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Random question, Hawkwings, I noticed you joined the Grille Scouts of America? What're they like? Been wondering since I realized someone other than the goons made a bad German tank pun name.

OH MY FUCKING GAAAWD.

Did some pre-patch grinding last night to get the 13-75 at a discount (compared to it's post-patch costs) with a friend who was trying to get a few final cheaper unlocks too.

It took us nearly 3 HOURS to get ~10k of XP (both of us with full sets of daily doubles to work through).

Matchmaking was just brutal. There were times when we ended up in absurdly unbalanced matches. Tier VIII heavies and us in Sturmpanzers IIs. Or the time that a guy in a T2 MT somehow got dragged into a Lowe heavy match. It was just ridiculous. Our W:L would have been at least 1:3 last night as idiot teammates compounded matchmaking issues.

The Infidel wrote:...I also came across a teamkiller of first class. ... This eminent asshole <cough>wonglon</cough> managed to kill 4 of us with his Churchill, then went ahead and just shot at rocks, the ground and the sky until the other team had captured the base.

Weird stuff. Apparently, you can have the same username on different servers. This guy is on the american server, not the EU one. It's a bit odd, because he had "*_EU" in his name on the testserver, not "*_US"...

Re: xthetenth
GSA is a good bunch by my estimation. I've played company battles with a bunch of them for quite some time, and since I joined a few days ago I've been in the TS and played some more company battles, as well as listened in on clan wars. I really can't judge well because it's the first CW clan I've been in, but they seem to be decently skilled. Plus we had an awesome discussion about politics, terrorism, diplomacy, government, and ethics on TS the other night.

Is the ram ii any good as a xp and credit earner? Likewise t 25 German premium. I could use more credit income...

Don't do the Ram. Or at least wait till 7.5 drops and maybe the match maker won't hate on it so much. The T-25 however is all fun, fast, armored, armed and a good enough silver printer, still far slower than KV-5 or other T8 prem. But it is good enough. Only thing it doesn't do is turning around. So don't, just charge snipe duel. Really proves that if they gave mediums just as much HP as heavies they would dominate despite the lack of armor.

Hawkwings wrote:Re: xthetenth
GSA is a good bunch by my estimation. I've played company battles with a bunch of them for quite some time, and since I joined a few days ago I've been in the TS and played some more company battles, as well as listened in on clan wars. I really can't judge well because it's the first CW clan I've been in, but they seem to be decently skilled. Plus we had an awesome discussion about politics, terrorism, diplomacy, government, and ethics on TS the other night.

Awesome. Having good guys is the key bit in a clan, if you've got good guys who're willing to put in the hard work, the rest should come naturally. Then again I just left my old clan because the good guys who were willing to put in the hard work were sick of losing, but the key bits of the gang are still there.

The Infidel wrote: Weird stuff. Apparently, you can have the same username on different servers. This guy is on the american server, not the EU one. It's a bit odd, because he had "*_EU" in his name on the testserver, not "*_US"...

If your account predates the EU/NA server split, there's a dummy in the database on the other server under your name because they left a copy of your account on each server so you could have your account whichever you picked. I'm guessing they didn't fix the issue some people were having earlier where the dummy got grabbed. I made an RU account to try the test server on a while back, and that accidentally used until I pestered service.

Nephtys wrote:Suddenly, this little Pz38nA, one of the worst tanks in the game, rolls up and fires HE into his treads, detracking the thing. And he keeps doing it, keeping the T95 perma-tracked. I get to the side and just keep firing into the commander's hatch, and take out the T95 after 15 shots. He WON the game, against a T95.

Glorious.

PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:Things like that are why I hate it when someone just quits because of crappy matchmaking. I had a match in my Valentine, platooned with a friend, where I ended up facing off against tier 7 and 8s, I contributed by shooting the tracks off of a Panther and keeping him still for an M12 to kill. Too many people in matches like that focus on what they can't do, "Woe is me, I can't pen the IS-12" instead of focusing on what they can do, tracking enemies, keeping them spotted arty and tds, and providing distractions if needed.

The other day, I made an M103 driver look retarded with my Jumbo, not by killing him, though I did do some damage, but by kiting his ass into the line of fire of an S-51. He was so fucused on removing the irritating little med, that he never noticed the huge artillary cannon pointed at him. If I thought like most people, I would have been like "Fuck that, he's three tiers and a weight class above me, I can't do anything to him."

A lot of players are just afraid to get killed and have to repair their tanks, or to get killed without scoring any kills themselves, so they will let the team down while they try to find weaker enemies to beat up on.

Of course, I don't want to pretend that I'm a model player. I allow my wife, kids, and dog to distract me from the game in mid-mission on a regular basis. But when I'm paying the game my full attention, I try to play properly. I don't see the point of worrying about repair costs; just play the game and let the repair costs be what they will be.

The Infidel wrote:After playing on the testserver a lot, I notice that my patience with idiots is lacking even more than before. I've seen idiots hide side by side behind own arty so that said arty couldn't turn and shoot at the enemy and I'm very tempted to shoot a round into the next fucker who park their ass just behind me and preventing me from backing into safety when I'm standing on a corner shooting at an enemy.

Sometimes teammates can be incredibly frustrating even when they're trying to help. I had an AMX tell me that he would stay and cover my SU-14, which I took to be a good sign. When an enemy (an identical-model AMX) came straight at me, my team's AMX tried to help ... by hiding behind a building and taking a couple of potshots at the enemy AMX while he zoomed around my massive (and helpless) bulk. You would think that he would try to dogfight the guy, but no. He hid behind a building and took potshots as if he was a KV-2 with a derp gun.

It makes you wonder how people can achieve such high tiers with so little understanding.

By the way, this is me on WoT. I know it seems weird that my username is actually my son's name, but it happened that I created another account in my own name and he played it so much that he took it over as his own account, so I took over the account I created for him, and played it myself. Strange, I know.

Darth Wong wrote:A lot of players are just afraid to get killed and have to repair their tanks, or to get killed without scoring any kills themselves, so they will let the team down while they try to find weaker enemies to beat up on.

Also, everyone wants to be the one who manages a breakthrough in their tank and starts rolling up the line/hunting down the SPGs. If you're driving a Tier 6 tank, you're a lot more likely to do this by brute-force smashing through a pair of Tier 4s and barreling on ahead. And good luck doing it against a pair of Tier 8s; even if you have help against them, it's going to be the help doing most of the heavy lifting and getting the glory most of the time.

So, yeah, lack of team spirit.

Darth Wong wrote:Sometimes teammates can be incredibly frustrating even when they're trying to help. I had an AMX tell me that he would stay and cover my SU-14, which I took to be a good sign. When an enemy (an identical-model AMX) came straight at me, my team's AMX tried to help ... by hiding behind a building and taking a couple of potshots at the enemy AMX while he zoomed around my massive (and helpless) bulk. You would think that he would try to dogfight the guy, but no. He hid behind a building and took potshots as if he was a KV-2 with a derp gun.

It makes you wonder how people can achieve such high tiers with so little understanding.

You only need several hundred matches to grind any one tank line up to Tier 6 or 7, not thousands. And even if you're relatively clueless, you'll still win battles a lot of the time, and still get kills a significant fraction of the time. Either you're fighting similarly clueless people, or you latch onto a major successful attack and find something to kill, or... you get the idea.

So even the pathetic bottom-feeders can have at least one or two powerful tanks. Or they can just play slightly more often than the rest of us to make up for less credits and XP per match, and do just as well as us in terms of what tanks they have.

Yeah, the lack of players doing what their tank means they should be doing is a killer. I was fighting an encounter battle the other day in El Halluf, where the rock in the base means that if neither side has pushed onto the oppositions side of the map yet, a tank or two can sit behind the rock and be immune to any fire and unspotted while capping. I was driving my BDR, which is big, slow, thin skinned but has a decent gun/rof and can ruin most tier 5 heavies with a bit of luck, but tends to be pretty breakable. I rocked up, our team were all camping on our ridge letting an enemy scout of some sort cap. And they just sat there. No enemy tanks had been spotted, the base was ten seconds drive away being capped, and you just ficking knew that there were a whole bunh of tanks and TDs sitting in cover on the enemy ridge waiting to fuck up anyone on our side moving in to cap.

And my whole fucking team just sat there. T50s, AMX's, meds and heavies just sat there letting the cap points build. I rarely use chat, and had to actually ask the scouts to scout. Didn't move, one moved across to another piece of cover. Eventually, when cap hit 80 percent I just went fuck it and drove into the base to try and get a shot at the guy hiding, got broadside to the rock, put a round through his glacis and then exactly what I knew was going to happen happened and I was bracketed by about 12 big guns, tracked, lost my driver and commander, lost my engine. Put one more round into the scout and then took another volley and died. No one else had moved, tried to spot. Nothing. I died first without destroying a single enemy tank and still rated myself the most useful player on the team. No one else got a kill, they just sat there and let them cap. It was the most annoying and pointless match I've ever played.

I've also spent entire matches as the only tank of any sort from my side in cover near the centre of the field on the Siegfried line map, just being an observation post trying to alert the entire rest of my team in the city know when a whole mess of mediums are about to scoot around behind them to our base. Rarely get a kill, but its still a useful thing to be doing.

One of my favorite maps is acctually Malinokva with my BT-2. So many noobs that it sometimes feel like I'm playing Space Invaders. The ZiS-19 cannon can penetrate at about 500 meters and with binocs and camonet, I can spot them long before they see me and can just take them out, one by one.

I've sometimes encountered Leichtetraktor with camopaint and lots of kills. It seems like there are several guys who get a kick out of playing a noobtank like a pro and surprise the rest of us. Checked one: More than 400 battles in that thing is impressive. Slow and weak... That's why I like my BT-2. It's a beast among its tier. Fast and with a good cannon, just wish it could aim a bit faster. Tried the 23mm VJa. What a piece of junk! Couldn't penetrate anything with my playstyle.

Mike, too bad you play on the american server. Would love to have a couple of SU-26 battles with you. This is me.

The Infidel wrote:I've sometimes encountered Leichtetraktor with camopaint and lots of kills. It seems like there are several guys who get a kick out of playing a noobtank like a pro and surprise the rest of us. Checked one: More than 400 battles in that thing is impressive. Slow and weak... That's why I like my BT-2. It's a beast among its tier. Fast and with a good cannon, just wish it could aim a bit faster. Tried the 23mm VJa. What a piece of junk! Couldn't penetrate anything with my playstyle.

The funniest example of someone driving noob tanks constantly is this guy. Yes, that's 23k battles. Yes, that's more than half of them in the T-26. Yes, he has amazing stats despite as far as I can tell being terrible in the higher tier stuff. I mean just look at that kill count.

People can definitely get stuff quickly enough that they don't necessarily have to learn before their first big tank. Granted, I'm always running premium and have a type to grind credits in (hooray for volunteering and E3 money), but I've got 8,400 or so battles. In that time span, I've gotten all 6 T10 heavies (I miss being able to just say I've got the tier tens), the batchat at tier ten, more than enough xp and free xp for the M48 (I'm trying to get 14k more xp to get it without free xp for the tank, just some for the gun), a T-50-2, and a T-54 and T30. So it's taken me less than 1,000 games per end-tier assuming I get my 110E4 and T-62A in my next 600 battles. So 2000 games for a tier ten the first time wouldn't surprise me too much even if the player isn't brilliant if they pay enough of their way.

most people blow through the low tier tanks without even hitting 75% crew, if you pimp one out with a 100%+ crew and modules it becomes at least twice as effective.

Marko Dash wrote:most people blow through the low tier tanks without even hitting 75% crew, if you pimp one out with a 100%+ crew and modules it becomes at least twice as effective.

Amen to that. I have 100% crew on my BT-2, binocs, improved ventilation and enhanced gun laying drive. I also have small repair kit and manual fire extinguisher. It helps a lot.

Speaking of BT-2, have I told you about WizardOfOz? I played with him and he had 9 kills. Next battle I played, he was on the my team again (what's the chance of that happening?) so I could tell him what an amazing last battle he did.

I have an elite Loltraktor myself, and it is probably my favorite tank. Namely beacuse I am a good player and its fun to beat up on the newer ones instead of being one-shotted by tanks twice my tier...which happens all to often with my higher tier tanks. As for the BT-2...only tank I've managed to get a Top Gun in, I got 6 kills in it one time. I love how fast it is, and it has a gun that does some good damage, unlike the Stuart.

I am looking forward to that free ELC once 7.5 hits though...just have to wait for the servers to come back up later today to try it out.

Skywalker_T-65 wrote:I have an elite Loltraktor myself, and it is probably my favorite tank. Namely beacuse I am a good player and its fun to beat up on the newer ones instead of being one-shotted by tanks twice my tier...which happens all to often with my higher tier tanks. As for the BT-2...only tank I've managed to get a Top Gun in, I got 6 kills in it one time. I love how fast it is, and it has a gun that does some good damage, unlike the Stuart.

Exactly my point.

Skywalker_T-65 wrote:I am looking forward to that free ELC once 7.5 hits though...just have to wait for the servers to come back up later today to try it out.

European server is up and I've encountered the ELC many times and hate it already. It's (almost) just as annoying as the T-50-2. It's a scout.

I'm lucky in that I already had a AMX 12t, so I get a free ELC. Now it will be my turn to play like those annoying T-50's

EU got 7.5 yesterday, so I decided to take a look on my barely used repository of the Lost and the Damned, and picked up a Super Pershing while I was there.

Oh my. It has taken the epic feat immunity to damage (frontal) to the degree that I accidentally ended up tanking a pair of T30s. *driving along* *BAM* *tank shakes, general sense of 'oh fu-* Wait. 0 HP damage. *keep driving!*

Finally, it's a medium I can get along with. I might use my EU account to try to collect Pershings. At the moment I'm... um, almost at the Sherman.

The Super Pershing isn't really a medium. It has utterly invincible front turret armor, but goes SLOWER than a KV-5! That's horrifying mobility. It's weapon also sucks, being the slightly improved 90mm, but not the Pershing's long-barrel 90mm.

I'm not going down that line, so I don't have to worry about the Super Pershing. The first T10 I'm likely to get is the Leo 1...I hope it at least is good. I'm certainly looking forward to trying it out, that's for sure.

Oh, I've not been driving it as a medium. That would be silly. It appeals to my german heavy driverness.

Gun-wise, I've not had many problems. Well, beyond rarely getting hits owing to the rain of gunfire into the lolarmour throwing my gunner off.

The Super Pershing's a T8 premium, Skywalker. You'll see a few around. Not as many as Types, it's got to be said.

It is? Wow, I was off...then again, I'm still at TIV in the American tree so that would probably be why.

EDIT: I guess I got it mixed up with the Patton...whoops...