What tanks have you picked up or shelved up since update 1.10 (Equipment 2.0 + overall meta changes)?

[Casas5591 58]

Though this topic is about 2 years late and lot of things have changed both for WoT and Wotlabs, I wanted to ask about what tanks you guys play or don't play whether it's because of power creep, more players on average gold spamming or some other reasons. I can list a few of my own but to be honest, I just play the Val and DB because they are brainless fun and unbalanced

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Matilda IV (shelved): I always had a soft spot for this tank because I felt like it was always given a worser reputation than it deserved. Was it a good tank pre 2.0: I don't think so but it definitely had some fun quirks like the fast firing 76mm and the -13? or so gun depression it has. I think the crucial thing that made this tank work (and be fun to play) was the armor it had against lesser skilled opponents using AP which allowed it to hull down or side-scrape to good effect. Nowadays, with a seeming more skilled playerbase that is willing sling gold and general rustiness, this tank has become a lot harder to play for me and there are other tanks that can scratch that armored low tier tank itch.



ST-1 (shelved): This is a tank that I played a ton of when I used to play WoT on a daily basis. It has more or less the same issues as the Matilda but at higher tiers and a lot of gold slinging, I found this tank really hard to keep alive even hull down. I'm 99% sure that it's just rust and poor skill on my end but from what I've experienced from playing other high tier tanks, bouncing stuff off the hull is just a hard thing to pull off unless you're using hull down strats in the right tank. ST-1 can hull down but trying to snipe hatches with a Russian heavy tank is a whole different story. I'd have to learn the high tier meta again which I don't feel inclined to do if the gameplay doesn't seem fun.



VK 3002 DB (picked up): How would you like a ersatz Tiger 1 (1350 hp w/ hardening) that can reach light tank speeds (65kph w/ turbo) that can also pull off so much ramming damage for it's tier that it would make a E50 blush? It's as fun as it sounds and the WoT devs haven't picked up on it because not a lot of people don't know about it in the first place. In my playtime, I think I've only seen 1 platoon that played the VK as a aggressive heavy fastmed. I can keep pace with a lot of light tanks/fast meds so I push rush zones and use my HP, maneuverability + alpha damage to brawl tanks. I then farm the best I can with the derpy gun til I can rush someone down, T-50-2 style. I play this game like a casual mobile game with about 5% brain capacity and I pull about a 66% w/r solopub so better players can definitely pull higher w/r with it. Gun handling is pretty shit with my equipment set up and it's expensive to run but I have creds to burn.



Valentine (picked up): The Valentine is exactly what you expect it to be: a heavily armored pocket heavy that can club tanks so long as it doesn't get gold spammed or meet tier 4s. The stock gun is the best gun as it has a pretty good APCR round, "not that terrible for it's tier" dispersion and a high RoF. It's usually the first tank I play whenever I feel like playing a few matches of WoT for a hour or two.

[lavawing 498]

VK3601 is stronk and became stronker with equipment 2.0, same gun as the 3002db but a tier lower and almost never meets 8s. 

If you're not averse to goldspam M4 45 is actually quite strong as it is and one of the best tier 7s for farming damage, and will only get better with 1.18 when it gets actual armour (with no gun changes)

STI should still be playable but its only merits are being a compact brick that can't be pushed out of hulldown/sidescrape + 340 HEAT pen. very frustrating to play thanks to 2014 levels of gun handling even after the (token) buff

I'd recommend the 50TP - it has a similar turret, boatload of HP, and a ludicrous 560 alpha gun on top, but does struggle with penning hard targets - one of the most brainless tier 9s I've ever played at any time 

[Panzergraf 68]

Vk3601, as lava said, is really good now. Big HP pool for the tier, and good mobility with a turbo. I'm using the 7.5cm waffe on it.

I also bought back the Tiger I and II. The Tiger II is amazingly comfy now after the buffs, and also running a turbo. The gun snapshots like no other, and doesn't have problems hitting and penning weakpoints of even tier 10's. I wish the premium Tiger II from frontlines was available for randoms as well, so I could enjoy this gem and grind credits at the same time.

IS7 with a full mobility build is also a lot of fun, and even has a place in some CW strats.

[hall0 1,095]

T95. 

In all the years of playing this game, I never actually played this tank. Way too slow for my cup of tea. I didn´t even grind the line on my old account. So much I hated this tank design.

When I got hands on my bought account I had in my garage. But I still had no urge to play this tank. Even after WG buffed the speed.
But with the introduction of the turbo things changed. Especially with Bounty/Bond Turbo. Normal unbuffed Turbos where the first step, but buffed Turbos make this thing finally bearablefor me. 
This turtle has grown on me. Just drive torwards to the enemy and farm them. When Toptier you can ignor so many tanks and keep on driving. 
Even bought the Surfer 3D skin WG offered during their birthday special. 

[Panzergraf 68]

I need to pick up the buffed AMX M4 54, from how it's performing, it seems like a really really solid tank at the moment.


Yeah, could be that there are just really good players playing it at the moment, but still. For a tech tree tank to outperform both the ebola and chief (at least as far as 3-mark reqs go) is really something.
The pre-nerf Kran never did that. The Minotauro doesn't do that.
But unlike those two the AMX at least isn't cancer to fight.

I'm actually way more excited about going up the French heavy tree (on tier 7 now, it's OK) than the new Spaghetti TD tree.

*that's on the NA server btw, I see it's not quite as high up on EU, but still up there with the best of them.