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[Erkki]

One of my bud keeps pushing me into this game, but I find the lower tiers to be no fun at all.

First of all, he reccomends the American med/heavy line.  However, the first couple tanks just seem like cash-ins you are supposed to skip with money or waste tons of time in (Like every line really).  The tier 2 is barely a medium tank, with just slightly better armor than the equivalent light and basically nothing else.  Not like the armor really matters.  Then the tier 3 is basically a bad version of one of the turreted TDs, and gets matched into tier 5 matches where a real scout tank would be a better choice.  Then the M3 Lee.

Almost half the people just go around spamming autocannons for free kills.  Makes going single shot seem silly if you can get quadruple the results by spraying and praying.

Armor means basically nothing.  Angle it all I want, I'm still dead in three-four shots.  Thickness doesn't matter either since everyone gets gold rounds to negate it.  Meanwhile the 3-4 random number generators for firing continue to make my gun do jack.

Its not a fun game if you havent learned the ropes, especially spotting and camouflage mechanisms, yet. You shouldnt advance tiers too quickly, at least not beyond 5.

The US medium line is pretty awful until the M4. M4 and all the tanks after it are not only fun, but also very good at actually winning battles. M3 Lee is bad, but its not among the 10 or 15 or maybe not even 20 worst tanks of the game, and you can grind through it in 30 games or so.

Armor is not meaningless. The higher you go in the tiers the more useful it is as a general rule of thumb, but there are many individual tanks that are very durably at tier 2 already. Autocannons have high burst damage but remember that they can only shoot to 270 meters or so, and have low penetration. You should never rely solely on armor because there always tends to be someone with a bigger gun or in a position to shoot your sides. 

[Rex_Nex]

All I can say is to bear through it. Not many people consider tanks below T5 to be really playing the same game as the others. T3 and T4 are really bad, as they have the worst matchmaking in the game - they can only see tanks one tier lower than them, but have no trouble seeing tanks two tiers higher. This is in contrast to, say, a tier five, which can see two tiers below and two tiers above.

Armor will eventually matter.

[MrRoboto75]

So half the game is just there to make an awful first impression?

[Girlinhat]

So half the game is just there to make an awful first impression?

Half the game is there to encourage you to buy premium boosters, like prem tanks and omni-research!

[Rex_Nex]

Well, in terms of time spent, T7 or T8 marks the end of the first half of the game, not T5.

But yes, I agree that its really fucking bad game design to make the newbie experience the worst experience.

[Ant]

Yep. The Lee is amongst the most horrifying meds around, lacking in everything but DPM and that doesn't really matter since pen is bad if you ain't getting top tier positions. It's not that bad though when you play it as TD, though. Try the american td line for a while, it's fun derping around with howitzers in low tiers and after T2, it also teaches how to deal with paper armor.

The lower tiers (2-4) in general are pretty rus/ger light and medium-wise, although the fra/gbr armor allows for early experience on angling for win. AMX 38/40 are horrible, horrible tanks but can be used to learn useful tactics for KVs, and valentine/matilda for later german heavies IMO. Of course, I'm just relatively new in the game, so if anyone else has better ideas listen to them

[Erkki]

The gameplay does not "get better" at higher tiers, it becomes different. Players themselves are somewhat better, the "To-Kill-Time" becomes significantly higher and armor more reliable, but at the same time as gun accuracies and view ranges improve, the maps "shrink" and more and more positions become vulnerable or plain unusable. Low tiers favor individual skill and good positioning or movement more because you can turn position advantages, surprises and vision mechanism into kills much, much quicker than you can at tier 8 or 9. That said, my favorites at the moment are 7 to 9, partly because there are less AFKers, friendly fire and people who lose on purpose there, and partly because there are lots of different kinds of tanks, and lastly because its actually a challenge, unlike tier 2.

That said out of the first 4 tiers, the US medium line is not the best. They are all big, slow and soft. Even above tier 4, they are not easy, as they require very thorough knowledge of the game, as they dont rely on sheer raw power but flexibility. But in right hands they are among the best tanks in winning random games. Heres some non-premium tanks that are considered good in where you are now, the first 4 tiers:

1: Loltraktor, T1 Cunningham
2: T18, Cruiser III, Vickers
3: M82, Cruiser IV, Pz. Ic
4: T40, M8A, Hetzer, Pz. III, Matilda, T-28

As you can see the US tank destroyer line has a tank at every tier on that list. Until tier 7 the US TDs are among the very best tanks of their tiers.

[Chosrau]

If you're already up to the M3 Lee, you should probably go for the heavy instead of the medium line. In the medium line the stock grinds become pretty horrible (especially the M46 Patton), while the Heavy Line is as noob-friendly as it can get without being russian.



Anyone else got a display bug with gun mark percentages?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last time I checked it about 2 months ago, I was at 97%. I can't imagine the player average having dropped so sharply that I'm now at 100%. Especially since the vehicle in question hasn't been altered in the recent patches.

[Sonlirain]

I find myself hating the T1 and M6 with a passion.
The T1 was bad but could bully tier 5 mediums and tier 3-4 tanks in general while being pretty shit against tier 5 heavies (something you should expect from a heavy to be good against) that usually have enough pen to damage you no matter how you angle your shitty armor.

But it gets even worse.
M6 when stock has 19 mm more frontal armor and lower traverse than the T1 and to get to the top gun (the only thing that's tier 6 on it) you have to do 30k experience that includes researching the suspension. some junk gun that's not even a real upgrade upgraded turret that's barely an upgrade and finally the top gun that actually can be called an upgrade.

Before it you are literally driving a tier 4.5 tank at tier 6. You can't angle the armor (tier 6 tanks especially the heavy ones have enough pen to go thrugh it anyway) the turret was good at tier 5 is not good enough at tier 6.

Quite frankly this thing is a terrible and slow medium before it gets the top gun.
Honestly? Now that i'm playing it i think it would be far better for my health to just take the Sherman line and piss off my team with the stock T29 for several games and not play T1 and M6 at all.

Also personally i hate low tier games. They all boil down to several people with binos camping a good position shooting people from across the map in province while being themselves unspotted. And i'm mainly talking about those professional reichtractors with binos and 3'rd skill on their crew.

Also to be fair i think i'll give up on the heavy line altogether. I was only planning to get to tier 7 with them (screw T32 and everythign after it) and now i hear news that WG historical research team found out that T29 did not have as much mantlet armor as they expected... so they might nerf it to a pitful 200. And at this point i will lose all interest in this tank and probably as a refund on T34 if they also make it that soft.

[Erkki]

If you're already up to the M3 Lee, you should probably go for the heavy instead of the medium line. In the medium line the stock grinds become pretty horrible (especially the M46 Patton), while the Heavy Line is as noob-friendly as it can get without being russian.



Anyone else got a display bug with gun mark percentages?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last time I checked it about 2 months ago, I was at 97%. I can't imagine the player average having dropped so sharply that I'm now at 100%. Especially since the vehicle in question hasn't been altered in the recent patches.

Yeah its super buggy. I had a tank with less than 100 games and the mark% was at 94,6 and then I played a game with over two times the average(for that tank, so far) dmg and assist damage, and the % dropped to 91% right away. Scoring over 3000 WN8 on average and having optics should mean I'm easily within the top 5% in many tanks but still no 3 marks of excellence. 

M6 is one of the best T6 heavies now!

[Sonlirain]

Well mine is still semi stock but i can't see it getting better all that much with the top gun. It will still be a tangle of tissue paper only this time armed with an actual gun.
If you ask me the T1 should be removed and replaced with the M6 without the top gun and then insert some proper tank at tier 6 in its place.

For what it is... i think i'd rather play a KV-85 armed with the 122 mm gun instead because M6 causes physical distress to my body every time i have to drive it for the current exp x5 first win.

[TheDarkStar]

The first lines I played were the US light line (it has a ton of really great tanks; it also helped me learn a lot), German TDs (original line - just about every tank is great), and Russian heaves (currently have the IS-3; for beginners, russian heavies are probably the best choice. I enjoyed American lights at the beginning, but they might not be the best choice.

[Rex_Nex]

I dont agree Erkki. Low tier play is absolutely terrible. Like, 2/3 of the time, the best way to play a T1/2/3 match is to camp. The reason why individual skill matters more is because of stupid reasons. You're stomping newbies with guns that zap them out of the game in just a second or two - that means that the only players that really matter in babytier games are the good players, everyone else is just food. It's just gross. The maps don't really shrink when you go up in tiers, because even though view ranges get higher, the maps get physically bigger. T1/2/3 is hardlocked into mostly very small maps (save malinovka) due to the comically bad viewrange on most of them causing serious problems on bigger maps.

Of course whether higher tiers are "better" is up to the person, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of players would agree that they are, so for all intents and purposes they are right.

The game really peaks at T7, imho. The only problem with T7s is that T9s can sorta roll them over with ease. Playing a T7 in a T7/8 match is a lot of fun, though.

[Erkki]

Subjectively I dont disagree - even at tier 6 I can alone without a platoon get a wr of over 61% let alone T2, and as you say its because most players are just fodder. Its stupid and boring because it lacks a true challenge and most games are the same.

Howeve I dont think someone new to the game sees it that way. I know I didnt for a long time. Doing almost nothing in average and succeeding every now and then is better than achieving nothing for a hundred games(those new to the game T8 premium tomatos).

I still play my T3 gift premiums weekly and havent seen those Su85b/T40/Matilda much. Maybe Ive been just lucky or the sealclubbers populate tier 2 more than ever.

[Sonlirain]

Aaand recently i "upgraded" my Tiger P to the VK45A.
Oh god why... i's a downgraded KT that's for some reason treated as it's equal. it does not even get the top gun from the KT instead relying on the middling gun most people skip on the KT.

Still i want the fun of the VK45B (or at least unlock it in general so i get the free premium tank when it get replaced by the protomaus) so i guess it's another grind to bear thrugh.
Also in hte news i'm close to getting JagdTiger and the top gun on the WZ-132... and again i'm kicked in the groin by serb.

WZ-132 suffers from power creep and TDs will be nerfed to the pits of hell soon.
Yay me.