Just saw my friend and very esteemed colleague Gentlefun, a.k.a PanCCham is getting close to 2000 subscribers on his excellent youtube channel.

Yeah, that is a shameless plug.

But it’s also true. Pancham puts out some of the most quality gameplay and content you’ll ever come across, and so if you have even the slightest interest in pixel tanks, his channel should be in your subscription list already.

Should it not be, for the next seven days you can sign up to win some gold or a TOG  premium tank while you rectify that situation.

Just make sure you are a subscriber, drop a comment with your ign and which server you are on, and you’ll be signed up for the giveaway.

Go, PanCCham, Go! 🙂

Wily Weazel: WZ-120 and the Game Meta

By:

IrmaBecx

I had a look just now, and was surprised to see I have more than four hundred games in my tier IX Chinese heavy Medium tank. Not sure how that happened, exactly.

Usually, I kind of forget about the tier IX tank once I’ve grinded out the tier X. I drove a few games with the 100 mm after the grind, and then there was the 100 vs. 122 mm paper I wrote a few weeks back, but I had no idea I had fought so many battles in the WZ-120.

It makes sense though. It’s a great ride. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but I also know a few who think it’s simply fantastic.

And it’s just a matter of perspective. If you approach the WZ as a variant of the T-54, then that’s about as exciting as it’s going to be for you, and you’ll probably end up running the “wrong” gun on it. But if you try to approach it on its own terms, it’s actually a very singular vehicle.

Medium/Heavy tank hybrids come in two flavours. They are either Heavy tanks that can do Medium tank jobs because they have better than average mobility for Heavy tank; tanks like the WZ-110, the IS-7, IS-5, AMX M4 45, et cetera, or they are Medium tanks that have Heavy tank armour or Heavy tank firepower.

I never liked the term “Heavium”, mainly because I think it led to a lot of misinterpretations. I don’t dispute the fact there are tanks that blend characteristics from both Heavy and Medium tanks, but what that actually means in terms of gameplay is a different matter.

Either way, if the IS-7 is a Heavium, then the WZ-120 is a heavy Medium tank. It’s a Heavy tank turret on a modified Type 59 hull.

From the “glass half empty” perspective, your knockoff T-54 will have a slower reload, less DPM, and a weaker front plate. Also the turret is a little taller, flattening out the turret face, and the front plate isn’t quite as steeply angled.

Where’s the fun in that?

*

If you decide to give the Weazel-120 a chance on its own terms, the “heavy Medium” playstyle isn’t very hard to figure out. It can be tricky to actually execute, but it’s easy to understand your strong points.

First of all, you have excellent mobility. The chassis moves so smoothly, and other than bogging down in mud and water like all Chinese tanks, it’s a flanking machine.

This is very important. Because it’s the key to finding your role.

You are not a Heavy tank. If all you do is trading shots with Heavy tanks from static positions, you will have put yourself at a disadvantage, because your armour isn’t as good as theirs. So to regain some advantage, you have to use your mobility. Keep moving the whole time so you don’t end up playing into their hands; remember you are a Medium tank, even when you are doing Heavy tank things. You are basically lugging around a Heavy tank gun and turret, trying to put cheeky shots in and then relocating before they realise you don’t actually have the rest of the Heavy tank with you.

As a bonus, you also have the best aimtime in your tier. No other tier IX Medium aims as fast as the Weazel, and of course Heavy tanks are nowhere near. Not even the Conqueror. In turn, your accuracy on the move is downright bad. You want to come to a split second stop and let the gun settle; if you do that, the reticule will shrink to nothing in a flash and the shot will go in.

So that’s one of the things I like about the WZ-120. You can’t really compare it to other Medium tanks, because it just doesn’t work the same way. It can work the same way as other Mediums; all you have to do is mount the 100 mm gun. But learning to use a Heavy tank gun in a completely different application than you are used to is part of the fun.

Reverse psychology is super easy. All you do is start thinking differently about things, and you will start acting differently as well.

I touched on this point in my paper on the 100 mm vs. 122 mm question. Ask yourself: why am I driving these tanks in the first place? No matter your answer, sooner or later you are going to get to the WZ-121, so it makes sense to learn the 122 mm plastyle. But more importantly, the WZ-120 is a completely unique vehicle, there simply isn’t anything else out there that even comes close.

*

Next to hunting skill stars for sport, driving the Weazel is the most fun I’ve had in the game for quite a while. Not because it’s so powerful, or because it’s so effective, but because it’s so singular.

Regarded as a knockoff T-54, it’s easy to see the Weazel solely in terms of lack. You look at it, and all you see are its problems. Regarded as a heavy Medium tank, it immediately starts looking much better; and as I said people even manage to find it excellent.

But it is getting a buff. The reload on the 122 mm 60-122T is shortened by almost a full second, giving you a bit more DPM.

Now, if you ask me or any other Weazel afficionado, they will say it doesn’t need a buff in the first place, and that may well be true. But from a Meta perspective, it makes more sense.

The WZ-120 is a Medium tank. It can distance itself from this role by using its Heavy tank attributes, but it can’t make enemy players not treat it like one. People will bully Medium tanks, and in those situations, the faster firing, higher DPM weapon may end up saving your bacon more times than the 122 would.

The buff should give you about a nine-point-something second reload instead of a ten-point-something depending on your crew skills, and the DPM difference between the guns will be cut in half. That means the inherent differences of the two weapons become more important; things like alpha damage, aimtime, and gun depression. These are now your considerations when choosing between them.

It won’t make the 122 carrying Weazel a monster, but it will make it a little more comfortable to play, because you’ll be able to shoot your way out of a few more situations. You’ll have more opportunities, but it won’t alter your gameplay. The WZ-120 is already what they call a “high risk/high reward” tank, and so getting the shot off a second faster will likely make quite a significant difference in your gameplay.

Anticipating 5.0 some time after midnight tonight, I had one last drive in my unbuffed Weazel, just to have it fresh in memory once the update drops. There are a few other things to look forward to, but for me the Weazel buff is actually going to be the most exciting.

See you guys on new Vineyards!

Skill Star Predator Pt. III

By:

IrmaBecx

I got so caught up in the wondrous feeling of turning the tables on the TD meta yesterday, I forgot part II of “Skill Star Predator” was actually supposed to be more practically oriented.

I even forgot to mention I found out something important. It’s called the “two calibre rule”. I kept thinking Xeno had gotten it wrong when he started talking about it, because I had never heard of it. I have heard of the three caliber rule, which states that if the calibre of the shell is more than three times the thickness of the armour, it will penetrate regardless of angle.

Here’s what the two caliber rule says:

“…if the armor the shell hits is less than half of the caliber of the shell, normalization is increased by the following formula: basic normalization * 1.4 * shell caliber / nominal armour thickness. If the shell penetrates due to this rule, it moves on to the damage roll. This rule does not apply to HEAT/HE/HESH.”

So, let’s look again at the side of my Object 140. It has a strip of 80 mm armour along the side, that will void the two caliber rule for almost all guns in the game. At 80 degrees, I have almost 500 mm of effective armour out of those 80 mm:

This looks like it would bounce, but it wont because of the two caliber rule

But as soon as the side starts to curve outwards, it’s only 57 mm. The 183 will overmatch that. And let’s see what happens to my 500 mm of effective armour with the two caliber rule:

AP shells normalise at 5 degrees. The two calibre rule says 5 degrees times 1.4 times 183 divided by 80, giving us sixteen degrees of normalisation.

A Jägeru wouldn’t be quite so bad. 17 cm isn’t enough to overmatch the upper curvature, but 5 * 1.4 * 170 is still almost fifteen degrees of normalisation. It’s doubtful you’ll ever have enough effective armour to get a bounce, even at sharp angle.

The way it works out is, if you are angling at an extremely shallow angle, almost zero degrees, it’s like you are already angling out sixteen degrees. Looking at the armour model, that practically means there is no way to angle my Object 140 to get a bounce off the side armour from a skill star, because one of the two rules will negate it all.

The problem with saying that, is the quality of the Information we have to work with. I spoke to Minitelrose about all this, and he explained the several problems involved in making an accurate representation of in-game armour models and penetration mechanics, the way Armour Inspector tries to do.

Basically, Wargaming doesn’t give out any information at all. Everything we know has been assembled by players over a period of several years, and so what we see is the best possible representation, but it isn’t always completely accurate. Trying to keep it accurate is a constant struggle, there’s really no way of knowing if you got it right, and even if you did, everything could change completely tomorrow, and no one would tell you about it.

*

Which is disheartening, of course. But it also shows us the value of information. The only places I should expect to get a bounce from a skill star is off my severely angled front plate, or the rounded sides of my turret.

There is another lesson to be learned. 183 / 2 is 91.5, meaning if you have 92 mm of armour somewhere – that’s 92 mm of actual armour thickness; not effective armour thickness, you will be safe from both the two and three caliber rules for all guns in the game.

Consider that for your side scrapers. Less than 91 mm means you will sometimes be around 15 degrees further out than you though you were. For 122 mm guns, the number is 62 mm; less than that, and you can add 14 degrees to your side scrape angle.

So yeah. Important knowledge. I should start paying more attention to learning my armour thicknesses on various tanks, and which guns I therefore need to watch out for. For the biggest guns in the game, it’s basically two numbers to remember: 62 and 92. that’s the limit beyond which you only have the regular 5 degree normalisation to deal with from a 122 or a 183 mm shell, respectively.

*

There is yet another lesson here about how completely bullshXt the skill star is for just negating peoples armour like that, and especially my magnificent Object 140, but I think we all heard that one before. I already knew the skill star is bull. The fact it’s even more bull than I thought it was doesn’t exactly alter my position on it. I just kind of sigh at that.

But learning about the two caliber rule, trying to work out what it means to me in practice, and how I need to alter my gameplay to avoid it; that’s the kind of stuff that makes me sit up and pay attention. I never used to like maths at school, but that’s because I didn’t always see a practical application. I don’t mind it at all now.

There is more to learn. I have a Foch 155, for example. That means less than 77,5 mm of enemy armour, and I will get the extra normalisation. Time to check some of my targets. Oh, and I have a few 130 mm guns as well. That means less than 65 mm, and so on.

This may seem like mere details, and in the grand scheme of things, yes; that’s what it is. But important details. The kind of stuff you need to know, things that should inform your gameplay, just like the overmatch mechanic.

And knowing why you got wrecked may not make you feel any better, although I do sometimes find that to be true. But the point is it will put you in a much better position to learn from your mistakes; they are of course easier to avoid once you know what they were in the first place.

Death to the skill star!