5461

Oh, I agree the mid tiers are fun. I tend to like mediums in that area, and arty, rather than the (mostly mediocre) heavies. I just don’t like the KVs, period, and while I’ll eventually backfill some mid-tiers, I actually prefer high tier matches, except for the cost.

5462

What’s the best Soviet credit farming tank if you aren’t on premium?

5463

T-34-85 with the 100mm is pretty good from what I hear.

KV used to be the king, but I’m not sure how the KV-1 is for making cash.

Su-85 is probably the best now. Decent MMing and a simply insane gun for the tier.

5464

I don’t know how it is for credit farming, but I’m not really a fan of this tank. It’s got a better gun than the T-34, but it’s still got the T-34’s very weak hull, and it’s slower than a T-34. As far as Tier VI mediums go, the T-34-85 is my least favorite (and I believe I’ve played all the non-premium Tier VI mediums at one time or another).

5465

I’m just going off of a buddy of mine thats never had premium. He plays the T-34-85 and other lower tier tanks for money and likes the 34-85 for it. The gun is pretty insane for its tier and has cheap ammo, so you’re looking at a likely high return. I didn’t mind the tank, but I preferred the T-43 because of the increase in speed.

I’d lean towards the SU-85 though. The 107 in tier 5 is just insane and you’ll penetrate anything you see and one/two shot pretty much everything. And if you get tossed into a high tier match you can hurt/kill anything in the game with that gun short of a Maus. Hell you can handle tier8s frontally without many issues if it comes to it. Good credit farming is generally a matter of doing a lot of damage with cheap ammo/high damage shots. The KV-1 with the 57mm is probably a solid money maker. The ammo is basically free and you shouldn’t die too easy, but heavies tend to have higher repair costs.

5466

Didn’t they nerf the income of the SU-85? It still might be worth playing for credits though.

5467

The T-34 and T-34-85 are my favorites of the russian medium line. The T-43 feels like a downgrade after the 34-85 because while it has more armor and hitpoints, it’s comparatively sluggish and has the same gun, so you’ll evade less while doing the same damage.

I kept an elited SU-85 around for a long time, very fun tank to play.

The feature I really wish they would add are more clan wars battle times. I went to join a clan for doing clan wars and found that pretty much every clan requires availability between 7pm-10pm which is when 95% of the action is, and that is the only time of the day I’ll never be able to commit to for the foreseeable future. Where are the 10pm-1am battles? It would be like if WOW only had raiding and arena during a 3 hour stretch each night. It’s ridiculous.

5468

IS-8 is fast becoming one of my favorite tanks. It has speed and has a beast of a main cannon when fully upgraded.

5469

It’s certainly a finesse tank, with the paper side armor! It gets penned by arty HE rounds if they can hit something other than the prow. But yeah, great mobility for that awesome gun.

5470

Yeah, I’m trying to like the Lorraine but I’m failing. The T59 seems to suit my play style better (i.e. suicidally aggressive).

5471

Yeah the Type 59 can take a massive beatdown and keep on running. I’ve only had mine a while, but it had a few times where I have run through a group of 2-3 tier 8 heavies, taken a few shots and sailed on pass.

Su-85 is an absolute monster with the top gun, if you get towards the top of the matchmaker you can look at the list and reliably think “Yep, I can one shot that guy” for 80%+ of the opposing team.

Referring back to the Tier 7 hate, so far I am enjoying my T-20 medium :-) It was mostly unlocked though, only needed 16,000 odd xp to unlock everything. Its fun running around with a 90mm, one of the few times with a medium you feel like you can actually dish out some damage. I’ve had at least one time let loose in the artillery park to rampage so far as well :-)

On the mid-tier (~6) mediums I have played VK3601H, Easy-8, and T34-85.

VK3601H is my most successful on average XP and is basically a super Pz IV or a junior Tiger. It’s a great tank, but obviously rewards the patient sniper box style of play, rather than charging forward. it generally loses out in a close quarters brawl / knifefight, it just doesn’t turn quick enough. The short 88 is great for its tier. (Its less impressive on the VK 3002DB, but that is another story)

Easy -8 is the most “FUN”. It zooms and booms - quick moving, corners/turns well, decent gun that fires / reloads fast. Get this thing in close and circle strafe! Have taken out lone Lowe’s a few times.

The T34-85 was my least favourite. It’s not particularly nimble or fast moving and the gun is “OK”. I don’t think I ever really figured out the play style for this one. You cant play a sniper (too inaccurate, slow reload) and it cant “knife fight” like the Easy -8. Moving at the back of a pack or seeking flanks is probably the best way.

I didn’t really notice much different in earning rates, but didn’t really pay close attention. I suspect the T34-85 is probably right as a good earner, with cheap ammo and ample opportunity to actually damage. Easy-8 is fun, but times you can damage might be limited.

Still no love from me for the arty, but thinking of jumping back in with a Grille. Is there any standout best / stupid / worst artillery line out of German / USSR / USA?

5472

CW timing sucks for a lot of folks. The times for battles seem to be a function of where on the map the battle is (some areas are in different time zones depending on what territory you’re fighting in) and how many people put in chips for the battle (the more people who are in the tournament, the longer the damn thing goes on). So, say, if you’re invading the Canary Islands landing zone, your first battle is probably going to be around 9-9:30PM Eastern, and if you win through you won’t take the territory until after 11 probably. But if you’re defending you probably won’t be done until midnight or thereabouts. For folks in the Eastern time zone it gets prohibitively late, and pushes it for working folks in the Central time area. My clan has a few West Coast players but more in the east, plus a coterie of Australians, and it’s not that often we can fields a full team for late events. So we often take a territory, then lose it because no one is around to defend.

One issue is that the territories that have earlier battle start times are either way too heavily contested for us or, more importantly probably, have start times too early for Pacific and Mountain zone players. So it’s a choice of definitely excluding West Coast players, or inconveniencing East Coast players, and we have to do the latter usually.

As an aside, though there are still the occasional teams that field a bevy of E-100s, most of the time all I see now is T110E5s, IS-4s. and IS-7s, with a smattering of Bat.Chats or AMX-50Bs. Once in a while a Maus lumbers up, and there’s often a few heavy TDs lurking about, but most of the mobile battles are fought now by the American and Russian heavies it seems.

5473

Yeah, the problem is that the map has territories with so few time slots. My best play time is 9:30pm-2am these days, but clans I have talked to want availability earlier.

5474

Hey, that’s my clan! :)

Obviously, I can’t talk for the entire clan but none of my clanmate friends are using gold in random or company matches. Even with all the gold coming from clan wars, it gets too expensive. We used to take about 5 gold rounds into matches but kept forgetting to switch to them when needed, so eventually stopped doing that as well.

So we often take a territory, then lose it because no one is around to defend.

I had the most fun in CW when we were doing this to be honest. At some point last year we decided that we needed to practice a lot in order to become competitive and we’d apply for 2 landings and fight all those tournament battles. Once you win a territory, you still have until the end of the hour (before the system updates) when you can apply for the next day landing even though you already have a territory. So we would do that and would just give away what we’ve captured. Fun times.

5475

Yeah, I am sure it is unfair to generalize, but our experience on the NA server with RUS has not been pleasant (speaking of my clan that is). But that is hardly a scientific conclusion!

5476

Why unpleasant? Was someone rude or disrespectful? Or is it strictly related to usage of gold rounds?

Which clan are you in, BTW?

Heh, I hear complaints about gold users every freaking day and do get some of them in my address and even claims that I hacked the game. :) I believe these complaints to be unfounded in 99% of the case (and in 100% when they accuse me).

It’s just the game has become extremely random allowing for some freaky coincidences and when stuff like that happens people scream either “Gold user!” or “Hacker!”.

And, of course, some people also got extremely good at the game too. Sometimes I see (or do) stuff that makes me go “wow, that was nice!” afterwards.

5477

Oh, I personally don’t care about gold rounds–hey, if you have the cash, use it, no problem. I’m in The Amazon Basin (clan tag [BASIN]. Unfortunately, and perhaps purely coincidentally, our run-ins with RUS have too often involved very rude and abusive individuals, sometimes just arrogant and insulting, sometimes downright offensive. Again, though, it probably was just a few individuals who showed up statistically more frequently than normal and who made an impression. Hell, I’m sure even though we try to be decent some of our members probably have done stupid things too.

As for gold rounds, you’re right that it’s not possible really to tell for sure, and everyone seems to scream “he’s shooting gold” when they’re hit; our experiences and experiences related to us from allies informed my opinion but in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have called RUS out specifically. I was looking for an example to help explain the performance of Types.

5478

One thing I will say about WoT’s NA community - it contains the most vile and abusive players I have ever experienced in an online game. Not just chat but also behaviour while playing a battle. And not just by random non-clan puggers. Some of the worst antics have been by players in well known clans.

What do these players expect. They join a PUG match and expect Clan Wars level playing skill. It’s not going to happen.

5479

This. The XVM mod has only exacerbated this. I’ve seen people call out their own teammates–including high-tier arty–and berate them as useless and “worst player ever” before the match even starts, because they had a low win ratio. I’ve seen, often, people who get killed start reviling the other players in the foulest language perhaps I’ve ever seen in a video game–and I’ve been playing online since the GENIE/CompuServe days.

5480

The XVM mod should be banned. But that will never happen.