along a major road where ideally, friendlies are about 100 meters ahead of you. Shoot enemies that come down it. If nobody shows, advance cautiously to another point of cover. In general, never let an enemy get closer than 100 meters

Binocs & Camo is nice combo for low/mid tier TD but higher tiered TD need other modules. Get Ventilation(some TD), Rammer, Enhanced Gun Laying Drive. Better aim time & faster ROF is nice to have on hard hitting TD.

[Imperial528]

Victory!
Battle: Dragon Ridge Wednesday, January 16, 2013 6:24:13 AM
Vehicle: T14
Experience received: 1,126
Credits received: 29,817
Battle Achievements: Steel Wall, Top Gun

Ah, I love this tank. Solo'd a BDR-G1B that thought it was a good idea to get into a hull-down contest with me. Finished a PzIV that thought its HE could pen my turret, killed a few TDs and an M4 at some point, and then finished their grille as it was trying to get behind me. 1,636 damage total. Very nice match.

Also made 27k profit.

[Jub]

If we go by the forums I should be loathing the Comet right now, but as it stands I actually like it more than the Cromwell. Perhaps that will change as I get more matches as bottom tank, but thus far I'm tending to get my damage in and the weaker gun is forcing me to play like a medium in a way that other guns haven't.

[PeZook]

That whole line is amazing. I'm up to the ISU-152, and I can't even describe how godlike it is fully upgraded. Once you fire the BL-10 at somebody, you will never be satisfied with another gun again.

Dimitryi Loza remarked in an interview about his book, "Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks" that IIRC in Prague he witnessed an ISU-152 fire at a Panther.

The Panther was hit and just...fell apart, like it was made of cardboard.

[PainRack]

I got rammed by my brethren, because apparently, he wanted to grab my perfectly good firing spot. So, I gave up my spot, withdrew back, he declined to take it and go elsewhere. Just as I was maneveuring back in, the KV 1 that was out in the distance spotted me in the open and I spotted 4 tracer rounds flying into me before I could reach cover.


....

[Vendetta]

The ISU-152 and Obj704 horrify me.

As a normal tank of any other kind, you're happy driving around in your landship. Turning your turret and shooting at enemies, having a nice battle. Suddenly, you feel an itch. No, it's not the always looming sword of damocles that Arty represent. No, you know they're not focused on your sector as you're chasing down that pesky AMX50 before it reloads, or crushing some idiot Lowe player.

Suddenly, you're dead. Because an Obj704 appeared like a submarine 40 meters from you, and torpedoed you down 1000 HP in one terrible shot...

Object 704 has a ridiculously high camo value for its tier. You can hide the thing behind a twig.

Also: 8.3 live. Nerf all the arty.

[Nephtys]

If we go by the forums I should be loathing the Comet right now, but as it stands I actually like it more than the Cromwell. Perhaps that will change as I get more matches as bottom tank, but thus far I'm tending to get my damage in and the weaker gun is forcing me to play like a medium in a way that other guns haven't.

Most people on the forums only understand hard stats. Which the Cromwell has. It's got more speed, the same gun effectively, and the same armor apparently (effectively zero).

The Comet when upgraded? Has amazing soft stats that make up for it! The Cromwell has low gun depression, but the Comet has ungodly gun depression. Likewise, the Comet has a powerful mantlet, which is better suited to hull down tactics that make use of said gun depression. I'll take that over the speed differential easy.

Comet's a great tank. I've once 1v3'ed a King Tiger, KV5 and an E8 at the same time, by abusing hull down and nailing their weak spots on one of those ditches in Karelia. ~2000 undoubled experience from doing something that only the Comet could do, as even the E8 couldn't depress it's gun enough to attack at the angles Comet was using.

[wautd]

So what are the toughts on the Chinese tanks that just got released? I didn't play on the testserver

[Imperial528]

Also: 8.3 live. Nerf all the arty.

Ftfy.

Yeah, reading the notes it's almost like they did a lot of the nerfing for the sake of nerfing. The only arty I really care about is the M37 and it really isn't a stellar piece and it had some pretty weird changes. Solid ground suspension effectiveness decreased, but soft ground performance increased by a larger margin. And health reductions across the board. I haven't played high-tier but I never saw any arty OP as it relates to health.

[Vendetta]

Arty has always been contentious. A thing that can sit at the back of the map well out of the fight and only be vulnerable to other arty until the match is almost over in most circumstances does need to be highly fragile if it is caught, because the potential to do damage with artillery is out of proportion to the risk suffered.

Slowing them down, making it take longer before they get into decent positions, making them suffer more for turning means they should be reduced slightly in that output.

[The Vortex Empire]

Splash radius on high-caliber HE is being reduced too, which will be a great help in reducing the ridiculousness of tier 8 arty. The T92 with gold HE has a bloody 13 meter blast radius as it stands right now.

My problem with arty is that it allows unilateral action by one player to another with no real fear of reprisal. It'd be less of a problem if there were respawns, but without them it's just poor game design in my opinion. Hopefully the nerfs work.

[The Vortex Empire]

Well then, Clan Wars is going down for a week while they wipe the map and replace Europe with North America. The first few weeks while every clan scrambles to grab land should be interesting.

[Broken]

Yeah, the arty nerfs make little sense to a lot of people. It basically makes arty more annoying to drive, more easily killed once found, and more punishing to readjust aim on. Perhaps the HE radius nerf + aim penalty will address some of the problems but I doubt it. You can't really balance a weapon system meant to punish the most heavily protected unit out there (heavy tanks) without making them terribly OP if they hit anything else. I have little faith that WG can do this properly (what is their cap 5 arty per side or something).

[Alkaloid]

The problem with nerfing arty the way they are is that they way it worked it could be massively powerful and untouchable, it depended entirely on the rest of the team to do it. Nerfing the whole category because the loudest complainers are upset they cant drive their maus into the open without being shot to bits by it is daft, and its not like you don't know the other side has arty in advance and cant account for it. The only change I would really have made would be a hard cap on the number of SPGs per side to 2 so that it can still be effective if youre clever or lucky but doesnt have the numbers to rain an endless sting of shells down on an enemy formation. The only result of these changes for me will be that I'll probably play my SPGs less because its more frustrating now.

[Nephtys]

It was a combination of factors.

Counter-Battery wasn't an effective counter. Shooting then moving allowed you to escape pretty much any retaliation without worry, especially with the new (zomgop) turreted BatChat 155.
Splash was too huge. An Arty could hit a dodging and moving medium tank, crippling it with a clear miss.
It didn't stop camping. It made it worse. Now instead of two forces taking hull down positions and exchanging fire and maneuvering, everyone's cowering behind 'arty safe' rocks the whole game.
TOO MANY PER GAME. You need to see Tier 9 and Tier 10 games for this, but for the longest time every game had 6+ arties Per team. And that made it so that the instant you were spotted, 3 or 4 shells come down, some missing, but the total volume of fire instakilled anyone who was seen. It made a fight between tanks pointless, as the entire game became about hiding from arty and hoping the enemy was worse than you at it.

[Mr Bean]

To add to what Nephyts said I played a game with my Tier 5 artillery with 2x Batchat 155s and a GW Panther. It was an assault map and every single tank that got spotted got popped instantly. It was time and time again, tank gets spotted then WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM the T32 went from 1400 hitpoints to 100 hitpoints before it gets it's second shot off. Next tank? WHAM WHAM WHAM miss because it's already blown up.

[Vendetta]

The only change I would really have made would be a hard cap on the number of SPGs per side to 2 so that it can still be effective if youre clever or lucky but doesnt have the numbers to rain an endless sting of shells down on an enemy formation.

Hardcapping at 5 has already made the matchmaker take way longer and go strange, because the number of high level arties trying to play hasn't changed the matchmaker creates more games for them, meaning that occasionally the only thing it can find to populate those games that's valid for those tiers is scouts, leading to the current scout infestation at higher tiers.

I think the ideal number would really be 3, but that would exacerbate the problem even further, meaning that you could be waiting for games for a significant amount of time.

[xthetenth]

About arty I'd like longer flight times to make hitting moving targets harder, except on a few lighter pieces so mediums aren't quite as vulnerable (although the clan wars game with popping scouts with arty is one of the more amusing bits because it's such a game of cat and mouse). The artillery nerfs this time are pretty much intended to make them more vulnerable when spotted.

Well then, Clan Wars is going down for a week while they wipe the map and replace Europe with North America. The first few weeks while every clan scrambles to grab land should be interesting.

This is going to be fun. Looking forward to staying up till 4 AM beating bad pubbies in a landing tourney. I wonder where we'll pick to settle.