228 replies to this topic

[Skywalkre]

Given the poor decision made by the balance devs to rework armor to fantasy levels at high tiers where gold is almost required it's hard to get upset when in one of my tier 10 heavies (which I'm having to play for this event) and see I'm getting shot at with gold.

 

When mid tiers, like in my 3002M, it's beyond frustrating to position myself perfectly and continue to get penned only to hit ALT and see the mouthbreather firing at me is loading all gold.  When moments like that happen it basically makes me want to log out for the day.  It definitely reinforces my decision to never give WG any more money.

Edited by Skywalkre, 04 November 2017 - 2004 PM.

[Colin]

I rarely play tier 9-10, I am finding joy in playing my Black Prince and other oddball tanks. You can generally tell within 30 seconds if you are on the winning team or not, just by watching the Minimap.

[Skywalkre]

So apparently they screwed up HE in the 2-3 years since I last played.  The high tier Jap monsters basically fire nothing but it and do way too much damage but everyone seems to know to avoid them, kill the rest of the team, and finish them off last.  I figured HE was just a high tier issue...

 

However, I just had a game in my 3002M where a Pz IV with the 105 (back when I last played someone like that would be spamming gold HEAT) fired nothing but HE at my highly angled and barely showing front.  He tracked me every time and did over 100 damage!  (Keep in mind the 3002M only has like 800 hps.).  WTF?  After six straight shots from him I was dead.  Are you shitting me, WG? 

[bojan]

2nd example would have worked same way since a WoT started.

[Skywalkre]

That still seems excessive.  He was basically doing as much damage from HE splash against my front armor (which is pretty decent for tier 6) as I would with a pen from my AP round.  I don't remember HE being that effective on repeated shots back in the day.

Edited by Skywalkre, 11 November 2017 - 2034 PM.

[bojan]

He pays that with lower RoF. I play occasionally M4A3E2 with 105mm howitzer, 75/76mm guns will pull two shots for every one of mine. And HE was always prefered for 105mm howitzers except in very short period when guns kept their previous HEAT penetration (~150mm) but you could get premium ammo for credits. With 102mm penetration... HE is a choice.

[Skywalkre]

So there's an event going on where I've been playing my VK 72.01(K) and fortunately haven't run into any of those Japanese monstrosities... til tonight.  Immediately loaded gold rounds and got in two perfect, perpendicular shots on his side hull... and neither penned.  I've never looked at their armor models and I understand I likely got two shitty rolls in a row but come on.  That's beyond broken if even their side armor is that strong that a low roll from a gold round (I carry them only for times like these) still won't pen.  WTF are tier 8s supposed to do if they ever run into these things?!

 

Arty is still cancer and the new stun mechanic is worse than whatever we had before.  If you have 3 enemy arty and are the only top tier heavy (in a 3/5/7 setup) or a good player and they have XVM expect to be effectively perma-stunned all game (and your health kit works all of once every 90s... give me a break).  What's worse is you can still die from them.  Had a game in my 3002M yesterday where I died to nothing but arty strike after arty strike from 3 enemy clickers while I was rolling a flank.  If they're going to have that stun mechanic they shouldn't do damage at all.

 

Both of the above just show how a game that could be great still is being helmed by some utter moronic devs.  It's so refreshing to get a game with no arty because you can actually play the fucking game.  Sadly those are rare occurrences. 

Edited by Skywalkre, 14 November 2017 - 2129 PM.

[bojan]

If you fired AP you would have penetrated, Type 4/5 side armor is relatively crappy (I have killed Type 5 with T-44-100 last day), but it works wonders vs HEAT due the being spaced.

[Skywalkre]

Used AP on the sides of one of those beasts today from my VK and it penned.  The issue is a player in one of those things can easily swap sides before I can reload to the right ammo for whatever side I'm facing.  Still broken and just ridiculous vehicles to have introduced into the game.

 

On a different note did the economy get overhauled in the last two years?  I've been playing ok on the VK the last two days but I bleed credits like crazy and I'm not firing gold.  I had a 7k dmg game earlier today, fired nothing but silver rounds, survived and still lost 15k credits.  That just seems broken.  I recall from back in the day if you had a decent game in a tier 10 on a standard account you could make some credits.  It wouldn't be anything special, like 5-10k, but to have a game like I did on the VK mentioned above and still lose credits seems wrong.

 

Also, Live Oaks is complete garbage.  We're talking AW level of bad maps.  Most of the reworked maps I've played are worse but this one is now so one-sided there's nothing redeemable about it.  South spawn has the advantage on the rail side since they can dive into the ditch sooner and whoever owns that ditch wins the game (obviously with all the mouthbreathers that are playing I've seen some rare north pushes through town win... but they're pretty damn rare).  Of all the times I've played it since coming back I've seen a north side win the rail side and the map just once. 

[bojan]

I don't play a lot of tier 10 in random  (benefits of clan), but for today battle with 1k spotted, 3.5k done damage on AMX-13-105 (so "decent, above average, but nothing really special" game) I got 31.8k credits with premium and would have got about 14.6k w/o. I did not fire a single premium round..

Depending on what you run on tanks (big first aid/repair/fire ext.), this can amount for a lot, even single large kit would have set me into - w/o prem (which was just as what was before). I stock on those during discounts and there were recently missions that gave lot of those for relatively easy tasks.

 

Heavies and TDs earn a bit less that meds and lights for a same damage done since you pay part of income to a whoever was doing spotting.

Edited by bojan, 17 November 2017 - 1428 PM.

[Skywalkre]

So I settled on the VK 30.02 (M) as my go-to tank.  It actually has decent frontal armor when angled for its tier, good enough dpm and speed, and decent vision.  Good without being OP.  My plan was to grab some German premium mediums for credits and to grind the crew faster since I won't be getting premium time.

 

So I grabbed the Shwarzpanzer 58 during the recent event.  It's... bearable.  Ok mobility with terrible dpm and armor.  It has decent gun depression, though, which is its one redeeming quality.  I also traded in some mid-tier premiums a while back I never play for the Panther 8,8.

 

What.  A.  Mistake.

 

That thing is absolute shit.  There is nothing redeemable about it.  It has the same armor as the VK 30.02 (M) but 2 tiers higher.  Mobility is below average (poor acceleration and turning with average top speed).  The gun is rubbish (no accuracy, depression, aim time, nothing over its competition).  So you can't maneuver in it effectively.  You can't ever rely on its armor.  You can't use its gun because the pen coupled to shit accuracy means even if hanging back and being ignored you'll either miss the weak spot on the target or simply not pen.  As such even as a premium you can't make credits with it.  I'm really tempted to retire it because it's getting to the point where it's not worth the x2 daily to play a PoS tank.  How in the world has this thing been allowed to be left like this for so long?  The presence of this in the game just reinforces their balance team needs to be fired.  Thank goodness I actually didn't spend any real money on it.

 

More signs of how bad it is.  With their new ranking system I'm 59th on the server with mine sitting at a 47% w/r and 1300 dmg.  The top guy right now only averages 2000 dmg in it and is the only guy on the list to do so (as comparison I'm 56% w/r and 1400 dmg on the Shwarz and that doesn't even put me top 100 for that on the server).  Why hasn't this thing been rebalanced yet?

 

/facepalm

 

I actually threw a brand new crew into my T34 this last weekend (ground out some credits to buy a bunch of consumables) and averaged about 4x the credits than I did in my Panther 8,8 with its 4-skill crew.  That says something right there.  From what I've read the only option for someone like me who won't spend money on OP premiums or premium time is to stick with high-pen tanks like the T34.  This last weekend seemed to reaffirm that.  You simply can't compete at higher tiers with all the gold spam relying on smaller weakspots with low-average pen guns.  As such I'm looking at rebuying the Rhm down the road and throwing my one good German TD crew in it. 

Edited by Skywalkre, 29 November 2017 - 0157 AM.

[Skywalkre]

Got into a 3/5/7 match in my T34 with tier 10 tops.  All three enemies that fired at me were spamming gold.  No superheavies on my team at all (our 10s were a Bat, clicker, and 13 105).

 

Gotta love high tier play on NA these days...

[Paul G.]

I find my Super Pershing is a great prem credit earner. I play it like a heavy on T8 matches...and get steel wall more than not. Gun is good enuf to not need gold cept in T10 matches. I also play the Super Sherman as a TD. Give it a net and binocs and camp. Gun is good enuf to pen most.

[Skywalkre]

The T34 is working out fine for credits.  It's just getting predictable.

 

To my frustration on most of the maps depending on your tank there's only like 1-2 spots to go and be effective.  If you get there, play smart, and have patience you're basically guaranteed good damage (and credits in the 34).  It's just not very... engaging gameplay.  Maybe my memory is failing me but I don't recall the old maps being that way.  At the same time given this is the case it's fairly easy to tell how your team will do if folks don't go where they need to (though this could also be folks are used to certain classes being in certain spots and simply don't have the capacity to adjust to abnormal deployments).

[DB]

I think that's an inevitable consequence of there being only a limited number of maps. It's difficult to see how to get round that, unless there were to be a breakthrough in random map generation.

[Skywalkre]

Right.  Back when I last played there were also more maps and the revisions, which made them worse, hadn't happened yet.  Was probably the combination of them being new enough coupled to so many that the 'right way' to play them hadn't disseminated throughout the playerbase yet.

 

I still don't see how we couldn't have randomly generated maps.  Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord had them almost twenty years ago and those randomly generated maps were actually better than the custom built ones we get in WoT.  I wonder if generating them isn't the issue but rather loading them onto potato machines that the average RU player uses is?

[Skywalkre]

Fucking WG...

 

Mid-tiers are about all I can tolerate in this game now.  Low tiers were always awful and high tiers on NA are just gold-spam cancer.  WG went ahead and ruined mid-tiers as well.  Sold the E25 yesterday as part of their advent sale.  It's already one of the most played tier 7s out there and now they just flooded the server with another OP vehicle.  Some matches in the last two days have been 50% E25s.  Heaven forbid they balance the little fucker.  Nah... let's just sell it, piss off folks without it, and then we'll rake in more money later when we sell OP tier 8 premiums and folks want an upper hand on all the E25 drivers!

 

Fuck their business model.  This is why I don't give them money any more.

[Skywalkre]

The joys of limited maps, limited useful spaces to go, and clickers.

 

In two games with my Tiger P crew (one in the Tiger P and the other in the VK 7201) I'm top tier and the only heavy in a 3/5/7 MM spread.  I go to the 'heavy' spot and subsequently get focused by the 2-3 clickers on the other team for the entire game.  Keep in mind they stun you for over 10s.  If they stagger fire (which they were) I was basically stunned for over half the game with my only means to counter it a Large Health Kit with a 90s reload.

 

What mouthbreather on the dev team is leaving this as is?! 

 

(BTW, we won both games.  I did my part, soaked the clicker spam, and still managed to push.  It's just not fun.)

[Rick]

No Brooklyn class light cruisers in this game? Nor Tone class heavy cruiser? 

[Harold Jones]

No Brooklyn class light cruisers in this game? Nor Tone class heavy cruiser? 

not in World of Tanks.  They are also not in World of Warships right now.