How to play Prokhorovka hill?

[Spaz 12]

Basically haven't gone to the hill on Prokhorovka since 9.somesingledigitnumber as it seems to be a total shit-show. I'm sure the instinctive response to this question is "go there and see what it's saying before you make rash generalisations", but it just doesn't look fun. I always go mid just for the map domination it gives you - the ability to shoot all flanks - and from mid I can see major problems with the hill which have put me off ever going there:

1. From both spawns the tanks almost always bunch up near the base of the hill without fully cresting, sniping into mid and not really achieving anything. This leads to repeated pinging from the people in mid who want some lights on the hill to farm that sweet sweet WN8. One side eventually bows down to peer pressure first, gets some balls and pushes up to light the enemy. The campers get spotted and get fucked from mid. This pussy-syndrome is down to problem #2.
2. Pushing up onto the hill and getting lit also gets you fucked from mid. Here I am sitting in a safe position (ty render range circle) farming my free damage and thinking "what fucking tards they are, fucking about on hill and getting nothing but a fuckload of 'fuck you' from a bunch of camo-ed stet-pedding-nubz". Hill just seems like a lose-lose situation.

This my issue with Prok hill. I have horrid memories of going hill and getting fucked from mid as soon as I get lit, and from mid all I see is a total fuckfest which leads to neither side achieving anything much apart from getting shot. Any help for playing hill correctly would be appreciated, I really want to try playing it again, but I know mid works in pretty much any tank bar TDs and I like my safe damage farm :3. Maybe there's some nice undulations that give you cover from mid that I don't know about, but it still seems like nothing can be achieved on hill without completely over-exposing. Maybe I'm just one of those 'blue shitters' I keep reading about here, but I need halp!

(Please also note I don't really ever play TDs and if I did I would most likely resort to going hill, as camping the 1/2 line just seems to fuck everybody over)

EDIT: and what sort of tanks would you take to the hill? Can you make literally anything work if played correcty, or would it be better in heavies/meds/whatevercosIhavenofuckingclue?

[X3N4 2,608]

I have a rep illustrating how I play hill from the North side (it's totally useless from the South, always go middle from that spawn).

1. You can get early spots and shots on slow heavy tanks/rail camping TD tomatoes. In the rep I get a shot on a T34 being spotted by a light. If you go really close to the little bump a couple of meters in front of me it's like a ~400m distance to the crossing which means you can also spot that yourself. Also you have pretty decent hulldown there, if someone's camping on top of the rails and you're in a soviet med you can engage.

2. When you go up I take the double bush from where I can spot tanks cresting if I move a little to the front and shoot them unspotted if I move towards the back. Also you can only get spotted from the town or if they already have someone on the hill, it's an easy farm towards the middle usually once you established your position and they don't have tanks on the hill.

3. If they play the hill aggressively and take it with T10 meds or something it's usually the best to fall back towards your bushes next to the rail somewhere in C/D6. You can't really engage them when they took the hill because you'll get lit and shot in the side from people in the middle. Gotta clear out the hull first before you can advance further. If it's a long and drawn out game and you assume that you won't get them off the hill in any time soon you can go all the way around and relocate to the middle now.

4. If your team is advancing on the hill it's not a good idea to attack from the top as you have to crest the ridge. Go down and through town advancing along the rails. You can get sideshots there and if you play the bushes and distance to the enemy smart you won't get detected. Enemy tanks on the slope should be distracted by your advancing team from the top and the enemy tanks in the middle should already be pretty low because you had continuous shots on them from the hill without them being able to fight back.

I think from the North going hill is the superior way to play because it's easier to be active in the battle whereas from the middle you force yourself into being passive from the start. You're also somewhat more arty safe because unless they take the hill themselves you'll mostly remain unspotted.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q0ce94p9q4qvpin/Prokh_hill_north.wotreplay?dl=0

This is like the ideal battle except that Cent. 7 fagtard caps with 0 damage forcing me to go very aggressive in step 4. Could have been an 8k game if not for the cap.

[cpraf104 268]

The hill... 

From the north, you just have to constantly peek (and yes I know that means risking dying to the middle peeps) and try to clear out the hill. In addition to possibly being shot by railroad campers back at spawn, this is also made retardedly risky because the hill has so many bushes that a lot of tanks can remain unspotted until proximity range (that clump of bushes towards the southern railroad is a prime spot that I always find somebody in). But once you clear everybody out from the hill, it's pretty easy. Just gather your pubbies, and eliminate the rest of the enemy that have retreated down the hill. Then you have ez-pz shots from railroad to the middle to delicious asses.

 

From the south, you actually have not that bad shots into middle (provided your middle people are competent and keep them spotted). Also, I would say the south has an advantage on hill because they can get to the actual top of the hill faster. Although staying on top of the hill is risky (because middle shots), it keeps pressure on the north spawn guns who're pinned on the base of the hill. The big moment is when you push over. If there's a bunch of railroad campers, you're pretty much fucked, you'll get slammed as you push over. However, if you get lucky and you do manage to clear out the base of the hill, you've pretty much won the east half of the map, you have a clear road to the north railroad. 

 

I find that winning the hill means you win the east, so if your pubbies have managed to hold in the west and middle, you've pretty much won. However, if the west fell, it's still up for grabs. Hill is just risky as all hell, since someone has to be willing to be the sacrificial lamb, to take the first hit, to be the first one "over the top".

 

Zeven summed middle up pretty well, you want to support hill, but ALSO you need to keep the enemy guys in middle honest, so they can't just ignore you. You have to make them keep an eye on you, so they can't mindlessly wreck your guys on hill. That means occasionally peeking over and saying "Hello! I'm still here!"

 

Tank selection wise, heavies to hill, meds and lights to middle ridge. I don't know for TDs because I don't play them. I find that taking heavies to middle is usually a death wish as it's much easier for arty to hit targets in the middle than the hill.

[Dodge94HUN 264]

I find it quite the opposite as @cpraf104, but I agree with @Mureke about the crossfire.

In my opinion the northern base has advantages on the hill and I go there mainly with medium tanks and support heavies (mainly 50B). I try to get to the hill as fast as possible and first I check the railroad campers from the bush in the upper left corner of F0. If I can't spot anyone for 3 seconds I immediately go up to slope and stop in the bush. That bush gives enough camo so the tanks which peek from the southern base won't be able to spot you and if you reverse a bit, you can actually shoot them. I like to stop the moment when the bush gets transparent, so when enemy tanks peek, I'll have time to reverese enough, aim and shoot them and still not get spotted. From this bush you can still spot the railroad and you still have cover to shoot at thoose campy players. If you are on the slope and you get spotted, you can just reverse, and the town will cover you, along with thoose little "bumps". If you are on the slope, you can shoot the mid players, if you are in that bush on top, you can shoot the hill and mid, too. Mediums with bad gundepression should take the middle from the northern base, too, since they would be hardly able to use the slope to their advantage to stay in hulldown.

From the southern base you actually have to go up the hill which makes you extremely volnurable to the mid players. Putting a light or a medium in that bush close to the southern part of the hill (sorry, couldn't describe better) will stop the people from north to peek and you can have advantage, but I don't see this used too often, because most of the lights will spot mid or the east. If you are on the hill and you get spotted, you are basically fucked if the enemy has some players in the middle. It doesn't really matter how fast you can get up the hill if you can't really do much when you are up the hill. You can't peek to spot/shoot the enemies on the slope, because their railroad campers -which you can't spot from hill- and mid players will just rip you. Actually I remember 2 games from the last couple dozen when I went to the hill from the southern base. Once in a CDC in a T10 game and spotted 6k from that bush, and next time with a Bulldog in a T9 game.

That being said, the key to win the hill is to cooperate with guys in the middle. You spot for them, they shoot thoose targets and vica versa. If you have no one in the middle, you are fucked. If you have no one on hill, you are even more fucked.

 

PS.: Excuse me if something is unclear, but 1st of January morning is not thebest time to write essays in English  

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

Here we go! Last night I was involved in 2 games that involved the South spawn of Prok that needed to be played as I described in the above post. 

In one I played the hill in the T-10 with @GymLeader_Surge in the middle in an E-50. Their team stacked middle and 1-2 lines so when I poked and saw only LTs fleeing, we inferred the distribution and I cleared that side to A6 for a quick win. That's a non-standard game, but does illustrate the importance of getting data on the whole map and getting map control when it's offered up.

Soon after we got same map spawn combo but now with sexy @Rexxie in an E-50 and pyrotealsurgestealthleadergympokemansspaghettislap102110 in the T-55A.  Of our 3 tanks his is the best for the bitch work, and after ensuring their team isn't yoloing hill, he scoots into bowl and begins to vision farm their team. I spent my time trying to surpress scouts and a Leo1 from Vilin. I hovered outside hill draw range, and it's pretty soon clear that their team is all hill and middle. Our middle is enabled by surge and protected by me, and despite not having the mass they have on the east side we hold, with our 1-2 eventually getting the count and pushing up. Surgestealthpyrotealleader nets 7.2k spotting and single handedly wins the match. His POV here and in his replay thread. We await his comments.

 

[HabNab 134]

Helps if there's no arty (though on Prok everywhere is crap with arty), but from the south if you have a good turret you can push way up into a pocket and have great spotting/shots/be very safe. Do it every time I get the chance and it's given me some really fantastic games.

http://wotreplays.com/site/2378713

Not the most exciting game in the world, but you get the idea.

Edit: woops went through all that without seeing this in in purple questions. Pls no bulli

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

I think there is a time to go hill from South spawn...BUT its a specific set of conditions. 

1. In a platoon with your platoonmates being better candidates for going middle
2. You are in a low profile hard turreted tank (T32, IS series, etc) - if you're fat, go 1 line. 
3. Not too much arty - this can mean low tier arty or small numbers of higher tier. More than 3 of any combo, I wouldn't do this at all. 3 tier 8s in tier 10, maybe. 2 tier 9s in tier 10...maybe if they aren't 53/55s. 1 tier 10, I'd do it given all other conditions. 

If all those conditions are met from the South spawn, I think hill is the best play. There is a shallow bowl up there with the bushes. You can repeatedly light the back side of the North hill and get back down before getting rekt, but you will take some shots. Stuff with turrets will be sufficiently protected as they'll only have short windows on you dropping back down below the ridge. You cannot linger. You're just cycling spots for your middle dudes and will need to communicate with them. 

Here is a replay of a partially successful implementation of this. It is partially successful because the server took a shit in the middle of the game. Everyone lagged out for about 5-8 seconds, HARD. Doing so pushed me over the hill prematurely, but I had already spotted a few cycles, enough for demonstration purposes of the method. WIthout the lag I'd have just cycled for another couple of minutes during which Ox would have either farmed them harder, OR had free reign to pop-up in the middle without being shot from the hill. Either is a winning situation. The next time I do this I'll try to remember to upload. 

http://wotreplays.com/site/2384702#fiery_salient-crabeatoff-is-7

[GymLeader_Surge 17]

I am a vision whore.  All the dank spotting damage will move me towards more marks of excellence!  Which is the only metric that matters now.  But really that spot is all about working with your teammates and only poking for lights when they are ready for the shots.  Pretty basic.

[Mureke 37]

Crossfire. Generally, you want some guys poking at the base of the hill to spot any enemies who crest. Your guys from mid and/or arty can shoot them. If your guys from mid spot their guys at mid, you can get some shots at those guys as well. If their guys at mid and/or arty get taken out, you can proceed to crest the hill yourself. From there, you can spot their guys at their base of the hill for your mid guys to shoot.

Basically, you need to have those guys in the mid. You need just enough guys at the base of the hill so that they don't get rushed.

EDIT: Like cpraf says, meds with accurate guns should go mid. However, pub deployment is unpredictable, so I take slow heavies mid if not enough guys are going there. Mid is actually ideal for heavy armor if there's no arty: you can take shots from the hill as well as bully enemy mid presence.

All in all, I don't think many guidelines can be given to play particular positions. It's all dependent on team composition and positioning of the enemy and your own team. You need to play the whole map.

[tje524 5]

For me if I'm on the north side as a light tank I will actually sit in a bush on the hill and spot mid and hill for my team to destroy I to date haven't seen any other LT's use this strat even though it works well. (not that it helps your area of play just a tip for many)

[Spaz 12]

Cheers for all the answers guys, very helpful indeed. Not sure how to mark the question as answered but I reckon X3N4 had the most descriptive/helpful answer, although all responses contained useful info. From what I gathered it's basically to only go hill from North spawn, abuse double bushes and work cohesively with mid to get lights, try and assert dominance on the hill but fuck off if the enemy starts to lug their massive balls towards your side of the hill. Might be time to put on my man-pants and venture up there again. Thanks again lads 

[My_Little_Pwny 26]

 

I have a rep illustrating how I play hill from the North side (it's totally useless from the South, always go middle from that spawn).

1. You can get early spots and shots on slow heavy tanks/rail camping TD tomatoes. In the rep I get a shot on a T34 being spotted by a light. If you go really close to the little bump a couple of meters in front of me it's like a ~400m distance to the crossing which means you can also spot that yourself. Also you have pretty decent hulldown there, if someone's camping on top of the rails and you're in a soviet med you can engage.

2. When you go up I take the double bush from where I can spot tanks cresting if I move a little to the front and shoot them unspotted if I move towards the back. Also you can only get spotted from the town or if they already have someone on the hill, it's an easy farm towards the middle usually once you established your position and they don't have tanks on the hill.

3. If they play the hill aggressively and take it with T10 meds or something it's usually the best to fall back towards your bushes next to the rail somewhere in C/D6. You can't really engage them when they took the hill because you'll get lit and shot in the side from people in the middle. Gotta clear out the hull first before you can advance further. If it's a long and drawn out game and you assume that you won't get them off the hill in any time soon you can go all the way around and relocate to the middle now.

4. If your team is advancing on the hill it's not a good idea to attack from the top as you have to crest the ridge. Go down and through town advancing along the rails. You can get sideshots there and if you play the bushes and distance to the enemy smart you won't get detected. Enemy tanks on the slope should be distracted by your advancing team from the top and the enemy tanks in the middle should already be pretty low because you had continuous shots on them from the hill without them being able to fight back.

I think from the North going hill is the superior way to play because it's easier to be active in the battle whereas from the middle you force yourself into being passive from the start. You're also somewhat more arty safe because unless they take the hill themselves you'll mostly remain unspotted.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q0ce94p9q4qvpin/Prokh_hill_north.wotreplay?dl=0

This is like the ideal battle except that Cent. 7 fagtard caps with 0 damage forcing me to go very aggressive in step 4. Could have been an 8k game if not for the cap.

This high quality content is the reason I love this forum!

[Snoregasm2 646]

On 2/20/2016 at 4:45 PM, CraBeatOff said:

Soon after we got same map spawn combo but now with sexy @Rexxie in an E-50 and pyrotealsurgestealthleadergympokemansspaghettislap102110 in the T-55A.  Of our 3 tanks his is the best for the bitch work, and after ensuring their team isn't yoloing hill, he scoots into bowl and begins to vision farm their team. I spent my time trying to surpress scouts and a Leo1 from Vilin. I hovered outside hill draw range, and it's pretty soon clear that their team is all hill and middle. Our middle is enabled by surge and protected by me, and despite not having the mass they have on the east side we hold, with our 1-2 eventually getting the count and pushing up. Surgestealthpyrotealleader nets 7.2k spotting and single handedly wins the match. His POV here and in his replay thread. We await his comments.

 

That replay to me is a typical example of why you can never actually scout the hill from the South. Surge could have easily been rekt at any point - he got lucky that the enemy team were incredibly dumb and very few shots actually went towards him. Most games with 2 or 3 arty you would die incredibly quickly there.

The main point I wanted to make though was that if you went there without any platoon back-up, in a normal match, then you would be destroyed so quickly. It is the ultimate position in which you would need to rely on the help of pubbies - something any decent solo player will actively try and avoid if he can help it - and therefore it is the one position I would avoid at all costs spawning from the South side, playing solo.

It obviously worked a treat for you guys, and you executed the plan perfectly. but that was a 1/10 game. The other 9 times you can't really do that, nor can you ever do that playing solo with any sort of expectation that you will live.

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

3 hours ago, Snoregasm2 said:

That replay to me is a typical example of why you can never actually scout the hill from the South. Surge could have easily been rekt at any point - he got lucky that the enemy team were incredibly dumb and very few shots actually went towards him. Most games with 2 or 3 arty you would die incredibly quickly there.

The main point I wanted to make though was that if you went there without any platoon back-up, in a normal match, then you would be destroyed so quickly. It is the ultimate position in which you would need to rely on the help of pubbies - something any decent solo player will actively try and avoid if he can help it - and therefore it is the one position I would avoid at all costs spawning from the South side, playing solo.

It obviously worked a treat for you guys, and you executed the plan perfectly. but that was a 1/10 game. The other 9 times you can't really do that, nor can you ever do that playing solo with any sort of expectation that you will live.

In platoon its a 9/10 thing in my experience. Solo, I'd have to see a platoon of competent players I recognized on my team in middle, and communicate with them, So that'd be much more rare in a solo position, although sentient arty also can help in these cases. I understand that NA might have a fair bit more communication than EU though, so I offer up that difference. Surge wasn't just lucky, he was actively peeking only long enough to light, only when he knew his middle was reloaded and pre-aimed and was dropping lights for periods of time to force enemies to do something else.

On another note, if you learn to enable your pubbies, you win more games, instead of treating them solely as damage sponges. Enabling != relying on them though, it just means seeing if they can hit shots, and then helping them hit more. 

And finally, go back and read my post from Jan 3, where I outline exactly the conditions you cite...platoon, low arty, good tank for position....

 

[Snoregasm2 646]

5 minutes ago, CraBeatOff said:

In platoon its a 9/10 thing in my experience. Solo, I'd have to see a platoon of competent players I recognized on my team in middle, and communicate with them, So that'd be much more rare in a solo position, although sentient arty also can help in these cases. I understand that NA might have a fair bit more communication than EU though, so I offer up that difference. Surge wasn't just lucky, he was actively peeking only long enough to light, only when he knew his middle was reloaded and pre-aimed and was dropping lights for periods of time to force enemies to do something else.

On another note, if you learn to enable your pubbies, you win more games, instead of treating them solely as damage sponges. Enabling != relying on them though, it just means seeing if they can hit shots, and then helping them hit more. 

Yes, on EU I would say it is a lot trickier communicating with players to ensure they work with you. I think that is also a meta thing - EU pubbies camp much more than NA, and are much more likely to be one 1/2 line rather than poking the middle as a matter of course. Even if they do poke the middle and shoot what you spot, one of two things tends to happen (as I know from bitter experience):

1. They will either miss their side shots completely or hit the side of a hull down IS-7 turret rather than the fully exposed 50B; or
2. Get lit themselves, shot by arty or the enemy hill players, then be scared of peeking the rest of the game, even with spots by the guys like me on the hill.

As @X3N4 noted regarding the hill:

On 1/1/2016 at 0:35 PM, X3N4 said:

(it's totally useless from the South, always go middle from that spawn)

which I couldn't agree with more. Maybe it's an EU thing, but honestly, it just doesn't work in my experience. As a side note, an alternative way to play Fiery Salient from the South (not Prokhorovka), is to go on the small hill on the 1 line and poke when your lights spots 1 line or shoot the enemy team when they poke the middle. That is a common tactic on EU, although not sure about NA. That 'hill' doesn't exist on Prokohorovka.

10 minutes ago, CraBeatOff said:

And finally, go back and read my post from Jan 3, where I outline exactly the conditions you cite...platoon, low arty, good tank for position....

My apologies, I missed this. Yes, I completely agree with those factors.

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

1 minute ago, Snoregasm2 said:

Yes, on EU I would say it is a lot trickier communicating with players to ensure they work with you. I think that is also a meta thing - EU pubbies camp much more than NA, and are much more likely to be one 1/2 line rather than poking the middle as a matter of course. Even if they do poke the middle and shoot what you spot, one of two things tends to happen (as I know from bitter experience):

1. They will either miss their side shots completely or hit the side of a hull down IS-7 turret rather than the fully exposed 50B; or
2. Get lit themselves, shot by arty or the enemy hill players, then be scared of peeking the rest of the game, even with spots by the guys like me on the hill.

As @X3N4 noted regarding the hill:

which I couldn't agree with more. Maybe it's an EU thing, but honestly, it just doesn't work in my experience. As a side note, an alternative way to play Fiery Salient from the South (not Prokhorovka), is to go on the small hill on the 1 line and poke when your lights spots 1 line or shoot the enemy team when they poke the middle. That is a common tactic on EU, although not sure about NA. That 'hill' doesn't exist on Prokohorovka.

My apologies, I missed this. Yes, I completely agree with those factors.

cool 

[Snoregasm2 646]

17 minutes ago, CraBeatOff said:

cool 

Sorry, I thought this was a discussion thread. I appear to be mistaken.

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

16 minutes ago, Snoregasm2 said:

Sorry, I thought this was a discussion thread. I appear to be mistaken.

It is a discussion thread! The downside is that because of the post upvote system it doesn't read in chronological order...making it confusing (for both of us)