Artillery Rework Proposal

Hello everyone,

as you know, artillery is one of the most heated debate subjects, when it comes to World of Tanks. Some hate it, some love it, but one thing is for certain, no matter what you think or how angry you might get.

Artillery is here to stay. It won’t be ever removed and I am really glad it won’t.

But, with that being said, nobody’s saying there’s no room for improvement or change. Generally, I consider the artillery in World of Tanks relatively functional, expecially with the latest Battle Assistant mod, that makes it MUCH more fun to play – not giving you an insane advantage, but rather giving you improved situational awareness.

Anyway, some people recently asked me “how would you make arty better for everyone?” – okay, here’s my idea what I would do. This would also be applicable to Armored Warfare, as it seems they basically cloned the artillery mechanism for now (however, it was already stated it would be reworked for artillery to work as “AoE damage”).

Proposal

Starting point: current WoT artillery state

I would take following steps:

- point of view (“satellite” mode) would be reworked from the current system to the system used by the Battle Assistant mod. I am sure everyone knows what I am talking about.
- minimum-size aim circles (max aim) would be roughly 75 percent of current maximum size (no precise targetting with long aim times), with maximum size increased by 25-50 percent, with faster aim times (comparable to current heavy guns, eg. 3-4 seconds)
- alpha would be reduced to current largest TD guns (for example, for the 240mm gun on T92, alpha would drop from 2250 to – say – 700-800, with smaller guns nerfed the same way), ROF would be buffed however to keep effective DPM viable (I’ll get to that).

Now, the big change. Each artillery HE shell would get a massive buff of splash – the splash area would cover over half the size of the maximally aimed aim circle area for that respective gun.

Each target within the splash area would be hit for (full damage – (armor*X)), where armor is the armor counted for the splash purposes (as it is now), while X is a balancing coefficient, based on testing, that would keep the DPM in reasonable limits, could also be removed and replaced by lower alpha.

Otherwise, no saves allowed, spaced armor is ignored (to prevent “eating of shells” – if you are in splash, you get damaged, end of story). The biggest change – artillery HE shells ignore both inner and outer modules completely, eg. artillery shell hits a wide area, but it cannot detrack you, ammorack you, destroy your gun or kill your crew. Additionally, vehicle top (roof, deck) armor would have a special anti-arty coefficient (basically it would for example count as if the thickness of the top armor is (X (nominal) + Y), where Y is depending on the tier and class of the vehicle). Open-topped vehicles would still get massive damage if hit directly, but mediums and heavies would take far less damage even from random direct shots. The impact distribution within the circle (given the massive splash) would also be much more randomized, so splash would be the primary damage-dealing mechanism.

This massive splash damage would be used to break “standoffs” without the frustration of arty chain detrack and annoying oneshots.

To offset this steady DPM by artillery, after certain amount of shots (two, three, four depending on that particular gun) every enemy team player would have 4 adjacent squares on the minimap light up red, indicating where enemy artillery likely is (possibly with verbal warning like “enemy artillery detected”). If more shots were fired from the same area, the artillery would become instantly spotted for X seconds (let’s say 15-20). Additionally, artillery would be vulnerable to enemy artillery shells, meaning splash from HE would hit it harder than regular shells, possibly even oneshotting it. This would mean that artillery HAS to move after firing a few shots and the DPM would have to be balanced taking this into account. One more thing, light tanks would get a special anti-artillery saving throw. If the light tank is moving at higher speed (specifically, at least one half of its nominal speed), it gets 70 percent chance to completely ignore splash damage. This would prevent the large splash abuse to “hunt” scouts.

This mechanism would also allow the implementation of mass rocket launchers, as instead of one large shell with massive splash, you’d get series of small rocket impacts (smaller splash), covering cca 70 percent of the area within (let’s say) 2-3 seconds. They would be also accompanied by a loud sound effect warning of the impact (the shriek of rockets or something a second or two in advance), possibly also with higher chance of detection (minimap “lighting up” after one salvo for example).

Well, that’s it. Thoughts?

Edit: Teamdamage issue? It’s probably not that hard to disable team damage for artillery or to add a teamdamage condition that would give more punishment to players who damage more than one friendly vehicle with one shell (which is pretty much exclusive to artillery).

205 thoughts on “Artillery Rework Proposal

  1. lets see it first to get it working, I see a lot of teamdamage here

    besides its for WG just another opportunity to troll accounts by fucking with the RNG like they do with me ATM

    • It would not work as long as you just need to click and let rng do the rest of the job.
      As long as arty could shoot from distance greater than the render radius, and entirely dependent on the team for spotting, it is not going to be a class that requires skill to play.
      After all, arty is never a weapon to take down tanks, so the implementation in the game is totally historical – WG logic.

      • “arty is never a weapon to take down tanks”
        Not their first priority, no. But improvised direct fire from landarty (SU-152) and some huge mortars (B4 guns, unhistorically mounted on ingame S-51) did took down tanks, and heavilly armored ones at that.

        Arty implementation should be and should have been HE-firing “TDs”. At worst we’ll have landcancer, but that’s still nothing compared to death satellite/ RNG Diceroll of today.

        • In the aftermath of the Lake Balaton campaign, Russian Engineers did a inventory of the several thousand German armored fighting vehicles that covered the battle area, aprox 90% had been taken out by Arty. This is just one example, there are many. Granted this was one of the biggest consentrations of arty ever, but arty takes out tanks. Anyone that says otherwise does not know history or is spreading the arty hater line, that is was never used to take out tanks, hopeing it will still be removed from the game.
          Appy

          • The situation is completely different here. In WoT case, it is precise aiming under a kilometer. In practice, it is battery firing at far range. How could these be the same?

        • Thats totally wrong. In WW2 Arty was never used to shot at MOVING tanks. In particullary it was never used to shot singular targets at all!
          It was used to shoot at AREAS and this would mean, the arty would hit about 1/4 of a map, because that was the spread of artillary in WW2.
          Also what should habben to over 100mm steal if arty misses? Right, absolutly nothing except if your shoting railwayarty!
          The idea of maximazing splash would make driving slow heavys or TD’s unplayable. If their open their dead on wider maps, this is already now so!
          Arty should get a major nerf on aim time, talking about 15-20 secs. If you allow arty to aim as fast as tanks, it will shot even more tanks during driving. And that arty hits driving tanks is so fucking HOLYWOOD style!!!
          In WW2 and afterwards arty was only used to dig out trenches (not even effectif), shot at bases or villages and citys.
          So may idea would be, that arty gets a better acuracy, but a way longer aim time, so it can only shoot at CAMPERS, which was the origin of letting artys parpicitate in this game, but not for shooting driving tanks! And lets not forget, to reduce SPLASH, cause it did NOTHING to tanks. Where are you getting this idea that tanks get damage of splash? Thats HOLYWOOD!

          • 100% right point of wiew. I suggest a kind of self-propelled battery, made of several SPGs. They must have a high reloading time and will only shoot barrage fire in the area chosen by the player.

          • First of all. Tanks in real life dont have HP in real life, so splash damage is logical for this game.

            Second, 15-20 second aim time would be redicilous. Take the ARL V39. It has a very limited turret/barrel traverse and it takes so long to turn and start the aiming cycle again. Now there are SPG’s who also have very limited traverse. for these machines it would be impossible to have time to aim effectivly before the tanks have already moved.

      • In my limited, but growing experience, of arty I have found skill is a determining factor as to your success.

        I have games where I have out performed a much worse player in a much better arty than myself.

        It may require less skill, but skill is still needed to do well IMO.

        • There is not even consistency in arty gameplay. Sometimes you just hit all your shots, but the other day you just miss no matter how hard you try.
          You would often see some player with 1.2k average damage in certain arty does over 4k damage in a certain game. But you do not see this at all in other tanks. This is the difference between arty and other classes.

          • “You would often see some player with 1.2k average damage in certain arty does over 4k damage in a certain game.”

            How do you define “often”? Because if it happens “often” as in 50% of the time – then he can’t have 1.2k average damage. Even if it happens every 4th game, he’d have to score always almost zero in other three games, which is kinda impossible even in arty.

            Most likely you just see some guy in one of his lucky battles, one in ten or twenty, and generalize.

            • As often as 20% of the times I would say. And they exactly make less than 1k damage in some of their games. Impossible? Just try to play arty yourself and you will see.
              Do not mistaken me. I was an arty player myself and I have over 5k games in it. I stopped playing it as soon as I realise that it is inconsistent and there is no way to carry games in it. And honestly, it is boring to play arty after all.
              Even it is one in ten or twenty, it is possible for someone to get lucky in arty, but the same does not apply to other classes of tanks.

          • I have over 1,400 games in my Hummel and have had many games I did 2,000-2,500+ damage in it, but thanks to RNG trolling I have more often 650 damage and even quite a few 0 damage games. You are completely right arty games are completely inconsistent it pisses me off when I know I’m a better than average arty player I know how to adjust my aim for variables such as my terrain decline/incline, targets terrain decline/incline/ distance to target, shell travel time, and other variables yet I still miss shot after shot thanks to RNG, it defeats the purpose of actually having skill in an arty. And YES there is skill involved there is a huge difference between someone that just plays arty and a good arty player. Battles can be won or lost literally just because an arty player doesn’t know how to prioritize targets and which flank to help, I have seen it time after time happen.

      • In WW2 Arty was never used to shot at MOVING tanks. In particullary it was never used to shot singular targets at all!
        It was used to shoot at AREAS and this would mean, the arty would hit about 1/4 of a map, because that was the spread of artillary in WW2.
        Also what should happen to over 100mm steal if arty misses? Right, absolutly nothing except if your shoting railwayarty!
        The idea of maximazing splash would make driving slow heavys or TD’s unplayable. If their open their dead on wider maps, this is already now so!
        Arty should get a major nerf on aim time, talking about 15-20 secs. If you allow arty to aim as fast as tanks, it will shot even more tanks during driving. And that arty hits driving tanks is so fucking HOLYWOOD style!!!
        In WW2 and afterwards arty was only used to dig out trenches (not even effectif), shot at bases or villages and citys.
        So my idea would be, that arty gets a better acuracy, but a way longer aim time, so it can only shot at CAMPERS, which was the origin of letting artys parpicipate in this game, but not for shoting driving tanks! And lets not forget, to reduce SPLASH, cause it did NOTHING to tanks. Where are you getting this idea that tanks get damage of splash? Thats HOLYWOOD!

        • Most historical artillery SPG pieces, when firing at WoT ranges, were actually not that much less accurate than their tank destroyer counterparts. Just look at the SU-152, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the only time when an artillery SPG has been used as a stopgap tank destroyer. The concept of artillery being used as an area attack comes when the arty is firing at targets several kilometers away, not under a kilometer as is often the case in WoT (historical WW2 figures would probably have all tanks firing at each other from across the map, or at least those with reasonably accurate, high-penetration guns).

          When it comes to splash damage: spalling and other forms of trauma from the shock of a nearby HE blast certainly was a thing, although WoT probably does exaggerate it somewhat. OTOH, historically there were few artillery SPGs used in action with calibers over 155mm: in my experience the effect of splash from 150mm calibers is usually fairly trivial unless the target is really lightly armoured, so the only high-tier artillery that really behaves as we would intuitively expect artillery to behave is the French.

          That said, mechanically speaking, the distinction between arty and other vehicles is the artillery fire mode instead of sniper mode, which gives them two things:

          * The ability to fire, with any reasonable degree of accuracy whatsoever, at targets outside of their draw distance.

          * The ability to use high-arc weapons to fire over obstacles. (Some other vehicles can do this, but it’s usually a PITA to aim at an enemy tank across a ridge or something than at the ridge itself, and you can never use sniper mode to do so.)

          Arty, however, pays a lot for these abilities: compare the SU-152 (historically a close-ish support artillery SPG that was often used as a tank destroyer because it proved effective at that role) to any arty piece with a similar gun: the SU-152 has better aim time, accuracy, and ROF, even if you’d think the often open-topped arty pieces would have an easier time with the reloading at least. The current game parameters are essentially a compromise between what such an SPG could achieve with direct fire and the expectations of artillery performance with indirect fire, giving arty arbitrarily longer load times and reduced accuracy in direct fire (although that could be excused through the arty SPG lacking rangefinders and other targeting optics to assist with aiming).

          Thus, I would probably be inclined towards breaking that compromise and explicitly seperating direct and indirect fire:

          Arty is given two different sets of accuracy and aim time parameters. The first is ‘direct fire mode’ – this applies when the SPG is within draw distance of the target location and has a direct line of sight towards the target. Essentially, anything that a tank of another class would be able to shoot at from the SPG’s position. When firing in direct fire mode, the SPG has similar aim time and accuracy to a TD with an equivalent gun: however, any arty firing in this manner is, essentially, behaving as a TD with all the attendant risks.

          The second is ‘indirect fire mode’, which could be represented by the shell arc line turning yellow (as opposed to green, which would be for direct fire, and red, for a blocked line of fire). In this mode, the arty has much lower accuracy and much greater aim time: this represents that instead of the crew being able to sight the target themselves, they’re relying purely on coordinates provided by their allies in order to line up the target, making things much more complicated and introducing further margins for error. Employed in this fashion, the arty piece becomes area denial: the chance of any particular shell landing dead on target is slim; however, it the target remains in place than enough shots fired will lead to damage, and a higher concentration of enemy tanks will lead to a higher chance of each shell doing some damage.

          In either case, reload times will also be buffed to something comparable to a TD with an equivalent-sized gun, allowing them to act more like a TD when in direct fire mode, and making the more frequent misses less painful when in indirect fire mode. (Economic adjustments may be necessary to adjust for the greater number of missed shots, but then again, arty does continue being a relative moneymaker longer than mediums and heavies do, so this may simply bring them back more into line.)

  2. Seems to make it better, removing the big part of RNG which make it bad.
    Maybe also to go in that direction arties should get a special HE which does a fix ammount of DMG, never penetrating (makes for the alpha nerf)
    Anyway, some changes are needed, to make it more fun for everyone! :)

    • Seems to make it worse, increased rof and more reliable damage output would make artillery more fun to play -> more arty players -> even moar whine!

      • Actually, arty with steady DPM, no penetration and no module damage would actually make it a lot better.

        Arty with the stupidness it has now is annoying.

    • The thing is that the penetration mechanism, along with shell distribution are broken and there is no way to fix it.

      You could make HE deal fixed amount of damage or make it not penetrating at all, but then what is the point of relocating? The real good arty players ( I mean really, really good ones. Those who travel in arty as much as heavy tanks) would relocate as much as possible to shoot at arse of enemy tanks. In that case, you could land penetrating shots with half skill and half rng. If damage becomes all the same, then I would as well click from base, all easy.

      I hope that most players do realise that to play any tank well, you need to move a lot on the battlefield, even in td’s. As soon as you start to believe that tank xyz is made to camp, you are not going to have a high win rate or damage per game. But does this apply to arty? I really doubt so.

      There is really no way to fix arty gameplay mechanism.
      First of all, you do not provide any line of sight for your team, which means you are totally dependent on your team. I could carry tomatoes with tanks other than arty by playing actively. But if you try to carry game with arty? (I mean carrying, not shooting zombies) Good luck.
      Secondly, due to the nature of arty, you click from over 500 meters or sometimes 800 meters most of the times. At this distance, even the most accurate gun cannot hit weakspots of tanks with confidence, but you just click in arty and, boom. If a tier 6 tank cannot penetrating most of the tanks in tier 8 game if he does not spam gold while a tier 6 arty could easily click anything he sees, there is something wrong. And the worst part – there is no fix for this problem.

      To speak of “situational awareness”, mentioned in the arty guide appeared on FTR, I would say that it is totally bullshit. The best way to help your team is to deal damage reliably (not much rng dependent) and consistently (not fluctuating from 0 to some 2k damage). There is no situational awareness in clicking from base.

      After all, if WG really cares to make the game better, they should remove arty altogether. Or at least, fix the HE mechanism and reduce range of arty to the same level as other classes.

      • “If a tier 6 tank cannot penetrating most of the tanks in tier 8 game if he does not spam gold while a tier 6 arty could easily click anything he sees…”

        I’m nos sure how much arty you play as most tier 6 arties will not pen tier 8s frontally. On the other hand, there are many tier 6 tanks like Hellcat that will pentier 8s frontally with ease and will do it unspotted at max range.

        Now, I wrote the part about “situational awareness” so let me explain. This is not about what is happening arount your arty but rather about what is happening on the battlefield. Dealing damage is not enough. Some 100hp shots are worth 1000hp shots. Just clicking whatever you see is the reason so many people suck at playing arty.

        • Roof armor is bad, and it’s quite possible for some tier 6 artillery (Hummel, M44, AMX) to pen tier 8 from the top.

        • Penetration here means dealing damage. How hard is it to land some HE shells on tier 8 tanks and deal damage in your tier 6 arty?

          Hellcat can penetrate tier 8 easily? You must be kidding me. It has 160 penetration and almost all tier 8 heavy tanks have over 200 frontal armor, not counting weakspots. Even tier 8 medium tanks could bounce your tier 6 tanks at times.

          If you think it is that easy to penetrate tier 8 tanks in your tier 6′s, show me how well you have done in your most recent 50 games in your tier 6 tanks in tier 8 games.

          Situational awareness?
          1. It is not going to work if you click once per 40 seconds.
          2. You have no control over how much damage you will do with your shot. You do not even know where the shell would land.
          3. With over 8 seconds of aiming time on average, if you are not pre-aiming or clicking the same place over and over again, you can hardly make use of situational awareness, if there is at all.
          4. Show me some replays where you make use of your situational awareness, not just a lucky game, or the enemy team is simply bad.
          5. Show me your arty stats so that we can make solid argument about how much situational awareness you need to play arty.

  3. solid idea, im okay with provided extensive testing and balancing before (which is where i see a problem, while i generally trust WG, i do believe the cry of kids and game newbies will outweigh the proper balance)
    but ill add one thing – limit of 2-3 arti per team, more the arty, less fun is this game for others ….
    you mechanism with five arties would cause potential: i dodge four, five still hits me ….like it is sometimes now, especially with faster firing arties … this limit will prevent that

    • 5 arty is even no fun for the arty players too…

      the only reason WG didnt implement this limit is cuz you would not be able to get the medal for 5 arty kills. I say a bullshit reason…

      • Agree.
        5 is too much for normal player as for arty player:
        Normal player get stabbed all the time, arty player get kill-stolen all the time.

        3 arty per team as maximum is good.

        • I dont see any need to change the arty is now. It would be nice to limit number of arties per game. Everybody is wining about clickers can do more damage with no brain etc…
          If you look the expected damage with tanks for the purpose of WN calculation you can see that there are only 3 top tier arties between top 20 results. But there are 2 tier 9 TDs. And only 4 Heavy tanks. With no mediums. Arty is not problem at the moment. TDs are.
          Link: http://www.wnefficiency.net/wnexpected/

          • You need to know how WN is calculated. Arty is the hardest class to pad stats. In fact, it is almost impossible to get 3k wn8 in arty if you do not shoot gold whole day and platoon with really good players (not clickers ofc)
            And that observation really shows how broken (not in the sense of OP, but not working properly) arty is, because it is all about rng and skill can hardly make any change to the performance of the vehicle type.

    • This~, sooo much this!

      More than 2 artys per team and the first enemy tank detected after 3 minutes from the start. Massive campfest. 2 artys per team is completely fine and 3 SPGs per team should be rare.

  4. in this situation, I’d just wait for the enemy arty to do the dumb thing and reveal itself … 3-4 seconds of aiming, increased damage from HE splash, if he fucks up and I just sit there and wait, I can get rid of him and then dominate the battle without having to worry about getting counter-artied.

    Also, shooting anything within 30-50 meters of an ally would mean instant team damage for big gunned arties. You’d have to tell your team where your shots are going to go and then hope that these people playing Random battles would GTFO so they won’t get 500-700 HP of damage themselves

    Otherwise, it’s pretty solid, arty should be DPM stuff not shoot-once-in-a-minute-hope-for-hit oneshot/nothing bs as of now

    • You cant expect your team to understand “I’m attacking ***, stay away, incomming shell”. Already hard now to not hit allies, imagine how much fails this splash system would add.

      Why dont they do like in XBOX ? No team damage, so no teamkillers and no arty fail…

      • Because console gamers are usually less… talented, so they need the “no team damage” idiotic crutch.

      • Because no team damage means people can think even less when playing the game. How fun getting rushed by an enemy who will pin you knowing if his teammates hit him it wont matter.

      • As the shooter, it’s your responsibility to avoid shooting when allies are in your blast zone.

        I have been team killed more by artillery than I have been assisted.

        • “I have been team killed more by artillery than I have been assisted.”

          I smell BS and you know it.

          You only remember the bad events when arty screwed you up, you never remember the time arty saved you.

  5. Well, it would ne a bit too easy to inflict damages.
    But at least, no more ****ing RNG oneshots and splendid useless misses + 30 sec reload.

    I like the idea. :)

  6. Yeah, the best propolsal I have seen in some time. I just hope the guys and gals over at WGRU read your blog and actually do something about it instead of the recently reacurring attitude of “Fuck you guys!”.
    Good job SS, keep it up!

    • I’m fully agree with Arild. That how arty should be. It just need a little bit of testing. It would be a shame if they don’t just try it in intern.

  7. Well although from my point of view it kinda SUCKS, because kills my joy for playing arty, I COMPLETELY AGREE with the proposal. With it it kinda moves arty to the historical aspect. No direct hits, aiming for certain tank, bla, bla, bla.

    But thing that bothers me is that there are not so many areas where tanks camp for long time, do arty dmg output would be significantly hurt, and almost render it useless on 90% of the maps. Because if you nerf alpha from ~2200 to ~700 you can’t damage more than two tanks for that damage to mean something. It would be like some 3 tier lower scout spamming HE at them. Not much of use.

    • I agree with you concern, and that is where WGs splendid balancing team comes in.

      Anyways, think of playing a T92. Currently is has (with HE):

      2650 DPM
      Alpha: 2250
      Reload: 50 sec
      RPM: 1,18

      Too maintain the DPM of 2650 with alpha reduced to 700 you would have to have a rate of fire 3,8. That is more than three times the current rate of fire, giving you a 15,7 sec reload. Now, if you think of all the frustrating shots when you sit there in your T92 and just see the shell disappear into the horizon, missing your target by three roman miles for you then to sit there for 50 seconds and reload. Instead think of doing that, just with a higher splash, and a 16 second reload.

      • Play SU-152 sniping all HEAT pretty much sums it up. It’s still somewhat fun, if dirty.

  8. Well, it would certainly be a much better implementation of arty, less rng stuff that makes tankers rage, less rng stuff that makes arty players rage. But I feel like youre throwing too many arbitrary rules in (like special coefficients for top armor, saving throw for light tanks etc.) I mean – i wouldnt mind such arbitrary rules if they made arty a well balanced part of the game that doesnt make everyone included rage despite me hating arbitrary rules, just because arty as it is now is huge bullshit and less rage > arbitrary rules. Also, since the game is an arcade anyway i guess such rules wouldnt matter anyway, if they made the game better.

  9. There is and there was nothing wrong with Artillery in game. A whinging uneducated player base was and still is the problem. A simple tweak to match making is all that was required to limit the number in game to no more than 3 or 4

    • what if i told you, most of the people whining are actually the ones knowing the game the best.

      Also, this proposal is probably the step in the right direction, but the proposed DPM is too damn high, almost 4 RPM is not that far from Bert standarts, imagine 500-800 hp shells raining death upon you every 15 seconds, that would probably made arty even more annoying. Arty have to have much less DPM since it has the advantage of shooting from cover.

      • “what if i told you, most of the people whining are actually the ones knowing the game the best.: unsubstantiated drivel. What mystical power does one need to understand and learn about “WoT”? None. Its a fucking game! That 7 year olds can grasp.

        What if I told you…blah blah blah, do you only use lines from the Matrix in your comments? OK……………… Say hello to my little friend! (Arty meets unskilled mediums)
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVQ8byG2mY8

  10. Sounds quite complicated…
    Unique HE mechanics, top armor coefficient for some classes, “magical” spotting after a couple of fired shells, special and unique quality for light tanks against arty splash…

    And now think on the average casual wot player for a second…

    • Average casual player already.. well.. sucks a bit.

      With a small tutorial for arty, that’d be perfect. :)

      • I agree with the special rules, because how many scouts get one shotted by arty these days. A huge amount! Its become so far that many good scouts dont even go near arty anymore. The M40 and M53 in particular are just deadly. Not to mention many of the tier 10 arties who just aim a bit and hit. While the hitting isnt necessarely the problem, its the total destruction because of their huge guns.

        Arty needs a rework desperately, unlike any other class, they limit entire sections of the map without even getting in the dangerzone themselves…

  11. As WG wont remove arty (as hard as I would wish for, but it wont happen) I am all hands and feet up for rework.
    Or do WG need a kick in head from AW to see how arty should work? (this one up is for debate)

    • I think WG needs a kick in the head from AW. Therefore I hope the ‘mericans over the pond read FTR so that they catch up on some tips from our beloved SS.

    • Actually they should make the trajectory of arty flatter, a lot flatter, so that it can’t shoot over hills that easily, and reduce camo by a LOT so that light tanks can spot them from 200 meter EVEN if they are behind bushes and cammo skill etc, and should not be able to shoot targets closer than 100m… if normal tanks can’t shoot further than 600 meter, why should arty be able to shoot closer than 100m? And I almost forgot, bring back the damn tracers so there could be counter arty… This way arties, all arties will have to fear all light players, n00b or pro, just like tankers who are brave enough to move, and not sit behind the biggest rock must fear every arty player, the pro and even the most retarded…
      They could even make the arties more accurate, and increase the speed, turning speed, and even reload speed.

      TL;DR:
      Nerfs: massive cammo nerf, should not be able to shoot closer than 100m, and flatter trajectory
      Buff: Movement buff, accuracy buff, maybe even reload time buff.

  12. Arty is pretty dead right now, why nerf it further?

    Why don’t we better discuss the TD nerf? It’s severely needed.

    • I lol’d.

      I kill tons of TDs with my Mediums, Heavies and TDs, but occasionally get one-shotted by red players because I am one of the few players who are NOT camping arty safe the whole match because a third of each team consists of those point’n’click adventure players. But yeah, even driving at 60kp/h while going zig-zag won’t work. My Leopard 1 will get one-shotted by tomatoes because of RNG and those broken arty mechanics.

      The way they are implemented right now makes me say that the game would be much better without them. Less camping, less tomato players who can score massive damage and kills even though they don’t understand the core mechanics of the game at all (spotting system, cover system, learning weakspots, armor angling, using terrain advantages for specific tanks with good gun depression etc – all not needed if you are playing arty).

      I always said the alpha is waaaaaaay too high in those arties. Make the accuracy and distribution A LOT worse, alpha a lot lower (at least down to a third of what it is atm) and fasten up aim time and fire rate for that.

      Or make ‘em direct fire only, like a TD. Keep their ridiculous alpha, buff their aim time, but they will have to have a direct line of sight. This would ensure arties won’t be able to camp in safety while lobbing one death dealing shell after the other into a choke point without having to fear any counter fire.

    • Why nerf TDs as a class when there are only a few offenders that can be balanced/removed?

    • A td nerf? Sure you havent loked at the maps lately have you? Many have any and all camping spots removed. The problems isnt tds its the superhigh alfa near arty ones at tier 9 and 10.

      Arty pretty dead, yes sure… many of the games I play arty gets among the top in damage. And even besides that, their RNG mechanic needs to change.

      WOT is never, ever gonna make it in Esports. Too many random factors.
      From aiming RNG to damage RNG. It just breaks any credibility.
      They need to make WOT less rng dependant, which will greatly reduce rage in the playerbase. How stupid is hitting for 295 on a 390 dam gun and leaving your enemy alive on 2hp. Ive seen it happen, Ive had it happen, Ive died because of it.
      Frustration to no end…

  13. @SilentStalker, nice write up. I miss one thing in it though.

    What about the ground/soil which has been cratered/hit by an artillery shell?

    Would it be a good idea to make the cratered ground temporarily ‘difficult terrain’ ??

    As the explosion/crater decal fades from the scenery the terrain pass ability returns to what it was, OR, the crater decal is persistent and pass ability stays modified untill the end of the match.

    What do you think about that?

  14. I can see several problems with that. Biggest issue is team damage. The general direction for the rework I like though. Less alpha, less accuracy more areal denial mechanics.

    I tried to come up with some ideas myself and my proposal would be to implement a more realistic way of artillery. Though that makes it rather costly to implement.

    Get rid of the artillery pieces and suplement them with command vehicles. Each vehicle has roughly the same properties as an arty. Low HP, less armor, stealthy but rather quick.
    Each of those vehicles is a scout for an artillery battery whick consists from the artillery in the game right now. Now those arty scouts would have to move with the tanks and need a visual on the tanks or the ground nearby (splashing). It then would mark a target for their battery and shell the hole area, as SS proposed, with low alpha high splash shells.
    That way, arty would work like every other tank in the game.
    Unfortuanately that means dumping and creating 40+ new tanks. I just can’t see them doing it.

    • Good for team battles, CW and Stronkholds.
      Now put a command vehicle in random battle, wait, and see.

      Imagine this x)
      Even better: a bot driving a command vehicle.

      No way to possibly add this because random battles

  15. And following the concept in more depth:

    - if it’s Tuesday or Friday every odd tier arty would get +10% damage bonus against stationary targets and -7.5% penalty against tanks which names start with “T”.

    - in case of an arty player nick-name having any digits his splash would have 1% chance to actually do module and crew damage, but only if each side killed at least 3 tanks.

    - Artillery shells velocity would be nerfed by 75%. Special assistant to Battle Assistant, called “Battle Assistant Assistant” would help friendly artillery to aim at the incoming shells of the enemy artillery to intercept them mid-air.

    More updates regarding the exact rework to follow …

    TL:DR

    No.

      • Yes, I was sarcastic …

        And now seriously, it’s too complicated. From what I gather all devs try to do is to simplify everything as much as they can. Special rules for this, special rules for that … with proposed changes arty “magic” will be new 0 dmg crits, with (already) clueless players complaining day and night.

        • Simplicity, SS, simplicity.

          Increase rof, aimtime and splash and reduce alpha and accuracy.

          Sorted.

          And if you really, really … REALLY … want to mess with circumventing spaced armour just take front/side/rear armour values that will be introduced for reworked ramming, and let the direct roof hits being governed by standard HE mechanics.

          There you go, you can’t say it’s not constructive criticism.

    • so many emotions, but to be honest, i don’t think WG will consider this, except for MAYBE the part where reduced alpha dmg is traded for ROF~

  16. The idea is really good because it removes the big problem of actual arty: rng.

    No more “fully aimed shot miss”.
    No more “not aimed at all shot hit”.
    No more “random pen oneshot”.
    No more “hit no damage”.

    BUT the problem is still there. Ppl now are like “yeah good, no more oneshot, I like it”.
    Yeah, what was the idea again ?
    800 damages per shot around a splash zone, no matter if it hits or not ? And faster reload time ?

    Frankly, I’d prefer being hit every 40s and be oneshot maybe one battle out of five, instead of taking 850 damages every 20s (means be killed with all the players around in less than a minute). Dont forget than for now, high tier arty will do less than 1000 damages if it doesnt pen, and with a reload of 35-50s and a low accuracy. 700 damages for non-pen HIT for most arties tier 8-9. And 300 for splash. You’re making it almost more deadly and powerful with your idea: 800dmg all the time, big improvement for all of them, the ones who can do it only with non-pen hit, now they dont have to hit. And high tier arties ? Faster reload so they do it more often.

    Think about that, it would be even more dangerous than now:
    Huge firepower, quick reload, no need to hit to do full damage. And even more accurate !

    I’m an arty player, as you may have noticed during shitstorm on battle assistant comments, and I can already see the rage of the hater come back after 1 week with this system. This time it wont be “arty OS op nerf !”, but “arty op random shot get half of my health every 25s nerf !”.

    Think about that

    • Note to potential haters about to tell me “lol idiot you dont know, it would be awesome”, well, if this system went to be in the game, I’d be happy too, trust me, arty would be so much fun to drive

      • you forgot SS suggested to balance alpha and rof, so it will be no 800hp every 20s.

        I don’t like his proposals anyway, but arty wouldnt be so op as you suggest making your post invalid

  17. I agree with everything except instant spotting and alpha change. Instant spotting could be replaced with lighting up the exact square. As for alpha, reduce by 20% and speed up reload by 20%.

  18. why can’t they just have arty free game mode , so people who like arty can still play it or play with it , and people who don’t want to play it can be left in peace

    • Because ppl who like arty will have endless queues.

      Even if you dont hate arty, if you have the choice of playing without a big gun firing randomly around the map and with the potential of OS you, you’ll choose to play without.

      • “Because ppl who like arty will have endless queues.”

        And if that happens, that should give WG a huge fucking clue about actual people’s opinion on SPGs.

        • “And if that happens, that should give WG a huge fucking clue about actual people’s opinion on SPGs.”

          I’ve said all along that I would pay real money to be able to play without arty. I’d pay the same as Premium.

          While you’re at it, get the 10 yr olds on their own server too!

    • “Canser” xD

      Dude learn to write, for now arty is maybe skycancer, but you gave me eye cancer

      • Yes, because he’s the only one that ever called it that way. Stop acting childish…no one calls it cancer because they are equalizing it with people suffering from that disease….people call it that way because of this:

        any evil condition or thing that spreads destructively, which arty literally is in this game

  19. The problem with less but larger AoE damage is that in end game every bit of health you saved up help allot. But if I’m aggressive in start of the match I will allready be severly limited in my ability to carry, because arty will keep chipping my health away. On top of that we got maps full of corridors which will help arty even more. And you want to remove all RNG for chance that shells will do no damage? So:
    NOOOOOOOOOOOOO
    On side note what TV series do you recommend to watch while playing arty?

  20. This is interesting. Every now and then, while raging about artillery I’ve also thought about how I would like it to get reworked, and my thoughts went into a completely different direction.
    My main problem with artillery is that it requires next to no skill to play. That doesn’t mean it’s OP, I don’t think it is, but aside from roughly anticipating where to shoot and relocating after shooting there really isn’t much to it. Once you do that, it’s all about RNG deciding whether you hit or not, and thus, whether you completely mess up an enemy in one shot from somewhere he’ll never know or do absolutely no damage. Now with your proposal that’d change and you’d be guaranteed to do a bit of damage each shot (and you’d have to relocate even more urgently), which I like, but I think you can make it more “skilled” still.
    I’ve been thinking about making aiming accurately the main challenge of an artillery player by essentially making it aim in a manual and realistic way, no more satellite view. You set your angles for elevation manually, you turn your tank manually. For that the accuracy should of course be buffed significantly, no more need for RNG. The RoF would also need to be buffed a lot. I want the aiming to be hard but you’re likely to miss at least your first shots and with current arty RoF missing would hurt too much. When your shell hits the ground (or a tank) the place it hit should also be displayed on the minimap, you need to have some sort of feedback after all. If you played artillery in BF3, this is fairly similar, but a bit harder and more realistic. I’m also thinking about a warning appearing on your screen telling you if you’d hit a friendly at your current angles since that could be a major problem trying to support your team.
    Still needs a bit (lot) of fine tuning but that seems like a possible solution to my main problem with artillery right now.

    • playing arty requires anticipation (next to prophetic abilities) – where to place yourself so you can hit enemies that will be spotted, alive and out of cover 20 seconds from now. It is definitely not skill independent.

      and manual targeting of arty without satellite view would make it painful to play

  21. The idea may be good, but the question I ask is this: it will be fun?

    Any solution imaginable clashes with the need to play with the arty remains fun.
    If I can not destroy a tank with a shot, even if lucky, but only do damage, I’ll enjoy the same?
    Why I should play with arty in this mode? What fun would I have?

    Currently use the arty is just a different way to destroy the tank. If you take away the destroy the tank, what remains?

    • It would be more fun to do 800dmg to 3 tanks at the same time per shot, instead of Os 1 tank every 10 battles after 12 miss and other fails

      • No, sorry, I think it’s more fun to destroy the tanks that do only damage … and I think that if I could not destroy tanks with arty, I would not play the arty.
        Whoever plays a Wot, plays to destroy the tanks, is a game of tanks.
        I would not have any purpose to play the arty in Wot in this mode. It would be boring for the majority of players …

        • Ahem…
          When you do -800 in a splash zone and tanks in the zone have less than 800hp, you kill them. All.

          Hey it’s not “do 800dmg in this splash zone then aim at another one”. You fire where you want, it wont make you unable to kill, it will even make you more able to kill than now thanks to splash zone

          • Mmmm…. well my english its no good and i read this : “The biggest change – artillery HE shells ignore both inner and outer modules completely, eg. artillery shell hits a wide area, but it cannot detrack you, ammorack you, destroy your gun or kill your crew. Additionally, vehicle top (roof, deck) armor would have a special anti-arty coefficient (basically it would for example count as if the thickness of the top armor is (X (nominal) + Y), where Y is depending on the tier and class of the vehicle). Open-topped vehicles would still get massive damage if hit directly, but mediums and heavies would take far less damage even from random direct shots. The impact distribution within the circle (given the massive splash) would also be much more randomized, so splash would be the primary damage-dealing mechanism.”

            So I interpreted this to mean that, in fact I did not manage to destroy more tanks or to put them out of action. But if you say that I can still destroy the tanks with the splash, it might be fine, but this would not be equally fun :-)
            In this way, you think that will destroy more or less tanks ?
            If it cannot detrack you, ammorack you, destroy your gun or kill your crew, why i fire with arty, only to do splash damage ?

            • You wont be able to ammorack/track/damage modules or crew.

              The buggest change in arty role will then be that arty wont be a support vehicle. It will be a destroyer vehicle, here to deal huge damages and kill, but not support team by tracking or slowing down targets.

  22. So to sum up:

    Faster firing arty which has guaranteed damage value of 700-800 and a wider splash radius along with easier aiming mods that allow hitting things in cover and on slopes easily plus more accuracy. Oh and we must all be subjected to RNG except arty.. So a straight buff then?!!!
    HELL NO. END OF STORY. JUST NO.

  23. I’m sorry SS but your whole idea is fantasy. A 105mm hitting the top armour of a Tiger will penetrate IRL. You want to change it to an AoE much like an MMORPG. Neglecting the suppressive effects of artillery.

    Perhaps if you added a suppressive effect, like all crew stats reduced by 75% within 7m of the impact, ranging out to 25% @ 25m. Aiming time increased by 200%. Or at least something that makes Arty unique.

    • WoT is full of fantasy.
      Guns, tanks, systems…

      At this point we dont care if one more unreal thing is added or not

  24. LOL…. where is skill you need to play arty now? End of sarcasm
    Even totally brainwashed cucumber can deal conistent dmg.
    Arty is broken mechanics, it doesn’t prevent camping, and with this “upgrade” its gonna be fucked even more…. with current trend of coridor maps it will be literally like shooting fish in the barrel

  25. SS,arty would get TD like performance except better(splash,vision) and all they have to do after 3,4 shots is to move in reverse 10m until cloaked again!
    Instad of tomatoes ,unicums would start playing skycancer.(Psssst SS I know its Christmas and your drunk I wont tell anyone ,shhh)

  26. i see this having balance issues But i think the thing you explained here would be improvment and in my oppinion that +-25% RNG is Too much if it was 15 it would make more sence and rebalancying would be easyer as you had more consistent statistics

  27. “Remove arty” is the perfect artillery rework, but I have one more great idea.

    For example, when u are playing arty, if you press fire button you will blow yourself up!
    It’s win win situation:
    arty stays in game, WG doesn’t have to rework any game mechanics, monkeys still can play arty, normal players can enjoy the game.
    Imo that’s perfect solution.

  28. Well, I’m not against making arty more about larger splash damage while reducing alpha and accuracy, but gun is a gun and shell is a shell. It definitely should affect modules and crew and the part about map highlighting and particularly the instaspotting part is so ridiculous I can’t possible take this seriously. Same for special resistance against arty shell, vulnerability against enemy arty, saving throws for light tanks, team damage extemptions – all complete and utter bullshit. If you can’t have solution without special rules, then you don’t have any solution at all.

    Besides, arties always were and still are more or less fine as they are.

  29. No point in reworking arty. Focusing on AoE would be more game breaking than it sounds imho (also it would remove the “national” characteristics…french arty with splash dmg ? not gonna happen)

    Reworking aim mode into Battle Assistant-like is also a bad idea. This mod is horrible when it comes to situational awareness…bird/satellite-view is much better

    Its fine as it is. The only thing I can think of is to reduce alpha (not on frenchies ofc…) and slightly buff the aim time and reload

  30. Pro arty people have 1 perfect unbeatable argument against them:
    “WHAT ABOUT GAMES WITH NO ARTY IN THE GAME CURRENTLY”
    How come they work,no problems there!

    • How it comes that all the epic battles where situational awareness and all other skill of player can shine are always with 0 to 1 arty in game… half of the hearth break moments are caused by tomato bush camper who under watch of rngeus connect one of his shots….
      Arty ruins the game
      Its absolutely:
      Rng dependant
      Frustrating to play and to play against
      Dependening on broken mechanics

      As someone else written before:
      Take artyfag defender and make him play kv-1 with hovitzer, force him to shoot tanks beoynd rander range or behind solid cover. And every time he said: I can’t do it! Slap him so hard over his head, he will found himself in different country

      • So by that you admit that you can do SHIT if there’s more than 1 arty in a battle? You are to scared to drive around a corner or get a position covered only by bushes but no hard protection?
        You’re not situational-aware enough to consider a certain spot safe/riski/dangerous?

        How come, arty can be both “frustrating to play and to play against”? If it’s frustrating to play, tha means it is not SO dangerous in the end. It misses many of the shots, often dealing 0 damage. Having huge reload time doesn’t make it better for you as arty player.
        And even if you DO hit – what DMG are you gonna deal? You never know. You rarely do full DMG, mostly it’s like ~40% of your nominal damage. And that’s not THAT much. Acpesially as (see above) you don’t hit with every shot. More like with every second shot.

        So what you have with arty is that you deal 20% of your nominal DPM (40%DMG / 2). That’s very hard and frustrating to play AGAINS, yes!*

        * In case you are completely noob.

        What people are really frustrated by with arty are one-shots. But honestly, are there SO many? I am being one shotted in 1 out of 100 battles maybe. And for the last 2k battles and have hardly played any heavy tanks, I’ve rather been grinding Waffentragers or some meds and lights. If you drive an HT or a heavy TD, you don’t get one shotted that easily. But yes, you get a royal butthurt if someone dares to deal you (by luck) some 800 DMG at once. Once in 10-20 battles.
        A big deal….

        So, now, again, with all that crap that encounters you as an arty player, how come the arty is frustrating to play AGAINST? *

        * Unless you are completely noob.

        • Prokhorovka, you r in Leo1 (only one scout like tank on ur team), ur team is full of avarge joes same as enemy. Three arties per side…. have fun…

      • Thanks for half-quoting me! :D

        But yeah, everytime a pro-clicker insists that “playing arty is no different than playing other tank classes, all of them *click* on enemy tanks” it starts to make me wanna kick puppies

    • -Pro TD/ARTY/MED/HEAVY/LIGHT people have 1 perfect unbeatable argument against them:
      “WHAT ABOUT GAMES WITH NONE OF THEM IN THE GAME CURRENTLY”
      How come they work,no problems there!

      … Yeah… prefectly reasonable…

      Instead of whining you could add arguments to improve the situation as it is now, or support other ideas which could help the current gameplay!

  31. I like it so far, but here’s a few additions.

    1. With the splash being larger, I recommend making all modules and crewmembers more resilient to HE splash. With a greater RoF and splash radius, losing modules and crewmembers with every hit, even with reduced damage, would stack up quickly. Or, combine it with the HE shell rework and have it knock out crewmembers for a short period of time, without killing them unless it gets hit with a more direct splash.

    2. 4 squares seems a large area to have offlimits to arty when they fire. And relying on regular tanks which need LoS to dissuade camping might be a mistake. I think a better system is to make arty shots drop their camo to 0 in an area around them for 20 seconds. In addition, make too many arty shots from one square give a global message that arty has been traced to “Square name”. This would be a the que for flanking light tanks to zoom in, or for friendly arty to see if they can catch someone with a counter battery.

    3. Team damage is an easy fix, just turn team damage off for arty shells. I am honestly not sure why this isn’t also in the current system, other than in a token nod to realism.

  32. and what about:
    - the horrible viewrange of the arties? more or less arty viewrange is similar with the meds. why?
    - the td mod usage?

  33. This idea is crap.
    1) we dont need tanks that need no skill to be played. pve bots can shot without aiming.
    the point of arty is not to snapshot anything that is spotted.
    2) cover would be practical useless, even the current fv arties hit cover alot. You cannot run from splash.
    3) arty cant track or damage modules and light tanks get arty protection? wtf are you talking about.in late game where a tank has like 5hit points left arty needs to hit roughly that square to kill it? this is crap.
    4) your post clearly states that you’ve never played arty. there are matches where you can shot 3 times with your arty, because your team rushes red team, or red team rushes your team. now do your 3 shots times 200 damage without tracking, so the tanks are even faster in cover again. 600 damage in TX match well played.
    5) you should know that they would remove tracers from arties if all arties would shot every like 5-10 seconds. Back in the good old times even TDs and heavies etc. had tracers so one could wonderfully counter campers. And seriously there is no point in having 8 seconds reload on 261 just to move after every shot.
    6) one point in playing arty is that you can do other stuff while reloading. you can command your team, or relocate. imagine a gwe100 to relocate from a1-a9. would be practical useless for 1-2min. with high reload its only useless for like 30sec-1min
    7) spotting arty for 15-20 seconds. do you know how useless that is? try to hit an arty with your arty while the arty knows that its spotted and moves. Waste of time for your arty and for their arty. furthermore you should consider maps like mines where it’s impossible to relocate arty if 2nd team got the hill.

    Im really glad that you dont do the balancing. You should really not talk about balancing anymore. Ex: you write that you advise not to buy the Panther 88. I really wonder why. It reloads 5.69 with 240 alpha and has the highest pen of all meds. did you ever consider it as an advantage not having crappy special matchmaking? Let me explain: my friend grinds IS3. I need money, so I want to play a prem tank. Voilà IS3 has no special MM so i have to chose Löwe, T34, or P2. and gues who’s most agile. Yes P2 might have some drawbacks like not having the p2 armor and not being the fastest tank and having a low credits income. So ofc everyone should watch a p2 replay or lets play and then decide on his/her own whether buy or not.

    • “Ex: you write that you advise not to buy the Panther 88. I really wonder why. It reloads 5.69 with 240 alpha and has the highest pen of all meds.”

      You focking wot, m8?!?

      Centurion, STA-1 & Indien-Panzer say “hi” to your BS

  34. I think it’s ridiculous.
    1.1. Making special rules only for Arty HE shells is definitely a bad idea.
    Why should be 152mm HE shell from SU-8 be different from the one of KV-2/U152, or 155mm shell from M12 be different from HE shell that T30 fires?

    700DMG done by 160kg T92′s shell? Really? Not even one-shotting a Lorraine hitting directly into the roof of the engine compartment? Well that sounds very plausible to me. [watch out - sarcasm!]
    But sure, instead the160kg T92 shell would be loaded as fast as 15kg shell with L7 Gun.

    1.2. No, please. While it would be quite reasonable gameplay-wise, you cannot implement different rules for one vehicle class only. And you definitely cannot apply this same HE rule to HE for other classes, as it would break many derp vehicles and nullify the effectivity of HE shells as desperate means in a “Davis vs. Goliath scenario” or to make a sure kill of a low-HP tank.
    And what about the “HESH” that are also simple HE shells in game?

    1.3.By the way, what would happen to arty’s HEAT and AP shots? What would the gold ammo for arty be?

    1.4. Can you imagine the frustration of a player that places a random hit on a mediocre armoured vehicle just to get a “pldshh” sound and reduce it by 150HP? – Because of dat armour coefficient!

    1.5. BTW coefficients. They would be intransparent, illogical and would confuse most of players thus leading back to “why did I do so little damage” and similar whine.

    2. With these changes arty would be completely unable to defend itself. I mean completely! Now it’s already very hard to even direct-shoot a 200-HP slow heavy tank rolling around the corner, not to mention the agile scouts. But if your minimum aim doesn’t fit the screen (which is exactly what is means – 75% of current max aim of most arties would NOT fit the screen on normal zoom) you are never gonna hit even a steady AFK target 10 meters away. Instead you are more likely to shoot under your own tracks (yes, that is VERY possible with the way the aiming circle works) and splash yourself to death. Great!

    3. Regarding the spotting system: have arty position marked – and all enemy arty will throw their shells in that area and with splash covering half-screen – they will kill you with second attempt at most.
    Have an arty spotted after a couple of shots and it would be killed with direct fire on many maps.
    Both features will really hit bad arty players who never move and would die 2 minutes into the battle.

    4. And the last but not least, the whole aim of this purpose: for arty to become a “standoff-breaker”. How often do you see “standoffs” with many vehicles on an open spot where arty can easily splash many at once? Maybe 1 time in 200 battles?
    What you need in most situations to break a “standoff” is to deal some hard damage to one particular vehicle that is holding a key location.

    5. This system may work out for AW, because HE shells are hardly viable on non-arty classes there and you can easily adjust how arty works not breaking other vehicles, but in WOT, arty uses same shell mechanics and any other class to, so it’s impossible to implement those changes. And I’m sure WG won’t do that,

    I’d be glad if you, SS, would take a few minutes to read through the text and maybe reply to some points.

    P.S. “arty chain detrack” lol wut’s that? Maybe you can do that with SU-26 or FV304, but with most arties it’s completely impossible due to low accuracy and HUUUGE reload time.

  35. What you are proposing it’s the most OP tank ever made. Any arty player could say you this. Switching AoE damage and maintain DPM is equals to even a monkey is going to be able to destroy entire teams.

  36. I copy my ideas about arty:

    “My opinion is, that artillery needs a REBALANCE:

    - Change its reload time, aim time, and dispersion to pre-8.6 values
    - Change their MM spread from -2/+2 to -1/+2 (so tier 1 tanks never meets arty at all, and tier 8 tanks never meets tier X arty)
    - Reduce alpha damage (by about 10%-15%)
    - Reduce the gun range of most artys (i definetly dont want to create more Bert’s and Bishops, but 1km range at tier 3 (!) is just stupid)
    - Remove all AP, APCR, and HEAT shells, so arty can use only different type of HE shells.
    I thinking about three type of HE ammo:
    - Standard HE: same as now, but reduced alpha
    - Sort Range with zero penetration, higher alpha and splash radius: shorter range means higher accuracy, but it will NEVER pen. (no RNG oneshot kills)
    - GOLD HE: same as previous shell but even higher alpha and splash, but still zero pen and ZERO MODULE DAMAGE.

    this changes would make arty more reliable and more fun to play (and less OP)”

    What i want is to make play artillery more fun (better aim and reload time), more challenging (less gun range) and less OP (less oneshots)

    One of SS idea is to reduce alpha, but splash do still full damage just like a direct hit. As you know, currently, if an arty HE shell hit the ground its alpha damage will be instantly halved (same goes to direct hits that does not penetrate). With this changes, damage between direct hits and splash would be smaller, but 700-800 damage for T92 is too low, maybe 1000 dmg so a splash can cause 750-1250 damage reduced by distance from explosion and mitigated by armor.

    • The first half sound somewhat reasonable, but the shell-part goes off.
      Let’s take M12 as an example, 1250 is current, let’s make new standard shell 1100, this means the “higher-alpha” shell would be say 1500DMG.
      Now what you propose is basically that a “higher-alpha” shell (1500dmg) will NEVER cause that damage in battle, thus it will not even one-shot a WT. Rh.Bsg. (1100 HP IIRC), instead it would always cause the standard ~40% of nominal = 600 DMG. (What do you need that 1500dmg value for – LOL)
      And if you hit a Maus – you cause 100 DMG because the damage is calculated depending on correlation of your penetration and armour of the target.

      That’s all not so good.

    • anyone who wants arty to be less op should be insta ignored….

      the point with arty is: everyone want it to be a way to brake the camp but not a way to kill rushing scouts and mediums.
      the biggest problem with arty is RNG – for arty players it means most shots are either missing or dealing pitiful damage while tank player notices only this 1 in 10 battles 1-shot that happened

      So what should happen is reduce the RNG influence and increase anti camp abilities without increasing overall damage dealing potential.

      So longer aim, much more longer shell flight, but bigger splash radius, better accuracy and better (more vertical) firing angles.

      That way even heavy tanks as long as on the move and not in perfectly straight line would be relatively safe.
      But tanks staying behind that rock or that house would be splashed to death in 1-2 minutes.

      alpha and rof should be balance parametres. too high rof means you have to stay in 1 place and snipe, too low means too much depends on that 1 shot you actually can make.

      Unfortunately such changes would not be really fun for arties – longer waiting for circle to shrink plus frustration when only tanks visible are moving like crazy while “arty intended” targets are rare, get damage from your 1 shot and then die by your teammates before you reload….

  37. One major point, though – if you remove the god view, you also remove the draw range bypass – which means that if you want to shoot at targets outside of the draw range, you have to move up and assume risks.

    Also, I’d make the crosshair a horizontal one, not a vertical one as seen in the Battle Assistant mode (think of how the Arty Barrage deployment in WarThunder looks like), while making it shrink the more you aim.

    And if it were for me, you could only move the camera via the X axys (up/down) rather than being able to zoom using the mouse wheel. That way
    1) you’ll be able to obviously cover more ground
    2) if you want to see the targets close, you’ll have to, again, move up.

    Oh, and the idea of giving 1-2 seconds warning time of an incoming arty shell is great.

  38. The only change that artillery needs is to make a tank visible in satellite mode after the tank is being tagged by a friendly tank.

    In such way artillery would become barely useful in randoms without platoons.

  39. Nerfing alpha and making arty more of an AoE weapon is probably the best option besides simply removing it. Something similar should be done for high tier TDs.

  40. The RNG factor in artillery is too high. This are excellent changes, and will also teach scrubs to refrain from taking shots with an ally in the aiming circle.

    Good post, SS

  41. i would split aiming system for artillery in two: artillery mode fire and direct (TD style file)

    1. artillery mode: longer aim time would, full HE damage as it is, BUT: shots would always miss the target and therefore deal only splash damage (realistically arty cannot aim so precisely at targets it doesn’t see) which is by itself a huge damage reduction. to compensate a bit i would also increase the splash radius

    2. direct fire: shorter aim times (depending on the SPG), sniper mode like for TDs, shots can hit a target directly and deal massive damage.

    • AFAIK, WG said that this would confuse the players – too bad, it would make sense, and its even historical.

  42. Of course, every man and his dog has suggestions about SPGs. I would say the general idea of arty = splash and direct hits are extremely improbable is best. But SS’s proposal is obviously too complicated, and WG would never implement special mechanics, as they consider the average player to be barely functional as a human being intelligence-wise (this has been brought up whenever changing mechanics has been discussed, such as for assault guns).

  43. OR WarLaming could keep things simple and leave arty as it is, BUT!…

    MAKE THEM ABLE TO FIRE ONLY WHEN FULLY AIMED.
    Hey presto! No more snapshotting moving targets, campers will be punished, arty will be defenseless in close quarters (rather than scoring a direct hit on a closing LT/MT with the shot going dead-center even though the aim circle is as big as the screen)

    Oh, and also remove the draw range bypass, as stated above.

    • The “curse” of the 8.6 aiming changes makes snapshotting possible, (too much shells hits the center of the circle) and this will be changed (accuracy will be nerfed a bit)

    • Maybe SS idea is a shell that does 700 damage in a VERY big circle… shell lands 10 m from tier X heavy and still causes 700 (+/- 25% RNG) damage?

        • You could tell you’re arty player just by the fact that something that simple would be complicated to understand to your tiny brain.

  44. Dissagree SPG is overnerfed right now… . One shot from,artillery is ok as do it so You will need be static around 10s and sit in place where it can hit … Not only rocks is big issue of artillery even any slope :( Only thing to balance it’s time to reduce reload time for non clip artillery on 50%

  45. What you are suggesting here is to make arty even more noob-friendly. Every hit will be splash damage according to what you say + roofs of tanks are weak -> direct hit should cause more damage, not less.

  46. Somehow, i stopped caring some time ago…
    Especially about arty as i don’t think there are ways to make it good in this game. Maybe a bit better, but still not good enough. Maybe there still are some ways, but i just can’t see them. Your proposal needs a bit of tweaking but without testing there’s no way of telling if it would be much better or something similar to situation we have now, regarding balance and fun provided to players on both sides.
    And, a small thing: disabling FF is a boundary to me, one we shouldn’t cross, or the game becomes TOO arcadey.

    The sad thing is that i stopped caring about WoT in general, too :( . I was to buy Haunebu E-25 before it became ultra-rare, but then i decided that i can live without it. And i’m not that keen on paying for anything right now, that is a bad sign…

    • same +1

      i seriously advice you to try other game’s and suffer and invest couple of hours in the unfamiliarity, it will be worth it.

    • Yes. Arty can’t be fixed by changing RoF, splash or alpha. The problem is its basic gameplay is just griefing. In public PvP game where each player has only one unit its effect is devastating. I hope AW developers will not allow it in public PvP games.
      I liked the WoT after 8.6 patch. Now its again polluted with arty. I don’t care any more.

  47. Arty is never going to be right in this game. The maps are too small. Wargaming screwed up when they put SPGs in the game (the vast majority of which never really did anything in reality) instead of having arty as some sort of off grid mechanic like in WT (only thing i like about WT GF tbh).

    All tanks and most TDs could fire indirectly at the ranges restricted to arty in game. Most could fire directly at such distances as well.

    If SPGs have to stay in game then the satellite view should be nerfed, the arty player should not see the tank precisely (at least beyond render distance), just get a general area (thus not showing the tanks orientation or which parts are poking from cover etc.), maybe have this area become more specific the longer the enemy tank is spotted and the longer it stays in one place. A sort of heat map. Together with a rework of the HE mechanic (which is lol broken) that could work.

  48. “World of Tanks relatively functional, expecially with the latest Battle Assistant mod, that makes it MUCH more fun to play – not giving you an insane advantage, but rather giving you improved situational awareness.”

    You stupid or just ignorant ? It gives you improved situational awareness, but it isn’t an insane advantage ? IT TELLS YOU WHICH ENEMY CAN BE HIT AND IF NOT, WHEN YOU CAN HIT HIM. AND IT HELPS YOU AIM RIGHT FOR THE CENTER OF THE TARGET, WHICH GREATLY IMPROVES CHANCES TO HIT A TARGET.

    No big deal, certainly not an insane advantage. For idiots maybe.

    And what’s with the idiotic proposal ? You want to have 3 arties firing at 1-2 sec arty barrage which inflicts 700 dmg to ALL TANKS IN A HUGE AREA ??? You’re really stupid, you know that ?

  49. sorry SS, the only good implementation of Arty is in WarThunder, were the player chose area of effect on minimap (they removed the 3rd view placement), no need for playable class. and that’s why i’m currently playing Warthunder and quite happy with all the new changes that are slowly getting better and the new US tanks with MG’s and also multiturrents, all works nicely and fun to play.

    playing WoT is pure suffering for high tier Heavies and even Meds, this should have been fun and challenging, it’s the end content of this game, and what you get is Arty that makes it unplayable (yet again) after returning to WT i feel at home and hopefully i will not touch WoT for the next couple of month’s or ever.

    of course next month is AW close beta so i’m still reading your blog for news and stuff and it’s good so yea.
    cheers.

  50. My sugestion would be
    -max 2 arty per team in pubs
    -long aiming time, high accuracy, low dmg,fast reload – pretty much like FV304

  51. I dont like the idea…

    So, 700 DMG in 15.6 or so secs from the other side of the map? Using the splash magic only?

    New “rules”??? the noobs dont get the mechanics now and want a series of:

    “artillery HE shells ignore both inner and outer modules completely, eg. artillery shell hits a wide area, but it cannot detrack you, ammorack you, destroy your gun or kill your crew.”

    But the KV-2 Derp HE gun will detroy every cms of your crew, modules, detrack…

    And the AP and Heat?? remove them?

    Sorry SS, bad idea is bad…

    Nice read, but the idea make the arty worst from the POV of arty players and HT tanks…

    • 700 damage…if you have 0 roof armor. This is a T92. No tank at tier 10 has 0 roof armor.

  52. I think spaced armor should still count. It saves lives in close combat when, say, a Panther turns the gun towards artillery and predetonates the shell.

    Otherwise, if balanced properly, a solid idea.

  53. Most people whine that arty sit in splendid isolation raining death from a position of invulnerability. I haven’t played much arty but it is a really frustrating class to play for me.

    I would go the other way, reduce the ROF and increase the splash radius. So they fire less but have greater chance of some damage (less frustrating as arty) – to be honest imho the 1 hit totals are fairly rare (but extremely annoying causing rage). RNG is in part way mitigated by the increase splash and it makes camping less profitable because the splash will still get you even if you are ‘arty safe’ causing possible module damage but you have more time to move from location to location due to the lower ROF. Obviously the splash damage curve would need to be more a bell curve than linear but that’s probably already true.

    The simplest solution to the hidden/invulnerable issue is that to make tracers more obvious and perhaps a big cloud of gun smoke when they fire making them more vulnerable to the counter. In addition with the high visibility from the reveal on fire (tracers and smoke cloud) you force arty players to have to shoot and move more (reducing the ‘not in the way of danger’ claims).

    Personally I think simply increasing the visibility of SPG’s is enough. Just saying…

    • i think you would only exacerbate the hate for arty if you did this. the reason is that careless players get hit by arty. i don’t mean that they are tomatoes, but arty is a factor in the battle that they are disregarding when decision making. i am a careless player. i regularly get hit by arty, even in fast mediums where i have the ability to do something about the arty and make it hard for him. better players than i are constantly thinking about arty and act accordingly, getting into arty cover. if you have arty that have larger splash, you piss of the better players by negating there attention and care by STILL making them take damage even in cover, and you piss off the less careful players by making them take even more damage both from direct and indirect hits. also you talk about moving from cover between shots. there are times when the tanks on the enemy team are positioned so that you cannot move but you may still be in a very strong position. all you are then doing by increasing arty reload is prolonging the inevitable.

      • I guess the longer reload and higher splash might have pro’s and con’s.

        The main idea (“Personally I think simply increasing the visibility of SPG’s is enough”) was to make arty less able to fire with impunity (visibility).The thing that annoys me is that they can fire without reveal even at fairly short distances. This was a problem with TD’s and it got fixed. If arty knew that every shot fired had a decent chance of being detected (especially by other arty) then they might have to think about positions and movement and when to fire and when not to a little more.

  54. - Put the exact same view as world of warship with almost no indication to help the player.

    - Buff rate of fire, accuracy, mobility and survivability but reduce range.

    And it ‘s fine.

  55. just a few other ideas:
    increase the aiming circle WAY more than even this article suggests and then have multiple shots land with in the target area. it would be 100% RNG to hit any fast moving vehicles and would reward to for targeting clusters of enemies.

    make artillery still able to shoot over obstacles but force them to come inside the 500m boundary aswell so that it will require a great deal more skill and self awareness to know when to get out as well as better positioning to not get spotted ( as a result you would probably need to buff health of artys)

    also allow arty to damage certain modules, for example, external modules like tracks, guns, and view ports (radio? damages the antenna?) so that you don’t get completely screwed up but it is still an inconvenience. perhaps make it armour dependant so slow heavies who would be most vulnerable to arty would have the added benefit of not having there important modules like the ammo rack and engine (as well as crew members) knocked out.

    • I think you’re closest.

      Make zoomed in mode represent a battery — lower calibers get more impacts in a large zone/higher calibers single or a pair of impacts. ROF equal to whatever the historical gun would have. Not enough to flatten a map square, but enough to eventually hit what you aim at with a couple salvos. In zoomed-out mode it is a gun and not a battery and if your target is at real speed you aren’t going to be able to aim at any real distance.

      Ballistics in line with reality — closer to target, the more ‘arch’ to the path; further away a flattened path.

      In the real world it was mere luck that any shell would hit a vehicle (especially the time period covered by the game) and a dead-on hit should be rare. Splash damage limited to external features (gun/track/optics) and the concussion effects should knock out crew regularly for close impacts. Heavy shells should upset a tank (maybe flip it on its side, etc).

      I like the idea of so many shots from the same location leading to some counter-battery detection mechanizm.

  56. Sorry, while a lot of what you are proposing seem worthy of at least a try, I honesy can’t see this working on smaller maps (Mines) or city maps (Himmelsdorf or others) – there isn’t a whole lot of places for arties to relocate around in those maps, and some high tier arties are too massive and slow for constant movement over even medium distances (beyond movement for current point of origin counter battery).

    • Also, ability to time a direct kill (barring the dreaded rng curse) on a fast moving LT is incredibly satisfying right now. Having LTs able to gain speed immunity from indirect fire would just encourage more suicide yoloing fools to zoom around the battle all the freaking time, detracting noobs from learning proper scouting.

  57. ..well i think the biggest problem with arty today is that sometimes u get 8 – 10 artys per battle and that sucks A LOT. So first of all, we need to decrease the amount of artys in battles. With maximum of 4 artys (2 + 2) the game would be much more better/enjoyable than with current 5 + 5 system…

  58. Is there any other good source for WoT news in English? Because farming views by reheating arty discussion posted on this blog (yes a blog not a discussion forum) now is too much for my brain to comprehend, thankeriono.

  59. Instead of changing it so dramatically (it IS a dramatic change) simply change the way the spotting system works for arty. Make it so that you don’t “see” a target until a team mate has spotted an enemy and has specifically requested arty assistance. You see only the tank that has been pinged (the one that your scouts radioman has relayed coordinates for), no one else, and as long as your teammate has the target in a direct line of sight, you get continuous updates on it’s location over the radio.

    So an encounter would go something like this:
    You are an arty player. You have an LT on your team that spots an enemy HT and a couple other smaller tanks. The LT takes cover and relays the HTs precise location over the radio, requesting fire support on the enemy HT. You as arty only then get a location ping on your map of the enemy HT and only then does he become visible to you, you see no one else (unless another member of your team requests fire at a different target. It is up to you who you decide to help).

    The LT cannot spam fire requests at the other tanks he has spotted as there is a cooldown on the ping for fire support (his radioman is only human, afterall, and requires time to gather data and relay enemy positions). He is free to ping another target once the cooldown ends, but he can not do it quickly and once he does the previously pinged target immediately disappears from the arty view.

    The LT keeps the HT in sight while you aim in (which would happen a lot quicker now, basically all around buffs to arty would be fair). You destroy the HT because he and his backup failed to kill the LT in time. With the originally targeted HT dead, LT pinging cooldown immediately ends, freeing the LT to to ping fire support requests at other targets.

    This does not dramatically change the way arty works now. In fact, arty should be given a buff to make it fair. Return it to the way it was before the big arty nerf in 8.6 would be fine for most instances

    This could also open the door to an entire set of USEFUL radioman crew skills as well, and dramatically increases the level of cooperation required between arty and the rest of the team for success.

  60. Way too complicated and way too many game mechanics have to be changed… I agree I believe the alpha damage from arty should only be 2/3 and the Rate of Fire boosted to 1/3 extra shells pr minute with twice the splash range. But all that other stuff is totally unnecessary… Currently it is too harsh a penalty getting hit with arty and it is not funny playing arty with only 1,5 shells pr minute. Giving arty more fun (more shooting) and at The same time a reason to shoot at group’s of tanks rather than individual tanks should do the trick.

  61. Complicated (weird damage model, extra coefficients), weird mechanism, that are going totally against the “casual player” understanding (ignoring spaced armor, strong roofs, ignoring spotting system, etc).

  62. I’m not exactly sure yet what I think of this proposal, but my (primary) issue with arty is thus: They always without exception target British tanks above all others. I mean FFS switching to driving any of the lightly armoured German TDs is a relief even when you get spotted.

    I’ve been in my Comet in tier 9 games spending the whole time dodging incoming arty fire instead of actually fucking playing the game.

    Arty also certainly does NOT reduce camping, but rather increases it. Also what about hull-down tanks correctly using hull-down positions? Again, they get to be fucking punished for playing properly by getting focused by arty while the typical brawler tanks get ignored because they have the armour and guns for hugging vertical, rather than horizontal cover.

    Only real justice for British tanks is their high tiers get a shell type more suited for killing arty, HESH.

  63. I chuckle when people say nerf aim time and make it 15-20 sec.

    My Sturmpanzer II with 15cm had about 13-15 sec reload time and 16 sec aim time. So from time I fire til I can send another shell down range is about 30 sec now.

    Smart players know to move if arty is in play, Some not paying attention get it when the first shell lands close and get moving. And then you have some who will sit while multiple shells fall around them.

    My biggest concern with the improved splash damage would be team damage, that said I like idea of improved splash damage.

    Instead of marking mini map when arty fires what about making smoke from firing more visible? Or maybe leave a more visible contrail in sky for X number of seconds that kinda leaves a trace of where fire came from.

  64. I for one think these changes are needed. It makes arty behave more realistically and gives them incentives to shoot at targets other than just the big slow heavies for a change (since in theory, arty is supposed to punish camping TDs, but in practice they gang up with TDs on the Heavies because they’re easier to hit).

    • Making arty more accurate and doing 700 to 800 damage a shot regardless of a hit or not while buffing the rate of fire and the splash radius is a very stupid idea. We don’t need more op arty we need less of them in each game and they need to lose their space age satellite God view that lets them fire beyond draw range. Getting constantly splashed for 700 damage from shells landing 15 to 20 metres away is awful. Arty in game is very unrealistic as it is without this crap.

  65. Stop making proposals about something you have no clue. You’re just average player after all, and don’t forget only reason you became this popular is translating stuff from russian to english. Stick to that.

  66. C’mon SS, it’s not April 1st today or just trolling? After reading all the bs in the comments, I finaly understand Serb’s “Don’t like it, don’t play it…” universal answer.

  67. damage scaled to the largest of td guns is not 900 dmg, further more makes absolutly no sense for a 240mm gun to do the same as a 183mm gun. imho arty is not the scourge of wot ,but tds. tds can consistently dish out dmg with hyper pen and stupidly high alpha, accurately. arty also has to to take shell travel into account which tds do not.most tds also tend to be well protected frontally, and when WG makes maps with few viable flanking options (usually just 3 doors to choose) then your forced into frontal confrontation.

  68. The problem is, they’ve already tried implementing an accurate, low alpha but high RoF arty with a bunch of handicaps, and they had to nerf it to hell a couple of patches later. The FV304 showed that these kinds of arties are extremely capable in the right hands. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see more arties like this, but they break game balance unless they are heavily nerfed.

    Ignoring module damage and spaced armor as a tradeoff for more splash is just silly, because it completely ignores reality and contradicts every other HE shell in the game. Forcing arties to relocate is also not a good idea. Sure, if you’re in a French or American arty that works, but have you ever owned a G.W. Tiger P? Many arties are not nimble enough to relocate. If you buff their mobility to compensate, low light tanks are ineffective at taking out enemy arties, and you’ve created a whole new set of problems.

  69. Many of the problems with WoT could be solved by fixing the maps. If so many maps weren’t entirely either corridors for peekaboo heavies, or death ground covered by camping TDs, then tanks could actually maneuver. I realize movement is a pretty radical concept in WoT, but strangely enough it’s not World of Artillery, or World of Tank Destroyers.

    Without fixing maps, more splash damage for artillery would just allow for even easier farming of damage against pinned-down tanks. More opportunity for maneuver would make camping less profitable and more dangerous, thus requiring more skill from all players.

    Removing Severogorsk was a good start, but much more needs to be done. Kharkov may be the best example of a map enabling maneuver right now. Stalingrad could have been another, if it was Working as Intended. Given the glacial pace at Wargaming, it will be interesting to see how AW handles these problems when it enters beta, and when it’s finally released.

  70. Good solutions are simple ones. What you are proposing here is a massive overhaul of the entire battle mechanics.

  71. Having artillery in wot is like if you put on a boxing match and then when the two boxers are fighting allowed between 1 and 5 morons in the audience on each side to throw rocks at the boxers. And when they are punching each other in the middle of the ring and get hit in the head by rocks and complain you tell them to just keep moving. Just plain stupid mechanic for a tank game.

  72. This is one idea I’ve bounced around with my friends:

    Arty DPM would be buffed by 25% and aim time lengthened by 25%. Alpha would be reduced by 50% (thus along with DPM buff reload would be much faster ~20sec for most tier 10 arty) but splash damage would be (alpha dmg) / (k*armor*(distance(meters)^2)). k would be some coefficient for balancing purposes, but overall the effect should be much more consistent splash damage near the tank and negligible amounts when it hits past ~2m from the tank. Since this would make arty’s life too easy, a wind indicator would be added and arty would have to account for the wind pushing the shell. This seems like a slight buff to arty, making them more consistently able to crit modules, but the next feature would balance it.

    Many higher tier tanks have smoke grenade launchers and it wouldn’t be a stretch to implement them down to say tier 7, since the were used irl. In game, the would hide the contour of the tanks within it for 1-5 sec, depending on tank and crew (time for heavy<meds<lights<tds). The smoke would linger, however, after that time (for about 10-15sec) somewhat about the target area (move with the wind) and thus would make artillery's aiming difficult. They would be an ability once per match and would be a smoke screen and would cover a small area (~20m radius circle). However, lights would have the option of an Infrared Optics equipment (complex) that would negate the effect and keep all targets spotted by the light spotted despite the smoke screen. To avoid people using the smoke to avoid fire from a long range, it takes about 3 sec to activate the effect and there is no camo bonus of hiding behind it, thus you would be spotted if you run outside of the smoke screen. My predicted effect of such a mechanic, along with sixth sense rework, means a lot more control of the spotting system. Furthermore, this would be mainly useful against arty when in a clumped up mass of tanks and useful if you are caught out in the open. In my humble opinion, this would give the players more control at higher tiers and the arty change would change arty from scum to reliable support. The above numbers are guesstimates, since there is no way to test such stuff, and I think the concept is more important.

    TL;DR: Arty would be faster firing, more inaccurate, with better splash dmg within small deviation from target. Smoke screen ability, once a match, for tanks would hide them from all enemies for a couple seconds.

  73. This is much better than the current system which is basically like throwing a dice where the arty will either damage you directly wrecking your tank, splash you but still wreck you, detrack you in front of enemy guns or miss completely. I like the idea and the removal of team damage by arty would stop them using their splash to suicide all the time. I would like to see them test this and i believe a significant amount of the hate about arty would be lost if this happened. it would also mean that big heavily armoured tank wouldnt be just as attractive to arty due to the damage mitigation by their armour. also forcing the arty to move their fire and not just focus on 1 area of the map is a fantastic idea because having artys just concentrate on you for an entire match takes the fun out of the game but the removal of critical hits by the artys would mean your tank would still be able to play a part in the battle and not just become a somewhat functional corpse. Overall i would be in favour of this change but the conquerour gc would need seriously rebalanced because of its pretty stupid shell arc but other than that this could work just give the artys a higher shell count due to the higher rates of fire.

  74. Too overly complicated,SS. Mine is simply:
    - Nerf SPG ammo velocity
    - Buff accuracy, and probably a lil bit of aimtime.
    - Nerf alpha
    - Nerf pen
    - Nerf camo slightly
    - Nerf TD mode fighting capability (remove autoaim, nerf rotating speed, increase dispersion when rotating hull)

    If it’s not enough, limit SPG more with more mechanics. Let it unlockable after 1-3k battles so ppl won’t play it as first vehicle, or make some kind of energy system limited to SPG so it can’t be played all the time.

  75. I think this is possibly the dumbest post I’ve ever seen SS post… Sorry but dang, consistent arty damage EVERY SHOT?? How about no… I’d rather be lucky then consistently shelled. Imagine being XVM sniped, except faster, more accurately, with almost no chance of dodging? Terrible Idea SS, terrible.

  76. Well the thing about arty is that rarley can take a moving target and kill it but when u [lay arty u hit the campers are u not tierd of campers MT tanks camping LT camping WTF TDS are going to spot and all the others camp im an arty player yes but u get rare blow up tanks i for one shoot for camping tanks its easier to hit them and when i realy have to shoot a moving target that only luck if i get it that player moves straight into my projectile because i hit in front of him

  77. Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned most of your proposal is BS.

    - point of view : turning the satellite view into Battle Assistant Mod would actually be a great nerf. I tried this mod and found out that in fact aiming was LESS accurate than with satellite view (you actually don’t have much clue about where your shell will really land) + you’re less able to anticipate the movement of vehicles moving sideways (i.e. perpendicularly to your line of aiming). So I stopped using this mod and don’t think I will ever use it again, I’m happy with sat view.
    - I agree about alpha-reduction-to-faster-aim-and-reload trade, imo it’s how arty could be saved in this game. Would reduce the randomness of shots but wouldn’t butthurt so much regular tanks. The biggest calibres (T92, CGC) could deal a mximum of 1k alpha damage (moderated with armor etc.), and from there, smaller guns would have to be adjusted.
    - Agreed again for massive splash. Arty fire is supposed to deal damage to a wide area, the splash radius of arty HE shells ingame is just a joke.

    This is basically how far we agree. From now on, what you basically propose, is : buffing tanks’ armor by 300% making arty fire inconsistent with any physics rules (no damage to tanks in any way other than mere damage points – no tracking, no module damage if directly hit, no crew damage if directly hit + roof armor values set on par with front & side armor values through mysterious coefficients. I note that, surprisingly enough, you don’t count spaced armor which was conceived to absord splash damage. But from all you propose, arty in the game would actually deal :

    MaxAlphaDamage – (armor*(X+Y+Z)) where X is the balancing armor coeff., Y the balancing roof armor coeff. dependent on tier and Z the coeff. provided by a spall liner

    > all of which would roughly lead a T92 to deal a maximum of 300 HP damage whatever the hitzone because of a surrealistically armored roof and buffed armor AND never deal any single module damage, as if tanks were driving through a forest of explosions like a walk in a park. Don’t you realize it’s hilarious?
    All tanks have very weak roof armor for a reason, and arty is the almost only class to be able to take advantage from this. You can’t expect a Foch to wear a 300mm thick roof plate, so don’t ever expect arty NOT TO DEAL full damage when an HE shell penetrates the roof and explodes inside the tank.
    From there, it’s unconceivable not to deal any kind of module or crew damage. Explosive material is lethal to anything, so please, for god’s sake, lets stay realistic and not to invent more rules going against physics. All of this having been proposed just so that people who get hit by arty don’t whine about “those m***f*** who destroyed my tank”…
    The best thing to be done would be (1) not to ignore spaced armor (that’s why it’s been created), and (2) increase the durability of tracks to HE damage. Apart from these, everything else – calculation of armor-blocking capacity, roof armor thicknesses, module and crew damage – are already fine as they are and should not be touched. People need to learn to live with arty, not to nerf it or modify it so that it does not “bother” their gameplay. Those who are noobish enough no to do so deserve to be ammoracked and farmed by the most skilled arty players.
    Apart from the fact that most arties (even T10 ones) usually deal 30-40% of what their normal alpha is, I do agree that there is still a slight issue with oversized damage. So imo there should be changes made indeed, but they should be restricted to :
    - lowering alpha damage (by 50-60%)
    - increasing RoF (by, say, 20-25%, no more given that arty already benefits from shooting at long ranges, it doesn’t need to be OP)
    - increasing aim time (+25-30%)
    - reducing RNG of shots (-50%)
    - increasing splash radius
    An arty that would deal, at T10, around 400 damage through direct hit or 200 with splash every 20 s. with 75% chances to hit, instead of the current 700 damage whatever the case + a oneshot every now and then every 40 s. with a 20% chance to hit would suit me fine, and I think many other arty players would agree. This way arty would regain its support role and would be efficient enough in right hands without having the means to carry the game on its own and without butthurting too hard the poor whiners who got hit.

  78. Artyes are hiting the wrong targets, thats the main problem!
    They kill a lot of light tanks and medium tanks! they shouldn’t do it.

    They kill more medium and light tanks than TDs!
    They need a delay to stop it, when you receive a position by radio, you don’t receive it instantly, you don’t receive the name of the tank, the position, the turret possition and the map obstacles instantly, they need time to give you all those informations, in wot you receive it instantly, that’s why arty are so dangerous to medium and light tanks in wot, this is the main change we want to see.

  79. “Artillery is here to stay. It won’t be ever removed and I am really glad it won’t.”
    This is why I stopped playing this game. Have fun dealing with no-skill sky-cancer. I’m gonna find myself a game that doesn’t have such pointless rage mechanics.

  80. If artillery’s purpose really is to stop camping, then the aim times should be increased. Campers stay still, and long aim times are no problem with a stationary target. Reticle dispersion could also be increased, so moving targets are harder to hit, making it preferential for artillery to target campers.

  81. Artillery needs to be more accurate when the cross-hairs are on a tank target.

    When this helps:
    1. The target is stationary. Usually in the open and simply needing a lesson in cover. Why must I miss when my target is a complete fool, and I’m dialed in???

    When this doesn’t help:
    1. Any time the target is moving. (no benefit for leading shots at moving targets)
    2. Or the target is in cover.
    3. or WHEN THE TARGET IS NOT SEEN. (get it? no benefit for blind shots)

    (Because I’m smarter than most all of you, that’s why) :D