World of Tanks - Free to play Panzer MMO

[Graphic]

I joined the Total War Center clan. They never do anything, its just for the tag I guess. If someone created an Org clan I'd quit TWC and join that.

[Husar]

I'll think about it, but it costs 2500 Gold to create a clan, not sure it's worth it for 6 people to be honest.

Would be nice if we had more interested people on the EU server.

[rajpoot]

I'll think about it, but it costs 2500 Gold to create a clan, not sure it's worth it for 6 people to be honest.

Would be nice if we had more interested people on the EU server.

How can I find out what server am I connecting to?

Edit:
@Graphic, how do I join the TW clan?

And what nicks do you guys use?

[Graphic]

Ask to join in this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=434196

[Sigurd]

I am SigurdOrg on the EU server cluster.


Right... I am grinding my IS3 to a IS4 as we speak. I just realized that we should soon see the new Soviet techtree. I am not sure when that will happen, but I will be ready.
The IS4 will become a tier 10 tank in that update and I will get the new tier 9 heavy tank, Object 252. Also the heavy lines will split in two. That would mean I should get 3 new tanks with slots.

KV will be split to KV-1 and KV-2
KV3 will move up to tier 7 and T-150 will take its place.
IS4 will move up to tier 10 and Object 252 will take its place.

edit: and... I am home with the flu.

[scottishranger]

Just got 8 kills in one match with my Vk3601. Never played a better game in my life it seemed like i was just a one man army. This is why i love WOT. You can have terrible games but when you get lucky it feels really rewarding.

Now i just need 10k more experience for my goal since beginning playing the game... the mighty TIGER!

[Graphic]

^ 8 is my record too, in the Panzer IV. I wish the game had a demo recording feature.

[Sigurd]

I played in a game yesterday where a GW Type-E did 11 kills.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[rajpoot]

I played in a game yesterday where a GW Type-E did 11 kills.

That's what I want to be when I grow up.

Anyway, I've been grinding my way up the USSR arty tree. I tried going 'via' the tanks path but I got bored (T26, T46 are both lousy...liked my MS1 better), and decided to go to arty straight away. Although the arty tree is rather unfair unbalanced, IMO....level 4 T28 needs just like 3000 xp, while level 4 Su 5 needs 14000 xp.........
But the question I wanted to ask was about crew effectiveness. After grinding for XP my Su 26 crew are all at 70 %. Now how effective will they be if I use them in Su 5 instead of training new crew from scratch?

[Sigurd]

But the question I wanted to ask was about crew effectiveness. After grinding for XP my Su 26 crew are all at 70 %. Now how effective will they be if I use them in Su 5 instead of training new crew from scratch?

Tank crew needs to be re-trained for a new tank, which means they can't go back to the old tank after being re-trained (stupid I know...)
And if you haven't reached 100% before retraining, they will be 50% on the new tank without spending money on them. This means, it is not worth it to retain crew which has not started a skill.
Take my IS3 crew. They were my original IS crew but had about 60% on their first skill (repairs) when I retrained them. I got 90% with 20 000 credits pr crew member and it didn't take long before they were back up on 100% and could continue their skill training. Their ranks increase with the skills and I know the Russian commander usually goes Lieutenant when he has reached 50% on his second skill (cammo or firefighting). Which my IS3 commander has... :)

edit:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Husar]

I think you actually don't go back to 50% upon retraining for free, it's more like they lose about 25%, as in once you get them above 75%, they usually won't go back to 50%.

If you invest money, they lose less of course but I usually don't mind training them up a bit so most of the time I do the free retraining.

[Ja'chyra]

Where to go after the M3 Lee, the M4 or the T1 heavy? What do you think?

[rajpoot]

Right I've been hooked to this game, surprisingly though, I don't feel guilty after having spend hours on it, as I felt with other MMOs I played.

Anyway I bought my first heavy, a KV today, and boy the play style is surprisingly different.
I mean playing as arty is fun, but unless you have a good team, you'll end up dying 9 times out of 10 quite quickly (specially if one is low tier), and even if one survives till the end, you can't do much but hide. Thus playing as a medium tank was better (also better than playing a light tank which I found too 'fiddley' and complicated). I felt more in control of the battle, although still very vulnerable.
But playing as a heavy seems to be an entirely different thing! For one I find myself at the top of the lineup more often than not, but also, the team almost rallies around heavies, and tries to move with them. That brings amazing cohesion......light fast moving targets are taken out by them, while I'm free to concentrate on the other heavies. The only threat is a skilled SPG player (a rare thing, I find, specially in lower tiers) or a TD.
Lots of fun.

[scottishranger]

Where to go after the M3 Lee, the M4 or the T1 heavy? What do you think?

T1's get eaten alive in high tier matches and i hear they have a pretty bad grind. Unless you wanna go heavy (I think the T29 is a great tank but I know its a long way to there) I would go the m4 route. sherman is suprisingly good.

the only threat is a skilled SPG player (a rare thing, I find, specially in lower tiers) or a TD.
Lots of fun.

Wait till you get in higher tier matches. Tier 6 mediums eat kv's for breakfast haha. Still kv is a good tank. I remember beiing so afraid of the Derp Gun in lower matches.

[Xehh II]

Hey guys, cool to see there are other people here that play this game, I doubt any of you guys will ever see me but my name's Akrotatos on WoT, if you do manage to see me, give me a holler or something.

[rajpoot]

Wait till you get in higher tier matches. Tier 6 mediums eat kv's for breakfast haha.

You jinxed my lucky streak man!
I've been getting matches with high tier tanks all day long....not a single one with me at the top.....And it's, so very dull! My stock cannon is absolutely useless...even against other KVs, my tank's slow, and not as well armoured as other heavies. It's getting very frustrating.

[Husar]

It gets a little better if you get the derp gun, that thing can take about 20% of the hitpoints from a KT with a frontal shot, from behind it's obviously even more deadly.
The 107mm is also really good, for tier 5 anyway.
In high tier matches you will be more like a gun platform, supporting others from behind, but a somewhat upgraded KV can be dangerous to many tanks, so hang in there.

[Sigurd]

I am starting to get a bit frustrated...

I have finally got my Elite IS3 and are currently saving up the 3.5mill I need to buy the IS4.
What frustrates me are the... crappy teams you have to play on.. In more games that I care to count, I have found myself the last or the second last tank in the game. Why is it so difficult to stay alive?
It is key to success to keep ducking those shells.
Alright the odd light tank going to spot tactics and artillery is, Ok but come on... I just finished a game where all my team was reduced to 2 in a few minutes.
It was me and a JagdTiger left and we had 2 kills each.. which was incidentally the only kills for our team... all the rest were smoking ruins...

The level of good team work is declining and my win/lose ratio is suffering. You seem to need to kill more than 4 to be able to win a game these days. Sometimes killing 6 doesn't even help.
I am not looking forward to taking the near stock IS4 out to play.

AND people need to stop bringing their loltractor friends to high tier games...

[Ja'chyra]

I am starting to get a bit frustrated...

I have finally got my Elite IS3 and are currently saving up the 3.5mill I need to buy the IS4.
What frustrates me are the... crappy teams you have to play on.. In more games that I care to count, I have found myself the last or the second last tank in the game. Why is it so difficult to stay alive?
It is key to success to keep ducking those shells.
Alright the odd light tank going to spot tactics and artillery is, Ok but come on... I just finished a game where all my team was reduced to 2 in a few minutes.
It was me and a JagdTiger left and we had 2 kills each.. which was incidentally the only kills for our team... all the rest were smoking ruins...

The level of good team work is declining and my win/lose ratio is suffering. You seem to need to kill more than 4 to be able to win a game these days. Sometimes killing 6 doesn't even help.
I am not looking forward to taking the near stock IS4 out to play.

AND people need to stop bringing their loltractor friends to high tier games...

What he said.

[rajpoot]

Just got my first Billote's medal with my KV.....Saved a T1 from being murdered by two mediums....Then realised a third one had sneaked up behind me, and he started finishing me up before I could turn. Caught on fire, lost quite a lot of stuff....then the T1 shot the medium and saved me. Lol. Things like this make the grinding worth it.

[Veho Nex]

Just got my first Billote's medal with my KV.....Saved a T1 from being murdered by two mediums....Then realised a third one had sneaked up behind me, and he started finishing me up before I could turn. Caught on fire, lost quite a lot of stuff....then the T1 shot the medium and saved me. Lol. Things like this make the grinding worth it.

Every player should have Medkit Repair Kit and Fire extinguisher on them at all times.

[Sigurd]

Say hello to my little friend...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[rajpoot]

Every player should have Medkit Repair Kit and Fire extinguisher on them at all times.

Yeah I thought of buying some consumables but then I'm the saving type of guy.
BTW I like your sig. Was it you who had the one where a sprinter runs right into a woman on the track?


@ Sigurd

You're a premium player! I didn't know that. I thought everyone here played for free. How long have you been grinding for that IS4?

And does anyone have any tips about grinding in the KV? Because I'm planning to make a jump back to the arty segment from the KV, and I require a humungous 1,27,000 xp to do so I think (as opposed to just some 25,000 for KV3...very unfair).

[Sigurd]

@ Sigurd

You're a premium player! I didn't know that. I thought everyone here played for free. How long have you been grinding for that IS4?

Grinding for IS4? Since the release I guess.
But I was a no gold man until I finally got my IS3. Considering I am a married man with two daughters and a day job, I no longer had the patience for "sticking it to the man".

I know most of you are students with a tight budged etc... I am not and I have limited time to play.

First game with the IS4... yeah it is really tough.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

With the BL-9 and IS3 crew at 90% it was a good game. The ISU 152 thought it could finish me off with one or two shots... hehe not a chance bozo. Instead I took him out with two shots. Both his bounced.
The KV was a one shot kill and I battled the IS3 and took him down to 4% before some poacher took the kill from me.

[Veho Nex]

Yeah I thought of buying some consumables but then I'm the saving type of guy.
BTW I like your sig. Was it you who had the one where a sprinter runs right into a woman on the track?

Yup.

[Sigurd]

I am grinding again without a premium account and are entering the German Medium line.
I have been playing for a while in the VK3601 and its 88mm... then, just when I was a few xp short of 39k and the unlocking of the VK3002DB, I played a game with another VK3601 who got 9 kills with a konisch.
What? ...
I wanted to try it out...
Oh, man. What a different play style and very beneficial for your team. It has a incredible fast reload and targeting. It doesn't do much damage, but it totally disrupts your enemy's ability to shoot you.
As a defender of a base that gun is just amazing. A team mate spotted a SPG, and I barely saw it as it was on the other end of the map. I just auto aimed and took it out from what must have been way outside my view range. What accuracy!!!

[Husar]

The Konisch is meant to be used with Gold Ammo, that way it gets the penetration of the long 105mm (225mm pen) and more damage as well, I think it goes from 65 damage to 165 or so.
It's the only gun that does more damage with gold ammo, the downside of course is that every shot costs 5 gold, turns the VK3601 into a killing machine though.

[Sigurd]

The exact numbers are:
125mm to 209mm penetration and 49 - 81 damage with the normal AP shells.
169mm to 281mm penetration and 124 - 206 damage with the APC shells.

My experience is that they near always penetrate, but does relatively little damage, unless you are lucky and kill the ammo rack, which incidentally happens more often with that gun.
The gun is just marvelous as anti cap when it only takes a penetration to take a 80% cap value to 0%. And since it can fire so fast, you can fire shells at several targets before they realize what is happening.

[Husar]

I only look at average penetration because the chance to get the highest or lowest value is really small since the penetration is normal distributed around the average and it usually seems to be very close to the average anyway. Damage really seems more random to me, but do you use it with Gold ammo or normal ammo? I don't think it penetrates a KT from the front unless you hit the machine gun port.

To stop a cap it's also enough to hit the tracks I think.

[Sigurd]

I only look at average penetration because the chance to get the highest or lowest value is really small since the penetration is normal distributed around the average and it usually seems to be very close to the average anyway. Damage really seems more random to me, but do you use it with Gold ammo or normal ammo? I don't think it penetrates a KT from the front unless you hit the machine gun port.

To stop a cap it's also enough to hit the tracks I think.

I don't use gold ammo, but that konisch can definitely penetrate a E-75 if you target the lower glacis. On tanks like Tiger and IS, you can auto target and still penetrate. I haven't been up against a Ferdi yet.
I have switched to the Type as I need to rake in a million to buy the VK3002DB