Am I the only one that likes 3/5/7?

[FlorbFnarb 537]

Yes, you’re bottom tier more often, but being bottom tier is so much more easy mode when literally 7 out of 15 tanks are the same tier, and only 3 top tier.  Remember back in the day when being Tier 6 in a BT8 match means seeing 8-10 Tier 8 tanks, so you just double-tap 2 and hope you’re in a tank with a good gold round?  Same for being Tier 8 in a BT10 match; good luck with your IS-3 or Pershing penning that T95, E75, two 110E5s, E100, Maus, IS-7, and JPzE100 on the enemy team.

Performance at bottom tier used to be (for me anyway) a major draw for some tanks, something to build a garage around.  Now being bottom tier is relatively easy mode, and the occasional top tier match just means you can play even more aggressively.

But I still see people bitching about being bottom tier no matter how easy it is.  Am I the only one that likes the change?

[Hellsfog 249]

It's really no worse than the old MM and if the price of getting teams balanced by type and tier is a boring template, so be it.  

[FlorbFnarb 537]

Yeah, it’s definitely balanced by tier; I hadn’t noticed balance by type, but given how some maps favor one class or another, I think it’s probably for the best.

 

I'm just surprised to see people still bitching about being bottom tier though.  I mean, all you have to do is avoid a couple tanks you know are hard to pen; how difficult is it to find something else to shoot?

[Sapros 348]

I don't know what it's like on NA but on EU T8 MM is completely fucked. Imo it's the main reason why game's bleeding players at an unprecedented rate.

3/5/7 doesn't mean you don't get retarded matchups like a 50b/grille against a type5/268v4 on a city map. Speaking from very recent experience. 

Being irrelevant for several rounds in a row doesn't make the game easy mode. Just frustrating.

[FlorbFnarb 537]

How are people irrelevant in 3/5/7?  Yeah, some maps arty isn’t having a lot of fun, but that’s the price of constantly nailing people with splash and stun on other maps.

But how is that related to 3/5/7?

[Sapros 348]

When you're playing a T8 you're mostly served T10 games in the 3/5/7 format. On EU, at least. Unless you're playing a very good tank, you can essentially go fuck yourself, because no matter how hard you try, there's just no compensating for your top tiers being braindead. 

Basically this:

 

[Ezz 1,770]

Key issues I don't like about the template mm...

It's a template so dull 

Highlights intra tier imbalances 

For tier 8 especially creates more battles where you are bottom tier so have limited impact on battles

 

Reasons I like it... Tier 9 is god tier

[FlorbFnarb 537]

21 minutes ago, Ezz said:

Key issues I don't like about the template mm...

It's a template so dull 

Highlights intra tier imbalances 

For tier 8 especially creates more battles where you are bottom tier so have limited impact on battles

 

Reasons I like it... Tier 9 is god tier

I get that you wind up bottom tier a lot...but half the enemy team is the same tier.  Seems reasonable to work on clearing the enemy bottom tier to create a numerical advantage, then blob the enemy higher tiers once they’re outnumbered.

But then I haven’t been back long enough to be sure I guess.

[Ezz 1,770]

Sounds fine in theory but I find reality of maps leads to only a few key locations wherein you can hope to meet same tiers but more often than not you meet something a tier higher (majority of tanks are still a higher tier than you).

But it's worth noting I'm also someone who didn't mind the old mm. As far as I was concerned all they needed to do was address the issue of top tier imbalances (eg one team 5 tier 10 vs 8 on the other team). Beyond that it was fine for me. 

[Hellsfog 249]

Circon is a chubby, pandering man-child so I don't know that appealing to him is the way to go.  

Tier 8, 6 and 5 get the bad end of the stick in the current MM. Tiers 9 and 7 seem to be doing better. Under the old MM, other tiers were in rough shape.  Point is that no matter how you arrange the deck chairs, with +/-2 MM somebody is going to be disfavored. 

I didn't have a huge problem with old MM but let's not paint it as some kind of workers' paradise. Tier 8 MM started to turn to shit when WG removed battle tiers 11 and 12.   Let's remember the teams where there were a handful of tier 8 tanks in a tier 10 match or constant tank type mismatches. (Those still happen but it doesn't seem to be as frequent or as bad). There were reasons why pref 8 tanks were popular and the old MM was one of them. 

Bottom line for me, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

One thing is certain, as long as MM needs a template, which it appears to need for tank type/tier balancing, some tier is going to get bad MM.  If WG tweaks MM to make tier 8 top tier more often, tier 6 gets shit on.  If they do improve tier 6, tier 4 gets the short straw. 

 

[Balthazars 210]

I don't hate the 3/5/7 template either, although it definitely has its flaws based on the current way WG set it up.

As you note, being bottom tier at least half the team is the same tier, so you're not completely swarmed out by higher tier tanks, but it is painfully obvious that tier 8 in particular has been borked (yes, this is the case on NA same as EU). Tier 8 tanks seem to get top tier far less compared to tier 6 through 9 in my experience (and I have pretty much been playing in those tiers since the changes as I have been grinding a few new lines). It's not too bad when the tier 10 tanks are not completely unbalanced, but given there are more of those around it does tend to accentuate the fact that power increases exponentially after tier 8. Yes, when your top tier tanks are brain-dead it doesn't help the likelihood of a win. Yes, it seems to love spitting out 3-arty games again recently.

But I don't think it's substantially worse than the old MM, just a slightly different set of problems.

[mati_14 129]

Just now, FlorbFnarb said:

I get that you wind up bottom tier a lot...but half the enemy team is the same tier.  Seems reasonable to work on clearing the enemy bottom tier to create a numerical advantage, then blob the enemy higher tiers once they’re outnumbered.

But then I haven’t been back long enough to be sure I guess.

I don't wanna be mean while saying this, you have this idea probably because you are not good enough to understand everything going on in one game. In theory yes, you should be able to deal with half of their team and then harass the top tiers. But this rarely happens. Why? Because when being bottom tier most players will play defensively and wait for the top tiers to start the tactic moves. In the end the ones who have the power to decide what's gonna happen in a certain battle are top tiers. 3/5/7 is bad because 3 tanks and maybe some of second 5 are the ones who will decide the pace of the game. It doesn't matter if I know what needs to be done being 2 tier behind, if my top tiers don't decide to help me. Old mm didn't had this issue, because:

1) You'll rarely have those games with 13 tier10 1t9 1t8. And even if you were the tier 8 you can play around much better knowing that there are 13 tanks capable of having some influence.

2) You'll get top tier in a fairly consistent rate no matter which tier were you playing. I remember having fun marking tier 8s during grinds because you wouldn't feel useless in 19/20 games?. The only issue back then was arty... not like that has changed to much.

If you want proof about how much new mm has fucked up low tiers, you could just check DPG whores right now. I remember back then. Top DPGs in basically every tier 10 was around 4500-4600. With certain exceptions.(Old IS-7, BC, old 155, etc). And it's not like the players became even better than they use to be, right now farming dmg in high tiers couldn't be easier due to the new mm. The problem is, most of the players would enjoy playing through lines between  tiers 5-8 because it feels there's something to be done in the game. Only unicum tryhards like me care about getting marks and stuff like that. I never enjoyed grinds, but I'll never hate it more than right now, mostly for 3/5/7 mm.

[sohojacques 271]

As others have said, it’s not like the old MM was good. I suspect that however you configure +2/-2 MM it’s gonna kinda suck. But 3/5/7 does really screw over tier 8 because of the huge power gap between it and even tier 9 and the large number of 8s always in queue grinding credits. 

Prioritising same tier and +1/-1 MM would seem like an easy fix. But it would make grinding past tier 9 even more pointless, so bad for profits, and give the recent crop of OP premiums Bobject win rates. Better than what we have now but because of the former I can’t see it happening.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,022]

3-5-7 is only bad because WG don't know how to balance between tiers. That is asking too much when they can't even balance the same tier properly. 

[Bavor 266]

Pre 9.18 regular matchmaking tier 8 tanks were top tier 35-43% of the time depending on the patch.  Post 9.18 tier 8 tanks are top tier in 3/5/7 battles 15-20% of the time depending on the time of day you play.  Also, pst 9.18 in 5/10 battles tier 8 tanks are bottom tier vs tier 9 tanks 89% of the time.  Yes I have the data to back this up. 

So basically playing tier 8 premiums gets frustrating because you are bottom tier all the time.

In addition to that many battles are largely influenced by how good your three top tier players are.  Get a CABRA or MUG platoon on your team as top tier and its a guaranteed loss.

I actually preferred the random pre 9.18 matchmaking.  It was very very rare that you were one of a few tier 8 tanks in a tier 10 battle.

 

Also the community contributors were told at Tankfest that the mechanic that is suppose to make you be top or middle tier if you were bottom tier the previous battle doesn't work at all.

[Sapros 348]

8 hours ago, Hellsfog said:

Circon is a chubby, pandering man-child so I don't know that appealing to him is the way to go.  

Be that as it may (I don't follow him so I have no clue), he's spot on with this rant. 

[igorCRO 45]

Atm on EU there are 3 artas in each and every tier X game.

[Kymrel 185]

The problem isn't that you can't damage enough tanks. The problem is that with only three top tier tanks, one (or two) top tiers playing like morons will lose you the game 90% of the time. And there is pretty much nothing you can do about it in your bottom tier tank.

It also highlights imbalance between tanks in the same class. As per the 50B and Grille vs Super Conq and 268-4 example.

It's a bad experiment that needs to stop if they don't want to kill the game.

[tajj7 560]

The concept was sound the execution was poor, having more of your 'own tier' whilst bottom tier is good and makes being bottom tier more tolerable.

What lets it down is that you trade this for being bottom tier literally 80% of the time, whereas from what I remember of various MM experiments back in the day top tier ratio for tier 8s was around 40-45% and you also had more mid tier games, with bottom tier games really being less than 1 in 5 of your games.

That is not a trade I want to make. 

The other issue is that having 3 top tiers means that 1 AFK or bot like player is a HUGE handicap for the team because you only have two other higher tier tanks to try to compensate for that, and often one of those is arty so you can essentially lose 50% of your top tier power. With the power gap at higher tiers so massive, tier 8s and tier 7s cannot compensate for a lost tier 10 or 9.

The same applies to tank type balance and mismatching, I played a 3-5-7 game the other day as a tier 7 light. Enemy team's top tiers were Jagdtiger, Type 4 and ST-1. Our top tiers were T-54, Strv and AMX 50120, the Type 4 and ST-1 just pushed valley on lakeville and just stomped a load of tier 7s and 8s in their patch, for that sort of match up it's RRR, right click, left click in those tanks, nothing challenges them.

It doesn't help as well that your rare 'top tier' games  as well are often all tier games as well, or that if you switch to playing a tier 10, you spend most of your time in all tier 10 games, so whilst you play a tier 8 you get clubbed by lucky tier 10s, but don't get to do much clubbing yourself leaving an all round frustrating feeling.

3-5-7 needs to go as a template, or be very low priority.

5-10 should the priority, effectively pushing us to +1/-1 IMO. 

[Vindi 414]

2 hours ago, tajj7 said:

The concept was sound the execution was poor, having more of your 'own tier' whilst bottom tier is good and makes being bottom tier more tolerable.

What lets it down is that you trade this for being bottom tier literally 80% of the time, whereas from what I remember of various MM experiments back in the day top tier ratio for tier 8s was around 40-45% and you also had more mid tier games, with bottom tier games really being less than 1 in 5 of your games.

That is not a trade I want to make. 

The other issue is that having 3 top tiers means that 1 AFK or bot like player is a HUGE handicap for the team because you only have two other higher tier tanks to try to compensate for that, and often one of those is arty so you can essentially lose 50% of your top tier power. With the power gap at higher tiers so massive, tier 8s and tier 7s cannot compensate for a lost tier 10 or 9.

The same applies to tank type balance and mismatching, I played a 3-5-7 game the other day as a tier 7 light. Enemy team's top tiers were Jagdtiger, Type 4 and ST-1. Our top tiers were T-54, Strv and AMX 50120, the Type 4 and ST-1 just pushed valley on lakeville and just stomped a load of tier 7s and 8s in their patch, for that sort of match up it's RRR, right click, left click in those tanks, nothing challenges them.

It doesn't help as well that your rare 'top tier' games  as well are often all tier games as well, or that if you switch to playing a tier 10, you spend most of your time in all tier 10 games, so whilst you play a tier 8 you get clubbed by lucky tier 10s, but don't get to do much clubbing yourself leaving an all round frustrating feeling.

3-5-7 needs to go as a template, or be very low priority.

5-10 should the priority, effectively pushing us to +1/-1 IMO. 

I agree with this on 100%.

[hazzgar 730]

The biggest problem with 3/5/7 for me is you are too reliant on your top tiers. Also sometimes the mm gets a brainfart an you get 2/5/8 and then it's triple the stupid. I remember one game on arctic region when my team got a type5 and me in a pre nerf bobject and they had an amx 50b and a strv 103b. Unless their players were magicians or I decided to play like a super moron it was impossible to lose. I never stopped pressing W. Literally. 6k dmg and 3k spotting with no effort in sub 5min

[Jesse_the_Scout 2,098]

You're in an M4E8. Does it matter one fucking bit when the number of Defenders driving straight at you is 3 or 5? You want to fight 5 defenders 33% of the time or 3 Defenders 75%?

[FlorbFnarb 537]

Well, it matters if there's 3 or 9, yeah.  If there's 9 of them you can't even avoid them and go shoot the Tier 6es, because (1) there's nowhere on most maps to avoid 9 tanks two tiers higher, and (2) there's probably only 2 or 3 tanks of your own tier.

But if there's only 3 of them and 7 tanks of your own tier, there's probably somewhere on the map you can avoid them and go shoot something thinner-skinned.

That said, I think the primary problem is that too many maps are too ideal for heavy tanks and heavy TDs, and not favorable enough to the mediums, lighter TDs, and light tanks.  Drawing Himmelsdorf and Abbey over and over again is just wearying when grinding a couple mediums.  Thankfully that seems maybe to be changing, with some new large maps being added.

[hazzgar 730]

1 hour ago, Jesse_the_Scout said:

You're in an M4E8. Does it matter one fucking bit when the number of Defenders driving straight at you is 3 or 5? You want to fight 5 defenders 33% of the time or 3 Defenders 75%?

You are looking at it from the wrong POV. While not being able to fight vs tanks 2 tiers up is a big problem  a low number of tanks higher up is a bigger problem than you think because the less +2 tanks there are the more important they are. So if you are in an easy 8 and your team gets one 45% top tier player when there are 3 top tiers is a bigger problem than if there are 5 top tiers. All you need to lose is to have top tier arty + 2 sub 50% top tier players.

 

Also yeah if there is more top tiers you can't carry as hard but it also means there is less pressure on individual players. Not only it means you need to do less as a bottom tier tank but also you are less often bottom tier. 

[lavawing 498]

Tier 8 misery can be broken down into a few problems, for which 3 5 7 is only partially to blame.

1: powergap, i.e. tier 8s too shit, 'OP' tier 10s (OP in quotation marks because OP is the new balance). also powergap between tier 8 and 9 is hyuuge. tier 8 meds in general being shit, tier 10s having no frontal weakspots against tier 8s, etc

2: MM prioritising 3 5 7 means tier 8s have a natural tendency to be bottom tier more often than not

3: tier 8 being popular, exacerbating #2. also because grinding creds at tier 8 is mandatory to offset tier 10 HEATfests

4: corridor maps means that although there are 7 other tier 8 shits on the other team, chances are you are going to meet their 430U/5A/268V4 long before you dig out their Progettoes

5: conversely, tier 10s have too much sway. 3 5 7 is basically designed to let reds steamroll tier 8s and feel good about it. however when your reds are too red you feel bad and lose the game for no fault of your own. 

6: no subclasses within 3 5 7 means you get 430U versus Leo 1 and 268 4 vs 268, except the fact you get 3 top tiers magnifies the OP/shitness of your top tiers

7: too much consistency means you feel like you are always bottom tier (even if statistically there are 5 % of times when you are truly top tier with lower tiers to bully). I joke to the few friends I have who still play WoT that tier 8 is basically tier 9 now.
As a result you probably have to look at all of these problems individually before you can even start fixing it. Given that WG has the IQ of a donkey in PVS, I doubt they will be able to pull it off before the game dies.