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[Sonlirain]

And again i hear that mediums are "flexible" but what does saif fexibility mean?
If i call a tank flexible i mean it can do many things at once so it can KINDA snipe KINDA brawl KINDA scout but won't fare as well as a specialized vehicle.
And meds?
Most of them can't brawl.
Some of them have autoloaders with decent guns so i guess they can do some serious burst damage unless the enemy manages to angle its armor just right.. but heavies also get loaders and it's hardly a medium tank shtick.
Their guns usually have lower penetration and alpha damage when compared to heavies.

So with teir mobility and agility in mind the only job they could excell at i can think of is the role of an ambusher that fires one or twice and relocates before the other team starts lobbing well aimed shells at their location.
HOWEVER the maps are too cramped for that so paper tanks like Leo 1 are pretty much forced into close encounters they weren't designed for because... well there's barely anywhere to run/relocate.

So since they don't really do well at anything the game was designed for i see them as little more than novelty and a challenge for people who like to try their hand at driving weaker vehicles for the heck of it and bragging rights.

[Rex_Nex]

Yet all this arguing is completely useless because statistics show mediums win more than any other class of tank. After 30k games I can attest to this fact - if you think mediums are useless you're probably just bad at them.

They can move to spots where they actually matter easier than almost any heavy or TD. Their rate of engagement/disengagement is unequaled - there will be many situations where heavies and especially TDs just can't respond to how quick a medium can roll up, get a bead, and fire. Their durability is often quite fine - what they lack in raw HP and armor, they gain in being smaller, exposing less, being better camouflaged, and being a harder target for artillery.

And, to top it off, until tier 9 they're given less matchmaking weight than heavies, meaning that the more mediums a team has, the more likely it is to have higher tier tanks than the opposing team.

I recommend taking a look at your positioning and being familiar with vision mechanics if you're still not convinced mediums are incredible.

[Sonlirain]

I explain their higher winrate by the fact people try tem get mauled and leave in disgust while the smaller minority decided to continue on with them and get better.
So IMO meds don't have a better winrate because they are better but because it's usually better players that decide to keep playing them.

[Jopax]

But if they were actually as shit as you claim then the better players wouldn't be able to get the higher WR out of them either, which is obviously false.

And by flexibility I mean their ability to adapt to a changing battlefield. A T95 is inflexible because it min-maxes its stats for great firepower and durability with almost no mobility. A Pershing is flexible because it doesn't sacrifice a single stat but instead spreads around so it has good mobility and is very agile, while at the same time it has decent firepower which turns into great firepower if you play to its strenghts, its mobility and gun depression.

If a T95 picks a flank to go down it will stay on that flank for most of the match, being unable to help the team if the fighting shifts from that flank to another (ie, there were two tanks on that side and both are dead, you are now stuck trying to get to the other side of the map at 13 km/h). A pershing on the other hand can easily relocate to where its needed and fill a role that's needed. Wether the arty needs someone to light up the enemy tanks, a heavy needs someone to distract the tanks that pinned him down or a nasty TD has locked down an approach and needs a quick flanker to get dislodged.

Also, as far as brawling goes, having good alpha is not everything, neither is burst damage. Because brawls are protracted most of the time, the most important thing is either your armour or mobility and your DPM. During a brawl, you either need to have the toughness to weather the shots or the mobility to dance around the enemy and make him miss a good deal of his shots. Furthermore you need DPM because of said armour and dodging issues, because the last thing you want in a brawl is a 15 second reload time gun that has a good chance of missing our bouncing.

It's because of this that mediums excel (most of them atleast) at brawling over heavies, they are mobile enough to be able to dance around the enemy, and fire quickly enough to be able to minimize the effect of any stray or bounced shots on their DPM.

[Erkki]

Note that the mass of heavy tank players are new and inexperienced or even downright bad players(pretty obvious if you use XVM) and I dont fully believe that its because all of the tanks they drive are bad. Heavies are the most used class in companies and CW(for most clans) after all.

I personally think that disregarding the obvious OP tanks such as M18 Hellcat, the best tanks for carrying are fast heavies such as the IS series. This is because they have the ability to advance quickly, their armor bullies lower tiers and often bounces against the rest occasionally/when used right, and the metagame that is spotting mechanics and map design, favor alpha damage over dpm via rate of fire. You can get more view range or better camo with crew skills and equipment but theres absolutely nothing that helps with pen, alpha or armor. Sure you could use nothing but gold ammo in mediums but there still arent too many that get considerable pen advantage unless the gold shell is the crappy HEAT. And abusing bushes and hard cover most heavies are still nearly as well camo'ed as mediums in most situations.

You need to be where you are needed with ability to retreat to save yourself to do damage later... You just need to choose between extra mobility and the ability to actually do stuff better once you get there. Unfortunately not many maps have true flanking routes or space nor have spots that only the fastest tanks can get to early.

So I'd wave my hands and say that when it comes to ability to contribute to the battle(=actually winning them through personal contribution to the team in any direct or indirect way)at least from tier 6 onwards its fast heavies > mediums > non-AMX90/T71 autoloaders(good at doing damage but difficult to turn the tide of a lost battle with) > turreted TDs > slow heavies > turretless TDs > SPG. All that being tier, OP/UP tank, map etc. dependent in individual battles.

Not that I'm a WoT expert or anything.

edit: 71% of my games are in medium tanks so I may be biased. When I press the battle button I want to play the game and not watch birds/bushes/reload time indicator tick down 

[WealthyRadish]

Been revisiting this lately. After waiting for like, 2 years for it to go on sale, finally bought a KV-1S at full price. Yeah, there were still people who didn't own one. I would've had every thing researched on it already, but alas, when they removed the T-50-1 and T-50 experience was shifted to the KV-1S, I derped and unlocked the crappy replacement light instead before realizing I could've unlocked everything on the 1S. It's actually pretty ok with the KV-1 derp. Sucks that they want you to research a statistically identical 85mm again, but I'll probably ignore it.

Question is though, how do you guys feel about the KV-3 and onward? I've really been enjoying the T-150 actually, as a consistently good tank that can easily carry in good matchups. Now that I have a 1S though, it raises the question of whether it's worth pursuing both lines.

[Sonlirain]

I'd say you shou;d go both at the same time. Probably get to KV-4 and grind up the IS-3.
This is because The ST-I that comes after KV-4 has tu use a HORRIBLE and COMPLETELY inadequate gun unless you saved up 44k free exp or unklocked the BL-9 on the IS-3.

The KV-4 is a very fun tank (a tier 8 maus i like to call it) but suffers from a somewhat bad stock gun but becomes fun when you unlock everything on it.
Also i'd like to point out that some of my best games were in the T-150 and KV-3

I don't have the IS-3 yet (need 30k exp) but from what i saw it appears to be fun... but you have to fight the instincts to angle your armor due to the beaked nose it has.
Also starting the grind with the T-150 line helps here because you can unlock the 100 mm idiot gun to use on the IS while the 122 mm is unavailble and not be suspect of the horrid 85 mm gun.

[Jopax]

The IS-3 can actually be angled, to a scary degree of effectiveness, the only problem is that you need hard cover to protect half your tank.

[Chosrau]

The IS-3 can actually be angled, to a scary degree of effectiveness, the only problem is that you need hard cover to protect half your tank.

The only way I can see that working is reverse Sidescraping. If you just hide the cheek pointing towards the enemy behind a wall you're also obstructing your gun (until you roll forward and present said cheek).

[Jopax]

Kinda, here it is nicely illustrated:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You either pop out once your enemies shoot and bounce, take your shot and scoot back into cover, which is the ideal way of doing it. Otherwise you gotta try and drive your tank flush into the wall so there's not much angling but you can atleast take the shot and get back to saftey rather quickly.

[Rex_Nex]

The only good IS series tank I can think of is the IS-3. The IS and IS-2 are okay but overshadowed by a bunch of T7s, whilst the IS-8 is just kind of bad. The IS-7 is middle of the road, but there are much better tanks at T10.

There are a lot of good heavies and a lot heavy players, but the main reason they are played so extensively is because everyone who starts playing this game wants to get the big tanks with big guns. The second reason is that they are easy - while there is a lot of finesse involved in bashing people around in a medium, heavies don't have nearly as much to worry about. You can jump straight in to a KV-1 and do okay, whilst jumping straight in to a M4 Sherman or T-34 is going to be painful.

A well played medium is still going to be extremely effective, and a lot of mediums are better than heavies (M4, Cromwell, T20, Obj 416, T-54, Obj 430 v2, Obj 140, T-62A are just a few mediums that often trump their heavy counterparts).

CW actually isn't mostly heavies outside of city maps. You see a lots of batchats and obj 140s backed up by things like the T57, Waffen E-100, and E-100. The ability to push fast and hard is game-deciding.

[Erkki]

Good basic CW tactics are formed around heavies unless the map is Malinovka or something... With mediums you can grab the initiative early and hold it but it requires more and better teamwork and individual skills and things can go horribly wrong in many new ways. So yeah, much harder than other classes, lights excepting, to master both solo/platoon and company/cw but the potential is also high.

I just recently played through the T20 myself and stock grind included I think I'm now somewhere around 63% WR and 1400 dm/g, all solo. I'm starting to like it so much that I'm considering selling all my other tier 7s. Interestingly it doesnt seem to be statistically an OP tank, maybe it just suits me. I really like the Comet too, but I'm slowly starting to have enough of that pitifully low alpha damage combined to low AP pen. Cromwell was more fun!

[Sonlirain]

Kinda, here it is nicely illustrated:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You either pop out once your enemies shoot and bounce, take your shot and scoot back into cover, which is the ideal way of doing it. Otherwise you gotta try and drive your tank flush into the wall so there's not much angling but you can atleast take the shot and get back to saftey rather quickly.

There is a major problem with this tactic. Any player with 2 brain cells to rub together (or any expereince) will know better than to shoot a heavy tank angled like that.
So if you park like this and wait for some fool to shoot so you can pop out and whack while he's reloading might end up in a SPG shell flying your way.

[Rex_Nex]

@angling piked tanks, it's sort of effective. Slightly angling these tanks is preferable to just pointing your front straight on - you skyrocket half your tanks' armor by 30mm+ and increase your lower plate while only removing 10-15mm of armor on the weakened side. This is almost required when you need to bounce something you otherwise simply couldn't, which is often the case for these tanks.

Also most players are terrible. Baiting people into shooting nearly invulnerable armor is a pretty common tactic.

Good basic CW tactics are formed around heavies unless the map is Malinovka or something... With mediums you can grab the initiative early and hold it but it requires more and better teamwork and individual skills and things can go horribly wrong in many new ways. So yeah, much harder than other classes, lights excepting, to master both solo/platoon and company/cw but the potential is also high.

Mediums are usually the tanks that decide CW games, the heavies are just there to draw the lines. Most T10 heavies are downright bad, actually, which is too bad because zerging with mediums gets boring. If you're playing CW with the intent to win more than you lose, having individual skill and teamwork is probably a given.

[Flying Dice]

TBH the best examples of this are in T5-6. Pretty much the only tech tree in which tier 5 and 6 mediums aren't objectively better tanks than their heavy counterparts is the Soviet one--not because the T-34 or 34-85 are bad, but because the KV-1 and the three T6 Soviet heavies are that good. The M4, Easy 8, and Sherman Jumbo are far better tanks than the T1 or M6, the Pz. IV and III/IV are both solid compared to the VK 30.01 H (though the 36.01 H is probably a second exception to this), the Cromwell is damned good compared to the Church VII and I'd honestly rather have a Crusader than a fucking Church I, I'm certain that the Chi-Nu and Chi-Nu Kai are both going to be better than any potential T5 Japanese heavy, and it's probably a sad truth that the ELC can contribute more than a BDR in some circumstances.

I mean, shit, the only T5-6 heavies I bothered playing were in the KV line because the rest are so terrible. I sold both my Church I and VK 36.01 without even getting them elite because playing them was physically painful; I got to the T29 through the Jumbo, &c. From everything I've seen, this continues to hold true all the way up to T10, with heavies only having the advantages of high alpha and thick armor, which are effective primarily because of the number of doofuses who don't understand aiming for weakpoints, flanking, and retreating.