5521

The thing is, you do get a surprising number of bounces, ricochets, zero damage “penetration” hits and misses with the BatChat. So while you can potentially do 9000 damage, you never actually do.

Compare that with the AXM50-120, for example, it has the “potential” to do 40x400=16000 damage in a battle. What’s my average damage per battle? Just over 3000. Why is that? Same reason as with the Bat - even with 267mm penetration on the 120mm gun, you still get misses, bounces, zero damage “penetration” hits and ricochets.

There have been instances where I couldn’t finish a nearly dead heavy (a 7% KV3 just yesterday, for example) because half of the 4 rounds in my AMX50’s magazine resulted in zero damage penetrating hits, from dead front, aiming right at the center, from about 200 meters away. The first two go through the target like a hot knife through butter - the others pretty much do nothing.

On the AMX50-120 (with 40 rounds each at 400 average damage), or on my Patton, or any tank other than AMX13-90, it hurts but is not worth tearing you hair out. On the BatChat which only has 30 rounds to play with, every ricochet, bounce, miss or zero damage hit is very painful.

But you’ll probably come around to my way of thinking after getting to the Bat. It isn’t overpowered precisely because of this limitation. But it’s an incredibly frustrating one - I wish they would nerf it in some other way, make it bigger, or have less acceleration, or longer reload times, but give it more ammo.

You are completely right, the damage dealing capability of the Batchat is entirely front loaded, if one utilizes it to its full potential from the start. And then the team has to pick up the slack. I’m sure in Clan Wars that’s not an issue, because you’re fighting together with people you know can tie their own shoes, but in public matches I’ve had to “rescue” the team countless times before in my Patton, or E50, or T-54 and so on. On the Bat it’s very difficult to do so when you’re down to your last 6 rounds or less.

The Patton is the best tier 9 medium (for me, in public games), because it has amazing gun depression, tiny turret, excellent mobility, excellent gun, neutral steering and plenty of ammo. Even enough to carry some HE!

With the Bat, you don’t take any HE ammo, all AP. That means you don’t get the luxury of finishing a 2% E-75 from the front as it’s charging you. On the Patton, I duck behind a hill, quickly change ammo types, and finish that near-dead heavy off by peeking barely over that same hill. Even my Lorraine carried 6 HE rounds (one magazine), because it had the ammo load to do that. The BatChat is a one-trick pony - it’s just really good at that trick. :)

Just for comparison, here’s how my Bat stacks up in damage per battle against the other tier 9 mediums:

Patton: 2220
E-50: 2331
T-54: 1803
BatChat: 2062

And compared to similar firepower tanks:

AMX50-120: 3040
Lorraine: 1916

Is the AMX50-120 more overpowered than the Bat? Surely not! But it does show how unrealistic it is to expect the maximum damage load to take place in battle when my Bat does 2062/9,000 and the AMX50-120 does 3040/16,000.

All I’m saying is that, in public games, if you had to make me choose to drive just one tier 9 medium, my first choice would be a Patton, the second an E-50, the third a T-54 and the last the BatChat. They’re actually all really good tanks (unlike the disparity in the lower tiers), but the Bat has the least staying power.

Maybe it’s dependent on my play style, but if you’ve had to learn not to rely on the team, staying power is important.

5522

Of course it’s dependent on your playstyle.

I would never dream of doung such exhaustive numerical analysis on my tanks, i play them far more intuitively. For me, a tank that rewards agressive play works best in that i have most fun with it.

Type 59, T-44, amx 13-90 really suit me, as well as soviet heavy tanks. I aint no sniper, and i rarely ever make it to the end of the match. I like to get up into the enemies’ face and kick his teeth in. I like to think im good at it, because i do have a positive win percentage.

Often just getting a heavy to turn his turret away from what he was aiming at can sway a match. Sometimes making an end run around a ferdi and tearing it the fuck up enables a 15-3 win. But about just as often my death is quick, senseless and useless.

Isnt it great that the game is complex enough to allow such diverse playing styles ? even with just the two game modes it currently has.

5523

Well the exhaustive numerical analysis constituted of taking the total damage done and dividing it by the number of battles. Not exactly rocket science math. :)
And really I only wanted to see whether or not the BatChat stands out very much among my other tier 9 mediums and whether it even approaches the theoretical 9000 damage per battle. Turns out it doesn’t do either.

And I hear what you’re saying about aggressiveness and fun - I actually can’t play a tank that can’t move and accelerate quickly and in which I cannot be aggressive. My most played tanks are all mediums (and French fast heavies plus Hellcat) for that reason.

So many other tanks are powerful (IS7, T110, etc), but they’re all so slow. I can’t stomach them. And if it’s not fun, what’s the point?

Seriously, Wargaming, where are the British mediums? :(

5524

Me too, that’s why I play mostly mediums.

5525

I agree with Supper on the Batchat.

Its certainly good, but its lack of ammo means you pretty much can’t ever afford to snipe because you’ll run out of ammo. Shooting on the move is a terrible idea at almost all times. And you can never stand up to more than one tank unless everyone is almost dead. Add in that one or two bounces or 0% crits can easily equal you dying because of the reload and its far from OP.

Its definitely a good tank. A very good tank even at times, but its also a one trick pony. If you run into a couple Type 59s you’re pretty well fucked. With any other Tier9 med you can hold your own and probably even win. Batchat is going to lose. You can probably kill one, but then you’ll die. With my Patton or T-54 I’ll eat them both alive.

But it makes up for all its weakness when you spot 3 tanks sitting at 25% or less and charge in and kill them all in 10 seconds.

5526

Have you guys tried playing TDs? Because a lot of those don’t have more than around 30 shells. I’ve definitely gotten them to the point where I’m low on ammo and have to think carefully about taking a shot. My Hellcat has exactly 30. My StuG has 36. Also my IS with 100mm only has 36.

5527

IS will never reload fast enough to use all 36 shots though.

I’ve played lots of TD’s up to Tier 6/ 7- Stug, Hetzer, Slugger, Wolverine, Jagdpanther, JpIV etc.

The only one that I EVER remembering runing out of ammo is Wolverine, because that has a crazy fast gun - twice as fast as the IS 100mm.

I have not played hellcat though, its the next tank I am buying.

Also thinking of getting back on the French Heavy tree grind, I still have some naff tanks to go though I think. BDR G1B is next.

5528

Of course we’ve tried TDs. In the beta I had an Object 704 and a JagdTiger. In the release I got as far as the Ferdinand on the German line and T25AT (also T25/2) on the US line, before abandoning TDs in general, as they were nerfed into oblivion after the 0.6.4 changes to bushes and firing. They were still usable the way people play them these days, but they no longer fit my play style.

I still have the Hellcat, though, and yes, I’ve repeatedly ran out of my 30 ammo on it. There were a few battles which I finished by ramming the enemy artillery to death. Vehicles like the Hellcat are so mobile that one can easily position himself in a target-rich environment. You then go through shells very quickly, especially with the fast reload on that 90mm. It’s so much fun that it quickly rose to the top of my tanks played list. The M36 Slugger is a pale shadow, in comparison, probably because the Hellcat is more of a medium tank than a TD.

I also remember the ISU-152 only having 20 shells for its BL-10, and having to use those conservatively. Then the Object 704 got an extra 10 rounds, IIRC, and I no longer had to worry about taking less-than-sure shots, and it paid off. And I don’t remember ever running out of ammo on the JagdTiger.

The thing about ammo loads, is what when you have plenty of it, you end up taking almost every opportunity to deal damage. It’s not always going to be successful - you don’t have a good chance of hitting that barely visible target 600 meters away, but when you have plenty of ammo you lose nothing by trying (aside from the meta game cost in credits). You’d be surprised how often that wild shot at an IS3 from 500 meters away ends up setting the thing on fire and killing it.

In my personal WoT philosophy, taking risks and being aggressive pays off more than it doesn’t. For this one needs mobility, survivability and plenty of ammo. :)

5529

Someone mentioned the 3002DB, suprisingly, that’s my tank with the highest experience gained in a single battle. And I think I had the mini derp on it. I believe I just whacked a bunch of small tanks to get to the arty and blew them all up, but it’s been a while.

Arty also tends to have limited ammo, but reload time is so slow that it’s usually not an issue. But man, does it ever suck to run out of ammo with artillery. What do you do? Scout?

5530

Higher tier TDs generally have longer reload times so ammo capacity rarely comes into play. My M18,though, yeah, you can shoot up a storm in that. Then there’s my arty with 16 rounds…

5531

That’s what I normally do–just scout for the remaining arty. But I have capped the enemy base single-handedly after running out of ammo.

5532

Yeah, you have fantastic stats (better than mine!) and to be honest, my own win rate of 65% in the Patton would certainly lend a lot to your arguments about its superiority! :) That said, the traits that make the Patton so strong in random matches aren’t useful at all in Clan Wars; its great gun and turret depression takes a backseat to the T-54s sloping, profile, and speed.

Just don’t want people getting the wrong impression when saving up to buy tanks like the Patton, E-100 or GW Type E. The Patton is one of my favorite tanks, but I was a bit chagrined when I blew a ton of free XP on tricking mine out only to find that they never get chosen in clan battles. It is a great tank otherwise for random play; you can easily swing entire flanks yourself by playing hill games with tier X heavies, and you don’t have to be afraid of wasting shots when on the move.

5533

So I’ve got the Patton unlocked, although I’m still short about 800,000 credits. I have a T-54 and I mostly don’t use it, because I got tired of playing against top tier heavies that I mostly can’t hurt, and I feel like I don’t pull my weight in matches with it. I realize that percentages with relatively small numbers of matches can show a lot of fluctuation, but my win % with the T-44 was 57% in 282 matches. On the other hand my T-54 is running only 47% on 248 matches. Admittedly I only very recently unlocked the top gun, which I thought might improve things, but my win % has actually gone down since then. IIRC I’ve actually dropped from about 49% to 47% since I got that gun.

Am I likely to have the same issues with the Patton? Or do you think it plays substantially differently enough from the T-54 that I might enjoy it?

Or am I just being a wuss with the T-54 and I need to man up and figure out what’s wrong with my T-54 play, because I should be able to get a similar win % with my T-54 as I’ve got on my T-44. Does anyone know at what point a medium starts counting as the same tank value as a heavy?

FWIW I really love the Pershing, and in general I really like the Sherman/American line of mediums as I think they provide a nice mix of decent offensive abilities, reasonable maneuverability, and are fairly tough (at least for medium tanks). I still play my Easy-8 regularly and sometimes my M4 as well. Really like the T-20 a lot too.

5534

I’ve seen empty arty scouts/cappers win games, actually. It’s especially hilarious when all the tanks die and it’s arty vs arty left, they typically send the fastest one to cap or scout.

Regarding the Patton, the play style is completely different from the T-54, aside from the considerations common to all medium tanks (flanking, trying to engage side/rear armor and getting to advantageous positions quickly, etc). With the T-54 you rely on your small size and armor to get you through. With the Patton you rely on your incredible gun depression. You don’t bounce things, ever, but you can do things with that gun that no other tier 9 medium tank can.

For example, you can continually troll high tier heavies, putting shots into them but never letting yourself be shot back - your tiny turret that only peeks over a hill for a second, just long enough to fire, is a nearly-impossible target to hit back.

Another example is the hill on Malinovka (Campinovka as it’s still inaccurately called). With the Patton, you can fire from the hill into the tanks below without exposing your hull. The T-54, E50 and BatChat can’t do that, they can only hit things much further back.

The Patton, as was mentioned earlier, has an uncanny on-the-move accuracy, which makes it an incredible arty hunter or brawler. I’ve hit targets ~300 meters away while going at full speed - and with the new skills/perks to assist that it’s even easier.

The Patton can also do some absolutely jaw-dropping moves right from the start. For example, on Prokhorovka, you can immediately rush for the middle ridge, park yourself behind a conveniently located bush/rock combination, wait 3 seconds for your binoculars to kick in (I used to have Coated Optics but eventually Binoculars became indispensable) and spot half or most of the enemy team dispersing to the tracks/hill and the road. Typically among them you’ll find one or two enemy arties (or some tempting heavies). At this point I see if friendly arties, who were paying attention, are attacking anything and I hit what they are targeting (if heavies) or not targeting (arties).
The beauty of this move is that the bigger the enemy artillery, the less camouflage they have and the easier to spot they are - and of course the more important to kill.
Just beware of enemy scouts making the same move - in that case you’ll be spotted early (you do have Sixth Sense, right? On ALL your tanks, right?) and your job becomes scout interception/denial of entry.

The more one plays the Patton the more nuances one discovers.

But, as CaldeDan mentioned, none of this has any use in Clan Wars, where medium tanks are glorified scouts. And as I understand it, the French heavies (the only heavies I can stomach) don’t get taken in Clan Wars at all. The T-54 was the default scout before, and now it’s the BatChat. Is that picture accurate?
That, by the way, is partly why I never wanted to get involved with CW, since the tanks I love to play the most are either not used at all, or utterly wasted (from my point of view).

5535

Okay, I’ll give the Patton a try. I played another 5 matches with my T-54 and lost 4 out of 5. One of the 5 I lost I even earned a Boelter’s award (7 kills). Somehow this tank just loses matches for me. Not sure why.

5536

Skills and equipment make a pretty big difference on the T-54, so if I may offer a few tips (I’d like to think I know the tank well, with over 250 battles in beta and over 200 in release)?

Skills:

Commander MUST have Sixth Sense. When that light bulb goes off, you move immediately to cover or just move (vs artillery, randomly, chaotically). That skill is the most powerful of all which exist in the game, and has saved my ass countless times. It is also invaluable because it tells you when you have not been spotted. I have it on every, single, one, of my tanks, it is that good.

Then there’s camouflage. The T-54 has ridiculously good camouflage, the best of all tier 9 medium tanks, so you should have full or close to full camouflage skill on every crew member.

Next there’s repair. You need to have repair on everyone as well (aside from the commander). This will allow your T-54, which already has fast track repair times, to do it amazingly quickly. While the tracks repair quickly, if your turret ever locks up, on this tank it takes ages to get back its rotation. If that happens during a brawl, without repair you will die without ever getting your turret moving again. Repair is also very important because you do not want to use repair kits on a track (outside of emergency) or the turret. My repair kits are reserved for only three possibilities: damaged gun, engine or (lesser priority) ammo rack.

Aside from Snap Shot, Safe Stowage and perhaps Smooth Ride, other skills are completely superfluous in the T-54 (and in general, really). You get these as your third skills (or second for Safe Stowage if you’re very like to take ammo rack damage).

That’s a lot of skills I mentioned, which requires a very experienced crew, does it not? The crew that goes in your tier 9 medium tank, regardless of faction, is the same one with which you’ve been grinding all along the line. By the time one reaches its end, the tank should have one secondary skill at 100% and another at over 50%, at least.

Equipment:

My T-54 has both the Vertical Stabilizer and Enhanced Gun Laying Drive - it’s the only way to get that Russian gun to aim with any kind of speed.

The third piece of equipment is Binoculars. The T-54 has the ability to sit behind a bush and light up a ton of tanks with its base 395 view range and play sniper with its ridiculously good cammo. For example, before Province was removed from tier 3+ battles, my T-54 with Binoculars could sit on one side of the ridge and light up the TDs on the other side, all the way in the back. This doesn’t just help you, but your team as well (arty, etc). On a map like Malinovka (Campinovka) your T-54 with Binoculars can sit behind the bushes on the little hill near the village (not the big windmill hill) and detect/fire on most of the enemy moving up the big windmill hill. You can place a remarkable number of shots into enemy heavies’ sides without every being detected, thanks to your inherent camouflage and camo skills.

And what else are you going to use? Coated Optics are useful, but not AS useful as Binoculars when you need to sit still and light things up from a long way away (like the example above). Up close in a brawl or medium range fight Optics are useless. And contrary to popular belief, a medium tank doesn’t move all the time - it is often employed as a sniper from a flanking position.

The Rammer is a decent option, but the gun already reloads faster than any other tier 9 medium (which somewhat compensates for its lower damage). I’ve found it to be of marginal help.
Ventilation adds 5% to crew skill, which translates to a 2% increase in tank stats - not worth it.

There’s really not a lot of equipment that can rival boosting your detection range from 395 to 493 meters (before taking into account enemy camo/cover).

One last piece of advice, which actually applies to all tanks - when playing peekaboo from behind solid cover, always make sure to wait 5-10 seconds to “drop” from enemy radar/map, before pulling out of cover again. This way they aren’t ready and waiting for you to come out.

Sixth Sense becomes doubly important when you are playing pekaboo behind a solid/soft cover combination (think the central hill on Mines). You’re going to drive outside of hard cover (still behind soft cover), wait 3 seconds for your binoculars to kick in, pick a nice juicy target, fire, and immediately pull back behind hard cover. If Sixth Sense doesn’t go off, it means you can do the same thing again right away. If it does go off, sit behind that solid cover for at least 5 seconds, until the targets you spotted drop from your map. The time to drop off radar is random at 5-10 seconds, so it’s usually safe to assume that if you stopped being able to see them, the same is true with you for them. You can repeat the process again, hitting something valuable again. If done right, this allows you to deal damage with impunity.

I realize that the T-54 is not the easiest tier 9 medium to play anymore, after it was hit by a few nerfs since beta, so hopefully this helps some (and applies to other medium tanks as well, really).

5537

Thanks Supper’s Ready. I’ve got Sixth Sense on my Pershing and it is amazing. Right now I’ve got Brothers in Arms on the T-54 and don’t have quite enough xp to hit 100% on the next skill, which for everyone except for the commander is currently Repair (all at 89% right now), commander has mentor. I suppose I probably should rework it.

I’ve got coated optics, the stabilizer, and the rammer on it. I guess I’ve never really thought about playing it as a sniper/scout. More as a brawler with speed to exploit enemy weaknesses – of course as I’ve said it doesn’t seem to do very well the way I’m playing it.

Interesting choice on repairing modules. I always put highest priority on repairing the ammo rack. Although if the ammo rack, gun, or engine goes out, I always repair it, on the theory that it’s better to use the repair kit right off rather than waiting for a potential damaged module that may or may not occur.

5538

Brothers In Arms is the best perk. You want this on practically all of your tank crews. A wave of other individual perks come after (Sixth Sense, Snap Shot, Clutch Breaking, etc), while your third skill on each crew member tends to be camo or repair. Camo is nicer for Clan Wars since you should be running a gold repair kit if you get damaged, repair is probably better if you’re just driving in random matches.

ydejin, sounds like you have your T-54 appropriately set up for grinding crew skills. I drive beside T-54s in my Patton all the time, they make excellent distractions while I do all the work of killing; T-54s are made for wolfpack tactics, in my experience. A good driver can create opportunities for his back-up in ways no other tank can.

5539

Keep in mind that on the official forums people have figured out that Brothers in Arms only gives you 2.4% increase to tank stats (almost as bad as Ventilation which gives you 2%). In my opinion that is absolutely not worth it when competing with Camouflage and Repair (also Smooth Ride and Snap Shot).

For Mentor, someone calculated that you’d need some 1000 battles to make it pay for itself. IMO there are far better skills.

The forums are down right now so I can’t link to the discussions on Ventilation/Brothers in Arms.

If your gun is damaged, you’re only worth anything as a brawler. So the Gun always gets repaired (same with Gunner and med kit). Whether or not to use the repair kit on an ammo rack is dependent on the situation - I usually do, and then live with it if the gun is damaged. Engine is repaired right away as well - a slow T-54 is a dead T-54.

The T-54 has amazing camo as I mentioned, so not taking full camouflage on it is a waste. It’s a skill that works always, whether you’re sniping, flanking or on approach to target. It’s almost always helping you.

Again, though, this is all from the perspective of public battles. CaldeDan and others will have to tell you about Clan Wars/company battles.

5540

Vents and Brothers in Arms are invaluable since they stack and apply to almost every single thing your tanks does. If you’ve ever driven a tank at lower than 100% crew qualification, you know how brutal that can be! Once a crew gets their first 100% skill and a 2nd at 50% or so, you should respec the 100% to BIA and then start grinding up the second skill as camo or repair as is suitable. It makes a big difference in actual practice.

Mentor is better on tanks with large crews due to how it applies its bonus. If you’re trying to get a tank set up with multiple 100% skills and you’re willing to respec the commander after you are done grinding, every little bit counts.

I listened to Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits while writing this, completely by accident.