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In light of some changes that have happened recently to low tier gameplay and the revealed intentions for these changes, I feel the need to step in and say something: Clubbers aren't going away. I should take a moment to clarify what I mean when I talk about clubbers. When other people talk about clubbers, they typically refer to players who've been in the game for some time and prey upon players of little familiarity or skill. This can refer to players of any tier and any skill level, which is where you get bad jokes from people who talk about clubbing at tier 10 and why you get people like

Last week, I spent a few hundred battles playing the new I-Go. I've been mildly interested in playing this tank ever since I'd first seen what kind of stats it would have. Anything with 320m view range gets my attention. On the other hand, from playing other Japanese low tiers in the past, I knew that I was going to struggle to make much use of it with its slow shell speed. But three weeks ago, I was thrown a curveball, a real game changer. WG announced that they were going to mess with the map rotation of lower and middle tiers. After a nice three to four years of becoming accustomed to

Yep. I'll probably use this for my game over that thread I made. Maybe.

My recent trip into the higher tiers for Wargaming's Own and to finish personal missions for TD and HT has not been an enjoyable one. Were it not for the opportunity to win something I could not get in any other way, I would not have bothered, because I know that playing the higher tiers and playing to get into higher tiers in this game is just a complete waste of time. When I first started playing this game, I almost immediately found myself in love with the T1 and T2 Medium. My interest in the T1 passed somewhat quickly, but for the T2 Medium, my heart will go on. The problem started to co

A short excerpt from the supertest patch notes for 9.14: Last post covered tier 1s. This post covers tier 2s. ALL NON-PREMIUM TANKS - Reduced to a single radio with no upgradable module available. ALL PREMIUM TANKS - No change. Type 89 I-Go/Chi-Ro - Reduced to a radio of 300m signal range, down from 425m. Cruiser III - Reduced to stock radio, down to 350m signal range from 450m. Cruiser I - Reduced to a radio of 350m signal range, down from 375m. Pz. II - Given a different radio from any it had before, down to 310m signal range from 455m.

Yesterday was the start of the open beta for Armored Warfare. As I wrote earlier, I missed my chance to get into AW previously during an open stress test, and by no means was I interested in dropping however much it was for a founder's pack to play earlier, so this was my first chance to play the game. Things started off well. After looking at the first two tier 1s, it may surprise some to say that I picked the autocannon tank to play through first. So far, I've only played the PvE mode, and have been enjoying it immensely. I only ran into some minor concerns at first, like not being able

When people ask me about what the difference is between low tiers and high tiers, there is one thing which comes to mind, one thing that matters, one thing that, by itself, represents a huge shift in design philosophy from the first tier to the last. This thing is the ratio of DPM-to-health. It is why low tier play is fast-paced and high tier play is slow-paced. It is why low tier play is dominated by strong individuals and high tier play is dominated by unified teams. The difference in this ratio between the low tiers and high tiers has allowed for two wildly different games to exist with

It's been a loong time coming, but somewhere in the middle of a 16 hour session last night, I finally started to get meds, and perhaps higher-level play in general Before, whether due to not enough map knowledge or my own mental habit of trying to find patterns in everything - probably both - I was never able to allow myself the flexibility to play meds to their potential. For each med, I'd either treat it like a (lightly armored) TD, or a heavy tank. Naturally, neither quite worked. However, I've been playing a lot of T-34-85 recently, and perhaps due to it being a bit more forgiving, have st

The last couple of patches have brought two major changes affecting tier 2. Here's what happened and what my thoughts are about how things have changed. The New Maps The most significant change by far, the map pool for the low tiers has changed drastically. Where previously players would run into open and campy maps such as Province or Prokhorovka, these kinds of maps are no longer to be seen. The most open of maps these days are Ruinberg and Mines, neither of which is so dominated by camping play as other maps of the past. With them are Mittengard and Himmelsdorf, creating a fou

It’s a gun, with some sort of building attached to it. If you’re thinking of getting the SU-100Y for any reason other than the gun, forget it. This tank is a gun and nothing else. It performs poorly in literally every single aspect that is not the massive gun. It has mediocre view range, radio range, speed, mobility and armor. Excuse me, did I say armor? The SU-100Y is made entirely out of bubble gum wrapper held together by positive thoughts from the crew. With a 60mm all around armor, you’ll be lucky to get even a single bounce. The mantlet is pretty strong, but as you have so much SU-100Y a

To understand what makes a tank good, you first need to take a look at the metagame. Tanks are only good if they have qualities that make them good against the meta. The meta is determined primarily by two groups of tanks - those which are most frequently played and those which are most frequently played by the best players. In tier 2, the tanks played most frequently (in the last 30 days, according to vBAddict) are the T18, Cruiser III, Pz. II, and T7 Combat Car. In my experience, the best players gravitate towards tanks like the Cruisers III and I, T18, M2 LT, and the Pz. 38H if they can

That's right bois, I actually got off my arse and went out with this hot Dutch girl who's three years my senior. Here's how this went down, my thoughts in hindsight etc etc... So I matched this girl on Tinder about three weeks ago, I found out she's a pilot and her motivation to get there but other than that she's a mystery to me. I feel weakness in that, to this point I haven't gotten her to really open up & build a deeper connection - you know the type when you just "click" with a person instantly and it's all easy. I want that consistently with everyone I meet. So all of the dail

Warning, here be spoilers. Game of Thrones is based on the formula "The bad guys win". This, at least in the first seasons, kept messing with people's expectations of what's going to happen because the vast majority of the media is all about the good guys winning. However that formula has now been overused to the point where GoT became predictable because of it. We know anyone who's good is gonna get fucked, we only don't know how. I'm gonna be honest, I'm pretty tired of caring for a character and then having them die. I imagine that, if the show was to have a downfall, this would be it

So the setting of my game is going to be the Solar System on 2253-09-16, because on that date, the positions of the planets will be very noice, it gives plenty of time for technological advancements which will map to gameplay elements, and it's my 258th birthday. define_stage(1,1,z_earth,"Earth"); define_stage(2,1,z_moon,"The Moon"); define_stage(2,2,z_ipss,"Interplanetary Space Station"); define_stage(3,1,z_mars,"Mars"); define_stage(3,2,z_venus,"Venus"); define_stage(3,3,z_mercury,"Mercury"); define_stage(4,1,z_asteroid,"Asteroid Belt"); define_stage(5,1,z_jupiter,"Jupiter"); define_sta

Firefly is a tier VI British medium tank with the highest standard and premium ammo penetration. 171mm on tier VI sounds great, right? On medium tank platform even better? Nope. It's British. Historical background Brits were bad at flanking (royal noobs) so they added 17-pounder gun to Sherman tank. Who needs maneuver when you may simply penetrate German HTs from front? Firepower 17-pounder gun. Do not even bother playing with another gun. You are here for gud pen, gud alpha (for that caliber), mediocre gun handling and amazing 6 degrees of gun depression making you (or at

This was a match that took place on the 18th of March, 2013. I recorded the game a long time ago and just recently converted it into a ~97MB 720p WebM, which you may download here. If you have a client compatible with 0.8.4 replays, you may get the replay file here. Using those or screenshots below, you may follow along as I retrace my thought process for that game played over three years ago. Countdown - There's no premium Hotchkiss, no glut of gift tanks on either side, and no platoons, which are three of the four things worth considering at the start of a tier 2 match. The las

A short excerpt from the supertest patch notes for 9.14: I'll look at the changes to tier 2 later, but for now, here's what's going on with the tier 1 tanks. MS-1 The thing which stands out most about the MS-1 is its high penetration compared to other tanks of its tier. In 9.14, it will lose the gun that gives it that recognition, falling back to 40mm standard penetration. The alpha is also worse, which is probably more of a big deal in today's meta. It otherwise has all the top modules it had before except for its engine, which is the 55hp module instead of 70hp on

Just a little more reflection on recent events. I've done what feels like a lot of work lately in putting together my opinions on tier 2 play. I think it started when I put together a guide for how I approach low tier maps, and then I did the autocannon challenge, and then I wrote about what qualities are important at tier 2 and redid how I rated all the tanks, and then in the end, WG pushes a change that completely upsets the balance and changes the meta of the tier in a big way. That largely voided much of the work that I put into making public resources for others to read and use to impro

My blog view count has been slowly creeping up since about a week ago. It seems to have gotten ~150 views in just the past two to three days. I don't know where all the views are coming from, if it's from links I posted on the forums here or someone else linking the posts somewhere else, or people actually looking at the new content or blogs page and clicking on my posts. I'm glad there are at least some people out there interested enough in this stuff to read it, or at least click on it. I haven't played WoT since Thursday. I think I've burned out from playing the Jap heavies so much. Got

A while back, I came across an old archive of replays and screenshots of me playing in 2012. The replays are basically worthless now, but at least the screenshots can still provide a glimpse into my earlier days in WoT. The earliest item I have, from around the end of March, 2012. Back then, I would often take screenshots of games where I felt I did well, which tended to be anything that earned me a medal. It's anyone's guess at this point why I was running 20 HE shells. I always found seeing the long lists of names and tanks in these columns to be more impressive than a simple number

So today, I spent all of my time working on my game! So far, I have added a line with an if statement in it! I wonder what I will accomplish tomorrow!

It's no secret; I'm madly in love with this tank and everything it has done for me. I've had the incredible luck of earning a Raseiniai medal, I won a Type 62 playing it back during the Medium Marathon, and with it, I'm at or near the top of many leaderboards across all servers in categories such as number of battles, efficiency, WN8, win rate, and damage ratio. My relationship with it came purely by chance, and I'd like to tell everyone the story of how I came to enjoy it and what it has to offer. My History When I started playing back in the open beta, I had only the first three nations

O Universe, I beseech you. Please bestow upon me the power to continue working on my game. It's really important.

*noms*

R.I.P. BOIS CURRENT STATS: FIRST DAY OF DESTROYING MY STATS: http://imgur.com/a/rnoY9 <---- ALBUM