World of Tanks

Bought myself a TOGII* as an xmas present to myself. It is ridiculous, but in a fun way. Most annoying thing is that it seems to be a magnet for TK'ers - out of 7 games last night, in 2 I took deliberate damage from teammates.

Yeah, I bought the TOG for a giggle. It dies a lot quicker than I thought it would. I was hoping it would soak up a few big hits at least. I pretend that it's an aircraft carrier and yell out commands about launching scout planes or (more usually) launching life boats. The MM is kind to it but it has very little to recommend it.

Well, how quick were you expecting it to die? I mean, it has 1400 health, which is about 60% more than other heavies at its tier, so you definitely can soak a few big hits. Apparently the engine deck is large enough that you can park a T-50 on it, although you can't just cruise around with a passenger because you both continuously take damage if you do that.

Of course, anything with an engine deck that large is also going to be arty bait.

I would love to have been there when you learned that.

I was expecting to live a bit longer than what I normally do. You get absolutely no shells bouncing, so that 60% extra health evaporates much quicker compared to your better armoured brethren at the same tier. The gun is utter crap against heavies at the same tier and your slow speed means that flanking shots are more a matter of luck than tactics. I'm finding it hard to find a decent trade off here.

Re: the Premium discussion from a week ago. I bought a JagdTiger 8,8cm and it is terrific fun. High-penetration, high-accuracy gun (although low damage) and if it ends up on the higher end of the tier it has some very tough armor, shots bounce of it all the time.

If anyone wants a premium and likes playing turretless TDs, it's a great choice. Been a while since I've played, but I seem to recall I was pulling in 40,000-60,000 net credits per match (with Premium subscription active), which I hear is pretty decent for a Premium tank, although the Lowe and KV-5 may be better money earners.

I found a nifty site that, once you've added yourself by entering your username, tracks all sorts of your stats over a couple of different intervals.

http://www.mywotstats.com/

at first it only shows your total stats just like in your user interface, but it apparently starts populating the more granular stats once you've added yourself.

the android app will show you a bunch of stats over the last 24 hrs, 1 week or 2 weeks, as well.

Ok, I'll need a few opinions here. I have enough XP and credits to get one of the following- Batchat, T110E5 or the T62A. I'm a very aggressive player who hates skulking and sniping from a distance, so I'm wondering if much finesse is required to play a batchat properly. I know I've groaned a few times when a friendly batchat dies in the first minute and I'd rather play to my strengths. I presume the T110E5 plays like the rest of the heavy line- finding hull down and trying to take most shots in the turret whilst the T62A is like a stronger, tougher T52.
I'm fine with playing either of those but I'm curious about the batchat. A well played one of them is a game changer.

The Crusader, it mocks me.

Win rate on UK med/ light tanks that I have >50 games with

Cruiser MkI - 62% (noob hunter)
Cruiser MkIV - 65% (tank just suits me)
Covenanter - 57%
Matilda - 55%
Valentine - 57%
Crusader - 38%
Cromwell - 50% (ugh, should be higher, this is a great tank)

52% on Churchill I, which is higher than my 49% on KV1

That's funny, as the Crusader is one of my favorites in that line. I strongly considered keeping it instead of selling/upgrading.

The Bat plays like the T-54 in terms of maneuverability and camouflage, but it can't bounce a hit, it is faster, accelerates faster and has enormous burst damage potential. It has German-like gun depression, so don't expect to do much hull down fighting.

BUT ...

You have to ask yourself this: can you restrain yourself from taking shots with low chance of hitting? Because you're going to have to develop some serious firing discipline. The reason for this is one of the major weaknesses of the Bat, its 30 round ammo capacity. This means you got 6 clips (of 5 rounds) and then you're a glorified scout. And if you think you'll rarely run out, well, as an aggressive player like yourself, I ran out more often than I'd like. More than any other tier 10 medium, the Bat is reliant on the team because it cannot afford to dump all its ammo into targets early and then watch the rest of the team collapse, helpless to do anything to help (you won't even do much damage ramming arty).

All that said, it is still probably the best tier 10 medium in the game, at least for me, because it can indeed turn the tide of battle all by itself. If you can develop further discipline to play more of an opportunistic role, people will hate your guts (on the enemy team) because you will come out of nowhere and finish off a 60-70% tier 10 heavy before it can fire back at you more than once. AND you can play a highly effective scout too.

The thing is, the Bat can't bounce and it has around 40 seconds of inter-clip reload. So you have to avoid putting yourself in a situation where you don't have a way to get to safety after emptying your clip. Failing to do this is probably the leading cause of death for Bat Chat players. If you're concerned that you won't be able to do this, the T-62A is probably a better option. This is also a second (and more immediate) reason to need good fire discipline--if you have three rounds in your magazine, taking on an enemy heavy becomes a bad proposition, but you also can't spend all your time running away to reload.

So, I got so sick of my T34 premium (too slow and gun aims/fires too slowly) that I caved and spent half of my remaining gold on an FCM50. This thing is like a bigger, faster Panther II with slightly more gun depression and penetration (219mm av.). Can't bounce 99% of incoming hits, is huge, thinks it's a heavy tank, seems to have no camouflage to speak of, but packs a great gun with a very nice rate of fire. Did I mention that this thing is freaking fast? This is probably as close as a premium tank can get to a "real" one. Typically premium tanks have grossly insufficient engine power and/or guns with very long aim times (see Type 59 or T34), which to me have been deal breakers (until I broke down and bought a T34 out of credit grind necessity), but the FCM50 sidesteps those weaknesses, and the ones it does have one can learn to deal with.

How does the FCM50 compare directly to the AMX 50 100? I stayed away assuming I had something similar already.

I was tempted but $50 is too much for me nowadays to buy a premium tank. I was also worried about the armour and survivability- I've realised that I'm a brawler, not a sniper.
The T59 and Lowe are my credit making standbys.

They are actually very different vehicles: the AMX 50-100 is significantly less maneuverable, accelerates more slowly (and has worse passability), has much slower aim time on the gun, worse gun depression (-6 vs -8) and, of course, is an autoloader tank.

Back when I played the French heavies, I hated the AMX 50-100 with a passion and even used some free XP to move on to the AMX 50-120 ASAP, which became one of my favorite tanks ever. But the FCM is nothing like the autoloader French heavies. It's actually a medium tank in all but name - a much faster and more responsive but larger Panther II, with a better gun and gun depression.

Also keep in mind that module damage can be severe on the FCM, I can go several battles and only get my tracks damaged, then every three battles or so I end up I losing multiple modules and crew. But, this is the most fun I'm ever going to have driving an (intentionally sub-par) premium tank. I now wish I hadn't spent the money on the T34, which is just sitting in my garage.

in my experience module damage is severe on every french tank. When you say medium in all but name it sounds like it plays like a tier 8 version of the is8 but with good gun depression

Churchill III (the LL one) @ 50% off is a good silver earner, especially if you have Russian heavy crews to train

I love my superpershing, but it's such an odd tank to actually use. I got 7 kills in a tier 8 game with it last night, though! Not entirely sure how nobody in the entire match bothered to flank me even when alone, but hey!

I'm still 50/50 on loving or hating my T-54. It's in theory a fun tank, but suffers heavily against the jump in penetration values from T9 to T10. Against anything even tier I can put up a pretty solid fight. Anything a tier up will pen me at any wonky angle without even trying, and the entire thing is made of freaking ammo racks.

I heard somewhere that it's slow enough that it kind of plays like a heavy tank. Tough armor, but slow. True?

Just comically spaced armor. It's slow as hell and completely vulnerable from any angle other the dead front or any range other than "medium"

If you're close in, it has easy to aim for weak spots on the hull and turret that any tier 5 gun can pen. If you're far enough that they can't snipe you, you'll eat anything up to a tier 10 gun with zero damage hits the majority of the time. Down side: 170ish pen gun, so you need to be closer than you'd like to hit a heavy in it's weak spots. But what most SP drivers do that causes them to hate the tank is trying to brawl in something that is trivial to flank at close range. Let your allies protect your sides and you'll draw a silly amount of fire. I've had a few games where I ate thirty rounds while every hostile tank tried to murder me and completely ignored my allies who were doing all the damage.

Module damage was a non-issue for me on the AMX 50-120, and on the tier 10 Batchat (was kinda bad when it was tier 9 though). Agreed though that it was pretty terrible on the previous French machines.

I have not played the IS3 in a very long time, but from what I remember, it's still nowhere near a medium tank in terms of mobility and speed. What I'm trying to get across here is that the FCM50 just flies: it is about as maneuverable and fast as a fully upgraded T-44. In terms of combat capability it's a more powerful Panther II (more penetration, better gun depression). It's as large as an E50 with the armor of a Tiger (yes that bad). So imagine a combination of those tanks.

The only thing about the FCM50 that resembles a heavy is its size (and thus camouflage) and in-game classification.

Fortunately, the terrible module damage on French tanks is partially offset by their unusually low health, meaning you could very well be dead before module damage has a chance to impair your performance.

For anyone curious about what an FCM50 can do in the right circumstances, here's a replay of my Ace Tanker Badge game in the tank:

http://mwreplays.com/replay/6RIDMFCF8CR0/

Note the turret jamming - happens every other game, but thankfully doesn't do much (with high repair skill) except force a bit of downtime, as the repaired turret is more than usable.

And another one ...

http://mwreplays.com/replay/SGT3F36UPIW8/

... where I got stupid near the very end and died, but we still managed to squeeze out a victory, just barely.

Cool, I didn't know that was you, Ender_Ward. I have run into you many times :)

I thought this was pretty neat:

The kicker is:

Nice to see that they're putting some of the money we spent to historic purposes.

People accuse them of being Russian-biased, or just being in it for money, or whatever, but I think it's pretty clear that they are actually huge war machine nerds.

Plus, FREE T-SHIRTS MOTHERFUCKERS. Though two of the designs offered suck, and the third one (the certain winner, last I checked) isn't all that great either.

Ditto. :)

Yeah I can't believe how this laughable conspiracy theory just refuses to go away. Especially when over the last year the American T110E5 heavy and the French Batchat have pretty much ruled the game (as well as the Batchat artillery, more recently).

And now there's the T57 Heavy, which I understand will be the "solution" to the Batchat problem.

The T34 (iconic Russian medium tank) has all but vanished as well, pushed out by 105mm gunned PzIV and Shermans. T43 always was bad... Russian tanks I see alot of are the T50, KV1, SU26, KV1S, but the mediums - rare, rare, rare. WOT seems to have consensus on what the "good" tanks are, and unless a new line is opened up and & rush of people going up that tree, can be a bit static. On the bright side, by playing rarer tanks, you know their abilities better than they know yours...

I had a nice long winded post, but it basically boils down to this: the game is becoming more mobile (batchats and the like) due to crazy high pen guns being added. This is very noticable in the french line, which has some absolutely silly pen numbers. This is even worse due to some of the gold rounds in the game (I've seen a rash of T69s using their gold rounds, which take the thing from 173 pen to 300 pen. 300 pen on a T8 pretty much spells out exactly why blocks of armor like german and russian heavies are slightly out of fashion)

I've argued since closed beta that armor is overrated, while mobility and firepower are the most important aspects of a combat vehicle (in WoT). When I came back recently after a six month break from the game, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that more and more people are coming to the same conclusion, especially with gold rounds for credits.

Speaking of premium rounds, being able to purchase them with credits is one of the best things to ever happen to public battles. All those people incapable of understanding the difference between side/rear and front armor strength, or what flanking means, who would normally die while doing zero damage, can now just switch to premium rounds and actually hurt the enemy a bit before they perish. Though as the post-battle screen shows, many people still die while doing no damage, very early on. The new premium rounds craze is also pushing people away from ridiculously slow vehicles like the T95 that rely entirely upon their armor, and which I've always felt were more of a liability for a team than a strength.

Is their any way to tell if you were hit by a premium round from the stats screen? Thorn mentioned they have a blue trail, but i haven't noticed.

I've never seen a trail difference. I'd like to see stat breakdowns by ammo fired (not just HE/AP, but add the premium rounds in) just to answer personal questions about people having high pen rolls vs using gold rounds.

Personally I like the credits/gold rounds in that it evens the field a bit compared to pay to win, but I dislike them intensely in their design. Some types are useless (HESH is pretty meh compared to the buff HEAT gives over normal rounds for example) and others are simply WAY out of line and completely negate any negatives to the tank (HEAT eliminates that HE is mitigated by heavy armor, it's simply an HE round with full AP pen), and some of APCR stuff simply doubles the pen.

Basically, gold rounds were always too good and were why clan wars used entirely different tanks than the normal popular pug tanks. Now they're still way too good, but a more balanced availability.

When you fire, there is no difference. When someone else fires gold rounds, the trail is indeed blue. Though if you're close enough, and the round travels fast enough, you won't have time to notice.

No way to differentiate from the stat screen, as far as I know.

Or they shoot me in a direction I'm not looking =)

I don't think this is true. All the tanks that are top performers in clan wars are also top performers in pugs, and insofar as things shake out differently in pugs it's because certain vehicles have limitations (having nothing to do with penetration) which only become important when one side can just play defensively the whole match and nobody is running into stupid deathtraps.

Anyway, you will still bounce gold rounds if you're sloppy. The only vehicles that can point their gun vaguely in the direction of a heavily armored tier 10 and expect consistent penetration just because it's a gold round are the FV215b and tier 10 TDs. This actually matters quite a bit in clan wars, since everything is sped up.

Kinda bummed I can't tell, I play more mid-tier (5-8), so I don't think I'm actually encountering gold rounds that often, but it would be nice to have a record. Heck, it could be interesting to know what type of rounds hit me over the course of a match, and what damage they did.

Agree. Of the trifecta (armour/ mobility/ firepower) the last two are now in the ascendant. If anything, HP are now more important that armour - you are likely to get penned anyway, so how many hits you can take is important, now seems to be the main survivability difference between tiers