9.0 Test – Changed Historical Battles Feedback

Hello everyone,

as you probably know from yesterday, in current round of the 9.0 test, there were some changes made to the Historical Battles mode. You can read about them in detail under the post. So, naturally, I wanted to try them out and here’s what I learned.

Overall, these chages were definitely positive. The increase of tanks per battle definitely had a positive effect on all three of them (I will write about that in a second). They changed the ammunition setups – that change seems a bit pointless though, because the amount of gold ammo generally wasn’t increased and I never reached a point, where I would be even close to running out of AP ammunition. Two things I however uncovered, that are not directly related to historical battles. First is the faulty Panzer III camo I didn’t notice before (I believe more models suffer from this effect) – in particular, the wheels are now covered by it, but in an incorrect way (no, this was not indended):

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It looks just weird. Second bug is that when you press “tab” to bring up the battle team roster screen, it will get stuck, until you press “escape” for the menu to appear and then “return to battle”. Anyway, back to HB’s – you know I am a fan of German tech in general, so I tested the battles with either Panzer IV or Panther. Panther in particular is insane fun in all three battles and I can wholeheartedly suggest it :)

One more new general thing they implemented are the missions for the lowtier tanks.

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In this case, as you can see, the lowtiers get 50 percent more XP and credits for winning the battle (with at least 150XP gained). There is one more missions – for lowtier mediums and lights to actually scout. If you have like 1000 spotting damage or so, you’ll get some 20k (or something like that). That should incentivize spotting, not bad!

As promised, they also added the switching respawn points (so I started north as a German in Kursk for example). What they did not add however are the tank hardcaps, so on the test, you can still have a 7 Tiger vs 7 SU-152 battle in Kursk. I assume they didn’t do it, because the test queues would be insane (yea, everyone’s rolling with a Tiger again).

Kursk

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So, changes. As you can see, the Panzer II is gone. Soviets now have a scout, but Germans don’t, which actually helped the Soviets (SU-152 + T-70 is a powerful combo, if both know what they are doing). The increase of MM weight limit for the battle definitely helped it and the battle is not as one-sided as it was before. With more Soviet medium tanks appearing (that can serve as spotters for the SU-152′s), Germans now have harder time staying invisible. I would say that this battle now stands and falls with the performance of mediums (or T-70) as scouts. If they rush and die quickly, the rest of the team (SU-152′s) will get killed. If they stay safe and spot, the Germans will get a beating.

The usual setup once again looks like this:

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And this is the result (suiciding T-70 + blind SU-152′s):

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A battle can however also end like this:

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In the case above, Germans got overconfident, and smart Soviet spotters kept us lit while the (invisible) SU-152′s did their dirty work. As I said, the battle felt much better and overall, it was fun.

Balaton

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This battle was earlier strongly tipped in Soviet favour. The increase in points and the disappearance of the Jagdtiger (that, if driven by an idiot, could basically sink the entire team) improved the balance a LOT. The battle’s problem is that lowtier vehicles are even more fragile than on Kursk, with Soviet alpha-oriented TD’s oneshotting everything below tier 6. Panzer IV really has a hard time here (but so does Soviet T-34).

In this case, the Germans lost, but not by much. The belance changes are clearly visible. The IS (tier 7) however is superior to anything the Germans can field on close range and with so many appearing in battle, I think the Soviets could use a slight cost increase of the ISU and IS in general, it’s still tipped against the Germans.

Ardennes

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And finally, Ardennes. Here too the balance changes helped the Americans. The problem is, the Americans are still hopelessly outgunned. This is how the usual battle starts:

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And this is how it ends:

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Basically, just like before, the Americans have to mob the Germans (swarm them) in order to win. If you don’t, you will lose, as the German superior firepower will pick the American vehicles off one by one. Jumbo Shermans are nasty battering rams, but they have too low firepower. Adding the 76mm gun to the Easy Eight definitely helped, but in the end, the only American vehicle, capable of slugging it out with Tiger II and such, is the Jackson. The battle is still tipped in German favour I would say and I won every Ardennes battle I went in (although some – where the Americans rushed – just barely). On the other hand, Germans are tactic-dependent as well – splitting the team is suicide and if you do that, you will most likely use (luckily, testing players seemed to have enough common sense to actually not do that).

Conclusion

The changes helped a lot. But I can’t help it but think that historical battles on live server will look completely different. For one, there will be the top tech hardcaps (hopefully) – but also not that many people have the top tech unlocked, so hordes of SU-152′s won’t probably be such a danger. We’ll have to see. But I am looking forward to it.

31 thoughts on “9.0 Test – Changed Historical Battles Feedback

  1. I must agree on that the battles in Panther are just outrageously fun.
    Been in a fight with 4 Panthers and 1 King Tiger versus 5 Hellcats, 3 Jacksons and 5 Shermans…(thats 5 vs. 13)
    That battle was probably one of the most fun things I ever did in WoT so far.

    EDIT: The battle was fun not because american forces were out gunned, but because they actually won by overwhelming us in sheer numbers.

    • Oh I remember playing a couple of battles with you :D But yeah I agree, historical battles are hella fun if still not perfectly balanced.

  2. The only issue I see is that the Germans, being largely out numbered and splitting up being suicide, are going to be a largely static blob.

  3. The problem with the ardennes is the number of people with kitties on the server which means the US team is biased towards a not particularly strong tank. I imagine they will be bored and move on whereas Jackson owners like myself will keep at it. I’m interested to see how much can be donw with the M4 derp to track those tigers and get in some module damage.

    The key problem is that you need to organise the team, but hopefully if everyone is told that the US side is weak then we might be left with some better players left in. As I have all the US tanks crewed and none of the other sides this is the one I will be playing and I hope I can find a way yo make it work.

    • I tried it with M4 derp and unless you get really close to the side of a Tiger II it doesn’t do much, the armor just cuts the damage down so much and the Tiger just has such retardedly better fire control, accuracy and practical alpha that it’s not very advised. M4 derp is pretty terribad if not slinging gold, especially against a T8 heavy. It’s good at nuking the rare StuG though and if you can flank it the Jagdpanther is a good target.

  4. If the HB now stays and falls with scouting, there are out of my scope.

    I every day see how the “red army” scouts in random and assume, that in HB it must be deeply worse, because of donkeys flood, which wants to kill T-34s by hundreds in their Tigers.

    • There never should be a battle with 1 type of tank vs 1 type of tank. It breaks most of the balance.

      If introducing cap on tanks that are too popular means longer queues – I’m fine with that. It’ll discourage people in them to play HB, while encourage people with more varied tanks to roll through them. Sounds like a nearly perfect deal.

  5. Tried to enter couple of battles with Tiger 2 just to check out, how roflstompy it is, was thrown back to garage after 5 minutes of waiting time in cue. I believe in Live this will be even worse. And there were like 90% germans of all the waiting tanks in every battle.
    So, it’s quite encouraging to play the little non-german tanks.

  6. First match after the changes managed to have 6k spotting damage in a Church 3. That’s more than I’ve ever had on the live server even in dedicated scouts.

    Still lost (you can imagine how many Tigers there were with that kind of hurt laid on the German side)

  7. I had a battle kinda like the last setup you posted. I played the Easy 8 and I kept one of the Tiger 2s busy circling around the building while the entire team took down another Tiger2 and panther… or jagpanther. I forget. But we lost 3-4 hellcats and while I kept the other Tiger2 busy a wolverine flanked it… or jackson… forgot. But it was extremely fun!

  8. Panther uses the Late G mantlet in Kursk, it should be the shot-trap one, but in that case 1 extra turret is needed… Maybe make Early version turret for the HB?

    • They should replace the VK3002D with Panther Ausf D. That would solve the problem

    • Future hull modules will probably fix that. But for the time being, I suppose the devs are prioritising on the right modules.

  9. First time that Tab stuck bug happened to me i thought it was my keyboard. Later i saw it stucks every time.

  10. “Panther in particular is insane fun in all three battles and I can wholeheartedly suggest it :)”
    Good, Panther is the only tank I currently have for HB, but I might buy the IS if it’s on discount.

  11. Two things i noticed and agree with with SilentStalker here:

    1: For the most part, German tanks are very potent in these battles. Heck, i was trying to run the Balaton battle a couple of times in my Tiger 2 (only rebought for test server, not in my live garage) and have had to wait quite a while to get into the battle. The queue times for German vehicles are understandably long lol.

    2. The Ardennes fight is still quite lopsided towards the Germans, simply because the Americans don’t have much to fight back with. Granted, i won one of these where all our Hellcats just swarmed and ate the enemy’s helpless Tiger 2s, but otherwise, we Americans can’t really win easily there. But, i guess that really is kinda historical.

    Overall, i enjoy these historical battles. Hopefully it turns out to be as fun or even more fun on the Live server.

    One thing is apparant though; in order for us to survive historical battles, we need to work as a team and actually use tactics.