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Man, the Panther II may well be the best tank I've ever driven. I've got a 65% win rate in it overall. I thought it was good with the 75mm L/100, but with the 88mm L/71 it's practically overpowered. Well-armored, fast, maneuverable, and packs a hell of a punch. Anybody ever driven an E-50? Cause if it's anything like this I'm gonna love it.

I have the E-50 unlocked. Too many tanks; too few credits. I really want to try its L/100 88mm, though I will probably end up running the 105 most of the time.

Personally I do not consider the Panther II particularly well protected, but that is just because it is a high tier medium where most guns have little problem with its armor. It is a nice machine though. A few days ago I checked my win rate on it and was surprised. 66%, making it my best vehicle with a statistically significant number of matches. It can certainly make itself felt against just about anything.

I have an elited E-50 and yes, it is awesome. It basically plays like a faster King Tiger. Decent speed and acceleration, but your turning radius is huge at speed and going over rough terrain will kill your speed very quickly. Your upper glacis is fully capable of bouncing almost anything out there, but the lower is as always a weak spot, especially with the up-coming hammer-nerf to the E-50 and E-75 by moving their transmissions to the front of the tank. And the new T10 german medium is essentially the current E-50 with the rear mounted transmission. This is because one of the dev's basically said the current E-50 and E-75 don't burn enough. Side armor is nothing special, so you have to keep facing the enemy. The 10.5 gun is glorious; very accurate, quick to aim, and fast to reload for its tier. Solo it is at the mercy of chance and your teammates, but a platoon of E-50's is hell on wheels and fully capable of destroying almost any enemy.

What I've seen of the E-50 would indicate that it's quite good. It's fast and when it sets up in a position it has a painfully accurate gun and enough armor to really mess up an enemy tank without being in that much danger. It's the only tier 9 medium that has enough armor to really trade shots with a tier ten when at range (don't do it with an AMX or a T110 though), and it's actually seeing a bit of a role in CW because it's the only medium armored against medium fire and with batchats running around that's really important. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was overperforming a bit. I love the Patton dearly, but it's finicky as hell and doesn't forgive mistakes that easily, the T-54 just hasn't seemed that impressive for a while, and the BatChat is getting moved to tier 10. I don't really feel that a slight nerf to the E-50, which is currently basically the second place medium is out of line, and that nerf really boils down to just needing to be quick on the fire extinguisher. The high tier tanks have high enough engine HP that I don't notice anything ridiculous like the Hellcat's huge problem with getting its engine shot out from nearly any angle.

It's been like two months since I have played for any length of time, but the E-50 in pubs is something I just don't seem to fear in an IS-3 even when facing a pack of two or three. Sure some of that is just that pubs suck, but fighting three and taking two down nearly solo is odd. I don't think they wolf pack well, since they aren't very nimble and they take up a lot of valuable cover space so in a close fight (which most wolf pack mediums do well in) they fall apart thanks to their over dedication to sniping. That doesn't mean they aren't a good tank, but that in a brawl they don't have the speed, firepower and they take up too much space when corner hugging to do much good.

But take all this with a grain of salt and remember that IS-3's have a beautiful 225 pen brawling gun.

If the E-50 drivers are much good that 225 mm pen gun won't be able to do much against them. A lot of that tank is based around being fast, having good armor and a good gun for flank shots. If you give them to the same folks who show the sides of their Type 59s they're going to get mulched. The thing is those are the same folks who rush in in a T-54, the ones who sit in the open and get their Pattons shot, and the ones who leave their batchats in the open. The E-50 has a lot of advantages for a good driver.

You know, as odd as it may sound I'm actually enjoying the A-20. Probably because it is such a welcome change from the turtle that is the AMX 40. Plus, it may be lightly armored, but its still better than the BT twins are.

I'm still looking forward to the T-34 though, since it is a lot better than the A-20.

Get the quick-firing 57mm gun as fast as you can, is all I have to say. It's the only gun the T-34 ever had that was optimized for antitank combat.

One thing I enjoyed about my T-34 was that I'd already gone up the line with the T-28, so I had the 57mm already.

Oh, get the upgraded turret as a priority. If nothing changed the stock turret has some of the worst view range in the entire game. I just checked, actually, it has the same view range as the MS-1. The MS-1 with the stock turret. Drive behind other tanks to use their spots. And definitely get the 57mm and if you can buy a 75% crew, by tier five you spend enough time in a tank that buying upgraded crew is worth it as is passing the crew between tanks.

Its still a while till I get past the A-20, but thanks for the advice. Nice to know what's coming with the T-34.

(Also nice to have that ever so useful Premium Stuart to make the money for that 75% crew)

I'm very thankful for that thing. Mostly because I could take the 50% repair crew and walk into a T-50 with three guys at 90% and 50% repair on the lowbie I'm working on and absolutely shred faces.

A word of praise for the T-34 from myself as well. With the 57mm "machine-gun" the T-34 can be effectively made into a really good money printer. I have the advantages of elite crew and secondary skills at 60% for all of them and the gun-rammer. Normally I average around 3 to 4 kills per round with it while usually making roughly 20k to 30k silver from a good round. With repairs and ammo at best costing you 4k to 5k and round duration being short when using Tier 5's, making money becomes a fun little effort of running around pub matches and blowing everything I come across into pieces with that fast aiming, nicely penetrating and quickly reloading 57mm. Overall, I've found the T-34 far more enjoyable and profitable than other Tier 5's such as the PzIV with the bathtub turret and long sniper cannon. Just remember to drive this little Soviet death machine like a maniac and it'll do wonders for you

ARGH! MATCHMAKING!

Playing with a friend in a Platoon, no matter what tier we chose, we ALWAYS ended up in the bottom third if not dead last in tiers. I mean, we had Tier3s in a fucking Tier7 match at one point. WHAT THE FUCK?

weemadando wrote:ARGH! MATCHMAKING!

Playing with a friend in a Platoon, no matter what tier we chose, we ALWAYS ended up in the bottom third if not dead last in tiers. I mean, we had Tier3s in a fucking Tier7 match at one point. WHAT THE FUCK?

I had my worst match last night when my Tier 4 AMX 40 got to fight 10 Tier 7/8s, three Tier 6s and us. Worse every single bloody Tier 8 was a heavy, the Tier 6s were arty. I have no idea how my poor tank was expected to compete. So I did the only sensible thing and just left that round.

Mr Bean wrote:

weemadando wrote:ARGH! MATCHMAKING!

Playing with a friend in a Platoon, no matter what tier we chose, we ALWAYS ended up in the bottom third if not dead last in tiers. I mean, we had Tier3s in a fucking Tier7 match at one point. WHAT THE FUCK?

I had my worst match last night when my Tier 4 AMX 40 got to fight 10 Tier 7/8s, three Tier 6s and us. Worse every single bloody Tier 8 was a heavy, the Tier 6s were arty. I have no idea how my poor tank was expected to compete. So I did the only sensible thing and just left that round.

T3 tank/TD max battle tier 6(has to fight T4 light/spg , T5 medium/heavy/TD)
T3 spg max battle tier 8(has to fight T7 tanks/TD , T5 SPG)
AMX40 max battle tier 8
A-20,M5,Pz38NA,T-50,VK1602 max battle tier 10(has to fight T9 tanks/TD , T6 SPG)


Plattons always get the worst possible tier spread.

T-50 + AMX40 tier spread BT6-BT10 = bad platoon
AMX40 + SU-26 tier spread BT4-BT8 = good platoon

Also, it seems like tier 4s get hardly worse matchmaking if at all. All the tier twos are getting dragged into lowbie battles, so the tier 3s are at the bottom of the pool. It gets much, much much, better at tier 4 because you're a tier higher, can reasonably buy a 75% crew and don't really see anything different in terms of what you face. A tier 5 battle is a nasty slog in a tier 3 but really quite fun in a tier 4.

Ironically enough, that battle when I had the A-20 fighting Tier IX's? Well there was a T1...not a T1 heavy mind you...a lowly Cunningham. Talk about horrible matchmaking right there.

That's gotta be a platoon. Platoons' tiers are determined by the highest maximum tier and highest minimum tier of the constituent tanks since otherwise people would be able to drag friends into games they shouldn't be able to get into and roflstomp everything.

xthetenth wrote:That's gotta be a platoon. Platoons' tiers are determined by the highest maximum tier and highest minimum tier of the constituent tanks since otherwise people would be able to drag friends into games they shouldn't be able to get into and roflstomp everything.

About ten patches ago it was possible to drag a Tiger into a Tier III/Tier II match.

Those who fun times, oh shit times but funny.

In celebration of me driving the Panther II again, it's rewarded me with a full 10 loss streak. I watch in awe as my team melts around me, leaving just me against 5 T8 heavies. I laugh and cheer as a pair of utterly invulnerable, absurdly armed T110s take it in turns to dismantle my machine.

Still, it's somehow got a positive win ratio, unlike pretty much every other T7+ vehicle I have. I can score kills, sometimes even a collection, but teams literally melt if I'm on them.

Also, apparently UK heavy tanks are going to be limited to same tier guns, unlike every other heavy in the game. If they're (for their tier) as frontally well armoured as an E-75 equivalent, okay. If not, well, fuck.

Sounds like you need some platooning. I'm mostly busy today but hit me on skype and I'll be happy to delight in your misery since it'll be mine too, and driving a T-50-2 as your team collapses around you is just the right blend of terrible and hilarious.

And Bean, that sounds a lot like the times some of the guys in my clan were talking about where one had a Ferdi, the other had a KT and nobody else had anything to match, so they'd always end up duelling at the end after they killed everyone else.

Try driving an AMX 40 as your team collapses. You just turtle along while everyone on the other team circles and takes potshots. Quite depressing really. Oh well, I would offer to do some platooning myself, but I lack anything about TIV right now (though I do have a PzIII, an AMX 40, the Premium Stuart, and the A-20).

EDIT: I've also seen several clans running around, but not been invited to any. Its weird to see these people talking amongst themselves and not getting the jokes.

I'm at T9 without being in a clan, I hardly think it's essential. Useful, given the platooning, but not essential.

I'm usually lurking in the SDN chat when I'm ingame and have a fair spread of vehicles if you feel the need for hangers-on.

xthetenth wrote:That's gotta be a platoon. Platoons' tiers are determined by the highest maximum tier and highest minimum tier of the constituent tanks since otherwise people would be able to drag friends into games they shouldn't be able to get into and roflstomp everything.

It seems to me that the game actually punishes you for platooning at low level, by giving platoons far tougher matchmaking than each member would face individually. For example, one of my buddies has a Lee, I have a Valentine, these are both tier 4, if we run them together, we get to fight against IS-3's and the like, which the Lee would normally see very rarely, and the Valentine never. An M-37 and a Matilda get the same type of shit. Back when KV-3s were tier 6, my roommate, another friend, and I ran a platoon of them that saw us on the bottom against multiple tier 10s for four or five matches in a row, untill we said "fuck it" and just ran our biggest tanks. At this point my roommate refuses to platoon entirely, because it fucks the matchmaking up so bad. I'll still do it, but that's mainly because I just expect to die in any case, and its not so much of a punishment when you're driving a tier 7 or 8, because you run into mice and such anyway.

Yeah, it's just fucking crazy how badly you get fucked. We were rolling into games where we had literally NOTHING which would be able to touch the higher tier vehicles.

I mean, a Marder II and Luchs in a Platoon suddenly being up against fucking Tigers and the like? And where we were Tier 3s, then the rest were 4, 5, 6 and 7? What a pile of total dogshit.