4961

Theres usually a warning. The sign that a patch is impending is usually when it hits the test servers. After that, depending on the size and number of changes, you’ve typically got about a week before its going to hit.

4962

Awesome, thanks. I loaded up on modules during the sale weekend, and while I can obviously liquidate them for the price paid, it’s always nice to have more modules, so I prefer to keep them!

By the way, to repeat for anyone who wasn’t aware: “Sale” items can be sold for their purchase price once the “sale” ends, so it’s good to convert any excess silver into modules that improve your tanks. (But be aware that if you sell a “sale” item during a sale you only get 25% of it’s normal list price.)

4963

Mostly, I think it’s just the tank really fits my playstyle. Also, I started playing German heavies after leveling out German TDs, Soviet heavies and Soviet medium lines, so I guess some experience kicked in.

Specifically to the setup, I used it with the Rammer, Stabilizer and Spall Liner. Nowadays, since the HE nerf in the latest patch, the usefullness of the Liner is questionable, I didn’t research it yet, since I am driving French heavies/mediums now and wouldn’t use the Liner there anyway due to its weight.

I always use regular rounds, but carry a couple of gold ones (for those rare moments when the fate of the entire match depends on your next shot) and a few HE ones (for when I need to reset enemies’ base capture).

I carry regular (bought for silver) repair pack, medipack and fire extinguisher (although I don’t really remember being on fire much).

Tactically, I just used all the good advices, like don’t go anywhere alone, use cover, know your enemies’ weak spots, etc.

The only thing that I consider to be a bit of a trade secret is positioning of your tank relating to the enemy. New players just face the enemy. More experienced players use the tank’s optimal positioning (diamond on German tanks and IS-4, straight at the enemy on IS-3 and IS-7, preferrably behind some small bump in terrain to cover the lower glassis).

The secret is that the most experienced players are never static in their positioning. When facing multiple enemies, you need to predict which one will be shooting next and you turn your tank accordingly (and keep your distance to be able to do that). When facing only one enemy, when he is about to shoot, you need to do these little jerking left-right forward-backward movements. This messes up your enemy’s aim, there is a chance they will miss completely or shoot your track without damaging you or shoot your upper glasis/turret instead of the lower glassis, etc. At the very least, most of the time, it delays their shot by a second or two, which gives you an advantage, because you will be shooting more often. This trick saved my bacon countless times.

And of course, one needs to shoot well. If you miss more than a couple of times out of the usual 12-15, you are doing something wrong.

That’s all I can think of. :)

4964

Great tips man, thanks!

I think i got the shooting down, using the long 88 i rarely miss. The wiggling i havent tried, but i ahve seen those big american tank destroyers do that to good success on occasion.

I carry only AP, so perhaps i should start packing some HE. You make a really good case for carrying it. I refuse to carry gold ammo. no match is worth that. principles etc.

The diamond positioning i havent gotten the hang of quite yet. perhaps this is because i ground out the xp for IS4 before starting on KT, and am therefore still used to a very agressive, square up to em and shoot em in the face style of play.

I really love my king tiger tho. it looks awesome, sounds awesome and the gun is quick firing, quick aiming and precise. it also penetrates well. the only thing it doesnt do is one-punch knockouts.

4965

This trick works - SUPER annoying when trying to shoot someone doing this, have missed many times.

4966

The only time when I buy gold ammo (not counting the Clan Wars, of course and my clan pays for those) is when it’s on 50% off sale, I’d buy like 10 for the tank I am about to use for a long time. The thing is though I never remember to switch to gold even when its use is kinda warranted. In the end, I maybe shot it twice on each of my tanks, if that, so I wouldn’t even recommend getting them anymore.

I don’t have gold rounds on my French tanks now but those have another reason against gold - autoloader, you can’t shoot just one gold round, it’s 6 or nothing.

The diamond positioning i havent gotten the hang of quite yet. perhaps this is because i ground out the xp for IS4 before starting on KT, and am therefore still used to a very agressive, square up to em and shoot em in the face style of play.

IS-4 also needs to be used in a diamond position, especially since its tough side armor allows almost perfect 45 degree angle towards the enemy, maybe a bit less. This makes it almost completely impenetrable, the only weak spot is the front wheel and not only the wheel will eat some of the damage received by the IS-4, the track/wheel will occasionally eat all of it. Or maybe it’s gremlins.

About the role of lower tier tanks in a fight. I’ve seen countless examples when a lower tier tank can be crucial to the team success. Yesterday was a great example of it.

My friend and I (both on AMX50-120) were in a tier 9 match, there also was an E-75 on our side. Enemies had IS-4, Jagdtiger, Object 704, a bunch of tier 8 and some tier 7 and 6 at the bottom. Our E-75 dies very stupidly within the first couple of minutes, so does one of our arty, the second (and last) arty follows them pretty soon. We are on defense, of course, and the match is pretty much lost by now.

It was Redshire btw, the northern base. Eventually it came down to two of us (2 AMX50-120), IS (tier 7) and JagdPz IV (tier 6), all damaged, on our side against IS-4 (80%), JagdTiger (100%), Object 704 (100%), Lowe (75%), Tiger and 2 arty. With odds like that I had no doubt we were going to lose.

My firend and JagdPz IV are on the eastern hill. IS and I are on the western hill, we are pinned down on the slope by arty and TD’s so we can’t even move or shoot but I manage to kill the enemy Tiger , which very stupidly moved into town below me. IS-4 comes to the ridge of my hill, our IS starts to annoy (and x-ray detect) him around, IS-4 wants to kill the IS and eventually my friend (AMX50-120) starts shooting at him. IS-4 shoots back but eventually hides on the other side with like 80 hps left. During this firefight, my fellow IS sprints for the top of the hill (detects 2 TD’s in the town downhill, btw), goes around the IS-4, kills it from the back and dies to the Lowe (which we didn’t see before and which was in a hurry to help the IS-4 on that side of the hill).

Our JagdPz IV noticed those 2 TD’s in the town (Object and JagdTiger!), noticed that they are both facing me and sprints towards them! Shoots a couple in their butts, moves around, the TDs start panicking and turning towards him. Both of them. I sprint closer, kill the Object and fall back to reload (30 seconds). JagdTiger, having killed the JagdPz IV, turns towards me and tries to get a shot. My friend, follows the JagdPz’s example, comes down the hill and shoots the JagdTiger in the ass. Lowe seeing that I was reloading is trying to get over the ridge and kill me but he was too late and I killed him. Then we just killed the remaining 2 arties and won.

It was a completely unreal win, all 4 tanks on our side played at their best but those IS and JagdPz IV practically won it for us. Yes, they couldn’t duel those big tier 9 tanks but they’ve played smart, used the environment and, yes, they killed those tier 9 dudes. Without those tier 6 and 7 guys we would have lost for sure.

The moral of the story is, if you are a lower tier tank in a high tier fight, don’t be in a hurry to die, you will be much more valuable at the end of the fight and can pretty much win it for your team.

4967

Bastard promotions lol 50% off on two tanks i had on my wish list, and on modules makes my almost attained goal of having enoug silver to buy an IS4 a distant dream again. From 600k to go to about 2 mill to go :( At least i now own a T29 and a VK3200DB :D

4968

Woot! Bought my T30 last night. Unfortunately, where clan wars strategy used to include T30’s, they’ve been replaced (for the most part) by French heavies. Sigh. Perhaps the new American heavies will play CW better.

4969

nice one hemlock, and right in time for 7.2 too! start of march is the latest word i heard.

4970

Lol, I have the same situation with my E-100. I bought 4 tanks (AMX50-100, AMX50-120, M4E8, AMX13-75) since when I had almost enough money to buy the E-100. The later two were on sale. :)

4971

i just couldnt restrain myself, but them light AMX tanks really really benefit from the enhanced gun laying system. Those 10% off of aim time enable far more efficient use of the autoloader bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-reload system.

Before i mounted it, i often missed many shots or had to wait for the circle to shrink back, making me shoot far less often than theoretically possible. Now I damn near get full speed out of it, despite not having a 100% crew yet.

Its a very expensive mod, but imo worth it.

4972

Crap, I missed it anyway, but mid-January I was thinking, what are the odds the IS goes on sale any time soon? I wrongly decided not very good and bought it. Oh well, now I’m poor.

4973

?? there’s a promotion?

4974

i think they have different ones for .eu, .ru and america.

4975

SWTOR was down for maintenance, so I started playing again after a long break. Sadly I overworked my arm – probably in no small part from playing too much WoT – so I stopped playing I think maybe sometime last summer? Fortunately the arm recovered after several months of being careful not to aggravate it. I think the KV-3 and Panther II are all new since I last stopped playing.

It really is a great game. Couple questions:

[ul]
[li] So do all the French tanks have that cartridge firing ability? Any suggestions on how to handle them? Just stay the hell away from them until they’ve shot their load?[/li][li] What happened to the Qt3 channel? Did you guys just get sick of having to recreate it after every maintenance period?[/li][li] Anything important I should know about, other than the introduction of French tanks?[/li][/ul]

I really need to get my guns upgraded. The T-54 without the top gun really can’t hold it’s own in Tier IX. I bounce off of everything. I think I need another 35,000xp or so. Same thing with the Panther and Panther II. The Panther II feels very sluggish :-( although I don’t think I’ve got the suspension upgraded yet.

Oh also did they ever fix the armor on the “wing” extensions on the T-29 turret or is it still recommended not to upgrade the T-29 turret?

4976

French lights get the rotary magazine/autoloader at Tier V (AMX 12t). Heavies, I’m not sure. Generally, they get six shots then a long reload, so when they back off they’re probably reloading and vulnerable.

Don’t know about the Qt3 channel, as I just stay in my clan channel most of the time and use TS.

Other than that, they did redo spotting during the time you were away, rejigger the hit boxes, and I think the wings on the T29 and the R2D2 on the KV-5 are no longer ubervulnerable points. Arty tracers are back in, sort of; if you’re in birds-eye arty view you can see them and counterbattery, so if you’re in arty, shoot ‘n’ scoot generally. A few tweaks to stuff here and there–T-44 gets a better 100mm, for instance–and new maps liek Swamp and Fjords. Type 59 no longer for sale, and the German/French premiums like the B2 and Hotchkiss are going away from the store as well.

4977

Thanks Wombat.

4978

Oh, and in Clan Wars now the Frenchies at high tiers are all the rage. You’ll run into BatChats (Tier IX medium) and the top end AMX heavies a lot, and they’re pretty vicious. The Tier X French heavies are not only fast, and hit like a dump truck, but are surprisingly hard to kill too–a fair number of folks are predicting nerfs for them, but with WoT you never know.

We’re still awaiting the long-awaited American line refresh–probably early March?–where the T34 becomes a premium and is replaced by something or other, and the T30 gets swapped as well; supposedly, according to the trailer, we’ll also get other additions to the US line. The Soviet refresh, with the IS-4 becoming a Tier X, is goodness knows how long in the future.

4979

The soviet refresh is promised for 7.3, which will be about may i reckon.

4980

Good to know, though with WoT, dates are always sort of speculative. Luckily, I like my IS-4 as is, and by then I’ll have the IS-7 I’m sure.