World of Tanks

[DLRiley]

The match maker has two priorities, 1 give "even" team selection (the match maker is always looking for a tier 4 scout to go into a tier 8 game), and put people in matches in under a minute. S

[apocrypha]

So, had a quiet day yesterday, downloaded & installed this. My god it's addictive :p

I've started working through this thread, but there's a lot of it... are there any good links to newbie guides? I've got up to Tier 2 - a Pz35(t) and a Bison atm, both mostly fairly well upgraded, and trying to decide where to go from there. I suck hard with the arty, although I did get 5 kills in one game earlier, mostly luck though!

Also, I haven't spent any real money yet, but I reckon I'd be happy to plonk a tenner or so down no worries. What's a good strat for getting the most "bang for your buck" as it were? Saving the Gold for when I can get a tier 3 and get a 100% crew? Get a premium tank?

Also, I'm right in thinking you need a premium account to set up a squad yeah? If I set up a squad (or whatever it's called) so me and a couple of mates can group up does one of us need to stay as a premium account or can we premium for 1 day, make the squad and keep it once premium lapses?

Cheers!

[Merusk]

Arty's one of my favs, though it's very obvious that it's tricky to be good with it.  Also the game appears to have been out long enough for people to figure out where the good site spots are but not long enough for lower-tier people to understand "defend the damn arty" so I die a lot more often when I play it.  Usually after only getting a shot or two in on the few guys who don't drive fast tanks so they're not splattered.

TDs are extra fun once you understand they're snipers.  Get into a good cammo spot on frequently-traveled routes and move after killing one or two guys so arty doesn't snipe you.  They're weak as hell on the sides and rear but the extra-thick front armor seems to make up for it.  Sometimes the stars align and you get get guys driving up and parking right in your los to try and potshot you.  So sweet when they explode one shot later.

I just wish the premium tanks weren't so obviously superior.  I bought the T2 German Pfzer-whatever and my god that thing just won't die.  Combine it with good aiming skills and a little map knowledge to make up for the slightly weaker gun and it's easy to rack-up 2-3 kills a match.

[Raknor]

So, had a quiet day yesterday, downloaded & installed this. My god it's addictive :p

I've started working through this thread, but there's a lot of it... are there any good links to newbie guides? I've got up to Tier 2 - a Pz35(t) and a Bison atm, both mostly fairly well upgraded, and trying to decide where to go from there. I suck hard with the arty, although I did get 5 kills in one game earlier, mostly luck though!

Also, I haven't spent any real money yet, but I reckon I'd be happy to plonk a tenner or so down no worries. What's a good strat for getting the most "bang for your buck" as it were? Saving the Gold for when I can get a tier 3 and get a 100% crew? Get a premium tank?

Also, I'm right in thinking you need a premium account to set up a squad yeah? If I set up a squad (or whatever it's called) so me and a couple of mates can group up does one of us need to stay as a premium account or can we premium for 1 day, make the squad and keep it once premium lapses?

Cheers!

You don't really need a premium account until you start getting into tier 4/5 imo. Then it will become pretty obvious that if you would like to get anywhere fast, its a requirement. 

I've never spent gold on a 100% crew and I would not do that on such a low tier. Ideally low level tanks are stepping stones to something bigger and better. You should be in and out of those tanks in a few days.  My personal path was: rip through tier 1-3 with just a premium account.  Tier 4-6 I spent silver on upgrading to 75% crew for each tank as soon as I bought it (especially the commander as he gives a bonus to the whole crew).  Now that I'm reaching the higher tiers, its pretty apparent how much of a difference the crews make to a tank. 

Premium tanks are really a preference in my mind.  You usually play them to generate extra silver as they have a bonus modifier added to them.  If you don't plan on spending much real cash on the game, you will lose the benefit of spending gold to transfer the xp you earn on those to be applied on normal tanks (free xp).  But they do come fully upgraded and "most" of them are very nice tanks.  If you are wondering why you would need to generate additional silver, well, here would be my example.  I have a tiger 2 (tier 8), last night I was in match, I took 10 shots (over 1,000 silver per bullet). I got killed (15,000 in repairs), and I earned 25,000 from the win.  Math that out, I think I actually lost a bit.  Granted this will get better once I get upgrades on my tanks but you get the idea.  These are not tanks you make money on. 

As a complete generalization of the tank trees: German usually have better sniper guns but weaker armor, Russian tanks seem to be great brawlers with decent accuracy, American somewhere in between.  Everyone will have a different idea on this as everyone has a different style of play. With each tank you get into take a look at the gun accuracy (lower the better, i like under .33) and the penetration (higher the better). Both of these, in my mind make a huge difference in whether you get a hit or you scratch their paint.  Or if you need a graphical version of which gun is better.  Pick the longest barrel gun you can find.  If its twice as long as your tank. You picked the right one.

My path with the tanks was to pick 1 medium, 1 heavy, and 1 TD that I wanted to play and head down those lines.  Some of the stand out tanks for me were the IS line of Russian heavies, the StugIII in the German TD line, and the Easy 8 (M4A2E8) in the American medium line.  I could frankly play my Easy 8 all day long and getting in a group of Easy 8's with my friends is damn fun.

[Abagadro]

Apoc,

What time do you play? You can look for me in game (same name as my name here) and I'd be happy to walk you thru some stuff.

[apocrypha]

I've been playing almost all day today    Same name as here, EU server.

[Engels]

Ah, I think most of us are on the US server. There is no crossover :/

[apocrypha]

No matter, I've got a couple of UK mates who're interested in it, just need to work out the details of how we play together :)

[Abagadro]

The signal to noise ratio on the official forums is surprisingly good. If you are looking for newbie guides and specific info on vehicles that might be a decent place to start.

[Dark_MadMax]

Premium account is probably best bang for the buck. It allows you to get xp and credits at much faster rate. For the price of Lowe you can have almost 5 months of premium, which is a lot more than lowe worth. Generally all the gold prices are rip off  besides premium - converting xp ,crew , gold ammo. I only buy gold ammo because my clans income pays for it

[apocrypha]

Cheers, just discovered the official forums, some good stuff there. I'm heading towards a Leopard, sounds like fun :)  Almost got the XP, just need 255k credits... 

[DLRiley]

Cheers, just discovered the official forums, some good stuff there. I'm heading towards a Leopard, sounds like fun :)  Almost got the XP, just need 255k credits... 

You wanted to get skeeted for gold?
Earn very little yourself?
Generally spend the first 2 minutes of a match in a bush hoping your not a red dot on radar?
Play tier 4 scout.

[Engels]

The 2801 makes it all worth it, tho. Seriously, those fuckers can determine the fate of a match within the first two minutes.

[veredus]

Just fyi you should be able to do two man platoons without premium. Pretty sure that was just added a patch or two ago. Three man platoons are premium only. 

[Tmon]

Just fyi you should be able to do two man platoons without premium. Pretty sure that was just added a patch or two ago. Three man platoons are premium only. 

Two man platoons for non-premium was included in the last patch. 

The upper level premiums are not nearly as OP for thier tiers as the German Tier 2 monstrosity but they make up for by earning  more credits per match.  The ultimate ATM machine is the Lowe, but it costs a fair amount of actual cash to buy these days.  My favorite premium is the Matilda, it's level capped so when you are solo you won't run in to anything more than two tiers higher and it has nice levels of protection and firepower for its tier. 

 Tier 4 in general is kind of a hell level since you tend to start running into things you can't do much damage to, but that can easily kill you and the XP needed to progress ramps up a fair amount.  Tier 4 lights are the most painful to play as they don't have any margin for error in most matches and they need to earn 50k+ xp to unlock the tier 5 lights.  Tier 4 lights also live and die by the match maker more than most since a match with no artillery makes it that much harder to earn spotting xp and also means you won't have the most  lucrative targets for you to find and engage.

[apocrypha]

That's cool about the 2-man platoons, I expect there to be only 2 of us most nights. One of our regular group is a highly overpaid network engineer/manager though, who I totally expect to go full premium straight away if he gets hooked though :)

So what's a more fun route to take in tier 3/4? I've not had a chance to play since I last posted so I've not got any deeper into the trees. I find the tech trees a bit overwhelming - with my limited experience it's really hard to look at multiple stats on cryptically-named tanks and work out which tanks are likely to be good/crap!

Maybe I'll bumble about in various branches of tier2/3 for a bit and see what I enjoy most. Not tried TDs yet, if I get time this evening I'll have a go with them.

[Merusk]

I find I'm grinding for cash to buy my t3 tank.. /grind /grind /grind.  Doesn't help I like buying upgrades.

[Mortriden]

You will find you are credit strapped up until about Tier 5.  At that point you require so much XP to move up that credits begin to pile up. 

I will second the part about Tier 4 lights.  It's rough.  I found the best way to make XP at that point was to wait about 10 seconds for the arty to set up then charge one side or the other of the map to try and scout as many targets as possible.  If you get lucky, you can get into the rear areas and target the enemies arty. 

[Ginaz]

Prices of Tier 2 and 3 tanks have been reduced today.  Good move for new players imo.

http://game.worldoftanks.com/news/notifications/upcoming-changes-tier-ii-and-iii-tank-credit-costs

[Dark_MadMax]

Prices of Tier 2 and 3 tanks have been reduced today.  Good move for new players imo.

Hmmmm. If that means less fodder for me to kill in tier 2 matches? -bad move!

[Merusk]

Woo hoo.  Off to T3 tonight then.  I was at 57000 of the 80100 for my M3 Stuart.

[veredus]

So what's a more fun route to take in tier 3/4? I've not had a chance to play since I last posted so I've not got any deeper into the trees. I find the tech trees a bit overwhelming - with my limited experience it's really hard to look at multiple stats on cryptically-named tanks and work out which tanks are likely to be good/crap!

Best advice I can give if you have limited playtime is to pick one or two high tier tanks as goals and just go straight to them. But having said that, US M2 Med with the derp gun I think is a lot of fun for a tier 3 and German PZIII can be a great tier 4.

[apocrypha]

Actually, my playtime isn't overly limited. I'm freelance with not a lot of work on at the moment, I don't have kids, I'm not playing anything else & we're not decorating the house. 

I'm having a lot of fun in t2/t3, I'm gonna putz about a bit, play with all sorts of different things and get a feel for them. I'm not in the mood to stat-compare too much, I'm just gonna have some fun and try and avoid anything that feels grindy. Hopped into a T2 MT last night. Lot of fun. Was expecting it to be slow and cumbersome but it's like a starter tank on steroids! Oh and I suck balls with TDs so far.

[apocrypha]

God damn the matchmaker hates me. Tier III/IV and I am constantly surrounded by tier VI and VII tanks. I can't scratch them and they 1-shot me.

I get the occasional kill with the Marder, some crits with HE rounds from the SU-26 but the T-28 and the M2 MT are pretty much useless in 90% of the games I'm getting placed in.

[Merusk]

I'm in the same boat on my T3 tanks, Acro.  What I've done is bought the fastest light scout I can use and I run the fuck all over scouting things.  If I live I run back to base and wait it out or run to a bigger tank to use it as a meat shield.   

When I die I just exit match and start fighting on another tank, usually one of my T2's.  You don't have to stick it out through the whole match and by the time most of the T2 matches are over the T3s are as well.  (Although yesterday both my t3 tanks were still in battle after a T2 tank match.  Must have gotten down to an arty vs arty fight.  I hate waiting those out. )

[Engels]

MM seems worse than before these days. I'm seeing M6s in tripple tier 10 matches. The line up is all mucked up. Like, 3 tier 10s per side, then a tier 9 med, then 2 tier 8s and then the rest tier 6.

I'm starting to wonder if they're flat out lying about the logged in numbers, because that kinda shit just shouldn't happen with 14k people logged on.

[Merusk]

There might be 14k people but perhaps they've all decided that lower-tier matches or tanks were more fun.  I know I enjoyed T2
with a lousy tank more than I am T3 with a fully-loaded T-46.

Or the folks get up to T10 and quit, so the average is around that T6-8 number.

[DLRiley]

The game is pretty grindy so unless you wish to MT, most people i reckon find there fun in the t2-t3 matches, others just use it to soulessly grind for their tier 6 dream tank. Again people usual cap skill level wise when they reach tier 3, you won't get a tank you like till tier 6 and your probably not truly competitive till tier 9-10.

[Kageru]

Tier-4 is pretty terrible. The tanks felt a lot weaker than T3 and the XP slope gets steep. If you don't have end-game ambitions there's little incentive to grind through it so I suspect a lot of people quit at this point. T2 was excellent fun.

[DLRiley]

Tier-4 is pretty terrible. The tanks felt a lot weaker than T3 and the XP slope gets steep. If you don't have end-game ambitions there's little incentive to grind through it so I suspect a lot of people quit at this point. T2 was excellent fun.

Oh and tier 4 is universally terrible unless its one of those dead end light tanks and good luck getting a match that is not all tier 10 line backers.

[Furiously]

MM seems worse than before these days. I'm seeing M6s in tripple tier 10 matches. The line up is all mucked up. Like, 3 tier 10s per side, then a tier 9 med, then 2 tier 8s and then the rest tier 6.

I'm starting to wonder if they're flat out lying about the logged in numbers, because that kinda shit just shouldn't happen with 14k people logged on.

I think they count the people that leave the game running then don't do anything for 5 hours.

[apocrypha]

I discovered the thing about just exiting the match and hopping into another tank from earlier pages of this thread. I'm so skilled that I occasionally have 3 dead tanks "in battle" at once. 

I did buy some gold and have got a month of premium and a few extra garage slots, which has basically made the grind that was starting to become apparent disappear - sped up the XP plus given me space for much greater variety. If I only get a month of fun out of it then £16 is my comfort zone for game purchases anyway and I often get less than a month out of PS3 games in that price range.

I'm finding that playing arty is the best way of learning the maps. I wish there was a fullscreen map option (I keep pressing M anyway, hopefully, uselessly....) but without that then the arty aerial view is pretty good for learning where the choke points and blind spots are.

Not tried a heavy tank yet, working up to KV (fotm tank or what?), and also haven't really tried scouting, despite my initial Leopard urges.

[disKret]

I think they count the people that leave the game running then don't do anything for 5 hours.

Next to online number there is number of games running.

[Kageru]

Tier-4 is pretty terrible. The tanks felt a lot weaker than T3 and the XP slope gets steep. If you don't have end-game ambitions there's little incentive to grind through it so I suspect a lot of people quit at this point. T2 was excellent fun.

Oh and tier 4 is universally terrible unless its one of those dead end light tanks and good luck getting a match that is not all tier 10 line backers.

I got the leopard first and didn't mind it that much. You are always facing much higher tier tanks but at least the thing is fast, low and relatively tough (and most of them are slow). And even though scouting is sort of busted as a concept (the maps are too small relative to heavy tank view and kill distance) at least you knew what was coming. The other tier 4 tanks I got, especially the T-46-5 (I think) were sluggish, high profile, tin-foil armored death-traps that just weren't fun to play.

Ah well, at least being f2p the game remains on my desktop and might well get fired up again for some pew.

[angry.bob]

Go for the T-50. It's a pretty tough tank for a light and has a gun that's actually useful in a lot of circumstances.