Totenstanz

You wot M8? Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough, but I do believe that it is totally acceptable to refer to artillery as cancer. I actually find it quite awesome that much of the community have latched onto referring to artillery as cancer. In fact, it is a cathartic experience to destroy the in game equivalent of my affliction. Now having said that, calling artillery and the people who play artillery cancer is most definitely offensive. However, I believe that it's more on the offensive level of calling somebody a retard. This is in contrast to what a lot of people who are staunchly against the practice of referring to artillery as cancer who, from my perspective, are attempting to equate the term "cancer" to a racial slur. Hopefully that clears up everything. One more thing however, the people with cancer and the people who have loved ones with cancer are not offended because you're flippantly tossing around a word. It is the emotional connection that word embodies pain, suffering, helplessness, and death. Personally, I've developed a rather morbid sense of humor about the whole thing, but for many people especially those with love ones suffering it maybe a lot harder to cope with. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use the term. In fact, I wrote my original post here because I didn't want anybody to try being a white knight for the unspoken masses of cancer victims. What I think everyone who decides to use the term cancer to describe artillery should be prepared to do is apologize, and be a fucking human being when someone may be genuinely offended by your verbal actions. You are attempting to bump a thread that is pinned. Much shiptoasting, much wow!

I think you meant to post in this thread:

Casual Purple? Meh... How about Purple Poaster Palace? \o/

Well, since we are on the topic of cancer, and whether it's acceptable or not to call artillery "cancer." I suppose I have a somewhat unique perspective on the subject. A little over three years ago I was diagnosed with stage 4 Nodular Lymphocyte-Predominant Hodgkin Lymphoma. Taking a moment to look back on it all, it is amazing the amount of physical and psychological pain that I freely chose to endure. Despite everything, chemo wasn't able to put me into remission. Fortunately my type of lymphoma is fairly slow-growing, until it's not, and despite my physical state being somewhat FUBAR, as of right now I'm okay. Now that we have that out of the way, my two cents on the matter. I think that at some level calling artillery cancer is offensive, to somebody, but not to me. Like most people who have been diagnosed with a form of cancer. I have had to look at death as a real thing, and not just a concept that will happen to me in the unknowable future. Funny thing, I'm not dead yet, but seriously there were a couple points during chemotherapy that I would have died if I would have caught a cold. That being said, When I was first diagnosed with cancer it would have made me fairly uncomfortable if someone would have referred to artillery as "cancer." However, at that point in time any reference to cancer was nearly unbearable for me to hear. Case in point, a week or so after being diagnosed I decided I was going to start watching breaking bad, long story short I didn't even get through the first episode. It's one of those things that you have to work out for yourself and it takes time to figure out how to come to peace with what is happening to you. I suppose it's one of those grieving process things anger, sadness, etc. etc. At the end of the day, calling artillery cancer is somewhat offensive, but it is also completely accurate. Furthermore, it is not the same type of "offensive" as using a racial slur to describe someone. P.S. Please don't say "I'm so sorry you have cancer." It has been an interesting journey, and I have gotten to see some of the best of humanity because of it.

I'm happy with my improvement.

Here are the last two. Thanks again for taking the time and effort to do this. #4 Siegfried Line, Standard 1. Hmm, not sure with the best counter for this is, but I suppose that's why I'm answering these things. For one thing, if your team members, who went field, would've spread out deeper into the field. They could have potential shots on the FCM and other tanks in that Far West side of town. Also, your KV-5 huddling in F6 should have maintained his defense of the six line instead of moving back. He's the one who allowed the WZ to get into a position to shoot down the F line at you. 2. Other than that shot that the T-34-3's tracks ate, I don't think that RNG treated you too bad at all. as far as, shots are concerned anyways. You could've possibly aimed the shot on the T-34-3 slightly better, but your engine is out, you're ammo racked, and you're getting shot from every direction. I mean, they see you rollin, they hatin. 3. Based on where your teammates were willing to move I think that you overextended yourself slightly. You still managed to do top damage on your team, but if you wouldn't have pushed up after your initial shot on the KV-5 you wouldn't have been as easy of a target to kick from every direction. #5 Sacred Valley, Encounter 1. By controlling the northernmost passage, it allows you and your team to envelop the enemy's positions on the D-line. Besides, the cap circle on this encounter map is situated wide-open in the middle of the Valley, It's a kill zone. 2. Actually, only two out of the nine shots that did damage had the possibility of rolling higher than 686. Assuming a uniform distribution , you have around an 11% chance of having a damage roll at or below 686 twice in a row. However, it's probably a normal distribution given WG's love for sigma, but without more info, it's impossible to give it an exact probability. 3. Good: Garbad SMASH! You kept your gun hot, and never stopped moving towards the enemy. You did a good job at aiming ahead of that 1390, and even though it didn't payoff it was still a good move. Bad: I didn't really see anything that I thought could've been done better.

Sorry these are coming in piecemeal, but here's another one done. #3 Airfield, Standard 1. You were trying to get some free damage on any tank trying to get to the ledge at E-7. I think you pushed up because you spotted an opportunity to shoot at the enemy tanks, who were all focused on your Bat on the B-line. I think that waiting, for a few seconds, for the chance to shoot someone in the side as they rush up to the E-7 ledge really isn't that bad of a decision. If in the event someone actually runs up there it ends up being a great decision, and if nobody does then you're still in a good position to defend the E-6 passageway. I think the push-up into the enemy was one of those high risk high reward kind of moves. It potentially gave you an opportunity to put some valuable damage into the enemy, but it also opened you up to many different shooting lanes. Including, that T-57. 2. Well, he did do a lot of damage, and JP HE100 so OP. At least a third of his damage was done after the game was already lost, but he did attempt to assist in defending against the enemies J-line push. Actually, for a yellow player he didn't do half bad at selecting targets and maintaining what appears to be some semblance of map awareness. 3. Good: Even after losing all but 570 hp you managed to inflict over 3000 damage on the enemy. Bad: deciding to push-up early on cost you for no real gain. Furthermore, the loss of your HP so early on restricted you from being more aggressive and aiding in the local push for D/E-7.

I'm currently working on answering the rest of the questions, but in the meantime here's my answers for the first to replays. #1 Lakeville, Encounter 1. Take control of town, and forget about Valley. This is because it is encounter mode. In this game your team has a clear advantage in heavies, so aggressively winning town shouldn't be too hard. I mean, unless a lot of your team is too passive. 2. Well, your shot hit on the roof of the IS-6, which the T-30 can easily overmatch, but it looks almost like you aimed at the top of the turret front just left of the gun. You did this, I'm guessing, to reduce the chance that RNG could send your shot above the IS-6. 3. Good: you pushed into town, and did some valuable early damage. You force the enemy to push up by applying Pressure. You punished that enemy SU for giving you his side, and he went down fighting. Psychological warfare +10 that enemy cancer couldn't help but type instead of move! Bad: You had one bad auto aim shot on a Pershing that was never going to connect, and it put you in a position where cancer robbed you of a great deal of your remaining health. #2 Himmelsdorf, Standard 1. Your team consists of less armored tanks for the most part, especially at the top-tier. This is of course a city map, so tanks like the T-95 and IS-8 could easily bully their way down corridors like the 7 line. You take up a position at D5/6. This position gave you an opportunity to get some initial spots on enemy cap, and almost yielded some early damage. Furthermore, this position gives you fairly easy access to crossfire on both the 3 and 7 lines. 2. After firing or being spotted, you duck behind that building while you're reloading. 3. Good: Your initial spotting on the enemy base gave your team valuable Intel on where the IS-8 was headed. Your crossfire on the three line undoubtedly helped that Chi-Ri hold the 3 line. You also made sure that tanks like that T-29 couldn't shift from one side of the map to the other without getting punished. Bad: I didn't see much wrong with your play in this game. You missed a couple shots, but RNG played more of a role in them missing.

"They" are trying to tell me what to do, but I won't listen.

Forward: The account written below was not written to insult, or provoke anyone. Instead, it was written to entertain and inform. I'm not a professional writer, so don't expect perfect grammar or the most eloquent phrasing. What I have written is the truth, and whether you believe me or not doesn't really matter to me. I wrote this account because I believe the more people who know, what I've gone through today, the safer I will be. 1742 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Something weird happened today while the forums were experiencing that "1742" thing. I was just going around to the different threads trying to see if any of them could be viewed, but all of them were just blank except for the number "1742." I know a lot of other people saw this happen too. There was so much chatter about it in everyone's status updates. However, I continued to try different topics. One after the other they all came up the same way. I kind of got a little frustrated, but then I started to think about what could be causing this. I reasoned that it was probably a database error, so I knew there was nothing I could do to fix anything on my end. I'd almost given up, but then I hit refresh on one of the 1742 pages. The number had changed. I hadn't noticed right away what the number had change to, just simply that it had. Then as I realized what the number had changed to I began to get a little amused. You see the number had changed to "Arty Hater." At this point, I thought of course I hate arty, but most people do. Perhaps this is just a clever little Easter egg for people to discover in the event that the website malfunctioned, like it was doing today. So, I backed out of the error pages, not thinking much of it. Back on the main forums page. My eyes moved to look at the status update sidebar, since that was really the only part of the forum that was working. I hadn't noticed anything weird on the page, but as I started reading people's recent status updates. I started to notice something really weird. Everyone's status updates were so bizarre. I thought I was going a bit crazy, so I took a screenshot of the whole webpage... That's when I noticed that the page had several things wrong on it. Obviously the most noticeable change was the wotlabs' logo. It was replaced with what looked like an SPG placed in the center of a pentagram. Even the Google ad on the page was affected. But seriously, I should've played arty more? I was starting to think Never was just executing one of the best jokes ever. As I started reading all the subtitles, Joke or no joke, I started to get a sinking feeling. The subtitle under shenanigans is kind of odd since I've never actually written that on the forum, but I knew I had muttered it allowed many a times since I had started playing WOT. "You shouldn't have said 'fuck arty, and everyone who plays it.'" All three of the Purple poster sub-forums had the same phrase in there subtitle. "You shouldn't of done that." "You shouldn't of done that!" "YOU SHOULDN'T OF DONE THAT!" By this time, I started to get really unsettled. If this was a joke it wasn't a good joke. I looked back towards the recent topics/status updates sidebar. Now I could see a pattern. It wasn't individual people randomly saying things... When read top to bottom it all said: "Arty Hater" "we are going to kill you." "You can't hide." "We are going to kill you." "Shame and kill you." "You are so Fucked now." "keep moving, or we will get you." "now rip" "Look. Look up!" "Only 6 seconds to reload, then you're dead" That was it, I was done. I thought to myself "this has to be a joke." It didn't matter anymore, I was done. Never, the moderators, or whoever did this I figured they could just go fuck themselves. I moused over to the refresh button, and hit it... To my relief, the page was normal again the logo was right, the subtitles were right, and the status updates looked right again too. I breathed a sigh of relief, and decided that that was enough of the forums for me today. After eating lunch and doing a couple chores around the house, I decided that I was going to play some world of tanks. Today's earlier events had sort of settled to the back of my mind, and after eating something I was in a much better mood anyways. The first battle was fairly benign, we won despite my tier 6 heavy being focused by the enemy team's three artillery. The next three or four games turned out similar. Some of them my team won, and some of them we didn't. Unfortunately for me, my tank was destroyed by the hand of artillery every time. As most people can probably relate, I started to get very frustrated with the game. I made sure to keep moving, and take shelter behind rocks and buildings. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't survive. Game after game came and went, and artillery claimed my tank every time. The final game I played was on Fisherman's Bay. I proceeded to drive my heavy towards town, but no sooner than leaving spawn my tank was struck by three HE shells. I was pushed past the breaking point. I started raging in chat about artillery and how much it sucks. Then confused players on the other team asked me what I was talking about? I replied that their artillery had executed me while I was barely out of spawn. This reply got a lot of chuckles. One of my teammates brought to my attention that there wasn't any artillery in this battle. To make the situation even stranger, while both sides recognize that my tank was in fact destroyed, no one on either side was given credit for destroying my tank. Deciding that I wasn't going to take anymore ridicule, I exited to garage. When I got to the garage screen I noticed that I had an active chat window, so I clicked on it. It was sort of weird because it was blank where it should've had the other user's name. The chat window indicated that I was the only one in the chat session, but whoever had initiated the chat left this before leaving. "Do you understand what we can do to you now." "Consider today, just a warning." "You hate us" "WELL, WE HATE YOU TOO!" After reading this I shutdown the game immediately. I realized that I was holding my breath, so I exhaled in relief of having this whole ordeal over with. I wondered why? Why me? I mean, I'm not particularly vocal about my distaste for artillery, or the people who play artillery. It just doesn't make sense. Then again, why in the world does artillery always seem to aim at an inconsequential low-tier tank when a top-tier heavy tank is right in the open? So, after this whole ordeal, I only have one thing to say...