Frustration about support

Been busy lately with work and grinding that I have no fresh ideas to post. I recently had the pleasure to platoon with a unicum and a really awesome player. No, I am not a platoon warrior in hoping that my platoon mate would improve my stats. I was learning from them with guidance via Team Speak. It was one hell of a pressure to play. Not that it's a bad thing but the pressure of a scrub like me needing to perform at their standards. It's a different ball game altogether.

Retreating
One of the things I learned is knowing when to retreat. Still learning it as I play along each day grinding. It's not something that can be learned in a single day. Experience counts for it.

I saw a few battles that we were winning and lost or losing battles that still could be won but lost it simply because of single mindedness offense. One flank is pushing hard at the enemy, and winning, while the other flank crumbles because they are out supported. If the stronger flank had won their battles and had breached to the enemy base, the best thing some players could do, especially if they are at the back of that group, is to retreat back to base to support the others defend the fallen flank or even possibly slow down the enemy from capping or from retreating back to their base to defend it.

Tactical play are hard in public matches simply because not everyone has the same idea as you. you really have to depend on your other team mates as you switch flanks or ignore targets. sometimes you could only spot targets hoping your team mates would take them out for you. Sadly, those kind of reliability rarely comes.

SPG
Since patch 8.6, players had been complaining about the nerf that the SPG had. I thought it was so bad that even I avoided it. Hell was I wrong. The SPG's aren't so bad after the nerf. Personally they nerfed it to make it more balance considering that they did adjustments to the accuracy algorithm. Having a very accurate SPG would be over powered. So instead of nerfing in the next updates if players complains of it's ungodly accuracy, they nerf it on patch 8.6, It's accuracy during battle is still the same as the previous patches in my opinion. Only drawback is the longer reload time. Which is of course not meant for certain players as it can bore you to death waiting for a target to shoot.

I also understood why Asia server is seeing less SPG, one reason being the insane amount of scrubs who have no tactical knowledge. They play it like an FPS. I hated playing SPG for 1 reason. Team mates dying like a countdown timer. There is nothing much an SPG can do on their own. They are support vehicles for a reason. To support. If team mates realizes that there are certain tanks they cant take out, stay alive and spot them so the SPG could take them out. If you die, the target disappears, what the hell can an SPG do? and you got to remember that SPG has a fucking long reload time, don't request for fire on so many targets hoping that SPG can fire everything every single time.

My SU-122A takes more than 20sec to reload. I need to pre-aim at a certain area that I think badly needs my support. If that side is doing OK, I change sides to support the other side which is gonna take 1 to 2 seconds and looking for an aiming another target which takes another 7 to 8 seconds. If I have to support both sides simultaneously, Imagine the amount of time I'm wasting switching sides! especially if I switched sides and then lost the target and reswitched and lose another target and switch again. And SPG hitting friendly targets? seriously sometimes we can't support you if you are too close to the enemy, Inaccuracy and splash damage is a liability in those situations. If u want us to give support fire, stay away from the target.

So SPG is bad? NO.

what makes SPG bad? the other tanks, and some other SPG players who have no idea how to aim their targets or even have the patience to ignore other flanks and concentrate on one flank.

New Tank added to my collection - IS-6 - Tier 8 Russian Premium Heavy

So I decided to get myself a premium tank and a premium account. A few days earlier I was wondering what tank to get to grind my credits and possibly as a crew trainer. So I consulted Hate, who had seen me play before, and he recommended the IS-6.

As in the picture above, those are my current stats on my IS-6 and I got to say I love it.

As what Hate had described to me, The tougher version of the KV-1S.

I know I had some disagreements with my choice for a premium tank, some even suggested the T34 American Heavy but I think I made the right choice getting this tank instead.

Comparing between the other tier 8 Heavy Tanks (total 12 different tier 8 heavy tanks including IS-6)

Hit Points
IS-6 has the third highest HP amongst all tier 8 heavies with 1550HP

Mobility
Only 3 heavy tanks are slower than the IS-6, and 5 heavy tanks are faster than the IS-6,
Despite that, personally to me it is still fast enough at 35kph, If you are used to the speed of a KV-1 and a T-150 then the IS-6 shouldn't be a problem. Coz you are not gonna go around chasing medium and light tanks. But don't expect to be able to switch flanks quickly or retreat to base for a cap reset when you are more than halfway across the map.
It has a faster traverse speed than 7 of the other tier 8 heavies, which is pretty average for a heavy tank at 26 deg/sec but will still be a problem if an enemy light tank decides to perform the circle of death.
Turret traverse how ever, it's slow at 24 deg/sec, being only faster than the Lowe, T34 and KV-4. So if an enemy tank decides to do the circle of death, you gotta try turning your turret and hull at the same time and try to out move him so he can't circle you easily.

View and Signal
It's bad. Signal range at 440m is bad, being typical of russian tanks, So it's best not to stay too far away from your allies or risk not knowing where your enemies are. View range is just as bad at 350m expect to be spotted before you can even see the enemy unless you are close to team mates with good view range and they spot the target for you. Avoid being too far ahead of your allies, stay close or slightly behind.

Gun
It's great for a tier 8 battle, does ok in a tier 9 battle and that is why you don't meet a tier 10 battle.
175mm penetration with 390 damage. Most fully upgraded tier 8 heavy tanks could dish out a lot more damage than you can and with even better penetration. Always pick your shots especially against tank with well angled armour like another IS-6.

Armour
This is the most deceiving part of the IS-6. On paper it has very thin armour for a heavy tank,  100/100/60 for the hull, 150/150/100 for the turret. But the armour is really well angled, making it possibly be almost 200mm thick at the front and sides. The turret is just as tough being slightly rounded and the hatch being very small. A player who knows how to properly angle his IS-6 is going to bounce shots all day.

Conclusion
Despite it's strength of the being well angled, certain situations will expose it as a weakness. If you are fighting at close range against a taller tank, they can aim down on your armour and make the angle lesser, decreasing the effective armour value. it's the same as you are on low ground and the enemy is shooting down on you from high ground or you are high ground going down a slope shooting an enemy on flat ground. City maps are best for this tank. Lots of flat terrain and cover for you to angle your armour. Side scrapping is an excellent choice to be used on this tank.

And like any tank, you have to pick your shots, aim for weak spots instead of randomly firing since your gun isn't as powerful as other fully upgraded tier 8 heavies. Be opportunistic when meeting similar or higher tier tanks. Don't charge in blindly especially if they are fully upgraded and have a gun strong enough to penetrate and damage you severely. And pick your shots because you don't carry much ammunition. You only have 30 rounds of ammunition. Missing and bouncing shots is a waste because each shot is worth 1,025 credits. Despite being a good credit grinder, missing too many shots in a defeat can make you lose credits unless you have a premium account.

In all, I think this tank is awesome!

Light Tanks

Light tanks are first and foremost identified with a diamond.

I'm not going to go into specific details about every single light tank as each light tank has their own unique characteristics. You'll find more details about each tank from the WoT wiki. The link is at the side of this page.

What I am going to mention is the general characteristics of a light tank and their role.

General Description

As the name suggest, light tanks are very light in comparisons to their bigger counterparts.
They are fast and lightly armoured, making them very mobile and agile tanks.
They are small and have very good camouflage rating, that means they are harder to be spotted in bushes. They even maintain their camouflage value whilst on the move.
They generally have the weakest guns but are still capable of destroying other light tanks, medium tanks, tank destroyers and spg. Some light tanks are capable to do considerable damage to a heavy tank.

General Pros and Cons

Pros
-Fast and mobile
-Good camoflage
-Small size making it hard to aim from a distance.
-Good view range

Cons
-Weak armour
-low health
-Weak gun.

General Role
Scout (active/passive)

-Due to their small size, good camouflage value, fast speed and excellent mobility, they make great scouts.
-They could zip near enemy lines and quickly spot enemy movement and  quickly retreat before they  could be taken out.
-They could hide in a bush from a safe distance avoiding detection and spot passively for the team to eliminate those targets, earning you spotting damage.

 Things to remember 
-Always remember to be aware of your surroundings to prevent enemies from getting too close and spotting you, having Sixth Sense for your commander is highly recommended.
-Never be afraid to retreat at the first sense of danger
-Move in cover behind hills, bushes, trees, forested area or buildings.
-Cover and Concealment is a necessity.
-Stealth is your strength.
-Always use your speed and mobility to your advantage and make your movement unpredictable.
-Most tanks would find it hard to kill you if you run around them, especially the Heavy tanks and Tank Destroyers.
-You could even flank enemies and use hit and run tactics.
-SPG is your food, take them out when the opportunity arises, observe the enemy movements and wait for an opening before sneaking in for the kill. It will save your team from lots of trouble, giving your team an advantage.
-Always have good battle awareness, it's pointless if you can spot targets and keep them spotted but your team mates are too fair away or the enemy is not within clear line of sight.
-Never engage tougher tanks head on alone or otherwise. You'll die very quickly without doing much of anything. Wait for backup or retreat to safety.
-A dead scout is a useless scout, so stay alive!

Personal opinion for light tanks?
Personally I don't really like light tanks. It uses a totally different set of skills and mentality to have a good game using a light tank that I'm personally not used to. I'm not saying it's a bad tank. It's a great tank to have in a team if the person uses it well. It can be the most annoying tank to face if the tanker is a decent one. A friendly light tank can be the game breaker or the one that spoils your team chances of winning.

Imagine the situation of most of the enemy are dead and what's left are the slow tanks, they are aggressively attacking your base as your team mates are courageously defending it. You zip off to the undefended enemy base to capture. The enemy might try to retreat but that would leave their rear expose from your friendly tanks to kill or they just got too engaged in battle that they can't retreat safely. And you secure a win by capping.

Imagine the reverse, both teams are capping, you zip back to base to reset it (damaging a tank that is capping is enough to reset it's cap, so you don't have to kill it. Just use your speed to keep yourself alive and keep resetting it). What does it do? it buys your team time for a successful capture.

You run off early in the game to spot enemy tanks and your teams are spread out evenly across the map. You spot a huge force of enemy tanks going through one flank, relaying information to the rest of the team. Your team reorganizes their movement to counter the threat saving your team from a crushing defeat.

Light tanks may be seen as a weak tank but they are important. They are the "spy" or "ninja" of the team sneaking around, hit and run, relaying important information for the team to act on.

***Note***
Not all light tanks are meant for scouting, some are slow but heavily armoured and have to be played like a heavy tank. Some have decent firepower comparable to a medium tank and can be played as a medium tank flanking enemies for the kill or causing serious damage. Know your tank strengths and play accordingly. You can check the wiki for a clearer understanding of each individual light tank.

First attempt to post a replay on youtube.

My first attempt to upload a video, this is dated back on the 18th July when I was platooning with HemanathanRX7 and his friend Liquidambar.

No commentaries, just trying out loading videos. If anyone knows of a good free video editing software, please tell me. :D

what is wrong with you people? seriously? where is help when you needed them?

Had a small discussion about how we asian players play. Some of the regular chatters I had chat with had experiences playing in EU, RU and NA servers and they all said 1 thing, those servers are tough.

I may not have experience in those servers but if what they say is true, it's very disappointing.

One thing I do realize about those servers are the Unicums or at least someone have some sort of initiative to give back to the community with livestreaming, posting replays on youtube or even do some sort of guide online or even mods. But what do we have?

We keep looking at their videos for tips and tricks, advise and tactical plays but somehow it just doesn't seem to work in this server. The only useful thing that a player can get is tank weak spots and tank reviews. But gameplay advise on for the server? NOTHING. Replays? NOTHING. Guides? NOTHING. And what do we do? NOTHING except complain how fucked up every player is.

So seriously, are you great players in this server gonna sit there on your ass and hopes that someone would do something? just like how noobs/idiots who camps together in one big group in the open hoping enemies would come to you one by one?

So here I am with ideas on making videos on simple tactics like flanking things like that and someone has to shoot that down by saying "you are not good enough"

So someone who is not good enough wants to do something and you tell them no, how about you people who are good enough? All I see you guys do is "2k battles? noob! you are not even close to me! i'm waaay better than you!" Hell, I've seen players with 10k battles who have no  idea how to use a KV-1S! so does that makes you with so many battles equates to being an elite? Then if you really are that good, why don't you try to teach us instead of looking down on us? I bet you guys forgotten how it feels like to be at the bottom!

I know of a Russian player who plays amongst us asians. He sends back replays to his Clan commander back in the RU server for him to use as training guide on what to do or more commonly, what not to do.

Do we do that? do we even look at our replays and gameplay? do we even tell your friends or clanmates and say something like "hey! I had a great game! here's the replay maybe you might find something useful!" or "hey! I had a bad game and I found out something about the map that got me killed! or I found out a way to counter this move! maybe I can show it to you"

But what do we do? share are battle results and we go "oh great job!, congrats!"

The players here play with the concept of "There is no I in teamwork" which means "Let the team do the work, not I". How often do we see platoons in a battle that don't play together? or even random team mates backing you up when you needed help?

Something like "help.. I'm under enemy fire and stuck here, can someone give suppressive fire? or can someone shoot that guy so he will take cover and I can retreat?"
But what do our team mates do? hide in fear despite the fact they are not in danger and when you die. "who asked you to go there noob?" and in your heart you know you wanted to get an advantageous position so your team can push forward.

Sometimes the team work is, they go scout and spot everyone and dies, and blames everyone for not killing the enemy or even say "I spotted them, now its up to the team"

Seriously? How bad can we asian players get? There was an event a few weeks back for getting Top Gun, SPG went into TD mode and rush forward.
I asked, "what the hell are you doing?"
His reply "I'm gonna go for kills, I wanna get Top Gun"
We don't have to guess if he was successful.

Then there is the issue of Elitism. The mindset of DOTA or what other MMORPG that we asian play. They don't realize that WoT is not the typical MMO game. It requires skill, not upgrading of armour and weapons and become the all powerful knight in shining armour. Having higher tier tanks won't make you a great player like how you play MMORPG where your your equipments can decide or damage output or defense capabilities.

Each tank is unique in their own right, some are over powered but still can be destroyed. Some maybe have weak armour but hard to penetrate because of slopes or how the player angles it. Gun with low damage but high penetration and quick reload? can still be good enough to kill that tank with High damage output but super long reload. Just because you have a Maus, T57, IS7 or what other tier 10 tanks doesn't qualify you as a great player. It does not qualify you as an elite either!

No disrespect to players with money to invest in the game but seriously, are you going to enjoy that money spent on a tank when you have no idea how to make full use of a tank or even how to play effectively that you will enjoy playing the tank? You wallet jumpers to me are idiots, why? You barely learned how to cycle, and yet there you go splashing all your money to buy a big bike thinking you can do awesome stunts with it.

Morning retards..

2 battles was enough to give up playing for the morning.

1st Battle

Cromwell suggest EVERYONE goes to the left flank and rush for enemy base.
I refused. Of course I told him don't be stupid for leaving the right flank open.
He said no, it's faster to win if we all rush.
And as I was arguing, I was moving to the right side of the map with 2 other tanks while he was still at base.

5 minutes later into the battle, he was still arguing, my flank of 3 tanks (1 MT and 2 TD) died because of 7 enemy tanks consisted of mediums and heavies rampaged through. The other flank however, just killed 1 tank (they took 5 minutes to kill that one tank when they outnumber the enemy 5 to 1).

I told him, I thought you said it was faster? you guys took 5 minutes to kill 1 tank. He said I was useless since I am dead. So I told him, look at the minimap, we are about to be capped. He continued to charge for the enemy base.

End of battle, He did LESS damage than me. So I am the useless one. -_-

2nd Battle

Countdown ended, on the first second, KV-1 turns and shoots a friendly Tiger-P.
We asked what the hell was that for?
His answer? Tiger-P shot him first.

WTF?

and he runs off into the middle of an open field in a KV-1 thinking he is a scout. I don't think I need to say how quickly he died.

They wanted a shout out

Well they were making noise I didn't mention them.

So this goes out to the regular chatters out there especially SoftShellTurtle and beercules (who specifically wants their IGN to be mentioned)

Oh by the way, that is not how I always look at my garage.

THAT is how I usually look at my garage.