8.9 Feedback – Marder 38T

Hello everyone,

this post contains my take on the new 8.9 tank destroyers, from tier 4 to tier 7 and my experience with them. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Obviously, the post is written from my point of view and it’s subjective. I like German tanks, I love tank destroyers and I think I am reasonably good with them, so I guess I know what I am saying in this case. I was running the tank destroyers with following equipment: camo net, binoculars, rammer – and with a 3-perk crew (with full camouflage skill). Let’s get to it.

Marder 38T

t4

Marder 38T (I somehow always refer to it as Marder III) is the new tier 4 tank destroyer. You can find the data on it anywhere, so I won’t get into hard data much and will focus on how much fun I had playing with it. Players actually sometimes complain about it – they cite its poor armor and “bad” gun as its main drawbacks, but I think that’s crap. This vehicle is possibly the best tank destroyer on tier 4 and certainly the one I ever had most fun with.

Don’t let the lowpen guns fool you – they are completely sufficient for its tier. You won’t be meeting anything heavier than tier 6 anyway and if you aim properly (obviously, aiming at the front plate of KV-2 is not the most brilliant idea) you will have absolutely no problem. The DPM is amazing (the gun fires very fast) and the wide gun traverse arc ensures you don’t have to move your hull much when you switch targets. This is extremely important on a tank destroyer, as moving the hull instantly makes you dump 40 percent of your camo – and when you add the camo penalty for shooting, you might get spotted.

Fortunately, that doesn’t happen often. Marder 38T is very small and despite its height has very good camouflage. You won’t get spotted easily, if you use bushes properly. Another quality that is easy to get used to is the viewrange – this vehicle sees far, even without binoculars. That’s very important – since you need to keep the enemies at distance. Why? The armor. Or rather, the lack of it – on your tier, pretty much everything penetrates you (that seems to be the hallmark of the entire line, but starts to be a problem only at tier 7). Fortunately, the vehicle is very, very fast and agile. That, combined with very quick aim time (1,5s!) means you get to fire off few rounds and quickly move to cover. Very useful. Of course, you can snipe too – the top gun is reasonably accurate (0,35) and the shells fire rather fast. Gold ammo is actually almost an overkill for it and I never felt like needing it – the guns are very adequate for its tier.

I found the best tactics for this vehicle (apart from the obvious sniping) is quick hit and run tactic – combined with flanking. The tank doesn’t attract too much attention in battles (“meh, Marder…”) – which is a huge mistake, if left unchecked, it will devastate pretty much anyting short of massed heavy tank frontal assaults. Only two things caused me somewhat trouble. First is taking tier 6 heavies head on (you have to aim carefully and know exactly how soon will they spot you so you can take cover before that) and the other is dealing with mediocre depression.

So, if you want to survive and enjoy it, here are a few tips:

- do not move your hull unless you have to, use your camo to full advantage
- don’t take tier 6 heavies and derp vehicles head on unless you know exactly what you are doing – derp Sherman, Panzer IV or even Hetzer can oneshot you
- you are not a tank, you don’t lead assaults, stay back
- bushes are your friends, you are small enough to fit behind most of them
- carry a few HE shells to deal with other Marder vehicles, they are HIGHLY susceptible to them, in a face-off, loading HE can mean life or death

Overall, apart from the armor, the vehicle is very comfortable to play with. If you find the lack of armor to be a problem, you are doing it wrong.

Oh, right, the camouflage. What I noticed about the camo:

- if you camp on the Redshire ridge (both in fact) behind bushes, you are practically unspottable, but you won’t be able to see the other ridge properly (viewrange). It’s better to setup yourself on the flanks (specifically the part of the northern base ridge overlooking the western access.
- Prokhorovka: if you stand on the western road behind two bushes in a row (easy), you are again practically unspottable, yet your traverse covers the entire road and part of the middle. Very useful.
- Malinovka: it’s safe to stay behind the bushes next to the big stones on the northern base UNLESS you move. If you move and shoot in sequence, you will be spotted by any light or medium tank that makes it to the half of the field. Very important is to set yourself up properly in advance.
- Arctic: on the ledge near the southern base (G4) you are again pretty much unspottable, unless a scout makes it very close to you
- Steppes: if you wait at the base and cover the middle road while hidden behind a bush, you won’t be spotted unless the attacking tank driving on that road makes it roughly two meters behind the stones and you fire or move your hull, on tiers 4 and 5, it gives you enough time between spotting and you being spotted to knock that tank out, but not if it’s a tier 6

Well, that’s it. Overall, I think it’s possibly the second best of the mid-tier 8.9 tanks (Nashorn is better, but we’ll get to that).

50 thoughts on “8.9 Feedback – Marder 38T

  1. ‘dealing with mediocre depression’

    I think you mean elevation. The depression is quite good; the vertical traverse is ±9.

    • yeah elevation is sometimes a issue. also, m5 stuart with derp is imho your most dangerious oponent of tier 4

  2. For some reason I keep refering to it as the “M38T”, or “Meat” if you’re too lazy to use nunbers.

  3. Running a 75% crew on this, I enjoyed it a lot. I also found the rof and pen to be excellent. It honestly is a tank I would consider purchasing back during a special to grind credits.

  4. oh im having so much fun with the Marder III
    ”- carry a few HE shells to deal with other Marder vehicles, they are HIGHLY susceptible to them, in a face-off, loading HE can mean life or death”
    yes this is 100% true. in one battle i destroyed the gun on one enemy Marder III with HE. and the guy was like ”F YOU DUDE YOUVE JUST DESTROYED MY GUN”, ”F YOU HACKER” :D

        • lol, i think you are the retarded one around
          here, because you can easily PENETRATE those td’s from up front using HE. Google “Dunning-Kruger-Effect” … It might help :D

  5. My only problem with the 38t is running out of ammo. Very nice little vehicle. Seriously considering a permament stall in the garage.

    • Ran out of ammo trying to pen the side of a AT-2. HE knocked him down a bit though. Came down to me (no ammo) plus an arty vs. the AT-2, a T49 and an arty. I went scouting for the arty and found the T49. I rammed him doing damage but he tracked me. Then the AT-2 rolled down an embankment next to me and rammed me, killing me. However, our arty was able to kill the T49 and the AT-2 was stuck between my corpse and the cliff. So eventually, our arty was able to kill him too. Final result was a draw.

  6. Seriously people say its a bad tank because of its gun and bad armor. I have fun in that tank, most of the time i get away with 4 to 5 kills in each game i play in it, totaling around 20k credits and 1k xp.

  7. This thing is the Pre-nerf Marder II with T-50-2 like speed :) I was kinda sad to let it go to get the tier V Tank Destroyer – but I’ll pick it up again once crew training is discounted.

  8. The T40 and the M8A1 are strictly better, but I still like the 38T. However, the fact it runs out of ammo rather easily is a huge drawback in T6 games where you often need quite a bit of it to deal with the larger HP pools.

  9. heh at first i’ve noticed huge traverse arc, next was the speed. at least the rof. and i loved it. 5 frags during 1st battle and 1.200 dmg was awesome. same goes for tier v, but traverse arc is mediocre with the best gun. from about 60 degs +/- to something like 5+/- but that rof, speed, aimtime, dmg,penetration… <33

  10. i like the marder 3 too. I’m often top of my team, but in tier 5 and even 6 matches you are highly dependent on what your team does. no luck in random with the teams. so far only got 1st class badge

  11. First of all I am not into TDs, have stopped playing them long time ago, but have come back with the new german TD line to play. I am currently playing the Marder 38T with camo, bino and rammer and have a 100% crew with around 50% camo skill, and yet in my first few battles I managed to get a Kolobanov and several Top Gun medals. I really recommend playing this tank.

  12. I buyed now that 5 tier german TD i forgot his name =/ that new, and i see some screenshots when he aim in air like arty but his gun was 90° up :), cool stuff

    • A T-50 came barreling down a hill to ram me but hit a bump and got airborn, I managed to hit him in midair while he jumped over me. Best kill ever.

  13. |Overall, apart from the armor, the vehicle is very comfortable to play with. If you find the lack of armor to be a problem, you are doing it wrong.|

    I think this applies to the whole line

  14. It’s a fine AT vehicle and I agree to SS opinion about it, but in 4th level there are too many good TD’s, so I mastered it in a few games, grinded to the Coffin and sold it. And that next 5th level Flak bus is even more epic vehicle :)

  15. I am on Nashorn now. I played Marder and Pz.Sfl and one thing to say about these vehicle is that: they are awesome!

    Marder III looks like “old Marder II” and tastes like it ;) yes i’m one of the old guards of game and know so much about older Marder. WG nerfed it and turned into a piece of sh.t (sorry but true is that!) but now i found my old pretty friend again. I doesnt want to say that but i know that after a few patches Marder III will be “rebalanced” ! So now play with it as much as possible ;)

    Also next td after that is very powerful machine too. Yup, Pz.Sfl looks like noob school bus and doesnt give us “trustable look” but it has very very good camo value and can penetrate lots of tanks without gold ammo. Just choose last 88 mm baby and loading deadly presents :)

  16. its basically the old marder again, but a tier higher with more speed and aimtime, so its pretty good.

  17. I dumped my JP2 crew into this (4×100% + 1×69% skills each – max camo on everything) and sold the JP2 because this TD is just the best. Currently running at 66% winrate it is by far the most fun TD to play. I do find however that as usual MM is some form of unfunny Russian humour and I am vary rarely in the top tier of the team – usually in the bottom 3 up against a LOT of T5-6 derp merchants. For this reason I do carry 10 gold but try not to use them. However If it comes down to me and a T6 at the end they invariably get big surprise. I found a good trick is to use the 250k daily bonus to buy gold – as I make about 600k per day this is easily covered and means my little Maerder is a much tougher nut to crack on the map.

    * On the Arctic base ridge spot – there appears to be a bug on that spot. I have noticed even using T10 vehicles that tanks on the ridge, even after firing, DO NOT become visible.

  18. On El Hallouf there is a mound at 9D where a WT E100 or hight tierwith net binos can sit and see most of the enemy ridge line and snipe

  19. I love it, my first 2 games were 5 kills a piece and after that I routinely put out top 3 damage even in a tier 6 match. I think the camo on this thing is broken and expect a nerf. I have been within a few hundred meters of the enemy and moved from cover to cover in the wide open and 6th sense doesn’t go off! Or crest a hill in the wide open to reset the flag and fired away un-detected at ranges you would normally be done.

    I have had several great games in it already, as long as you abuse the camo and RoF you can contribute to each match.

  20. Frank, you also admitted it, the WTs got epic view range…it’s a great idea to swap those binocs with optics.
    With full camo you’ll be able to spot everything on that tier without getting spotted even while moving, not only by sniping.
    I used that on all of them(I’m at Nashorn atm) and I made wonders…got impressive scores solo’ing them.
    And yeah, marder 3 is awesome…kept it.
    The tier 5 is a bit meh and the Nashorn…hmm…first battle got 4.4k exp on a double, might keep it.

  21. Favorite TD I have played so far
    But no armor, ok ish elevation and not enough armor. Everything else is really good though.

  22. This tank rocks! I have been calling it marder 3 too. Ive built several plastic models of this machine :)

    First game 5 kills and then a T1 heavy trolled my topgun!!

  23. I agree, it is a very good td – with 80% crew i don’t feel handicapped. After 1-2skills it will be like driving UFO…
    I could add some advices to this article but i don’t want my enemies to be too proficient :P .

  24. The Marder 38t plays almost exactly like the E-25. Both are fast, agile vehicles with insane rates of fire and amazing camo.

  25. Played 4 games with M38T. Non-respecced crew from JP E1000 with chocolate. That thing felt like rickety piece of shit and I sold it. On the other hand, T40 with similar setup worked like a charm. My clanmates have abused SU-85B as well. Why?

    1. Penetration. You basically have 20 more with aforementioned vehicles’ top guns. You are encountering a lot of KV-1′s and such tanks and if you want to penetrate them frontally from a distance, M38T isn’t doing the job.
    2. View range. 360 meters might feel sufficient for someone. Unfortunately competition has 390 and 400. A considerable difference that lets you spot the enemy way before they spot you even if you are spamming truckload of ammo towards them. It also helps your team to shoot easily at targets that can’t spot them.
    3. DPM isn’t exceptional. Beats T40 but loses against SU-85B.
    4. Firing arc isn’t exceptional either. Beats SU-85 but loses against T40.
    5. Power/Weight ratio is better with the competition so in practice they feel more nimble though their top speed is slightly lower.
    6. I don’t have camouflage data available for M38T but I believe it’s probably on par with the competition.

    The only thing M38T is better at is the gun accuracy and aiming time. IMO M38T needs to be rebalanced in relation to its peers.