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I take a 2nd look at the M103, the tier 9 American heavy tank in World of Tanks (WoT), with a replay of a tier 9 himmelsdorf battle.
Stat line: Ace Tanker, 5.4k damage, 7 kills, 2.6k blocked
I make several consecutive critical decisions that help our team pull out a victory, despite our being outnumbered and the other team having map control.
Key Takeaways
1. IMO 80% of the time when a team tries to cap (or calls for it in chat), it's tactically the wrong thing to do, because either it won't be possible to reach 100 points (e.g. the map is too small as is the case in most city battles, or cappers are very exposed to resets), or the better thing to do when you have a meaningful numbers advantage is to continue flanking the enemy.
I'm not saying you should never cap. Obviously if they are wrecking your team on the other side of the map, sometimes a miracle cap is the only way to win. Capping can put pressure on the opposing team or provide insurance.
It's noteworthy that the WN crew found a correlation between defense points and win rate, which is why it's included in the WN8 formula, but not between cap points and win rate.
2. on the flip side, if your team is losing and the opposing team is capping, often the best thing to do is defend your base, instead of continuing to push forward toward their base. This will take any of their base campers out of the fight and allow you to crush their isolated cappers.
Comments / Errata
a. the opposing Tiger I in tank alley was firing HE at me, which makes no mechanical sense.
HE only provides value in 3 situations: to destroy buildings, for higher damage on targets without meaningful armor such as Waffentrager TDs and American arties, and to finish off low-HP tanks that have strong armor (e.g. hull-down IS-7).
I talk through how I'm reading the battle as it unfolds and discuss key decisions and mistakes. My hope is that these videos meaningfully help other players improve their gameplay.
FAQs for the “Road to Unicum” series:
http://taugrim.com/2015/02/19/taugrims-road-to-unicum-guide-videos-for-world-of-tanks/#faqs
Next episode: T110E5 Review, 9.6k Damage / 9-Kill Carry
Previous episode: M103 Review, Recovering From a Poor Start
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Cheers,
Taugrim
+Vacras > wasn’t the snapshot on the ISU-152 rather risky
Yes, it was a 50/50 situation.
If I were willing to take more time, I could have tried sidescraping and
trying to bait a shot into my tracks.
Granted, if I had properly angled earlier vs the Super Pershing and bounced
his 2nd penetrating shot, I wouldn’t have been 1-shottable by the 152
regardless, so I put myself in that situation to begin with.
+DEANOGTO > honestly i can say i hate fighting jpz e100s more than fighting
either of the other 2
That makes sense. The WTE100 and 183 are much easier to penetrate.
+Taugrim
im just going by personal experience because the maus gets focused by arty
much more than the is4 plus the is4 is one of those tanks which ive noticed
gets underestimated a lot people seem to be oddly cocky when fighting it
and seem way to confident that they can easily kill it. gold spammers
because they are used to just penning turrets like butter just seem to snap
shot at the is4 which is a huge mistake and i punish them so hard everytime
they try that crap.
people say the jpz lost its fear factor when the 183 and the wtf 100 got
introduced but honestly i can say i hate fighting jpz e100s more than
fighting either of the other 2. also because people dont give it the
respect it deserves a lot of the time people will sit and aim at it for
longer practically guaranteeing that youll get a shot off at them in return
providing your guns loaded.
+DEANOGTO the IS-4 front hull is very vulnerable to goldspam, whereas a
properly-angled Maus IMO is harder target to penetrate.
The IS-4 side hull armor is fantastic and trolly, but with the front hull
armor either the shoulder or the front plate is 250mm or lower, which is
50% or less for bouncing incoming shells.
> the only german superheavy i could honestly recommend to anyone would be
the jpz e100 because at least you can make people pay for firing heat at
you with that 1000 alpha cannon
Yup, the JPE100, especially hull-down, is very scary to run into.
+Taugrim
after playing the is4 for a while i cant really see why anyone would go
through the grind for the maus because honestly the is4s armour just feels
stronger thanks to the insane amount that tank can be angled at along with
the armour sloping and the better gun. the only german superheavy i could
honestly recommend to anyone would be the jpz e100 because at least you can
make people pay for firing heat at you with that 1000 alpha cannon.
+DEANOGTO E-100 is incredibly relevant. It has a great combo of high alpha
(750) and strong armor with good protection against HEAT on the side hull
because of the skirts and track.
Maus is not as relevant. It lacks alpha and DPM, and it’s slower than the
E-100.
That said, both the E-100 and Maus are pen’able with medium tank HEAT
rounds (330-340+) in their turret face, which kind of makes all that armor
not as valuable.
+MiChUV5 > can I ask you about your opinion about X – Jagd.Pz. E100
Soft lower plate, but strong superstructure. Terrific alpha.
It’s much weaker than the WTE100, but then again, isn’t everything?
I hate running into a hull-down JPE100 in a corridor.
Yeah, but still same engine :/ The could do something with WoT, I mean I`m
playing on 40-60 fps but That getting annoying when I HAVE to play on low
little settings when rest of my games can be on high.. At least 😉
Also.. I`m playing on JagdTiger, And can I ask you about your opinion about
X – Jagd.Pz. E100?
+MiChUV5 WoWS was built later, so it’s not surprising if it runs much
better.
I bought a new gaming laptop (Sager NP8268-S) earlier this year and WoT
runs great on max settings.
+carnifex2005 Haven’t tried WoWS. It doesn’t look interesting enough to me.
People say it’s like a slower WoT, with more opportunities to hit
friendlies because of the long travel time for torpedoes. I doubt I’ll pick
it up.
+carnifex2005 I don`t know how WG fucked up so much optimalization on WoT
but in WoWs it is done so well xD
+El_Maginio > Could u pls make a vid about the STB?
I haven’t played the Japanese med line yet. I’ve been curious about the STB
– it has great DPM, good alpha, and great gun depression. I’d have to grind
from the low tiers to 10 to be able to play it.
+Christian Henke I know the AMX is a scout 🙂
It’s just that scouts need to be able to penetrate targets too, and 144 pen
is pretty laughable against anything but arties, lights, and a couple other
tanks.
You may still forgot that AMx is mainly a scout. Besides that, if you plan
to deal damage, you will go on medium lines where tanks as object 140(easy
pen) and stuff appears. Otherwise get in sideshots or stuff like that. If
nothing works you often can pick off like 800 dmg by killing artiest.
+Christian Henke I’m actually most worried about the AMX 13 75, because it
has very low silver pen (144) for a tank that gets tier 8-10 matchmaking.
All of the other tanks in the line look playable IMO, although people
complain about the Lorr 40t.
besides the lorraine (in my opinion) and the amx 12t the grind is awesome +
you can get amx 30b too
+Christian Henke funny you should mention that.
I’ve been trying over the past 150 battles on my ELC to complete LT-15 –
haven’t been able to do it yet, I’m bad – so I started to think about light
tank lines I might want to work up.
Yesterday I bought the AMX 12t.
It’s a longggg grind to get to the BatChat, but that’s a tank I’ve always
wanted to play.
I have about 400k tank-specific XP saved up but less than 1k gold atm, so I
can’t convert much of that to Free XP to shorten the grind.