The Best Tanks of the Sandbox Server: Week 2

There are definitely tanks on the Sandbox Server that stand out. They are just good by themselves, or they match up well against the other tanks being displayed. I must stress again how important it is for Wargaming to include an experience coefficient for arty to the number/time stunned on tanks that they hit. This could make arty a profitable class to play, instead of the current, usually bottom end of the experience spectrum. Now, on the the tanks:

AMX Foch 155 (with a 120 mm gun)
This tank is sort of a remake of the old TD with four rounds and a two second time in between shots. Also, this tank has the one of the highest DPM of the tier 10s (around 3.5k fully maxed out). This creates a strong brawler with a quick reload that can dish out a ton of punishment in a short period. This tank also has decent mobility, unlike many of the Tank Destroyers on the server, as it has decent traverse and acceleration/top speed values. This tank makes a powerful addition to the Assault Tanks Class, with its armored tank destroyer chassis, and (old) T57-like gun.

Maus
This tank has all of the armor of the live server, but the lack of gold round abuse on sandbox. This tank is slow, but has very strong armor when angled against tanks without overpowered heat rounds making this one of the most powerful heavies on the Sandbox Server. Also, the gun received buffs which make it one of the fastest firing tanks in the Heavy Tank Class. It can also snipe with its decent accuracy  which allows it to fulfill multiple roles. The Maus has become one of the most powerful city warriors on the Sandbox Server.

T110E4
This tank now has competitive DPM (better than E 100) as well as some armor, especially with the global penetration nerfs. This tank also has good gun statistics compared with other tanks of the Juggernaut Class. The 2400 health also allows this tank to trade much like an E 100, but also out pace in in speed and penetration. This tank also has strangely good gold rounds, as it seems they only nerfed HEAT, not APCR. This tank is a good entry as a competitor to the E 100, sacrificing armor for gun handling and mobility.

Leopard 1
The Leopard 1 is actually better, with respect to DPM, than many of the other fire support tanks. Also, the gun handling on this machine is simply fantastic, sacrificing armor to gain everything else. This tank will make the perfect blend between long-range sniper and mid-range support tank. Also, scouting will be possible with its decent view range, albeit relatively large size. This tank is a perfect example of how the Fire Support Class should work.

E 50 M
This tank is a fantastic brawler with its decent DPM (similar to Russian mediums), and good gun handling. This tank is a good city fighter with its boxy shape and angled hull. It also has some depression allowing for a flexible and quick entry for the Cavalry Class. It also happens to be a ramming machine.

121
This is a tank that is very similar to the Russian tanks, giving up accuracy for alpha damage and the ability to be the best brawler in the Cavalry Class. It is the top tank to have in a close range fight that also has some excellent speed characteristics.

To Address Scouts
I must say that scouts are all excellent, but are not very effective when up against tanks at Tier 10. They do have insane mobility and view range which leaves even the BatChat in the dust.


Here are some interesting graphics:

HP of the classes

Updated DPM

9.15.1: Thoughts

So Wargaming NA has released the Common Test notes on 9.15.1 and I will be discussing how this will effect the game in its next few patches. This Patch will mostly include bug fixes and HD-models, some supertest tanks, and the rebalancing of the ISU-130 (I won't discuss this as nobody owns this tank).

This patch seems to be coming at an odd time for Wargaming, as it will probably get released soon, probably 3 weeks from now. The HD-models don't actually concern the overall Global Rebalance, but we don't see the buffs/nerfs that we normally would see in a patch that is common tested. This could mean that 9.16 will come at the end of the summer and include the Global Reblance.

The supertest vehicles of note were the T95/Chieftan and the Object 257 which may become Clan Wars reward tanks. Also, the Swedish Tier 6 premium tank was implemented and we may see that in the game during the summer months.

One final thing to note is the sale of Personal Reserves for gold? Pay to win maybe? You be the judge...


-Spirtwalker

Sandbox Server: Week 2

There is an NDA for the Sandbox, and I can't tell you anything about the happenings on the server itself (like no hard stats) but I can give you opinions. (I know, loopholes for days) So here is what I think about Sandbox 2.0 (or week 2). I'm pretty sure that this is mostly about direct video, so I may hint around some statistics in this post (i.e. M48>AMX 30B)

Arty
My initial impressions came from a blog post from Rita's Status Report Blog (Check her out btw for leaks) describes a change to the artillery "stun" effect which basically crippled everybody last iteration. I thinks this does not meet the issue that artillery is not rewarding at all, as there is little damage and the same overall reloads. I think this will meet everybody's needs in the sense of less "troll" mechanics, and still a place for artillery.

Death Star and Death Barn
The FV215B 183 and the FV 4005 Stage II received some heavy gun nerfs to balance their HE and HESH rounds against the current importance of armor. These rounds were doing guaranteed damage in a way that does not suit the game as a whole, as well as allowing them sometimes get lucky and one-shot tanks. There is also a clear difference between the two, the Death Barn tends to be more snipey/less heavy than the Death Star.

The Classes

Juggernauts/Heavy Tanks- E 100, Maus, JPZE 100, Death Star, E3, E4, IS-4, Type 5 Heavy

Assault Tanks- E5, 113, FV215B, IS-7, 263, AMX 50 Foch

Cavalry/Brawling Mediums- 140, 430, 62A, E 50M, 121

Fire Support Tanks- Leo 1, Patton, T57, 30 B, Batchat, Centurion AX, TVP, STB-1

Tank-Destroyers- 268, Grille 15, Death Barn (also keep in mind that the 263, JPZE 100 and E3 have TD-like gun statistics)

Scouts- RU 251, T54 Light, T49

Artillery- G.W. E 100, T92, 261, Conq GC, Bat 155



Juggernauts have high health pools and the largest guns. They are not good for sniping and have poor mobility and soft statistics for their guns. Their DPM is okay due to their higher alpha damage but bad rate of fire.

Assault Tanks are sort of fast and mobile, with mid range guns and decent armor. Their guns have decent statistics and have okay DPM- a bridge between Cavalry and Juggernauts.

Cavalry (great name for this WG)- Fast tanks with good armor and great DPM. They have good aim time but bad accuracy so are only good at close range engagements. They have similar amounts of penetration as heavy tanks.

Fire Support Tanks are mid to long range sniper/support tanks that have good aim time and the best DPM in the game. They also have excellent top speed and better view range than Cavalry. Their gun handling and accuracy are also stellar but they don't have much armor.

Scouts- Have great view range and mobility characteristics. They are the fastest tanks in the game.

Artillery- They are support tanks that do low damage and provide assistance to allies by "debuffing" enemy tanks and tracking them.


Connectors
Keep in mind that there are many tanks that are sort of "in between" the average for their own class. They resemble a mix between two different sets of characteristics. (i.e. the JPZE 100 is a cross between an E 100 and a Grille 15, it has an accurate gun and also has a large health pool with armor, but no mobility.



Conclusion
I think that Wargaming is heading in the right direction and the change that buffed the medium tanks to their old top speeds was straight out of one of my posts :). This might prove that Wargaming is looking to the community for input? Either way, these changes support more dynamic gameplay and specific classes as well as tanks that bridge the gap to make each tank feel unique and not left out of the competition.


-Spirtwalker

Initial Sandbox Mechanics: Thoughts

Warning: Long Post

So I have seen streams and leaked data about the new WoT Sandbox Server and I have formed some opinions about their ideas.

I must start this off by saying that I understand what they are trying to do (and also that this can all change). They want to increase the value of view range and increase the importance of light tanks. I also understand how they want to decrease the usage of premium rounds which decrease the importance of armor. They also decreased the traverse of most tanks in order to slow down the game in order to improve the ability of medium tanks to flank. So here are my points:


Speeds and Traverse

They decreased the overall top speed and traverse of all tanks (not lights). This has slowed down the game a bit, but not to the extent of many people, for example, Quickybaby.  I would say that he blew  the problems way out of proportion. The game did not take that big of a hit speed wise. It is now fast in a different way, there is a lot more time to plan your maneuvers. I however, don't see how Wargaming sees this in the game because I pretty much thought that the old versions of the game were fine in this respect. I also see how they wanted to distinguish the lights from the medium, especially at higher tiers. I however, don't feel that they needed to nerf the top speeds, but maybe just mess around with the ground resistances or soft statistics.


Armor and Shell Penetration

The armor in WoT is arguably losing value as more and more HEAT is being thrown around the battle. I see how they nerfed the HEAT shells in the game to reduce the usage of shells with excess amounts of penetration. They actually did pretty well with this, as they also nerfed the APCR penetration over a distance compared to AP. The issue I take with this is how they nerfed accuracy as well as AP ammunition. They wanted to "decrease the cost of making mistakes" but all they managed to do was to promote a game that consists of juggernaut heavies taking hundreds of hits at long range with arty barely able to do any damage. This creates a game that promotes low level players to play heavier tanks and more experienced players to play mediums that are, in some ways, unable to kill the heavies (and stronger TDs). This will eventually promote a game that includes mostly strong heavies and large TDs, but will include about 1/4 mediums and faster tanks. This does not currently represent the number of mediums that are re-searchable, compared to heavies and TDs. This could prove to create a completely different game, with many skilled players preferring the previous metas of WoT, even if it is medium tank dominance.

View Range and Light Tanks

The overall idea of nerfing the view range globally is a good one, and promotes more active plays and aggressive peeks. However, giving light tanks more view range does not help the game as the real problem lies in the map pool. Most maps only contain a good area for mediums to brawl (mediums with armor keep in mind) and heavies to fight on ridges and in cities. TDs are also very good for holding alleys and giving long-range fire support. Even if lights have fantastic view range, there is little they can actually do because of the lack of accuracy on tanks, as well as the lack of artillery damage.


Artillery

Artillery was heavily nerfed on this server. It was given a sort of "debuff" that hurt tanks which I can say is extremely annoying and does not promote dynamic plays at all. Their damage has also dropped off a lot, which makes them less rewarding. What I think they need to do is get rid of the "debuff", and boost artillery rate of fire by 10-33%. This will allow arty to hit tanks for amounts of damage that add up, as well as not instantly one shot everything. Many people call for the addition of "smoke rounds" or "illumination rounds" which would not be used much in the majority of game modes (i.e. random battles).


Too Many Variables

Wargaming is trying to test a Global Rebalance which will improve the state of the game. In order to do this, they need to evaluate and access each change to the global client before the make it, and make each change one at a time. What they are basically doing is mixing 10 different chemicals just to see what happens, instead of trying to access what each chemical will do, and test them individually in order to find an appropriate product.

My Thoughts on Fixing the Server

• Keep AP the way it is, and don't nerf snipers
• Armor is fine without premium rounds and artillery that can one-shot heavies
• View Range is only important on maps that aren't close quarter fights anyways, buffing light tanks won't solve the problem unless maps are fixed
• Test one thing at a time
• Mistakes should be punished
• Tanks do not need drastic speed nerfs, only small ones to seperate mediums from lights and heavies from mediums (TDs are actually quite good on the live server)

Thanks for reading this far if you did!

-Spirtwalker

Stats, What They Mean in WoT

World of Tanks has an interesting stat counter that many players pay a lot of attention to. These stats are a good representation of what kind of player you are. I am going to try to summarize what these statistics tend to mean on your account. The best place to find out the stats of you and your clan:

wotlabs.net

WN8- A statistic that can be misleading because sometimes it can be increased or decreased artificially. It is the overall stat that represents how you do in battle which combines damage, spotting, kills, etc. (basically everything except whether you win/lose)

Win %- This shows your percentage of wins/loses and basically shows how you impact your own team.

Recent Statistics- Show how you are performing in your last 1k battles and is a very accurate representation to how you will perform in your next battle.

XVM- Shows the stats of players in a battle (a mod), but only shows overall, therefore not showing the whole story.

Those are the important parts explained, now on to who you might be as a player and what you may have:

The average active player on NA has 1400 recent WN8 and 52% wins. This, if shown as the average, will probably shock you because you may have much less than this. This is most likely relatively artificial, as the majority of players have much lower overall and average WN8. (active players is a smaller category than you think)

Things that may impact your stats:

If you are sub 4-6k Games- your stats are not really functional as you may have not understood the game as well and you had to suffer through painfully bad low tier tanks against seal clubbers.

Seal Clubbers- Play low tiers in overpowered tanks, get insane statistics by killing people new at the game, and generally one of the reasons why the game as very few people who progress to the higher tiers in recent months. One clan that has been known to do this is CIA. (sorry if you belong to one of these clans, but you know it is true)

You Play Scouts/Arty- These kinds of tanks don't allow you to do as much to win battles as other tanks, in other words, carry. They tend to be squishy and don't have powerful enough guns to effectively take out tanks consistently. This will decrease your win-rate and in the case of SPGs, cause a lower WN8 in most cases.

Have Recently Progressed to Higher Tiers- This may happen to you if you jump from playing a lot of tier 8s to playing a lot of tier 10s. This is a large jump in skill, and you tend to see a lot more pro players who have played this game for years. Don't get discouraged, you will get better if you learn from your mistakes and from the plays of these more experienced players.



All in all, don't take it to heart if you have low stats. It means nothing about who you are as a person. Many things in the game also will effect your statistics in a positive/negative way. Don't worry about it, all that matters is that you have fun playing the game. Your Win %, combined with your WN8 is the best way to judge a player, along with the recent tier played over the past 30 days. This is a really helpful tool to use in order to dictate how a player will perform.


Here are my stats at the moment (my WN8 dropped cause I started grinding again XD)



-Spirtwalker

Swedish Tanks? Guess Those Will Be Cool

Wargaming has confirmed numerous times recently that Swedish tanks will make an entry into the game. I've done some digging around the internet and on some old blog posts from For the Record to bring you guys my opinion:

Swedish seems to have speedy tanks that have depression and autoloaders. The tanks are hard to guess specifically, but the overall themes seemed to be pretty clear. Also, these would bring into the game something somewhat new. I am worried that these tanks will be very similar to tanks already in the game like the Leo/30B comparison which is all to evident. What I am hoping for out of these trees is going to be more Tier 8 lights and another SPG line. (I am a big light driver myself btw) As for SPGs, I think we need some variety in the game, especially in Clan Wars. All you see at top tiers are Conqs and 53/55s which is kind of dry. Keep in mind that this may change with the Global Rebalance, as could most things talked about on this blog. Maybe this tree will shake up the game a bit, (but I think they may only do mediums)  but they have not really done anything game-changing since the introduction of many more top-tier lights. (again, more lights please)

Here is the FTR article:

http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/10/24/swedish-tanks-special-branchtree-for-wot/


-Spirtwalker

Wargaming Wants to.... WHAT?

So Wargaming has displayed the overall changes to the Sandbox Server (but now the exact values to probably not piss people off with BS stats that aren't permanent) with this link:

http://worldoftanks.com/en/in_development/sandbox-server/#global-rebalance

All of these changes can be viewed as good/bad but none of them break the game more than it already is. Arty making tanks worse is an interesting route to go in my opinion, but I can see where they are going with a sort of debuff class/support class. I can get behind that over what is currently occurring.

Wargaming wants to destroy the current shell distribution within the aiming circle and make it much, much worse. First of all, NO! This game is already somewhat RNG dependent, and doing this could potentially destroy the Esports prospect of the game and the ability for new players to even hit shots that aren't point blank (as in crap crews). This is potentially hurtful to this game in a big way. A rebalance is fine, if they want to decrease the distance of combat, fine as well. But I would like to hit the target in the right spots, thank you.



-Spirtwalker