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Meh, I usually don't HE other Type 59s. I shoot their hatches instead

Also, bloody hell. Keep getting Top Guns on a loss.

... And then I win and scored 6 kills, but unfortunately an idiot teammate got himself TK'd and so I lost the Top Gun. Sigh.

It's not even the tiny HP pool. It's that it's tiny, and turret shots can wreck the gun, ammo, turret, commander, gunner and loader with hilarious frequency. Two HE to the turret should be sufficient softening, much more and just digging in with AP is faster, especially when you consider how frequently they're driven terribly. Way too many people show their sides in that tank.

It was recently revealed that the T59 is finally going to start getting tiered as a proper T8 in the matchmaker with the next patch.

The kiddies are already screeching at not being able to farm T5's anymore.

Good. I am so sick of getting matches in my pzIV where a third or more of the other team is Type 59s. I can make one regret coming after me, but I never run into just one.

Nothing ensures you will face actual teamwork more than a large wolf pack of Type 59s on the enemy team. Seems like that's the only time randoms ever work as a team.

Highlord Laan wrote:It was recently revealed that the T59 is finally going to start getting tiered as a proper T8 in the matchmaker with the next patch.

The kiddies are already screeching at not being able to farm T5's anymore.

All I have to say as a concerned Type 59 driver is thank fuck this is getting in, it's about time to get some nice big juicy game. Bigger tanks are more valuable targets, so the only people to get hurt suck.

The Vortex Empire wrote:Nothing ensures you will face actual teamwork more than a large wolf pack of Type 59s on the enemy team. Seems like that's the only time randoms ever work as a team.

About half the time that wolfpack forms I find that it ends up sucking on every high tier heavy's gun barrel, and my god does that wreck those things fast. The T32 can laugh at a Type 59 to its front and punch through its armor consistently and that tank isn't renowned for its comprehensive armor or its gun penetration.

Sodding hell. Just came out of a match where the enemy had 7(!) Type 59s.

Defeat
Battle: El Halluf 23 December 2011 08:32:42
Vehicle: PzKpfw VIB Tiger II
Experience received: 963
Credits received: 34,524
Battle Achievements: Top Gun, Sniper

Managed to take 3 of them and damage a 4th while killing an ISU and two other meds. Ended up as the last tank on the field, and under heavy fire took out the 5th. Actually kinda fun as I managed to shepherd our M10s into forming a gunline on a ridge to chew them up as they came over the hill.

Edit: I cannot count, I did not take out the 4th tank twice.

Zinegata wrote:The Type 59 has no real staying power with its tiny HP pool, so even a couple of HE shots can take away a good chunk of its life.

0.7.0 changed that. I played "shoot me" with the other team on malinovka. My Type59 survived more than 30 hits. HE spamming = no/minimal damage = steelwall medal.A hit on a weak spot still does a lot of damage. But the average HE user is unable to hit a weak spot.

That reminds me of earlier today. Our team's three KV-3s were the heaviest things on the field. I drove mine a bit incautiously on Sand River and- wham- something took out my periscope. Another round glanced off my glacis, then I got tracked.

At this point, I think three or four enemy vehicles all opened up on me with HE and/or AP. There were a LOT of bounces, plus quite a few low-damage hits, systems damage galore that kept me permanently immobilized. I snapped off a few shots in response, but didn't manage to hit my hull-down opponents because of various systems damage...

I wound up taking 56 hits before going down.

That is one tough tank, and I've got to hand it to the other guys. I hope the credits they got for battering my KV-3 to pieces covered the cost of all the ammo they must have thrown at me to do it. Probably.

I have to hand

HE is bloody useless now.

I primarilly play Americans with some Soviet Mediums, and I have to say. It's just useless firing HE at anything. Changes to the blast pattern have rendered it literally unable to do any damage, instead of guarenteed almost to at least knock two or three percent off. You're really much better off now it seems loading AP for virtually everything. If you hit a weak spot, you'll go right through and do way more damage than five or six direct HE impacts it seems.

Even the 105mm Derp Howitzer did only 30 percent to an enemy Pz4 today, which it should be a one shot kill or nearly so. My 90mm Slugger and T29 can't penetrate the front of a T-59, so I used HE. Previously, it'd do around 6 percent damage per hit. Today, none of those hits even scratched the paint. It's rather ridiculous.

At least they're fixing T-59 Matchmaking. There's no excuse to see that thing running around killing T-28s and Lees.

You have to really aim a bit with HE. Since the blast pattern no longer flows around armor your best bet against a Type 59 frontally is to aim for the bottom of the turret or actually hit the ground underneath it. Both those shots stand to knock at least as much damage as you would be used to (though on the ground shot you need to use a gun probably larger than an 88 to do anything. It is an odd transition to say the least, not helped by the inaccuracy of the standard derp guns.

But that doesn't mean derping doesn't work. I still one shot jgpz4 pz4 and others with my KV (no 152, only 122), and I can hurt anything by aiming for the ground underneath them. Not the greatest shot in the world, but I believe that even Maus can be hurt with such a shot.

But against a type 59 you should be putting your HE either into it's turret bottom or sides and rear.

Vanas wrote:Actually kinda fun as I managed to shepherd our M10s into forming a gunline on a ridge to chew them up as they came over the hill.

Somewhere out there in Tankhalla, Erwin Rommel is very proud of you.

Agent Sorchus wrote:You have to really aim a bit with HE. Since the blast pattern no longer flows around armor your best bet against a Type 59 frontally is to aim for the bottom of the turret or actually hit the ground underneath it. Both those shots stand to knock at least as much damage as you would be used to (though on the ground shot you need to use a gun probably larger than an 88 to do anything. It is an odd transition to say the least, not helped by the inaccuracy of the standard derp guns.

Interesting. Could you explain in more detail? What did they do to the mechanic, exactly, compared to what it was before?

But that doesn't mean derping doesn't work. I still one shot jgpz4 pz4 and others with my KV (no 152, only 122), and I can hurt anything by aiming for the ground underneath them. Not the greatest shot in the world, but I believe that even Maus can be hurt with such a shot.

So that's why it took a literal ton of ammunition to put down my KV-3... now I get it.

The weird thing is that I'm still using my Sherman 105 with its segregated crew (it happened by sheer random selection, I wound up with an all-black turret and an all-white hull). And I haven't noticed that drastic a decline in the tank's effectiveness against other tanks, even though I'm playing it the way I always did. And that's a tank armed exclusively with HE rounds, which 'only' do about 300-400 points of damage even in theory against something they can penetrate, so if HE has been nerfed that badly the 105mm gun should lose a LOT of its combat effectiveness.

Although maybe it no longer works so well against the really big bastards; I'm trying to remember if that time I got Oskin's Medal was in 6.7 or 7.0...


Also, sigh. One problem I have is that between my own limited ability, and the lag and frame rate on my machine (~10 fps during a good minute, ~50-100 ms lag likewise) that actually aiming for a vision slit or a machine gun mount or something is hard. I can do it in theory. But most of the time if the enemy isn't just parked there ignoring me, I'm never going to have time to line up a shot like that, even if my crew is capable of making it (and since I now have fairly well trained crews that's at least conceivable).

If they really have nerfed HE to the point where it is no longer a viable option for someone who's trying to at least significantly injure a much heavier armored vehicle, such that they'll really regret tangling with you when they then run up against a peer competitor with 30% of their HP and a couple of modules damaged, I'm not happy.

I'm just not sure if that's the case yet.

It wasn't a large nerf, but more of a realism thing. It takes a little explaining so bear with me since I don't have good visuals to go with this.

In all earlier versions if you smashed an HE round right to the face of a Tiger and it didn't pen through that plate the blast would do an unrealistic flow around that flat plate to hit on the top armor, potentially penetrating it.
..........___#____
........./
......*/

The asterisk is where the shell lands and as you can kinda see if you stretch your imagination the lines form the shape of the hull. The # is where in prior editions the explosion would've wrapped around the hull and penetrated the roof armor despite having no line of sight to the explosion

In 7 and future that can't happen, the most you will do is pen the vision slit if the blast encompass' it.

But in both versions if you hit the front of the turret low the explosion will hit the top armor and most likely penetrate there, especially on Type 59s where direct shots from a sluggers 90 HE will directly penetrate and explode inside the 59's hull, and probably ammo racks it.

Edit: and of course if you hit the ground underneath something the HE blast can reach up and pen the under armor easily.

My Sherman Derp was still wrecking light tanks last night, but I didn't really get into a game with big boys.

Awesome, free Tetrarch. I'm hoping it's a tier 2 and similar to the Locust.

About the HE, the smaller guns seem most affected. Howitzers are still powerful.

I was on a five game losing streak of my T32. It probably sensed that it was going to be retired soon as I was about 4000XP away from the T34.

I won the sixth match and got this:

XP: 8100 (x5)
Kills: 5
Shots fired: 21
Shots scored: 21 (Sniper Medal!)
Hits Received: 14 (Steel Wall!)

It was a good send off for a good tank.

I bounced three shits off a panzer III with my tiger today. I'm not sure how that is possible.

It is official. The Matilda is now my favorite tank.

spaceviking wrote:I bounced three shits off a panzer III with my tiger today. I'm not sure how that is possible.

Well generally, flinging poop isn't a very effective way to punch through a tank's armor, even a small one like a Panzer III.

spaceviking wrote:I bounced three shits off a panzer III with my tiger today. I'm not sure how that is possible.

The same voodoo magic that lets me bounce rounds from my Patton (bless its metal heart) from a Tiger. I'm thinking extreme angles. It's usually the answer.

Well, a Tiger at least has some decent protection- ~100mm armor on the thick spots and God knows what the gun mantlet is modeled as. There are places on the tank that a 90mm round could plausibly bounce under unfavorable conditions, though bouncing a 105mm AP round seems unlikely.

But a Panzer III? Jeez.

If you're shooting the same spot three times via the same angles, then yeah it's probably gonna have the same result .

Some of the hits may have been no-damage crits though.

Actually if he was relatively close, he could've been doing what I've seen a bunch of people do every once in a while, and aiming for the tank from above enough he aimed at the top, so when he fired he hit at less than 8 degrees of angle and automatically skipped off.

Damnit, Churchill, why do I love your barge-like form so?

Victory!
Battle: Westfield 24 December 2011 17:34:28
Vehicle: Churchill
Experience received: 9,950 (x5 for the first victory each day)
Credits received: 40,369

Oh, that's why. Took out 2 TDs, a Sherman and a rail KV with hardly any support. Lost 200HP. We'll call it a win.