Monday Musings - 4/24/17

Another big weekend on the battlefield of World of Tanks. Here are a few random thoughts...

Right of Way

It's all too common for there to be a big traffic jam trying to get out of the spawn at the beginning. Often there ends up being collisions, a few hit points lost and occasionally a few tempers lost too. Let me suggest that in the case where there's a jam we follow this order:

1. Scouts should get out first. They can clear quickly and they're probably heading somewhere useful. If the scouts don't get to the field in time there aren't going to be many pretty red tanks lit for you to shoot anyhow. So let your scout get out of the spawn and into his scouting position to light people up for you.

2. TDs should get out second. They're probably heading to their favorite bush to kemp in and they're often not super fast. If they can go and get set up they'll have a better chance to shoot those tanks the scouts light up early.

3. Heavies out third. The heavy tanks need the extra time to get where they're going because they're usually pretty slow. Let them trundle along on their way.

4. Mediums fourth. They're more of a support tank in most battles anyhow and they're usually fast enough to make up any lost time waiting for the rest of the traffic to get on their way. When I play a medium I'm often flanking for my heavies anyhow so no need to get there first.

5. Finally the artys. Half the time they're just going to camp around the spawn anyhow. They don't have a long way to travel. And if the scouts light people quickly the artys can just drop anchor and fire from wherever they happen to be, most of the time.

So let's have some courtesy getting out of the spawn. If you don't know where you're going yet either stay put while you think about it or maybe pull out of spawn and just move to the side like when you're on the street and a fire truck comes...just to let your team get where they're going quickly and intact.

Which brings me to...

Noobshooting

Noobshooting (v): The act of pointlessly firing your gun around as you leave the spawn, either in random directions or at various parts of the landscape. Like a noob who just discovered what the left mouse button does.

Don't noobshoot. It's stupid, it's counter-productive and it's even dangerous. Not only are you wasting ammo (which in a long, close, game might be precious later on) but there's a non-zero chance that you might accidentally hit a teammate. A couple of weeks ago on Arctic Region I was leaving the spawn and some knucklehead actually shot me in the back because he was randomly firing around. I took ~100hp of damage and had a damaged module; all because some idiot found his daddy's tank and started shooting. He mumbled an apology in chat but it shouldn't have happened.

Probably once or twice a week I see somebody accidentally get shot because some moron is noobshooting coming out of the spawn.

Stop it.

Chaffee

So I spent a lot of time this weekend playing my Chaffee. It was my favorite tank pre-9.18 and I was worried that the 9.18 nerfs might have ruined it. I talked about this, briefly, in a previous post but I thought I'd take a moment to give a more informed review now that I've played it a bunch.



Is the Chaffee ruined?
Short answer is: No. It's still a really good tank. They reduced the view range and the top speed. The top speed nerf hurts a little, but the Chaffee IS still able to get to those aggressive bushes and it doesn't seem to be an appreciably easier target to hit on the move.

The view range nerf hurts a little more.  Even with optics, vents and a two-skill crew (with situational awareness and recon) my view range STILL only gets to 422 on the Chaffee and that's a little frustrating - especially when I know there are TDs out there who can outspot me. That's why camo, camo paint and concealment skills are pretty important. 

That said I have a 28% camo rating on this tank and a 422 view range and I still, quite often it seems, get 1-shot by a Hellcat that I can't even see. Now that I have Sixth Sense on this tank it's gotten somewhat better because at least I *KNOW* I've been outspotted and can try to get into cover.

In my next post I'm going to talk about how I set up crew skills on my light tanks.

GLHF!

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