World of Tanks

[DontSayBanana]

Finally decided to try this out, though I'm not in any position to plunk down RL money on any kind of enhancements at the moment.  Any tips for the noob?

[DGuller]

Finally decided to try this out, though I'm not in any position to plunk down RL money on any kind of enhancements at the moment.  Any tips for the noob?

Avoid being at the front of your team's line.  That's a big one.

[Stonewall]

So far the IS-3 has been a disaster. Complete and utter disaster. That same gun I kicked as with in the IS cannot hit anything. And when it does it bounces. And I keep getting blown up in just a couple shots.

Welcome to the non BL-9 IS-3.    I can say that the BL-9 completely changes the tank and that my performance in it went up exponentially.  The key to remember is that IS-3 is, unlike the other Russian heavies, not a brawler tank.  It is a mix between heavy and flanker.  Once you get used to pointing at your target and not angling your armor, the tank starts bouncing a lot more shots.  You have a very low profile and very good turret armor.  While you lack the gun depression of the US tanks, playing hull down is also very beneficial.

Stick with it.  It gets fun once you're upgraded.

[Stonewall]

Finally decided to try this out, though I'm not in any position to plunk down RL money on any kind of enhancements at the moment.  Any tips for the noob?

It's ok to be a lemming.  Don't go first.  Let the other idiots plod out and be the first deaths. Remember that your xp and credit gains are directly proportional to how much damage you inflict.  While it might be good for your team for you to be the lone voice of reason and sole defender of the left flank, its not worth being the first one killed or the only person who goes.  If you see 10 people going left and 4 going right, its ok to go right.  Chances are you'll get a lot more chances to damage enemy tanks as the stuff your right group encounters will likely die quicker than you can change targets.

Survival is the name of the game.  Get used to the ROF of enemy tanks so you can move openly wither to shoot or to another piece of cover when they are reloading. 

Most important advice is to learn the tanks you'll be using and facing.  What guns they use and how strong their armor is.  I recommend the PoGS counter mod.  It replaces symbols you can't understand with schematics of tanks that show their armor levels and best gun penetration values.  At a glance you can now see what your biggest threats are and what you can safely ignore in favor of more dangerous targets.  There is a floating combat text mod as well that converts the % you see above enemy tanks to actual HP numbers.

[Tamas]

Ok so one of the loadin screen tooltips basically said, if the target is too armored for AP, try HE.

What gives?

Also, how profitable points wise to scout? I saw you get credited for spotting.

[DGuller]

Ok so one of the loadin screen tooltips basically said, if the target is too armored for AP, try HE.

What gives?

Seems pretty self-explanatory.

[Habbaku]

Ok so one of the loadin screen tooltips basically said, if the target is too armored for AP, try HE.

What gives?

If the target is too armored for AP, try HE.

[frunk]

Sometimes, when a target has a great deal of armor, HE is a better choice over AP.

[Tamas]

Sometimes, when a target has a great deal of armor, HE is a better choice over AP.

thanks guys, I knew I could count on you.

You could further enlighten me on that, however, seeing that the anti-strong-armor solution HE has miniscule armor penetration. Not to mention that my general assumption was that the AP ammunition was invented to go through armor the general HE shells couldn't. I clearly assumed wrong.

[frunk]

If the AP has enough penetration to get through the armor it's the better choice.  However if it can't the HE has a better chance of damaging the tank even though the HE also won't achieve penetration.

Also note that on the small early guns HE is pretty useless as it doesn't do enough extra damage over the AP to really matter.

[Slargos]

Sometimes, when a target has a great deal of armor, HE is a better choice over AP.

thanks guys, I knew I could count on you.

You could further enlighten me on that, however, seeing that the anti-strong-armor solution HE has miniscule armor penetration. Not to mention that my general assumption was that the AP ammunition was invented to go through armor the general HE shells couldn't. I clearly assumed wrong.

HE ammo creates a heat wave that "washes" over the target in a cone after impact, and effectively "seeks" weak points in the armour. It does spalling damage rather than penetrating.

If you penetrate with a HE shell, the effect is typically devastating, but even if you don't it will almost always do some damage although HE can sometimes bounce aswell though it's only happened to me a few times. HE can also do proximity damage although the effect is very limited in the shells for most tank guns.

Hence, when you find yourself in a fight against a higher tiered tank that you can't penetrate even if you flank him or in a situation where it's important that your next shot does damage against an opponent that for instance has only 1% of his hitpoints left [yes, Berkut, you fucking ass-cunt, I am calling you out again] it's typically a good idea to switch to HE.

[Syt]

My understanding is that AP goes through (makes damage) or doesn't (makes no damage), while the HE is very likely to do at least some damage (but not as much as a piercing AP round), no matter what.

[Tamas]

[Slargos]

Is it double artillery credit day today or something?

I just got 70000 credits in one battle with my M41.

Starting from 5:30 AM UTC, August 25, and till 5:00  AM UTC, August 26, the profit gained from Hummel, SU-8 and M41 SPGs  will be doubled.

[Berkut]

Ahh, cool. That is well timed, since I just went broke buying that POS IS-3.