World Of Tanks

[RichVR]

People are already asking for an opt out of the new game modes. In further news, sky blue, water wet.

[Dave47]

People are already asking for an opt out of the new game modes. In further news, sky blue, water wet.

Right, but none of us care about the opinions of posters on the official forum. (I hope!) What I am interested in is the opinion of Qt3 posters on these forums! The new game modes represent the largest change to the game since launch, so I'm excited (and a bit scared) to see how they change the game.

I haven't had a chance to try the new patch yet, but I'm not happy with many of the new nerfs. Especially for the T30, where the changes seem designed not as much to weaken the tank as to force it to play more like how the designer's feel a tank destroyer "should" play. Which is a backwards way to go about things, especially since the T30 isn't really a tank destroyer in the first place.

[TheWombat]

I've only played a couple Assault maps, and no Encounter maps. One thing that jumps out is the weirdness of having one side attacking and one side defending--but then not adjusting the matchmaker to take this into account. So, you get 15 tanks assaulting...15 tanks, and often the side with all the TDs is, you guessed it, attacking.

What they need to do is have the match parameters changed for these battle types so you do something to adjust for the advantage the defender has, at the very least. Give the defender fewer tanks, I'd say, though I guess tier adjustments might work (but mess with that too much and the attacker would roll over the defender even with fewer tanks). Also, I'd think give the defender the TDs if possible, too. Probably not really feasible with the system they have, but right now the Assault battles seem grossly unbalanced in favor of the defender.

[Nathan Phoenix]

The new game modes are the best thing that has happened to the game since they added matchmaking at all. I wish that there were opt in buttons for each game type, because then I could play all encounter, all the time.

[Nathan Phoenix]

Finally gotten my pantherII kitted out. This is the tank the panther I should have been. wonderful fun. the long 88 is such a sweet gun. having a whale of a time with it on a fairly mobile medium tank. Less than 5 seconds between shots is plenty quick for me. Gonna wreak some havoc with that baby! looks cool as well.

It's pretty much what the panther was before they dropped it down a tier, gun included. :)

[Byrdman]

I'd say the encounter map mode is the most dynamic of the new modes. It really shifts the battle lines on maps that have typically been pretty static like El Halluf.

[Peter Frazier]

I like the new encounters for the fact that they prevent the same old defensive lines occurring. The very first match I had on steppes was just weird though. Starting on the south side of Steppes, almost the entire team
lemminged towards the enemy base in the west out of habit or confusion. Myself and two other heavies actually went for the cap zone. Despite a lot of uh, terse communication on our side they managed to pin down the enemy side for a win.
I also lashed out on an IS6 and it plays pretty well- 3 heavy kills and a few T32 shots bouncing off it. I also came out with 100,000 credits. It seems like a tier 8 version of the IS4, a low profile brawler.

[Stridergg]

I've only played a couple Assault maps, and no Encounter maps. One thing that jumps out is the weirdness of having one side attacking and one side defending--but then not adjusting the matchmaker to take this into account. So, you get 15 tanks assaulting...15 tanks, and often the side with all the TDs is, you guessed it, attacking.

What they need to do is have the match parameters changed for these battle types so you do something to adjust for the advantage the defender has, at the very least. Give the defender fewer tanks, I'd say, though I guess tier adjustments might work (but mess with that too much and the attacker would roll over the defender even with fewer tanks). Also, I'd think give the defender the TDs if possible, too. Probably not really feasible with the system they have, but right now the Assault battles seem grossly unbalanced in favor of the defender.

I think it remains to be seen still.

Remember that in WoT standard battles, the side that decides to do full on defence will lose 9 times out of 10. Of course, map, matchmaker, player skill, etc. all play their role but everything else equal, the side that doesn't play more or less active offence will most likely lose.

And that's what I've experienced yesterday as well. I played Assault mode 6 times, all of them on the assaulting side for some reason and we won 5 out of 6.

Another thing is that the defending base often seems to be placed in a hard to defend position. At least on the two maps that I remember - Westfield and Malinovka. Especially Westfield.

Maybe over time people will learn that defending doesn't actually mean "hide in the bush near the flag and wait for the enemy to surround you" and this will probably make this mode easier for the defenders. But, to be honest, I am sceptical - if playing WoT for two years taught me anything it would be the fact that general masses don't really learn well. Average random people still make dumbest moves in Standard mode, it will be the same in the new ones.

Overall, I really liked the addition of the new modes. They spice up the game that was getting very stale for me and I enjoyed playing new modes. Don't know if it's just the excitement of seeing something new but I like them so far.

What I didn't like is that "penetration with no damage" thing has not been fixed at all and possibly even made worse. When AMX 50-120 hits the AMX-90's side with no damage it's just wrong. Or KV-5's butt.

And whatever they say in patch notes, they still haven't fixed HE rounds - they still damage for like 6-20 hps per shot, making them ridiculously bad for anything but disrupting a base cap.

[TheWombat]

Stridergg, you raise valid points about the psychology of players. I hadn't considered that. It still seems odd, though, that the defender and the attacker are handled just as in a standard battle, only with one side given what should normally be a tougher assignment. And while it doesn't make much difference tactically, it would be really nice to have TDs be more likely on the defense, for instance. I've won on the attack too, and been beaten on the defense, for precisely the reasons you outline above, so it's more a matter of impressions I guess. It doesn't "feel" right. But I also agree the two new modes are welcome additions.

[Nathan Phoenix]

Most assault games I've played in have had the attacking team win. Probably 9 out of 10.

The renault ue 57 is hilariously small. It's a go-kart with a gun.

I didn't care much for the somua - too big of a tank, easy target.

Now, the s-35 CA? this may be a fluke, I will admit, but in my first game in it, with stock gun, I got 7 kills, 3 others damaged, 7 detected, boelter's medal, top gun, sniper, master gunner (9), sharpshooter (15), 3200 xp (as my X2) and mastery badge M. This was as the attacking side in assault on campinovka, assaulting the hill. Looking forward to seeing where that goes with bigger guns!

[Byrdman]

... the side that doesn't play more or less active offence will most likely lose.

While I understand that you don't want to just hang out in your base, what I've seen when playing on defensive mode has been boggling my mind. It's great to move out to forward positions, get good scouting and prevent any sort of surround, but good god, when there is 3 minutes left in the match and the assaulters are hanging back, why are people pushing forward? In one match on Karelia my defending team went from 4 tanks up to 3 tanks down as our heavies decided they needed to push ALL the way around to the opposing start to, finish them? or something. If you're defending, and your opponent is content to sit behind cover, why the fuck wouldn't you just let them waste their time?

[Stridergg]

Stridergg, you raise valid points about the psychology of players. I hadn't considered that. It still seems odd, though, that the defender and the attacker are handled just as in a standard battle, only with one side given what should normally be a tougher assignment. And while it doesn't make much difference tactically, it would be really nice to have TDs be more likely on the defense, for instance. I've won on the attack too, and been beaten on the defense, for precisely the reasons you outline above, so it's more a matter of impressions I guess. It doesn't "feel" right. But I also agree the two new modes are welcome additions.

Yeah, I agree they could (should?) have come up with a more interesting ruleset for the Assault mode but I guess they took the easier route - all defender/attacker balancing is happening during the map design. This allows them to leave alone their matchmaker, which by the way is struggling even with the old ruleset. They were talking about releasing a new matchmaker in April but somehow all those plans just disappeared.

While I understand that you don't want to just hang out in your base, what I've seen when playing on defensive mode has been boggling my mind. It's great to move out to forward positions, get good scouting and prevent any sort of surround, but good god, when there is 3 minutes left in the match and the assaulters are hanging back, why are people pushing forward? In one match on Karelia my defending team went from 4 tanks up to 3 tanks down as our heavies decided they needed to push ALL the way around to the opposing start to, finish them? or something. If you're defending, and your opponent is content to sit behind cover, why the fuck wouldn't you just let them waste their time?

That's just old mentality. Actually, let me correct this, even in the old standard mode, there were plenty of situations were advancing some flank was a bad idea and people did it anyway.

New modes are IMO more tactically complicated and on the average, I think, we will see more tactical fuckups hapenning in the new modes. One could say that it's yet another move the devs have made towards completely randomizing the game.

I like the novelty so far though.

[TheWombat]

We were defending on Prokhorovka, where the defense starts on the hill on the eastern side of the map and the attackers start on the other side of the north-south road on the western edge of the map. With a platoon of Tier IX mediums, we swung south off the hill and over the tracks into where in standard battles the enemy base would be. This flanking maneuver so unsettled their push across the field that they never recovered, and we wiped the floor with them. The worst thing we could have done with the meds is sit in bushes, that's for sure, though we found plenty of Tigers and stuff sitting waaaay back in the bushes on the attacking side for some reason....

[Peter Frazier]

I especially hate it when there is a significant amount of artillery and a team decides to camp. Firstly, the enemy artillery will obliterate you and secondly, their scouts will quickly locate your artillery and they'll be the first to die.
Add to this that my prime time involves a lot of Asian players who don't communicate in english and it enters keyboard-breaking territory.

[ShivaX]

We were defending on Prokhorovka, where the defense starts on the hill on the eastern side of the map and the attackers start on the other side of the north-south road on the western edge of the map. With a platoon of Tier IX mediums, we swung south off the hill and over the tracks into where in standard battles the enemy base would be. This flanking maneuver so unsettled their push across the field that they never recovered, and we wiped the floor with them. The worst thing we could have done with the meds is sit in bushes, that's for sure, though we found plenty of Tigers and stuff sitting waaaay back in the bushes on the attacking side for some reason....

That map is just completely broken in Assault. All you really have to do is get down to the RR tracks and sit there shooting anything that tries to come over and you'll win. The only time I've lost on defense is because our heavies sat on the hill and let them get into the buildings.

[schurem]

I won a defence on malinovka, but that was mostly because the other team attacked really ineptly and my team shifted to a more offensive stance as soon as the tables were starting to turn.

Tanks are per definition by their very nature an offensive weapon. TD's are often dubbed assault guns (sturmgeschutz). It makes sense that they perform better in the offense than defensively.

I am very VERY happy with the patch. I love the new game modes. dont mind at all to have them randomed in like the maps themselves. I love what they did to the minimap. SO much better. I like having new tanks to play with as well.

i for one welcome our new 7.4 overlords.

[ShivaX]

Overall I'm really enjoying it, but I think Assault needs to be looked at. Once people figure out where they need to go attackers are going to be screwed. All you have to do is slow them down since they'll probably run out of time.

I think the attacking force needs to have a slight edge in tanks or something.

[Soapyfrog]

I am finding that the defence rarely wins.

[ShivaX]

So how do these new Assault and Encounter modes work? In Assault are the tanks on each side asymmetric with the assaulting team getting better or more tanks? Otherwise I don't get it.

I'm also a bit worried that these modes are not going to be very friendly to my poor lightly armored tank destroyers.

Attackers get nothing over defenders, which is kind of an issue so far. I think if attackers would all zerg one direction it might be effective. Ironically, no one is willing to lemming in the one game type where it might work.

[ShivaX]

I am finding that the defence rarely wins.

Really? Defense almost always wins in my games. As long as they don't all sit inside the spawn circle they tend to demolish the attackers in short order. Maybe its because me and my clanmates are out there spotting and tearing shit up or something...

[ydejin]

Tanks are per definition by their very nature an offensive weapon. TD's are often dubbed assault guns (sturmgeschutz). It makes sense that they perform better in the offense than defensively.

that's only some of the TDs though. Try assaulting with a Marder and let me know how it goes.

[schurem]

Lol you got me there. Marder would be a rather suicidal assault lead. But still, it should use its mobility to get in a position to provide direct fire on the enemy. If it sits in a bush twiddling its thumbs waiting for the assault to fail, it squanders its mobility and deprives the assaulting tanks of its fire support. So yea. offence ftw.

Shiva, i think the deciding part here is "me and my clanmates out there spotting and tearing shit up" . You are engaging in a very active defence, so active one might go so far as to dub it counter-offensive ;-)

Pete i play on the .eu servers. Many poles, czechs etc. they dont know much english and if they do they aint using it. i feel your pain. you get used to it. i did. just dont expect or hope to go much beyond 50% win stat on solo randoms lol.

[Soapyfrog]

Really? Defense almost always wins in my games. As long as they don't all sit inside the spawn circle they tend to demolish the attackers in short order. Maybe its because me and my clanmates are out there spotting and tearing shit up or something...

It's almost as if our varied experiences and small sample size are not enough to draw any firm conclusions.... except that the results of random matches are still pretty random.

[RichVR]

Tanks are per definition by their very nature an offensive weapon. TD's are often dubbed assault guns (sturmgeschutz). It makes sense that they perform better in the offense than defensively.

But the concept of assault gun isn't so much about being a front line tank killer so much as it's being mobile artillery. The assault gun concept is more about killing troops and opening up holes in defenses. That would be after the front line tanks did their jobs.

[Greybriar]

Really? Defense almost always wins in my games. As long as they don't all sit inside the spawn circle they tend to demolish the attackers in short order. Maybe its because me and my clanmates are out there spotting and tearing shit up or something...

I just got through playing a random battle and I was the only member of my team outside our base (I was using my SU-26). It's a pretty sad state of affairs when an arty has to do the scouting for his team and is the only one attempting to cap.

[ydejin]

But the concept of assault gun isn't so much about being a front line tank killer so much as it's being mobile artillery. The assault gun concept is more about killing troops and opening up holes in defenses. That would be after the front line tanks did their jobs.

I thought some of the assault guns were development specifically for direct assaults on fixed positions particularly bunkers and in urban environments. This doesn't mean that this occurred after the front line tanks did their jobs, in fact I think they were meant to be used instead of front-line tanks.

The T95 for example was originally designed to attack bunkers in the Siegfried line. Similarly the Sturmpanzer IV Brummbär was designed in response to lessons the German's learned at Stalingrad. AIUI in both these cases these were meant as replacements for tanks in these specialized situations.

My personal take is that the tough T95/JagdTiger type heavy assault TDs are great advancing in situations in which the position of the enemy is known, particularly when you've got a very narrow corridor to assault through. The central road in Himmelsdorf is probably the best example. They don't do well assaulting in situations where the position of the enemy is not known and the enemy could be located anywhere within a wide area -- assaulting the "magic forest" in Murovanka with a heavy TD seems like a bad idea.

The main issue with the TDs is that they can be easily tracked and thus placed in a position in which they cannot return fire. Unless they are used in specific situations where this cannot happen, they are not idea for attacking. Although with the right support, of course, this could be different. I suppose a T95 could act as a scout drawing fire and hopefully highlighting targets while more poorly armored tanks (or for that matter artillery) hit whatever it spotted.

Question for those that play heavy TDs with long reload times. Do you play peak-and-poke in urban environments or just sit with your front pointed to the enemy, and count on your armor to shrug off shots? I'm always a bit anxious pulling back around the corner in a turret-less TD because I find getting tracked and not able to return fire to be very frustrating. OTOH as reload times increase, it does seem rather silly to just be sitting there getting blasted at.

[Nathan Phoenix]

Well my heavy TD is an object 704, which is decidedly less bouncy than the others, and I definitely peek and poke. I do bounce some stuff, but not enough to rely on it. Generally though people are afraid of the damage I can do and they tend to be more afraid of me than I am of them, so I tend to be the first one to be setting up around the corner.

[Sean Tudor]

My main TD is a JT. Where possible I follow the super heavies like the IS-7, Maus, and E-100 and support them. Opposing tanks will generally think twice about taking on such a combo. Where possible I try and avoid going solo. The JT tends to suffer due to its massive size and weak armor and is an easy target.

[TheWombat]

Assault Guns and TDs were, historically, two different things, though there was considerable overlap. The original StuG was designed to lob HE at infantry and other soft targets, or fortifications; when the Germans ran short of actual tanks and needed more mobile AT support, it got pressed into service that way and was eventually equipped with a longer 75 for killing armor. The American M10 was designed as a mobile tank destroyer with its 3"/76mm gun, but was very often pressed into service as an assault gun by infantry who, lacking tanks at the moment, wanted a mobile and somewhat protected cannon to help them out. The Soviet SU series included a mix of vehicles with different roles. The SU-100 and SU-85 were pretty much tank killers, the 152s were sort of dual-purpose, though the low velocity cannon was probably organically more suited for HE lobbing than for tank hunting, despite the massive damage it could do by virtue of its shell size.

The early StuGs, the Brumbars, SU and ISU-152s with their short-barreled guns were probably more "pure" assault guns, while the Jagdpanzer IV, SU-85/100, M10/18/36 types were more purely TDs as we know them, I'd say.

In the game, things like the T28/95 are clearly bunker busters designed to "lead the charge" (or the slow walk), but few of the other TDs really have the durability to do that. The Object 704 is a mobile BL-10, best used aggressively, but it's hardly a front-line charge leader IMO.

[ShivaX]

With the T95 you never peek and poke cause it will take longer than your reload time to withdraw anyway. At best you angle a little while reloading, but not too much or you wont be able to return fire.

With the 704 I almost always withdraw since most things can easily penetrate me.