Snoregasm2

What are people's experiences following the buff? Still struggling given the current meta/maps, or has the improved gun made this playable now? Another consideration is Ranked - given how campy it is, does the Leo 1 play into this and excel?

I don't necessarily get XVM focused as a more solid purple (from what i've seen), so I think this is a tin foil hat thing. Of course, there's always games where pubbies go full retard, but from my personal experience you have to be in FAME or something similar for pubbies to ruin their game to kill you. I'd be interested to see how it plays now. Tier 9 is the sweet spot given the imbalance among tier 10 tanks, so i'm thinking of moving my STB crew into this (given they butchered the STB by all accounts).

That's a shame you stopped playing again, although understandable.I think I speak for most others in that when players of your calibre quit the game (even temporarily), it only weakens the higher tier gameplay. I hope you can continue to provide feedback in this thread and elsewhere - it is all great content, and very helpful. On that note ... I thought on Mines the spotting was a happy side effect - re-watching it, I can see you peaked more than you needed to, so yeah, good spotting work. On that note, I saw your view range was slightly less than max - i assume you use vents rather than optics as a result? All my high level meds run optics instead - it is mainly because i hate relying on teammates for spotting and often have to do it myself (or at least I feel that way - maybe I should change). Is that something you do for all tier 10 meds, or just the Russian meds/140? Another thing I noticed (i've watched the rest of the games now, including Studz) was how decisively you push when you decide that's what you want to do. I think a lot of players like me (nowhere near your level, but fairly good at micro/other stuff you mentioned in your topic) are timid when pushing, because we remember times when it went wrong/we died due to lack of teammate support. Essentially, we're letting emotion/past tilt get in the way of the correct play at the time. I think (correct me if i'm wrong) you push so well because you actually have such a macro understanding/awareness that even though it may look like a risk, it actually isn't. Your push on Highway is a case in point - you went at the Jagd E 100 and Badger, because you knew there were no base campers and that they couldn't counter push. It's really helpful watching what you're saying in your topic in real time. Your worst game was probably Minsk. I personally block it as it seems so random pushing the 1/2 line (do you always do this in meds?) - you have no real idea as to what's there until you're there (a little like the hill on Serene Coast) - which maps do you block, out of interest? I liked to watch your opening moves in each of the games. On Sieg, for example, I often go to E8 at the start from North spawn, but it is very hit and miss. I thought your opener was much better for a Russian med. How much are your opening moves dictated by arty? Studz for example was a very safe opener (yeah, you got a little lucky, but tbh it is hard for them to push if you have back campers), given it was both arty safe and not going into the trench to potentially get yolo'd. I thought on Mines the spotting was a happy side effect - re-watching it, I can see you peaked more than you needed to, so yeah, good spotting work. On that note, I saw your view range was slightly less than max - i assume you use vents rather than optics as a result? All my high level meds run optics instead - it is mainly because i hate relying on teammates for spotting and often have to do it myself (or at least I feel that way - maybe I should change). Is that something you do for all tier 10 meds, or just the Russian meds/140? Another thing I noticed (i've watched the rest of the games now, including Studz) was how decisively you push when you decide that's what you want to do. I think a lot of players like me (nowhere near your level, but fairly good at micro/other stuff you mentioned in your topic) are timid when pushing, because we remember times when it went wrong/we died due to lack of teammate support. Essentially, we're letting emotion/past tilt get in the way of the correct play at the time. I think (correct me if i'm wrong) you push so well because you actually have such a macro understanding/awareness that even though it may look like a risk, it actually isn't. Your push on Highway is a case in point - you went at the Jagd E 100 and Badger, because you knew there were no base campers and that they couldn't counter push. It's really helpful watching what you're saying in your topic in real time. Your worst game was probably Minsk. I personally block it as it seems so random pushing the 1/2 line (do you always do this in meds?) - you have no real idea as to what's there until you're there (a little like the hill on Serene Coast) - which maps do you block, out of interest? I liked to watch your opening moves in each of the games. On Sieg, for example, I often go to E8 at the start from North spawn, but it is very hit and miss. I thought your opener was much better for a Russian med. How much are your opening moves dictated by arty? Studz for example was a very safe opener (yeah, you got a little lucky, but tbh it is hard for them to push if you have back campers), given it was both arty safe and not going into the trench to potentially get yolo'd.

I started playing seriously in 2014 (around the time you quit) until around 2017, before being on and off for 2 years and only now picking it back up again. I can echo that probably as recently as 2016 there were still a lot of guys who could consistently push high w/r in solo (and obviously higher in platoons). I was never one of them, but I saw it in others - hell, when I platooned (much less than 5% of my games overall I believe, although not sure where that can be checked) I could hit 75% w/r for sessions. Those days are dead. Almost completely. Unless you are absolute superuni, 5k dmg sessions good, I think the current meta makes those insane w/r impossible - even as part of a 3 man platoon. I guess it is some combination of those factors you set out, but I don't think it is a WN8/Marks/not caring about winning mentality - I think it is the wider game, power creep, armour creep, flavour of the months tanks, arty rebalance (more random due to bigger splash, less skill required in avoiding getting hit), corridor meta, old arty players migrating to TDs adding up to make what would be 'winning moves' 5 years ago (pushes, sacrifices, flanking) suicidal hail marys now. I feel like it used to be a lot easier to lead pubbies by example - if you lead, they would follow - than it is now. A lot of that is a new generation of pubbies who never learned the game as it was, and only know it as it is now (that's not even talking about how much easier it seems to be for pubbies to get to tier 10 quickly, and how there is such a variance in tier 10 tanks in terms of quality). Maybe NA is different due to lower server pop, but from what i've seen on EU (both personally and through streamers) the above is accurate. Just look at Decha, one of the best players on the EU server (particularly when WGL was a thing). He is my favourite streamer primarily because he is so aggressive (like @X3N4 used to be), but in his latest streams (admittedly, where he gives less of a shit than a few years ago) he gets caught out so often playing that way because teams are so passive and campy - it's not that it doesn't work, it's that it definitely isn't the optimal way to play nowadays. I don't know, maybe there's a streamer out there who has adapted to the meta and only plays heavily armoured heavies or TDs and can manage those w/r by steering into it, but I haven't seen them if so (and they would be boring as fuck to watch).

I can see what you mean about spotting - a few games (Highway, for example), you actively spotted at (mostly) the expense of damage. But there were also games where the BC's limitations as a damage dealer were on full display. That game on Cliff you 100% should have won, but those shots at the S. Conq. and WT Pz 4 just went . . . I don't even know where. I think that in a Prog or 50/51 (to name two other autoloaders) that game is probably a win. What I like most about watching this is when it goes wrong, I can still see what you were going for. It's hard for regular players to watch guys like you and Decha and it goes right everytime, as it feels like 'of course that was the right move, it would be stupid not to do that'. But the right move and the right decisions still go wrong sometimes, due to playing against 15 varied players everytime. A good example is when you got FV'd on Murovanka - that was a nice spotting position and I could see you were going for early crossing damage, you were just unlucky that the FV was pre-aimed at that bush. Weirdly, I think I learn more from you when you die quickly or get into trouble than when everything goes smoothly. Thanks again for uploading. It might be worth copying my comments from the status into here? Particularly the 2nd one - I think it'll give people some really useful insight into your methods.

Abbey - 9 Airfield - 9 Cliff - 15 El Halluf - 17 Ensk - 12 Erlenberg - 10 Fjords - 12 Glacier - 13 - 3 = 10 As noted below, I am recently back after a long hiatus so for me this was a completely new map. WTF. Encourages one of 3 things: 1) western corridor poke fest; 2) try and poke middle ridge/make a run up the hill, at the risk of getting shit on by camping TDs or, worse, arty (also, yay for new stun mechanics. I am all for removing in most cases the 1 shot capabilities, but repeatedly getting splashed and stunned feels even worse, particularly when you get focused e.g. Malinovka hill); or 3) be on of those base camping morons aiming for middle ridge/waiting for your team to lose the heavy area for a couple of shots of damage. I've never seen either team really push the eastern side of the map properly yet, but that may be because I'm still new to it. When I have gone that side I quickly get rekt through not knowing the firing spots/no support. No thanks. Himmelsdorf - 15 Karelia - 16 Lakeville - 15 Live Oaks - 6 Malinovka - 16 Mannerheim Line - 6 Mines - 3 - 3 = 0 I have recently come back after 2+years away and I can't believe this is still in the game, at least on high tiers. Still broken, still shit and still way too team/composition dependent. Also, it's so bad I am tempted to turn encounter off, despite generally enjoying the rest of the encounter map rotation. Minsk - 15 Murovanka - 21 Overlord - 13 Pilsen - 3 Prokhorovka - 21 Province - 13 Redshire - 18 + 1 = 19 I liked this before the rework, and it still works now. There are ways to approach the TD spots without getting murdered, and it rewards knowing vision mechanics without it being OP. Also, a decent heavy brawl area that has a decent amount of arty protection and cover from TDs, until one side or the other wins and pushes through, which is fair most of the time. It also allows a decent defence if your team loses one flank or the other, or even the middle, provided you set up correctly and see it coming. As someone mentioned for Murovanka, it feels like a noose tightening rather than a steamroll, which is how it should be to prevent 15-1 scores. Ruinberg - 15 Sand River - 16 Serene Coast - 15 Steppes - 19 Tundra - 12 Westfield - 17 Widepark - 15 

Yeah, in answer to your post prior to this one, it's worth waiting out Ming and engaging in an arms race with them, so that in 30-50 years you'll be twice their strength due to conquests elsewhere. RE manufacturies,just turbo develop in Farmland near Paris - it'll soon spread elsewhere as France is super highly developed.

Why waste Admin points/Diplo points (e.g. vassal feeding) on Europe until you hit administrative efficiency upgrades at techs 23 and 27? Europe (and China, for that matter) have lots of high dev provinces that should only be conquered late game. If there is no threat from Europe, don't waste resources there that you could be using to expand in key trade nodes/against weaker nations, which will also make it easier fighting simultaneous wars (which you'll need to do non-stop from tech 23 anyway, if you want to world conqest). I would advise that you leave Europe, concentrate on breaking Ming's power (but taking vassals/lower dev provinces, rather than 100% warscore in provinces), and maximising the cancer strat so you have bases everywhere, and focus on making every nation digestible in one or two wars (so you can roll them easily late game).

Thanks once again for the feedback. I'm fascinated by your thought process when advising that I should have gone after the Jagd/T32/Mutz solo. Surely, in an autoloader with 1,300 clip potential, that would have been an incredibly risky move, even if the game was won? I rarely overextend in any autoloader, as its so easy to get rekt, especially by yolo-retards who don't give a shit whether they die if they get two shots of damage in. That's the reason why I went back to the other flank to farm the enemy heavies with the rest of my team (although I only got 6 of 8 shots out). When would you say it would become too risky to push a flank alone in an autoloader? Just a few specific observations: Man, those marks of excellence criticisms That was only like my 40th battle in that tank!! I'm now 94 battles in and averaging 3,600 DPG and 800 APG, so its not TERRIBLE E5 miss - I was going for 2nd engine fire - I just missed. I never autoaim (except very occasionally when circling tanks or on arty when I want to dodge their shells), so the Jagdtiger shot was just rushing the 4th shot to get into cover. Would you have pushed into the heavy area directly at any point? I always avoid it on that flank from the North spawn as its easy for their heavies to go hull down and their TDs/meds too quick poke you and shoot you in the flank.

And I offered the same for EU, in case that was easier. Message not even read

Ok, I've tried to apply the advice/criticism you gave me in the last replay review. In this game, I attempted to be more aggressive early on (going for the spots, as we had no lights) and then, later, assassinating the 140. However, I think you'll still think I'm playing too passively We'll see. Also, I picked another game which looks good on paper but still wasn't played optimally. For example, there was a long period mid game when it was a massive heavy slugfest and I didn't know how to push the situation. Should I have gone to the other side of the river? Tried to flank the heavies, even with the Jagdtiger and 140 watching them? Or did I play it right by sniping then taking out the 140 (I doubt it)? I've found that I act like a pussy much more when there's arty and corridors for arty to destroy you. I think Erlenburg is a map I always kind of know what I want to do (if my team comp lets me), whereas other maps I'm more hesitant, which leads to passive play. Anyway, here you go. Thoughts once again welcome: http://wotreplays.com/site/2879179#erlenberg-snoregasm2-tvp_t_50_51

That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. I'll try and find more games where I was genuinely unsure as to what to do to push the situation. My main concern was the fact that I was against 2 same tier mediums on full HP, in a platoon. My team, in a middle engagement, would have been useless if they had both yolo'd me, provided they played it right. What would you have done if I pushed up the E line and engaged the Panther 2, and it turned out the CDC was supporting on the E or D line out of line of sight of my city campers? I got massively lucky that they were retards, but I also felt (at the time - it was pretty horrendous watching it back tbh) that the way I played was the only way to a) allow my team to support me if I got yolo'd and b) the only way that left me a clear line of escape without being sniped. Early game observations also spot on - (I didn't go to the left side of the house at E6 as it is quite easy to get spotted there in a no camo FCM even using the bushes, and the enemy reds who haven't made it to the city usually have nothing to shoot at except you when spotted. In a med or light I would always go to the left side though).