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Darth Wong wrote: You were defending the behaviour of the German tank whiners, and none of them are asking for all the historical weaknesses of the German tanks to be somehow simulated in-game. They want all the win, and none of the fail.

I said they had a valid point, one singular. A point where the strength of German tanks had been reduced for gameplay reasons. I did not say they were entirely justified in everything they said or half justified, a third justified or any other ratio. I brought up a singular point that German guns are de-tuned in game compared to what they were historically.

And second
@PeZook
That actually did happen during the preliminary stages of the Battle of the Bulge, captured Sherman tanks manned by German crews fighting alongside Tigers backed by Soviet artillery guns from the 41 campaign that were shipped west to fill out the various line defenses then re purposed as mobile arty again when German guns came up short. And yes I know your joking but of all the zany tank combos you could have picked you picked the crazy combo that actually happened.

Historical Weaknesses! That'd be a horrific game.

Soviet Tanks now have a 50 meter view range, and cannot see teammates, nor do they get radios. Also, the IS-4 may randomly kill either the gunner or loader whenever it fires.
The Ferdinand has a 25 percent chance of catching fire for no reason at random. The Maus will bog down permanently and wreck bridges.
Sherman Drivers need to spend 12 days riding in a boat before each game loads.

Nephtys wrote:Historical Weaknesses! That'd be a horrific game.

Soviet Tanks now have a 50 meter view range, and cannot see teammates, nor do they get radios. Also, the IS-4 may randomly kill either the gunner or loader whenever it fires.

Don't forget if you stop your engine your strip the gears on the KV series

Nephtys wrote: The Ferdinand has a 25 percent chance of catching fire for no reason at random. The Maus will bog down permanently and wreck bridges.

The Maus will also be only half constructed, you have to finish building it before each battle.

Nephtys wrote: Sherman Drivers need to spend 12 days riding in a boat before each game loads.

Nahh, every single hit will set the Sherman on fire and those that don't jam the turret ring, and those that don't do either of those two things will provide you with a free skylight in the tank.

I don't even think the german tank players are the worst complainers. At least they have one good point about their guns. Fuck the American players that complained about the T110 before it was released because it has a similar armor scheme to the M103 and not a 'superior' wedge scheme like a german tank. These complainers jumped up right when the T110 was unveiled. Sure it was going to be the fastest, with a good gun and all sorts of other tricks, but no they could point at one little schematic that might've had wedge shaped armor.

And WoT said they would get the wedge shaped armor eventually (remodeling the tank would take awhile). But the T110 is dominating already, and based only on the good things the T110 was always going to have. Stupid idiots complained without the tank even being available for play.

Don't forget that the Panther/Tiger/King Tiger will break down every other battle and refuse to move until someone kills it. Oh, and the Matilda will take an hour to cross the map, and when it does, it won't have a good enough gun to kill anything.

Or that the PzII will die if someone BT-2 or up so much as looks at it funny.

(It is fun to point out how much it would SUCK if they went full on with the historical accuracy.)

EDIT: Ninja'ed...yeah, not just German players complain about these things. Everyone has complained about something with their tanks by now.

Nah, historical realism is great, which is why they should add a historical game mode option. You get to have one broken down Tiger against 15 T-34s or Shermans, just like real life!

The Vortex Empire wrote:Nah, historical realism is great, which is why they should add a historical game mode option. You get to have one broken down Tiger against 15 T-34s or Shermans, just like real life!

I was actually thinking that the only way to model the real nature of super-expensive complicated tanks versus hordes of simple cheap tanks would be to remove your ability to choose your tank. Otherwise, no matter how expensive you make the big tanks, there are players who will grind to get them (or simply pay real money; I was stunned to see a guy on the WoT forums who says he buys fifty thousand gold every month), and then gleefully run around smashing n00bs and ruining everyone's experience. They could have a "historical mode" where the game randomly assigns you a tank, so you might have the super-tank, or you might have a cheap low-end tank.

Darth Wong wrote: I was actually thinking that the only way to model the real nature of super-expensive complicated tanks versus hordes of simple cheap tanks would be to remove your ability to choose your tank. Otherwise, no matter how expensive you make the big tanks, there are players who will grind to get them (or simply pay real money; I was stunned to see a guy on the WoT forums who says he buys fifty thousand gold every month), and then gleefully run around smashing n00bs and ruining everyone's experience. They could have a "historical mode" where the game randomly assigns you a tank, so you might have the super-tank, or you might have a cheap low-end tank.

That's "only" two hundred dollars a month which depending on your job is nothing, the most expensive premium ammo is 15g a shell so 200$ buys you over three thousand shells easy and that's if your using artillery with premium which is some of the least cost effective premium shells, heavy tanks run seven to ten per shell. And that's without counting consumables and premium consumables which I'm guessing this guy is running. Either way I could see him running a Hetzer with nothing but premium ammo and the 105mm and totally ruining people's day when the little Hetzer penetrates their Tiger to the front and ruins half their modals.

Yeah so it does not count that much to be a dick full time in addition to whatever dick job that guy has be it injury lawyer, adjuster, HR or something even more vile.

On the subject of artillery, I've really pretty much forgotten that artillery is a major thing, because between positioning and movement habits I very rarely get hit with much more than a splash or two with any frequency. Just thinking about where arty is and moving when they might be able to see you to make you an unappealing target helps a ton, arty doesn't aim for splashes so if they don't think they'll be able to do more they won't try.

I would love to see historical battles, although the sort where you get randomly allocated a tank might be a bit tricky to make work considering they had to pull a game mode and some of the new game mode maps because while the supertesters had been able to figure them out easily and play good games the general player base couldn't.

On the german players... I really dislike the vocal sort who tend inevitably to downplay all their strengths and play up the other nations' strengths. I actually had to argue that the E-50 is a better sniper than a T-54 because the useless hull armor, worse accuracy, very slow aim time, low damage per shell and bad layout for peeking aren't serious problems. I would like the pen on the short 88 increased, because playing a 130 pen gun going for a 200 pen gun is painful and could seriously use some middle ground. Hopefully they really do tighten the tiers because that'll help a lot.

finally hitting Tier V-VI for the Russian and German Tanks, right now I've got the PzIV fully upgraded with the nice turret and everything, and am loving it (75mmL70 is awesome!), I have a T-34, (Not sure if I should keep grinding that tech tree) a T-49 US TD, a T III German arty, (meh) and I just swapped my SU-5 for an SU-8.

I think I liked the SU-5 better. The aim time was shorter and holy hell basic SU-8 ammo is expensive! like 6-7 k!

Couple of questions. I unlocked the T-150 and the KV-1s lines, and am unsure about what to go for next. Also, I am wondering what the best strategy is for a free-to play player. (I intend to stay one) I have five garage slots, and am gradually grinding the lower tiers. I am frustrated with the Tier 4-5 matchmaking, and am concerned with the prices for shells and repair on my Tier V artillery. what is the best way to play the game free to play?

I'm thinking of having a couple of high tier tanks for fun and good mm, and I've kept the Premium Stuart I got for joining the game, but I'm not sure how to keep it "affordable" and for me to play higher tier tanks if the costs keep going up exponentially and the MM is capricious.

Thanks.

Well, myself I find that the KV-1 is really cost-effective: I'm not all that good with that tank, but can average 10k credits a round of pure profit with only a very minimum amount of effort. Premium tanks are also generally moneymakers because they're cheaper to fix up, so if you want to stay free, keep a few moneymaking tanks to pay for running the higher tier, expensive ones.

And get ready for a horrible, horrible grind after Tier VI when modules start costing 20k exp to research

xthetenth wrote:On the subject of artillery, I've really pretty much forgotten that artillery is a major thing, because between positioning and movement habits I very rarely get hit with much more than a splash or two with any frequency. Just thinking about where arty is and moving when they might be able to see you to make you an unappealing target helps a ton, arty doesn't aim for splashes so if they don't think they'll be able to do more they won't try.

That's certainly true for higher-tier artillery. When I play my SU-14, I tend to ignore enemy units that move around a lot, because I don't want to waste a shot. I can only uncork so many shots per game, so I tend to go for the bigger tanks that feel invincible and expose themselves for extended periods of time. My favourite target is the Lowe: in my experience, Lowe drivers are most likely to think they're invincible. I've even seen Lowe drivers take a direct hit and not move even though they weren't tracked, thus allowing me to nail them again despite the slow reload time on my gun. I don't know why Lowe drivers seem to be so unusually dumb about avoiding artillery, but there you go.

Mind you, when I play my SU-26, I'll often fire at moving targets just because the thing shoots and reloads so quickly that I can do this and be effective.

I would love to see historical battles, although the sort where you get randomly allocated a tank might be a bit tricky to make work considering they had to pull a game mode and some of the new game mode maps because while the supertesters had been able to figure them out easily and play good games the general player base couldn't.

If they were to do the historical battles with randomly assigned tanks, they would have to make it a user-selectable game mode instead of just randomly dealing it out to people when they click on "Battle".

On the german players... I really dislike the vocal sort who tend inevitably to downplay all their strengths and play up the other nations' strengths. I actually had to argue that the E-50 is a better sniper than a T-54 because the useless hull armor, worse accuracy, very slow aim time, low damage per shell and bad layout for peeking aren't serious problems. I would like the pen on the short 88 increased, because playing a 130 pen gun going for a 200 pen gun is painful and could seriously use some middle ground. Hopefully they really do tighten the tiers because that'll help a lot.

I get the feeling that they've either never tried playing other nations' tanks or they're just lying when they say US and USSR tanks are so much easier to play. I enjoy playing my Panther tank at least as much as my T20 or my T-43 which are both at the same tier. The 198mm penetration and fast firing rate easily make its gun the best of the lot, and while the other two are obviously more maneuverable, I can't see any reason to feel jealous of other tier-7 medium tanks when I'm in my Panther.

Similarly, while the Tiger tank is not as invincible as its legions of fans would like it to be, it still has a gun which is superior to its same-tier competition. Yes, the Soviet 122mm guns have more alpha damage, but so what? Alpha damage is academic if you miss or bounce, both of which are more likely with the 122mm gun which has less accuracy and penetration. Its low-tech shells are also outrageously expensive.

Darth Wong wrote: That's certainly true for higher-tier artillery. When I play my SU-14, I tend to ignore enemy units that move around a lot, because I don't want to waste a shot. I can only uncork so many shots per game, so I tend to go for the bigger tanks that feel invincible and expose themselves for extended periods of time. My favourite target is the Lowe: in my experience, Lowe drivers are most likely to think they're invincible. I've even seen Lowe drivers take a direct hit and not move even though they weren't tracked, thus allowing me to nail them again despite the slow reload time on my gun. I don't know why Lowe drivers seem to be so unusually dumb about avoiding artillery, but there you go.

You know, I noticed that exact same thing ; Which is pretty funny because the Lowe is not a stunningly well armored tank. I can in fact poke holes in it using the US 76mm gun. And because they tend to expose themselves a lot, and won't dance as much as other heavies, pumping three or four rounds into them is easy.

I used to fear them because they have the whole "I'm a Tiger, only BETTER" aura due to their name and (vaguely) their shape ; But while they have a good gun, the armor is pretty underwhelming.

I think its because a premium tank Lowe players didn't necessarily "earn" it?

Anyway I got the E8 over the E2 and I'm dying horribly because I'm playing it like my PzIII and it's not working out so well lol.

I'm back to grinding my M4 with the derpgun to get teh E2 and then I'll see which I truly prefer.

And also because the idea of a sherman collection amuses me.

And then I'll have to get back to my VK3601 and grind for the Tiger...

Anyway, I've never really gotten used to using the 105 for the M4 and the 75 for the PzIII but am trying it now, for you long term players which do you favour and why?

I mean between the M1A1 and the 105 and the 5cm and the 7.5cm

With the E8, don't get into sniper duels with German tanks. Just don't

EDIT: I found the key to the E8 is to dance around a lot. Your gun is fast-firing and actually has decent penetration if you aim for weakspots ; So fire off a couple rounds and immediately scoot. I usually run around the battlefield like a rabid terrier, biting people's ankles. Whenever I try to stand and fight I usually get pasted, because while the E8 can take a couple hits, it usually means losing modules. Also: all Shermans have pretty decent gun depression, so despite the high profile, they can make decent use of all those dimples and ditches that litter almost every map.

The side effect of pissing off heavies with your stings is that a careless driver may try to get back at you (seeing you as a weak target) and expose himself to other people on your team ; I've drawn more than one tank out of really good cover this way.

EDIT2: On my basic M4, I think I prefer the 105 howitzer slightly, due to its high alpha strike and hilarious capacity to blow up KVs in one shot if you manage to place your shot JUST RIGHT. However, you should be careful not to get into a brawl - the Sherman's fragile and the 105 reloads rather slowly.

However, it makes the Sherman suck at range ; While you can clip a PzIV and take off a good chunk of health, you WILL lose a duel at range almost certainly. So I prefer to go places where there's plenty of cover I can run between (not all maps have those, and of course if you run into a bunch of heavies you're fucked...)

On the Jumbo...once, I used it to stop a Stug III, two T-14s and a PzIV. I killed the Stug and the PzIV at medium range (bouncing every shot from the PzIV), then the T-14s drove right in my face and kept pumping shell after shell after shell into my front armor while I calmly unloaded the 105 into their machine gun ports. If the dice rolled my way, I'd have won, too: as it was I destroyed one of the T-14s before the other one finally got in two penetrating shots that killed half my crew, broke my gun and then finished me, but he had something like 14% health left after the ordeal, and my team won.

Darth Wong wrote:I've even seen Lowe drivers take a direct hit and not move even though they weren't tracked, thus allowing me to nail them again despite the slow reload time on my gun. I don't know why Lowe drivers seem to be so unusually dumb about avoiding artillery, but there you go.

Almost all of the German tanks have vulnerable engines and transmission, and you might be damaging them with your artillery shots often enough to immobilize tanks once in a while, even if the tracks are fine.

Probably some of both.

BTW; Tigers and especially German TDs very often wreck my engine RIGHT THROUGH THE FRONT of the E8.

Yeah. Again, German drivers complain about this all the time; their transmission is in the front of the tank, so if you hit the ground in front of them with splash damage (or just spall through the glacis with a big HE round), there's a big hitbox where they can take engine damage and possibly catch fire. I think it may make their experience with artillery a bit more annoying than usual.

Exactly, WoT seems to model your transmission as just part of your engine, which sucks for those tanks that have it mounted in the front.

The aforementioned issues with the Lowe are not unique. I see them with other high tier premiums, especially KV-5s. Whenever my friend and I run our Ferdis, we rejoice if we see them on the enemy team because they almost always suck. Easy kills.

I do not know if they are still happening, but for a while there were fan organized "historical battles." The allowed tanks and modules were restricted, and you had to sign up for a slot in advance. I think they were basically just specialized training rooms.

That is likely the cause of some of my complaints about arty. I have an E-50 and E-75, both of which tend to suffer horribly from engine damage and my M103 has paper armor also on many angles so arty blasts right through. It also just seems silly to me to use anything close to historical armor schemes when you have SPG accuracy that was frankly impossible until the advent of artillery fired guided munitions and even then, the current accuracy is tremendously nerfed compared to what it was like in beta where firing through windows of buildings to hit tanks was the normal experience.

The good/bad old days of Beta artillery when three Hummels in a platoon could devastate the entire enemy team before anyone got close and getting two kills on roundstart was typically because tanks started with a shell loaded back then. Everyone hated that even arty players because of the fact that arty tended to spawn in the same spot so round start consisted of instant counter battery fire between each side.

Yeah, Lowe and KV-5 Drivers are the worst in the game. Chances are, they didn't 'earn' their vehicle, or have much experience driving a high tier heavy. It also doesn't help that the stats of the Tier 8 Premium heavies are a bit weaker than their non-premium versions.

But regarding tank quality, each line has it's gems and it's stinkers. But in general, USSR Tanks are easier to drive for newer players, since they all focus on hard stats instead of soft qualities. They're all fast, generally very powerfully armed (if not accurate), with good rate of fire, and well armored on the higher end. These are all properties a mediocre player can take advantage of to some level of success, unlike the much harder to take advantage of qualities of good agility, view range, aimspeed and the holy grail of soft stats, Gun Depression.

Nephtys wrote:Yeah, Lowe and KV-5 Drivers are the worst in the game. Chances are, they didn't 'earn' their vehicle, or have much experience driving a high tier heavy. It also doesn't help that the stats of the Tier 8 Premium heavies are a bit weaker than their non-premium versions.

But regarding tank quality, each line has it's gems and it's stinkers. But in general, USSR Tanks are easier to drive for newer players, since they all focus on hard stats instead of soft qualities. They're all fast, generally very powerfully armed (if not accurate), with good rate of fire, and well armored on the higher end. These are all properties a mediocre player can take advantage of to some level of success, unlike the much harder to take advantage of qualities of good agility, view range, aimspeed and the holy grail of soft stats, Gun Depression.

I don't think someone has to be a particularly skilled player to notice gun depression (or the near-total absence of it on the Soviet line). I suppose someone might not be aware of it as an important stat if he only plays one nation's tanks though, and it doesn't help that the in-game tank summaries don't mention it so you have to look at the wiki.

Gun depression would be even more important if it weren't for the high-powered artillery. A lot of really good back-of-hill sniping spots tend to make you a big fat target for artillery.

Speaking of hull-down shooting, I am often amazed at how many T29 drivers don't seem to know the weaknesses of their own tank. When you have a tank with absurdly high frontal turret armour and relatively weak body armour, you want to stay hull-down as much as possible. I've seen T29 drivers who had a hull-down position actually coming out of it to attack me when I back off, so of course I put a shell right through their now-exposed lower hull armour. Idiots.

First things first: The 7.5 test server is up and it's probably the best place to go if you want to try before you buy because there's 10x xp, so you can get any tank in the game real quick.
http://worldoftanks.com/news/1415-versi ... blic-test/

Darth Wong wrote:

xthetenth wrote:On the subject of artillery, I've really pretty much forgotten that artillery is a major thing, because between positioning and movement habits I very rarely get hit with much more than a splash or two with any frequency. Just thinking about where arty is and moving when they might be able to see you to make you an unappealing target helps a ton, arty doesn't aim for splashes so if they don't think they'll be able to do more they won't try.

That's certainly true for higher-tier artillery. When I play my SU-14, I tend to ignore enemy units that move around a lot, because I don't want to waste a shot. I can only uncork so many shots per game, so I tend to go for the bigger tanks that feel invincible and expose themselves for extended periods of time. My favourite target is the Lowe: in my experience, Lowe drivers are most likely to think they're invincible. I've even seen Lowe drivers take a direct hit and not move even though they weren't tracked, thus allowing me to nail them again despite the slow reload time on my gun. I don't know why Lowe drivers seem to be so unusually dumb about avoiding artillery, but there you go.

It's slow as molasses and the drivers are more often inexperienced. I only fear the Löwe in my Type 59 because it's got the pen to make my tank point and click and the lower glacis which is pennable is small for the Type to hit. Even then if I can close I don't fear it at all.

Mind you, when I play my SU-26, I'll often fire at moving targets just because the thing shoots and reloads so quickly that I can do this and be effective.

I actually curse at low tier arty far more than high. High tier arty is a lot more manageable because it aims slowly enough and has predictable enough arcs and locations that if you get walloped by it it's really likely your fault or the artillerist's fault. And screw it, I'm cool with losing a tank if some guy gets in a really unconventional spot and lays a shell into me and I don't notice.

I would love to see historical battles, although the sort where you get randomly allocated a tank might be a bit tricky to make work considering they had to pull a game mode and some of the new game mode maps because while the supertesters had been able to figure them out easily and play good games the general player base couldn't.

If they were to do the historical battles with randomly assigned tanks, they would have to make it a user-selectable game mode instead of just randomly dealing it out to people when they click on "Battle".

I've seen it mentioned that pretty soon you'll be able to pick which mode you want to play in random battles, although companies will face all the types because they have better organization.

On the german players... I really dislike the vocal sort who tend inevitably to downplay all their strengths and play up the other nations' strengths. I actually had to argue that the E-50 is a better sniper than a T-54 because the useless hull armor, worse accuracy, very slow aim time, low damage per shell and bad layout for peeking aren't serious problems. I would like the pen on the short 88 increased, because playing a 130 pen gun going for a 200 pen gun is painful and could seriously use some middle ground. Hopefully they really do tighten the tiers because that'll help a lot.

I get the feeling that they've either never tried playing other nations' tanks or they're just lying when they say US and USSR tanks are so much easier to play. I enjoy playing my Panther tank at least as much as my T20 or my T-43 which are both at the same tier. The 198mm penetration and fast firing rate easily make its gun the best of the lot, and while the other two are obviously more maneuverable, I can't see any reason to feel jealous of other tier-7 medium tanks when I'm in my Panther.

Well, the USSR tanks are easier to play decently. That's because they're harder to play well. That good all around armor isn't exceptional from any direction like the German armor is, but it isn't as weak from any given angle. I really like the Panther, although there are times I'd trade its accuracy and pen for the much smaller silhouette and higher per shot damage of the T20, but there's just as many times when I'm very thankful for my ability to throw shells downrange from 500m and have a good chance of hitting. I'd never trade either for the T-43, that tank's terrible. It trades all the advantages of the T20 for some armor that won't bounce much anyway. Hopefully now it has a faster aiming gun and more speed to make it distinct.

Similarly, while the Tiger tank is not as invincible as its legions of fans would like it to be, it still has a gun which is superior to its same-tier competition. Yes, the Soviet 122mm guns have more alpha damage, but so what? Alpha damage is academic if you miss or bounce, both of which are more likely with the 122mm gun which has less accuracy and penetration. Its low-tech shells are also outrageously expensive.

I loved my Tiger H. Of course it isn't invincible, it's facing off against its peers. The thing is its best armor historically is still its best armor and that's range. The really nice thing is that the other really good tier seven heavies (T29 and IS) are notably deficient at long range. The T29 has the armor to be able to slug a bit at long range despite the mediocre accuracy (incidentally the way the listed value works is that the listed value is the standard deviation and the reticule is two standard deviations, so that's where the really rare out of reticule shots come from and why the reticule looks bigger than it should be). If the IS tries to snipe, it's going to be ineffective. The Tiger can use range and good positioning as a shield, the IS needs to be getting in close and likely wants to be getting into flanking positions with its mediocre armor, which is a lot more high risk high reward as far as actually playing well goes, but that 400 damage is impressive. I'd say a lot of the USSR tree's reputation for ease of use comes from the tanks currently on the KV-3 tree, since they're rather forgiving with good all around armor and flaws which require a bit of game knowledge (armor riddled with weakspots, slow aiming guns) to really notice and exploit. One thing I really notice a lot is continually selling aiming time short as a huge advantage. It's huge being able to poke out and take an accurate shot very fast without showing off your hull for long.

The 7.5 matchmaking chart has come out.



It's... beautiful.