I have a confession to make. I really really really absolutely LOVE the E-100 on the test (with 15cm gun and credit ammo). It is just amazing fun brawler on tight spots. A bit like is3 on steroids, botox and tons and tons of lipstick. Of course it can not snipe at all but damn it can bounce shots and at close range it is deadly to everyone. Most fun of the all t10 tanks I've tried. Maybe it's because people play really badly but I did not really find it a bad tank.

Another gem for me was the ST-I. Had one 6k dmg game in it. Too bad the KV-4 leading to it is pure crap. The gun and the mobility are its weak points imho. I really need buy my tiger2 back and start grinding to the e100. Even the e75 was pretty epic to drive. Of course I only played with the top configurations so the grinds may be really horrible...

Yeah, I found that with the JpzE100 on the test server. It's supposedly horrifically underpowered but I was consistently in the top 4 players for XP gain on the fancy new battle stats screen (also something new I love).

0.8.0 update tomorrow on RU server

0.8.0 live on all servers now.

So far I love everything except the new tech tree.

Nice to see (hear) that the sounds were updated. The gun sounds are pretty wicked now. Nice thundery boom, nice thundery echo and a bit of crackling and all that.

Sad that they basically broke the replays now with that new battle report system. Now when you watch a replay there is no way to know the results (how much exp/credits etc you earned from that battle).

Bouncing in sniper mode (even with it unchecked in the options) is the thing I now hate the most with the new patch.

EDIT: Turns out I'm an idiot. The update made 'vibration in sniper mode' switch back to the default, just turn it off again and all is fine.

Not bad result in my Tiger II with the 8.8 Trying to make the money required for my E-75 at the moment, only 600k off
Got the Ace Tanker badge as well for it!

Good job mate! I'm still not sure if I want to grind to KV-4, I only have 300k right now (well ~400k if I sell rarely used tanks)

Quote from Sobis :

Good job mate! I'm still not sure if I want to grind to KV-4, I only have 300k right now (well ~400k if I sell rarely used tanks)

Thanks! My friend got stuck on the KV3 when the tech tree changed, luckily for me I was already on the IS, he's hating life and swapped to the German heavy tech tree now because of it

Hum
I hate tanks games but i'm still downloading X)

I want to get back in to it now.

The possibility of having premium bullets for credits has liven up the game IMO. My beloved Hetzer is punishing KVs heavilly now. Driving T-54 got easier two. I play in the squad with my mate usually. There was a situation some time ago, when we accidently popped up out of the corner where two IS-7 were waiting for us head on. If we wouldn't have used gold shells we'd be done. Object 268 came in right in time and finished the last of them.

Quote from Seb66 :

Thanks! My friend got stuck on the KV3 when the tech tree changed, luckily for me I was already on the IS, he's hating life and swapped to the German heavy tech tree now because of it

Oh hell no, I'm not going back to German heavys. I had Tiger and it was so awful! I had ~20 matches with it and I didn't enjoy any of them at all. With my KV-3 I can feel like a real tank. If I'm thrown into T7 and below matches, I can feel like a real tank. Many T6 tanks are having hard time penetrating me and T5 has no chanses (well ofc he does if he knows the weak spots). But the problem is I don't think I want to grind almost 2 millions for the KV-4 even tho it was a fun tank to play in the 8.0 test server.

Quote from Sobis :

Oh hell no, I'm not going back to German heavys. I had Tiger and it was so awful! I had ~20 matches with it and I didn't enjoy any of them at all. With my KV-3 I can feel like a real tank. If I'm thrown into T7 and below matches, I can feel like a real tank. Many T6 tanks are having hard time penetrating me and T5 has no chanses (well ofc he does if he knows the weak spots). But the problem is I don't think I want to grind almost 2 millions for the KV-4 even tho it was a fun tank to play in the 8.0 test server.

Tiger is a tier 7 fat AT. Using it as a tank in close range combats will have poor results. Ideally, you should be working at 400-500m ranges without getting spotted. Unfortunatly, it is hard to find such opportunity and place in all battles at diffirent locations.
on the other hand,It has a pretty good moveability, rate of fire, huge amount of HP, why don't you try to support MT directions? It does that quite well.
On the other hand, Tiger P is the sort of tank that is close to soviet HT tanks regarding battle style.

Both are good tanks IMO.

I knew I have to keep distance as it has thin armour (for T7 heavy) and I did.The reason I hated it was that I had a gun with low penetration, so I had a hard time penetrating T8 tanks and even some T7 and for a better gun I had to grind ~30k exp so I was like :challengedenied:.

Yeah, getting top gun on Tiger was a pain in the arse, but there are only a few tanks in the game that are playable in stock (su-152).I'm sure you'll agree with me that getting 30k exp on tiger with 8.8\56 gun is a walk in the park compared to getting 60r exp on ISU-152.
Allthough it got much comfortable now, gold shots for credits make a diffirence.

Tiger is a beautiful tank when fully upgraded! The 8.8 is such a good gun that I forget I'm even using it instead of my long 10.5 somtimes on my Tiger II

Hopefully the E-75 is decent. Once I've got that I'm going to get the 10k extra xp I need in my IS to get the IS-3

Quote from [RF]-art555 :

The possibility of having premium bullets for credits has liven up the game IMO. My beloved Hetzer is punishing KVs heavilly now. Driving T-54 got easier two. I play in the squad with my mate usually. There was a situation some time ago, when we accidently popped up out of the corner where two IS-7 were waiting for us head on. If we wouldn't have used gold shells we'd be done. Object 268 came in right in time and finished the last of them.

Wow the t54 gets 350mm pen ammo with gold while the normal ammo gets only 201 or 219 pen depending the gun. I think the gold ammo is very much game breaking. A tier 9 medium should not fight against t10 heavies frontally anyways.

I think the premium ammo for credits is a horrible mistake for all kinds of reasons (economy model is broken, game balance is broken, some tanks are broken while others stay unaffected plus the pay2win benefit for the premium account users...).

Luckily the 8.1 is not yet on the eu servers.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Wow the t54 gets 350mm pen ammo with gold while the normal ammo gets only 201 or 219 pen depending the gun. I think the gold ammo is very much game breaking. A tier 9 medium should not fight against t10 heavies frontally anyways.

I think the premium ammo for credits is a horrible mistake for all kinds of reasons (economy model is broken, game balance is broken, some tanks are broken while others stay unaffected plus the pay2win benefit for the premium account users...).

Luckily the 8.1 is not yet on the eu servers.

219mm penetration was already enough to penetrate HT10 frontally, you just need to know weak spots. Also T-54 gold ammo has no normalization, so the actual penetrating possibility on angled armor is less efficient.

I'm playing for a while with this ammo changes. It really is exaggerated. Only tanks with low penetration and HE ammos as main ammo had a little boost. Gold ammo isn't THAT much better. If you'll act like an idiot and shoot T29 into the turret, or upper front armor of Maus gold ammo won't help you anyway. And as most of the players are idiots who don't even know you should be aiming at certain weak spots the difference will be miserable. Skilled drivers will just get an extra chance to fight back a little more. Idiots will suffer, just like before.

Besides, having more than 5-10 rounds is unnecessary. You just don't need to. Getting to the top condition got more comfortable. You're still getting a positive balance result after a battle if you use gold ammo, wisely (I'm not using PA). They aren't needed as often as might appear.

Some tanks like KV2 (152mm) etc. might need slight re-balance later, but that isn't a critical change.

What happens is that everyone will carry few gold rounds. If you play a tank like kv4, maus or any other tank that relies on bouncing shots those people who carry just those few gold rounds will shoot you with them. Your armor can only bounce anything if the enemy is really bad at aiming

350 pen heat ammo can penetrate 120mm of armor from the maximum 70 degree angle without normalization. Acpr even more because of normalization. Basically you will see t8 tanks reliably penetrating t10 tanks from the front. Of course you still need to aim to avoid extreme slopes and thick spots in armor but you will still penetrate more easily than before.

Tanks like maus for example are impossible for an is3 to reliable penetrate from the side. Even with he ammo you will not do any damage at all to the sides of the turret for example. But with gold ammo you will reliable pen a maus from the front when previously you had to aim really well to pen from behind.

And because you are a maus everyone will see you as a hard target and will load gold ammo as soon as they get a chance to shoot at you. Maus for example is balanced so that its armor makes up for its relatively poor gun and poor mobility. Without armor it has nothing good left about it.

It is without a doubt the worst decision ever wg has made.

Maus died as a heavily armored tank many patches ago. The game balance is moving towards MT tanks and fast thin armored HT tanks overall. Is it good or bad, time will show. As for gold ammos...I drive IS-7 from time to time and I haven't noticed the increase of penetrations on my armor that much. More than that, quite a lot of people used to have gold ammo (3-5 pcs) just in case anyway.
Besides, the GBR (Great Belorussian random) rules in this game anyway. Stupid hits without damage won't go anyway, and gold ammo still have -+25% penetration.

It's just that everyone is equal now, weather you donate or not. I don't think it is a bad thing. If tanks like KV-4, Maus will have significant decrease in their statistics they'll have an buff. They game won't collapse

Nah. It will just increase the inequality. You now basically need premium to be afford to use gold ammos. Previously gold ammo was so expensive that not many people in reality used them at all. You don't need to use gold ammo all the time but even to just be able to fire few couple rounds per battle you stop making profit if you don't have premium. It is pay2win even more. With money you bought gold and then used that gold to get premium account or to buy gold ammo. Now you buy premium so you can use gold ammo. It is just more incentive to buy premiums.

At higher tiers like at t8 good players can still make profit. At t9 you can rarely get even without premium but the losses are maybe 7k per match in the long run. If you add couple of gold shell costs you will not make it even at t8 anymore.

Plus when you get to the last part of the match where it is just you and the enemy it becomes just a mathematical equation about who has more dpm and more health left no matter what tier you are. A maus vs is3. The one will win who has more hp left. Both still need to aim to guarantee penetration.

What would have been equal and same for everybody is a) remove gold ammo altogether or b) balance the whole game around gold ammo (economy, earnings, penetration values etc.). WG just went for the money. Whether the game breaks down totally I don't think so. I don't like to think only extreme situations. But it will have negative effect to the game.

Quote from [RF]-art555 :

It's just that everyone is equal now, weather you donate or not.

Rubbish.

It's just moved the pay2win from gold ammo to premium accounts. People with premium tanks/ammo can afford to shoot premium ammo a HELL of a lot more than free players.

As has been discussed to death on the forums and on here above, all it takes is for everyone to carry 5-10 rounds of premium and it pretty much negates armour in the game. How many times in a game could you take a shot, but don't as you know you almost certainly won't penetrate. It's not more than around 5 times per battle I would wager, and that's all the premium ammo people need to carry, and just use standard ammo for all the other occasions.

Hull down T29? Hey, instead of having to think about how to flank and get round behind/beside them, you just turn off Mr. Brain, turn on auto-aim, switch to gold and open fire. I really enjoy playing my Pz B2 740, I like the fact it can take a lot of punishment but the weedy gun means that you have to really make use of weakspots and know exactly which targets you can and can't take on. A Hetzer used to be a very dangerous opponent to me, requiring tactics to flank them or a brave move to take out their tracks and get round behind/beside them - they're pretty much impenetrable head-on. No more. Hit auto-aim, put something heavy on the mouse button and go make a brew.

This is easily the worst decision WG have ever made (and I'm not one of these 'oh noes, teh Wrgmamng are teh evills!111'). It rewards stupid, lazy gameplay while punishing those who play intelligently and use angling, terrain and armour to avoid taking damage.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Rubbish.

Hull down T29? Hey, instead of having to think about how to flank and get round behind/beside them, you just turn off Mr. Brain, turn on auto-aim, switch to gold and open fire. I really enjoy playing my Pz B2 740, I like the fact it can take a lot of punishment but the weedy gun means that you have to really make use of weakspots and know exactly which targets you can and can't take on. A Hetzer used to be a very dangerous opponent to me, requiring tactics to flank them or a brave move to take out their tracks and get round behind/beside them - they're pretty much impenetrable head-on. No more. Hit auto-aim, put something heavy on the mouse button and go make a brew.

I also enjoy driving Pz B2. It does have a weak gun. I used to have an experiment back in the patch when French tanks were introduced, I bought 20 gold rounds for gold for shooting at B1 and AMX40, because there were lots of them. And you know what, out of 20 shots, only 3-5 penetrated.

Hetzer is still a certain death to B2 unless he is an idiot.
T-29 turret is still a rock, whatever you'll shoot it.

What I'm trying to tell you is that GOLD ammo \=100% penetration. Its been a week since 0.8.1. released in RU region and global collapse didn't come.

As for profit...Using 3-5 gold rounds per battle on 5-7 tier tanks will still have you profit. Yes it will be smaller, but still a +. If you want to get into higher tiers and have comfort playing you'll need a premium account or a tier 8 premium tank, that is devs official position.
Tier 8 HT, MT and tier 9 MT do have a profit out of having gold ammos. Tier 8 AT, Tier 9 HT don't really need it. I drive T-54 and use 3-5 gold rounds in some battles and still have small profit or zero balance. That was just as an example.

The armor started to decrease its value quite a long time before these changes (French tanks and new soviet and US tanks with 270mm penetration).


By the way, if we are talking about game balance problems, I think there is one that is more serious than gold ammos. Does EU region also having 4-8 Artillery of tier 7-8 in every battle you go in tiers 9-10? That is what really messes up the balance IMO.

P.S. Anyway, that gold ammo experiment is just an experiment which might be ended after 0.8.2.
So, just try it for yourself, as 0.8.1 is released at EU region soon IIRC.

So, anyone still play this?

Just started seriously playing Tier 7 (I'm very purposely not rushing up the tiers) this month after I bought the T29. I'd had the KV-3 since it got up-tiered months ago, but never really played it that much.

My favourites (apart from the T29 which is awesome) are still my beloved PzB2 740(h) and my T40.



Regarding the gold ammo argument above, I'll happily eat my words and say it's made a very insignificant impact on gameplay, at least in the tiers I usually fight (4-6).