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I did a summary of the changes (I'm lazy so the formatting is fucked). But really, it doesn't take a professor of anatomy to tell you that the changes are ass. Here's why: 1. Crews lose skills Your old crews that had 3-4 skills will only have ~40ish skill points in the new system, which will lose you - 2-3 skills/perks in practice 3-4 skills were basically enough for anything that wasn't a highly specialised LT build, but now, you have to grind much, much more to get those crews to perform at the level they perform now, i.e. >75 points in the new system which is the equivalent of what is now a 5 skill (non-0th skill) crew. for a more detailed take, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/lqriw0/this_average_crew_loses_24_skills_when_converted/ 2. Crews do not combine If you were in the habit of grinding several crews to 3-4 skills instead of having 1-2 crews which you maxed out (which most people will be), you're shafted because crews do not combine and you're stuck with multiple (un-competitive) crews this is unfair to the players because under the old system, there was very little incentive to go past the 3rd or 4th skills, whereas now you're massively penalised for it with no recompense whatsoever if you think this is just sandbox and they might change it later, community contributors have said on the forums that they do not plan on introducing merging crews as a feature. 3. 0th skill crews have exactly 0 worth If your crews are Christmas crews/0th skill BIA crews, the extra skill you have will not be counted in the new system - you lose 2-3 skills from that alone - not counting the fact you effectively lose 2-3 skills anyway for what are currently 3-4 skill crews this massively shafts people who bought/ground out 0th skill crews with zero compensation 4. RNG-gated instructors Speaking of 0th skill crews, special 0th skill crews will now become 'instructors' which give small bonuses to specific perks. you have a choice between 3 perks of one category for each instructor - and which 3 you get to choose from is pure RNG - no rerolls. this locks bonuses behind a pay to progress, RNG-based mechanic where previously you just had to grind crews to progress. which makes the game even more unfair as between the players that pay up and players that don't (or can't). 5. Massive endgame grind for even more inequality They nerfed the commander bonus and introduced a new 'expertise' grind where for each level of progression you grind past the 75th point, you get a 'small' bonus to your vehicle handling. vehicle handling is the same thing as what BIA does now, and the maximum ('small') bonus you can get from expertise is 20%........on top of the 5% you already get from the renamed BIA and all the other bonuses you have through skills/equipment. Previously, crews, once you were past 100% and had BIA, no matter how much you played with them, no matter where you got them, no matter how many crew books you bought and fed to them, were capped at the same level of performance - you won't get a faster reload, you won't get less aimtime. For the mechanics of these changes, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/lqlt46/crew_20_sandbox_general_feedback/goi4lif?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Now as for their effects.... The new system introduces an all new grind that gives you the equivalent of stacking an extra ~ 2.5 more bond vents on your tank this not only adds a new grind, but increases the already gaping inequality between players a new player with a fresh crew will lack the renamed BIA, he might lack equipment, he is likely not to be be running food, he certainly won't have the expertise bonus on his tank - and he will be facing veterans with crews that perform 40-50 percent better than what he has. *this hypothetical player would have to grind the equivalent of 7 skills in the current system just to catch up. the only bandage on this fresh bullet wound is the free sixth sense - which players in the current system could have got pretty easily by crew books in the first place - and which could be added without all this hullabaloo with the new system. CW Implications: some of the perks would be very strong in a competitive setting, which I admit isn't a bad thing necessarily. for a decently competitive clan, crew 2.0 would mean basically mandating people to have the equivalent of 6-7 skill crews in order to perform on a 'level' playing field and that's not counting stacking with bond/bounty equipment and access to reward tanks There are also side issues with tanks with large crews seemingly being shortchanged but that's minor compared to the iceberg that we're headed towards. Don't look a gold sink in the mouth! one of the touted features of Crew 2.0 is that you can train 1 crew for up to 3 tanks, only that.. u/Kuratovsky has kindly pointed out to me that in Crew 2.0, training your crew for the 2nd and 3rd tanks, just like retraining crews under the current system, will result in a penalty. unlike in the current system, the retraining penalty for the 2nd and 3rd tanks is 10% of the crew's total experience. if your crew has, say, 13 million exp (~6 skill crew), you will lose 1.3 million crew exp from the F2P option - and this directly eats into your crew skills/expertise bonuses currently, the penalty for retraining a crew to another tank is 10% of the major qualification, i.e. 10% of 100k exp. this does not affect the crew skills/perks. if you want to avoid bleeding XP, the solution is simple: 750 gold, 750 gold for every tank other than the first tank, and for every new tank that you switch in. the effect is that what appears to be one of the most F2P friendly features of Crew 2.0 is simultaneously the least F2P friendly part of the changes. this is because people who don't have gold will be forced to lose 10% of their total crew XP every time they retrain a crew to a different tank. Concluding thoughts For those of you who say that there's nothing to worry about and WG will surely revise the sandbox changes and make them good, I present to you the examples of: what happened to WOWS (https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/k44sbi/flamu_dissects_the_upcoming_commander_skill/) what happened to Console(https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/l12hd1/world_of_tanks_console_ruined_with_1_update_dont/gjx40yr/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and what is happening with the HE changes despite the population being generally ambivalent towards them (http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/765180-sandbox-test-he-shells%E2%80%94feedback-and-reaction/) For those of you who still remember, Rubicon failed in 2015 because the playerbase was not okay with cosmetics having an effect on gameplay. That they made heard. These changes with Crew 2.0 are of a much greater magnitude, are much less accessible, and in their current guise, it is safe to say that they will impact the game much more negatively. The multitudinous changes to the system and the overhauls to the interface only serve to hide the fact that your crews will be worse, that as players we will suffer, that we will have to pay more, grind more, to get less in return. There is no reason that the playerbase should allow these changes to happen.

This is trash. The new perks suck ass for a multitude of reasons, especially proc based situational ones. They don't work in any game, I can't believe someone greenlit that idea. Creates a huge gap between 7+ skill crews and lower level crews. You don't have amazing crews? Fuck yourself. New players can look forward to literally never being on even footing with veterans. I'll end up with 50%+ more crew skill then the other players in the match after 3 kills and a burned medkit. That's fucking stupid. I'm not even playing the same game at that point. How much you benefit from the crew conversions depends entirely on whether you kept a small number of good crews or a lot of okay ones. You honestly might as well quit the game if you did the latter because of the above reason. Incredibly disappointing. Give everyone sixth sense and then literally never touch the system again, wargaming.

Went for a quick look at the RU forums to see what they are saying about it: They dont seem to like it for many of the same reasons as us, so far at least. Edit, link to that thread: http://forum.worldoftanks.ru/index.php?/topic/2127797-ваши-впечатления-от-экипажа-20/page__pid__54595832__st__20#entry54595832

Basically it looks like this is the plan: Right now it's brutal to start out (especially when we're talking 50% crews) but you gain ground rapidly. It peaks earlier, because a 2-3 skill crew is reasonably competitive for the most part. By the time you have 4 skills you hit diminishing returns because you probably have all you vitally need on most tanks. 2.0 flattens it all out into a more linear climb. You start out way better off (100% crew plus 6th sense) but gain much more gradually. And ultimately, while your crew is lamer in the middle zone than it used to be, it eventually becomes more powerful... but only with a metric ass-ton more grinding. It takes way longer to get to the end, but +20% to crew skills alone is redonk. So, the good is that new players won't get shafted as hard, and the scaling of crews is much more even. The bad news is that they want to basically obsolete a bunch of your crews and extend the grind. Extending the grind is what this is really all about. Veteran players all have solid crews in their tanks at this point, so there's weak incentive to furiously smash that lever like a conditioned muppet to get the next pellet. So they want to make the grind longer and ultimately more rewarding as reaching the end grants stupid bonuses to the entire crew. So cool, purple nazi dork (and other assorted no-lifers) now rules the world, the whales get milked harder as they dump resources to pump up crews, every one else is pissed. LOOKIN GOOD, GUYZ

not just a crew with 5 full skills, but that crew can't be a 0th skill/female crew because the 0th skill doesn't count towards the XP pool now also level 75 is not enough: maxed expertise gives you an additional 20% of crew skill on top of the 5% you get from the nerfed BIA and that's basically the new bond equipment grind for crews lastly but prolly most importantly to casual players, a 2.5 skill crew (basically enough for most stuff in the current system) will only get you at most 3 of the old skills RNG instructors are stupid This shit isn't Crew 2.0 - it's Rubicon 2.0.

I feel the effects of the new system as proposed would break the player base into 3 different groups: Rough guesses on the percentages, but: The really new/really casual players (guess 10% of the player base?): Those who currently grind crews without 6th sense, those who play with 50%/75% crews when they get a new tank. These players would see a buff in that they get 6th sense for free and there are no more crews less than 100% major qualification. The really dedicated players (maybe 5% of the player base, probably less?): Those who currently have 5-skill crews on many of their tanks (fully grinded, 'zero-skill' crews don't count!). These players would see a buff in that they would immediately get Level 75 crews allowing them to get all necessary skills plus 2 talents. Also any skills they have over and above 5 turns into more major qualification. The vast majority of players (the rest, 85% of the player base?): Those who currently have between 1- and 4- skill crews on most of their tanks. These players get the shaft. Where their crews are perfectly passable in the current system (particularly so for heavy tanks), they either feel a bit worse in the new system, or or at best the same. This group of players doesn't see the advantages gained by group 2 above as their crews convert to somewhere from Level 18 to 70. So WG has proposed a system that helps the 10% really need it (the new/casuals), the 5% who really don't need the help (the really dedicated) and shafts the other 85%. And on top of that, the conversion process is going to be a ridiculous exercise for just about everyone to get their crews set up. The only good things about the proposed crew changes, in my opinion, are 6th sense for everyone, and no more crews with less than 100% major qualification.

Havent seen it properly myself. Friend did a long summary of it. From what he said it sounds horrible. Changing it fully from a mostly passive stat boost that it currently is to a full blown gimmick system. "You get this for 5 seconds after doing this" "if you get this many kills you get this boost" No no no no no no no. It sounds awful. I didnt actually want WG to change crew skills because aside from making 6th sense default, I didnt trust them to not fuck it up. And it looks like thats whats happening to me.

Neither of the tanks you have are good earners so the 122TM does sort of fill a role. But then again, it lacks the credit coefficients of some of the older prems, and you will be wanting to run food to try and fix that 1.6k DPM. Looking at it another way, the 122 isn't that much stronger - if at all - than the other two, and any difference in strength will be even slimmer after the 34-3 gets its buffs next patch. I'd get something with a different playstyle entirely, preferably from a different nation, too

All of this is super depressing I am really upset about the shafting of zero skill crewmen, nearly all of my meaningful crews are made up from those. Shame on me, but I did specifically spend money on tanks that were sold with zero skill crews bundled - maybe if I am not alone in that, it might be sufficient leverage for the community to have the zero-skills counted somehow? one last thought: for those willing to burn some (quite some, actually) gold, it might make sense to split up and move the old-style crews into two-person tanks before the change: The shift from old to 2.0 should be done on a per-tank-basis (independent of crew size), so this way you could “duplicate” e.g. one 4-skill old crew into two 2.0 commanders or make five 2.0 commanders out of two five-man old crews, or make three 2.0 commanders out of two three-man old crews etc., you get the idea. there should be at least one two-person tank in every tree for this, I think

The difference will be even larger after the changes

I'd try to give WG my opinion, but I know that is 100% waste of time. RU players will determine crew 2.0

And who is asking for a stupid HE rework? Who will be satisfied with this? Almost nobody. Ppl are asking for fixes in MatchMaker, premium ammo, SPGs, wheeled vehicles, map design, clan wars, marathons, reward tanks, premium tanks... You know: the real issues. If WG didn't start this HE topic, nobody would be talking about it. It's irrelevant in the grand scheme.

I think it's trash. It doesn't even make sense, the shells don't explode anymore. If it does make it to live, cool, swipe that credit card and spam more gold. No one deserves what they get more than the WoT player base. Here's one way to fix HE. You drop the damage to match other shells because why the fuck are they different numbers anyway. You increase the blast radius so it can actually be used to target thin armor. Penetration drops to 0. Damage will be higher against thin armor anyway, damage spikes just make it hard to balance. And then option: Rework the damage calculation from (damage/2 - armor thickness) to more like (damage - armor thickness*2). Or you take the arty stun mechanic and scale it down to stuns that last 1-5 seconds or something. First option would increase overall damage, second option would instead add stun. Either way the shell would be more about aiming and knowing armor models than currently, and be more useful for smaller caliber guns. As it stands, there's not much reward for aiming. If you increased the blast radius, it would allow you to target, say, low on a turret and splash the top armor on purpose, or fire underneath a tank to hit the thin underarmor. Shots to thick armor would do less, while aimed shots to splash thin armor would be more consistent and do higher average damage. Right now the blast radius is so small it's a waste of time. The main problem with changing HE is that most of the ideas, like what WG is testing, make the shell pointless, more obnoxious, or both. No one's going to load a shell with 60 pen to try to pen tanks in the side with 80mm + 20mm tracks to do extra damage. The last thing the game needs is a shell for killing lower tier/light tanks more easily. These changes ultimately will just hurt light tanks and buff armored bricks... which is, of course, the original sandbox vision they've been pursuing for years now.

Yep, this hands down looks like the worst change to the game in years. As others have pointed out, it is bad on so many levels it is simply not funny. Yes, there will be some iterations, but again, WG recently has a habit of forcing stuff through despite negative feedback. Probably nothing short of a full-scale RU server revolt will stop it at this point in time. So many bad decisions. They cannot possibly think that the majority of players have 5+ skill crews, it is so painfully obvious that the majority of players will have 3-4 skill crews, simply because going beyond that has massive diminishing returns and is basically unnecessary when playing randoms. The bonus to the additional grind levels beyond level 75 are simply too big, and will only exacerbate the current issue of veteran players dominating new players because the veteran players will start substantially closer to to those additional levels than newer players - plus they then get to use that dominating crew in 3 vehicles, instead of just 1! RNG on the 'instructors' (which was already a dumb idea to deal with the special crew members - they have been a successful mechanic in the game, why now remove those fancy voice-actor lines and special portraits from he crews entirely?) The zero-skill and bonus BIA commanders getting nerfed is potentially the one area I can see them changing because of the paid aspect of many of these crews. There are some aspects of what they are trying to do here that has merit, such as starting new players on better ground, and there are aspects of the WoWS model that I think could work okay in WoT, but as usual, the transition ideas here are just absolute trash.

I think this system will fuck new players sideways. I managed to pull my wife into WoT, and she has interesting strategy. She is stopping at tier 6, and grinding crews there until they have 3 full skills before proceeding to tier 7. in the new system, the moment she decides to move to tier 7, she will be punished with 10% of the crew XP (assuming she will pay silver, but not gold for the conversion). And another 10% whenever she advances up a tier. Before, players like her would lose only 10% of the major qualification, which is like 10-11k of xp, which can be compensated for quite quickly. On the other hand, players like me will be fucked the other way. I have all the tanks I want in the garage, and those that I don't play as often, they have usually 2 full skills and 3rd on 90 something %. Those tanks are usually tier 8s and 9s that I've kept, while the "main" crew that was grinding through the tree from low tiers is now on tier 10 and has 4-5 skills (usually 4 full skills and 5th on 90something%). The lower quality crews are practically useless because they will get like 30-40 points after conversion. Counter argument is "yeah, but you can use your tier 10 crew instead", which is true, BUT i must either pay gold or lose 10% of the total crew XP which is insane. I just checked for my batchat crew what would that mean, and i would lose 1.3 million crew xp. So basically I would have to pay 12.5 million credits in order to partially compensate (the 0.5mil are for the retraining itself). The last point is, I tried some battles in Sandbox with my batchat, and there are some really wonky builds you can run. I always hated the pathetic gun handling, and with some min-maxing i really managed to make beast out of a bat, but at the expense of the mobility aspects. This is definitely interesting to say the least, but I think it will widen the skill gap even further. Bad players will not skill their crews properly, and experienced good players will eat them now even easier than ever.

Crew with this much skills is only level 54 when converted to 2.0: I would've expected it to be maxed out, but it's nowhere near 75 levels... The zero perk crew members really get nerfed. I have tons of tanks with 3-4 skills, which is all you need in the old system. For example, I have full crews for all 5 russian tier X heavies, but since the new system allows to use one crew with up to 3 tanks, I'd rather combine those crews to have 2 better crews rather than 5 mediocre ones.

Nearly all my crews are 2-3 skills. You don't need more to be competitive. The third skill wasn't even that needed, it's just because you lose one commander skill on sixth sense, and the second skill is BIA. So the third was needed for the view range skills. Make sixth sense default and you only need 2 crew skills to be competitive IMO. The new system seems to make the gap between pay2progress and others, and between people who really focussed on crew training to 5-6 and up skills and others even bigger than currently.

The crew grind is absolutely terrible. Playing without sixth sense is rage inducing. Getting clowned by people with 5 skill crews in tier 5-6, while you're trying to rank up the first skill, absolutely blows. I have no idea if this will help casuals/new players, and I'm sure WG will fuck it up. But, as a casual, who mostly sucks, I think some kind of change to crews was needed. The difference in effectiveness between a 1 skill crew, and a 3 skill crew, is pretty fucking enormous. And, let's be honest. Tank effectiveness at higher tiers, with 5 skill crews, is pretty absurd.

I already miss being able to stack BIA, recon, and SA for max view range. The new vision skill only gives 4% more view range when maxed out, which is significantly less than what can be done with the above. Though the investment of 10 skill points compared to currently having to max out 3 different skills (which may all be bottlenecked to the commander) may be simpler, many tanks in my lineup need more than 4% view range from the crew. The new camo skill also seems like it has less effect in total than the current one, another disappointment. As of how the system as a whole works, I'm still failing to see the point. If they wanted to make sixth-sense a default feature and make crews start at 100% training without having to pay gold, or having crews trained for multiple vehicles, they could have done that without having to rework anything. ***Edit: Actually it seems that the 'Cohesion' skill acts sort of like BIA and fills the gap to some degree, but oddly the garage UI doesn't show improvement to either base spread or camo in particular. Another incidental thought- why do so many of these skills have to be conditional? One gives better aim time, but only when stationary. Another improves acceleration, but only in a straight line. Cohesion improves some 'handling' stats, but not others. Plus the condition that its disabled by a crewman being either wounded or stunned. Why can't the new skills just give simple, useful buffs without conditions, tradeoffs, or strings attached?

Seems like: They fucked up reward crews. Free skills from Santa, Chuck, Girls, etc... do not count in conversion. They made performance gap between 2.5-skill and >5-skill crews larger. And they made ALL* crews WORSE after conversion. Light tanks with less than 6 skills are gonna get rekt the most. There is no real replacement for camo skill, and you cant max camo and VR early in the "crew talent tree". *maybe not all of them. Seems like there are huge buffs after level 75 in the New system, so crews with real 6 or 7 skills are gonna become extremely powerful compared to average 3 to 4 skill crews.

It seems like level 75 is where you want to be with all crews on all tanks in 2.0. And to get that in conversion, you need to have a crew with 5 FULL skills, and 6th opened. That's crazy. I dont even have crews with full 4 skills and I dont feel like I'm missing much on HT, TDs, Arty.. Only lights and some meds really need 4 full to work well. Edit: Wow. All my tanks will be NERFED after conversion. My perfectly fine 3-skill Maus for example... After conversion: gonna be a level 35 turd. Hahahaha

Welcome to Gimmick 2.0! Now not only are new tank lines built around arbitrary gimmicks, but your crew is too.

Yeah. Most of the skills are fine, but a lot have micromanagement events. Like... fuck off, I just want to play my stupid tank, not have to memorize "cooldown period for my intimidating shout" WoW-style mechanics. I barely remember "need keys make car go vroom" from one day to the next.

It's wonderful and clearly well thought out. I trained a separate crew to each tank in the American medium line, suffering through 75%-100% starts 7+ times, so now I have a pile of level 27-47 crews. You played a couple of crews and moved them around, now you have a level 60+ crew in the entire branch. This is not at all mildly infuriating.

The thing that annoys me the most is the overall hit to effectiveness due to taking away the 14% or so Commander passive boost and locking it behind the Level 75 wall in increments, meaning that you have to get a 5-skill equivalent crew to activate the old passive Commander bonus. Another thing that I've found annoying is the RNG for the instructor skills (You get random presets given to you, you don't get to choose where the bonus points go). They said in the video that they wanted to get away from having must have skills that are always picked, but Repairs, Firefighting, scuffed BIA (Coherence) and Situational Awareness are all still needed for randoms IMO. From a CW perspective (I've really only watched Daki experiment so far), I can see that there's a massive variation in skill loadouts that you can have for CW, but I feel that for randoms this won't change much and there will be a figured out set of skills when (I say when because I know that WG will most likely have already decided that they will push this, regardless of feedback) this comes out, like for equipment 2.0. There are some very nice and unique skills that have come out of this such as redution of RNG for pen and damage rolls, but I don't feel that they will be effective enough to be used. Oh also, damage rolls seem to be very bugged on the Sandbox, with min rolls and max rolls becoming incredibly common to the point where you will hit multiple in each game.

So you must love digging out the campers on Steppes, or from the forest of Malinovka, even if you cornered the opposing team on 20% of the map, but there is still a chance that you will be punished for actually playing actively? I really call BS on this sudden love for Komarin by everyone. That map was embodiment of everything that you all claim to hate in today's map pool. It was a campfest shit and it's good that it is gone. Hopefully for good.

It's amazing how this thing devours stuff. Most tanks with insane DPM are heavily gimped in some way. Not this bad boy. If it weren't so sensitive to artillery it would be the best tank in the game. Vent stab rammer is best setup with food. Without food: optics stab rammer.

I'm not bothering with it. I see good players struggling to get damage in fast games, and even in non fast games it's an opportunist at best. It lacks the DPM to brawl or to defend itself when over extending. It is at best a decent credit earner for the average player who with good standard rounds and high alpha will make a sizable amount of profit from the average game.

Should be available by Friday at the latest! I was hoping to have it done by now but last week I came down with a pretty bad case of something and I've been pretty much knocked out of comission since then. Hoping to get back on my feet this week! Cheers!

yeah i'm done with wot as well - EBRs are just running too rampant for this game to have a single enjoyable possible game anymore so I'm not going to push it will still be here every now and then - bye for now

You know the drill, 5 replays per person max. You shouldn't cherrypick good games here if you actually want good feedback. Derp games the same, they are just derps and not much else to say about them. The best games are games similar to your skill level. I'm more than happy to offer advice to anyone. If you don't want the video public - I'll PM you the unlisted Youtube video. I know @Private_Miros has been struggling a bit lately, so the offer for him is 10 replays. Games where you feel mistakes were made are obviously the ones you should want reviewed. If they are carries that is also fine, there's room for improvement there too. I'd love to review a 5k tier 10 session from somebody else than myself. Tier 9 and 10 only. I would consider some stronger tier 8s as well (Borrasque, Prog, etc) but I won't be doing a TVP VTU review because that would be a two second review of me saying "pick something else" No SPGs. You can post LT games, but that's not where my analysis will be the strongest. (That's a nice bush and your team played around it isn't exactly much to say). If you want me in my element here, pick high impact tanks. No Berlin/Pearl River maps. I still have yet to get a good read on these maps yet since coming back so analysis on them would likely not result in great feedback. This time you don't need to post sessions like before, you are free to pick any replays you want. Analysis will be tailored towards skill level - lower end means a higher mechanical focus and initial reading while stronger players will be subject to understanding tempo better, and decision making. Upload your replays to wotreplays and post the links here. Remember that if you make them secret then you have to specifically post the secret link (not the browser URL) I will do this for as long as I can muster, and everyone who asks for a review will get it. I'll close the entries eventually as I can't do this forever but everyone who posts their games for review before that will get their games reviewed. Estimate is about two weeks.

I watched the video as well and my takeaways from that + platooning with you this week are as follows: You have really good awareness. You clearly notice things like tanks crossing, potential spotting angles, when a flank is falling etc. The Sand River game you could tell from where you were looking you noticed all the big game beats super early. That is a really hard part of this game and you're already very good at it. But . . . you react sub-optimally when you do notice these developments. You pick them up, react, but the reactions often aren't the best ones. You've either already placed yourself in a bad spot where it's hard to take advantage, or you move into a position which then "locks" you in and doesn't give you any flexibility. A lot of your micro-positioning is quite risky. I'd advise following @kolni's advice around always giving yourselves options and if it is a choice between a) fully committing for potentially a bit more damage, or b) not committing for less damage, but keeping your options open, then all things equal always pick option b). Always be able to fallback - if you can't either fallback or kill everything in the vicinity, you've made a mistake probably. The hard part of this is not being too passive as a result, and therein lies the skill (i still err too much on the side of caution/commit at the wrong times). Load. More. Premium. On Sand River, you would have had 1,400 dmg against the Jagd E 100 if you had loaded gold from the start. A lot of players only carry a couple of AP rounds in the STB. That's an extreme, but your default ammo should be premium rounds in most tanks, unless you have an amazing standard APCR round like Russian meds, where your split is more 50/50. Leo Pta - all gold APCR. M46 - all APCR. STB - say a 75/25 split in favour of HEAT. I doubt you've got an ethical stance against it like WG forum shitters, and i'm sure you have the credits, so load it and use it! Always look for shots. There's a few instances where you focus a little too much on the macro game/mini map, and you miss chances for easy shots. This is hard, but always try and be feathering shots, particularly when moving around to see if you have angles/if it is worth stopping to aim. Don't worry about hit/pen ratios - fire when you can and let volume get you damage. The more you shoot (Especially with prem), the more you'll get lucky snaps, fluke pens etc. It's also worth blinding obvious bushes in tanks with high ROF like the STB, when you have nothing better to do. Redshire is a decent map for this, as are maps like Fisherman's Bay, Prokorovka, Malinovka etc. I think you need to think about minimising exposure more as well. A tank like the STB is great for this actually because of it's amazing gun dep. If you can get shots just by peaking your turret, don't drive your entire tank up. Try and keep your front towards where the enemy fire will come IF you get spotted. Pull back if you think you might be spotted as soon as you fire, not when you're lit - you can always move back if not spotted. Making yourself as hard a target as possible helps in two ways: 1) the enemy are more likely to bounce or miss if they fire; and 2) more importantly, if you're a hard target, they might just not fire. They might have easier shots, or they might not want to use one of their clip (if an autoloader) or reload too long (e.g. a TD), so you'll take a lot less damage this way as well. Your damage taken seems to come in "bursts", i.e. you get spotted with your full tank exposed, and every enemy in range instantly turns to aim at you and chunks of 2/3/4 shots in 3 or 4 seconds. Making those instances 0 or 1 shot allows you to survive mistakes better and live longer to do more damage.

I really want to emphasize this part, as why I think HE in the current form is wrong and needs a rework. The problem when OP tanks take dominant positions and can't be flanked, is not a problem that should be solved with a game mechanics that removes skill from the game (i hope we agree that shooting HE in general area of the target for guaranteed 300 dmg does not require a lot of skill). Damage shouldn't come for free (and that is why everyone who is interested in skillful play has issue with arty in the game) This is the problem of poor map design (no opportunities to flank dominant positions when hull down tanks take them), and of course imbalanced tanks.

After seeing Daki getting trashed by HE for 1k in a perfect hull down I have to revise my other postings. This rework needs to happen. If you are stuck in such a situation it's just toxic. Them not needing to properly aim means you have no chance of hitting their weakspots. This means you either get dumped on or do nothing. This is especially an issue with tanks like a 60TP and E3 where you have to aim precisly.

I'm a recent addition to the forum and I can't say the people here are xenophobes. Most of them are really helpful and share lots of good advice which you can't say about the rest of the playerbase so I avoid the official forums like the plague. They have strong oppinions about the game, which they are allowed to have playing for so long and at that level. If you can't respect that don't expect any respect in return. You have some valid points which make sense but these won't validate all of your thesis. Ofc. they try to push their T8 sales by making T10 stupidly expensive. Ofc. they handicap all new premium tanks with shit standard pen so that you use more gold ammo therefore more boosters (which aren't given out for free like they used to). T8 is the backbone of the game which they are killing right now but you won't change anything by insulting and calling out people here.

Playing 60TP this weekend I had a game on lakeville where me and my platoon mate encountered 2 other 60tps in the corridor. We spammed HE at each other for 10 minutes. It was a very boring experience and this ordeal will take even longer after the HE damage is getting reduced. An array of unpenetrateable tanks lobbing HE shells at each others pixels chewing down 2,4k HP with 50 damage a shot. Sounds like fun and engaging gaming experience. Even less people will play Heavy Tanks.

Under normal circumstances, this would be a non-issue. If some tomato in an E3 chucks HE at center mass and does say 300 damage he's only cheating himself out of the 750 that should have been dealt by one of the other shell types. The only way that the HE tactic gets ahead is if the other shell types have very low odds of success. Otherwise, HE consistently loses in the long run. If HE really has become an actual threat to the high tier meta, that would mean something has gone terribly wrong with the conventional AP/APCR/HEAT performance against typical armor profiles. As of the odd detail that HE no longer causes splash damage (cue memes about non-exploding HE), this smells to me that they're trying to shoehorn arta back into relevance as the magic solution to the 'camping' problem. Good luck with that.

@Hoenn HE spam is a symptom of far larger issues.

I'll happily answer all your questions you have about me. I am an ex-WGL Pro player for starters, look up FAME 7x7 and Knäckebröd and you will see me playing casted games. I stopped playing WGL because the League literally got shut down. I've traveled to events and competed and met friends from the two clans I spent most of my time in (FAME and S3AL). This game was a very large part of my life before I moved on. I come back every now and then, and it takes a few weeks but then I'm back to form again. I find the game laughably easy. I wish it translated into something more productive though. The yun9 account was a reroll I made to get number 1 on the server, which I did. My account before the reroll was Yung_xD. and there I was playing off meta tanks. Stuff like this: The account was then sold, and obviously the player wasn't my caliber and depadded the account down and renamed it. I know the ID but since I have a code I won't leak the nick as that isn't very nice to the one who bought it. 4K EUR is plenty of compensation. After this, I pretty much only boosted other accounts as I literally did not have an account of my own anymore. I made a living off of this game for over 3 years alone. The average tier is a bug. That account had zero games below tier 8 on it. You didn't find it strange that it has a 3700 average damage output with a 7.22 average tier? Since I rerolled my original account after three marking every tier 10 in the game (excluding rewards), I got to keep the prems - and rewards. It had 1200 907 games on it. The rest was a mixture of strong meta tanks. If you go through literally any of my threads, content and so on, you will very obviously see that I know what I'm talking about. I know this game better than reality. I'm also the top DPG holder on very many tier 10s I'm 25 years old. My life's actually pretty fucking bad. I have autism, ADHD and I'm very likely bipolar too. Drug addict on top of that too. Somehow I'm still able to run circles around literally millions of players despite all of that. Have you ever played WoT on LSD? I have. It was pretty much the only time in 5 years that I played what the average player would consider average. That sig is my mark of achievement. Of coiurse I'm posting it - I'm proud of it. Have you ever been number one in the world at any point ever at something? That feeling really is something. At the time, I was ahead of the russians too. I'm not anymore, and plenty of players are better than I am now, but my knowledge regarding the game is more refined than pretty much anyone you'll ever come across on this forum, or any other forum. You can question my integrity, but pretty much anyone who matters in this game, or on this forum for that matter, will corroborate what I'm saying.

You clearly have literally zero understanding of how any game that involves teamplay works whatsoever, when your teammates are literal garbage (which a minimum of 11 will be every game on your team in this game) you need to play around their weakness. There is no teamplay. It's making use of teammate fuck ups. Anything goes in combat. WoT is a knifefight, not a team game. It's PVE, despite the notion that it isn't. The only thing you can influence is your gameplay, and when (and it's always a matter of when, not if) your team goes full ape the best outcome is to stall it out to cut your losses. The only way to actually get to 70%WR is by doing this very thing you are arguing aganist, or triple platooning. I know, because I did. I'm probably further behind my teammates than your average unicum but my impact is pretty much double anyway. Know why? Committing means all or nothing, and keeping your options open is how you can continue to positively influence the game - even after it's decidedly lost. I consider many games lost right at countdown because of matchmaking, and I have never used XVM. Composition decides your best course of action and sometimes you are dealt a really shitty hand. SR is great at making use of a bad hand. I've reviewed his replays and while there are things to improve on - there are things he does better than players considerably better than him by many margins. The most notable one is probably never giving up like so, so many players do when all seems lost. It's probably still lost, but you can either go down swinging or get down on your knees because you're never going to improve. Playing for WN8 and playing for wins aren't as far apart as you make it out to be, winning game states lead to better games. Snowballing is a concept for a reason and when that snowball is running towards you - you fall back to stalling. This applies to prety much every game ever created and not understanding it is a very fatal flaw you have in your gameplay just by typing these words out.

Apologies to @sr360 for mucking in his thread. But you know - maybe we should take this out on the WN8 developers. Force them to run only manual fire extinguishers? Or dismiss their crews? WN8 is clearly the illuminati - it literally is telling you how to play your tank! Oh I have a better idea- what is WG took WN8 (which is open source) and used it to develop their own rankings! That'd show those WN8 whores who is boss! And then...WG could add in spotting! And apply it over a time period where they actually tracked stat totals over time! Then we'd never have to hear from those WN8 purple scum ever again! Oh - and here's another idea - WG could make a Ranked mode to match those players against each other - or maybe some kind of war between the clans? Or team battles or maybe some kind of Skirmish? These are amazing ideas dude.

I want to clarify something on this subject. A core problem is that HE shells scale twice: once with the raw damage value, once with the size of the blast radius. I did a lot of math on this back in the day, and the larger the blast radius, the less damage you lose from seeking out the thinnest armor. Take a case of a Lowe and Pershing facing another hull down Lowe. Lowe loads HE, it's 420 damage and 1.91m blast radius (6.27 ft in freedom numbers). Typically even with a solid shot you're still going to be about 3 ft from the thin top armor and thus losing 50% of the damage from blast distance. Lowe's top armor is 40mm, so 420/2/2 - 40 = ~75. Too low, but still something. But the Pershing is way worse because the damage is not only lower at 320, but the blast radius is 1.46m (4.79 freedoms). So for the exact same shot, your calculation is now roughly 320/2/3 - 40 = ~ 13. Pointless. If the blast was the same size, it would be 320/2/2 - 40 = ~40. Much more consistent. Thus, HE damage effectively scales exponentially instead of linearly as the damage value would imply, because two values governing damage are simultaneously increasing. By the time you reach the KV-2's 910 damage 152mm gun, the radius is 3.66m. In the shot mentioned above, the Lowe loses 50% to blast radius, the Pershing loses about 65%, while the KV-2 is only going to lose a paltry 17%. A numerical representation of the damage output isn't 320, 420, 910, but more like 112, 210, 792. The proportion becomes even more grotesque when we add in the armor thickness reduction, and becomes 72, 160, and 752. It's a joke. I said "increase blast radius", but that was a poor choice of word. It needs to be rescaled. Currently the smallest HE rounds are like 0.33m and the largest (non artillery) is the shitbarn at 5.05m. It should start at more like 1.5m, quickly rise to 3.0m, and then slow after that to maybe 4.0m. At 4m+ aiming becomes quickly less and less important to the point you get the HURR DURR SHOOT effect of HE that a lot of players dislike. The radius is so high that even a bad shot will seek out weak armor halfway across the tank. Rescaling the blast size would fix a lot of the problem by making HE scale more like a line instead of exponentially. It would be stronger on a Pershing, but be slightly weaker on a nuclear-sized gun that doesn't aim. It would do so while maintaining the basic concept of the shell and still offer an alternative form of doing damage.

Sounds like Steppes to me. Or Ghost Town Assault. This going in one by one is deadly on any map. This is how you carry games. Same on Sand River, Live Oaks or even Redshire. I remember it as kinda fun but it was dark closed beta times so a lot of winters have passed since then. Swamp and Windstorm would be really nice to get back. I also want Fiery Salient back. Would be nice for the game to switch some maps around every patch.

Komarin was unironically better than many of the current maps. At least you had flexibility.

I kind of prefer an imbalanced map with many options than a balanced map with funnels.

Port is an unbalanced shit map, but I did have my best game ever on it. Pool's and 3,6k xp in Chaffee on my alt account.

I liked Swamp because you had so many options, I don't really play that much heavies, so castle wasn't really ever relevant early-mid game for me. I played it mostly from mid, where you could abuse camo and vision to rek enemy team, and it worked from both sides, you also had good arty cover if you pushed over mid. There was also useful arty cover if you approached from water on both sides. It was just a really fun map to play.

Hey I still check forums like any addict

same, swamp back might just be enough to get me to log on again