PzKpfw VIB Tiger II Guide

Main characteristics
The Tiger II or King Tiger (ingame often refered to as KT) is a tier 8 german heavy tank offering great frontal armor, a very nice gun and reasonable mobility for its weight. It can be researched from the Tiger for 78000xp and costs 2 450 000 credits. The tank has 1600 hp(or 1500 with the stock turret) which is quite good in its tier.

Crew
The Tiger II has 5 crew members: a commander, a gunner, a loader, a driver and a radio operator. This is the same number of crewmembers/roles as you have had since the PzIV, so you can keep retraining your crew to the next vehicle throughout the tree, which can help you achieve a very experienced crew from the start. I recommend that you retrain the crew you had on the Tiger so you start out with a 90% crew(or 100% if you used gold) that most likely has some secondery skill(s).

Mobility
The mobility of the KT is good for its weight of more than 70 tons. The top engine makes it accelerate quite fast, but you are limited to a top speed of 28km/h. The turning speed is also better than most heavies even though the game says it is only 26 degrees per second, in reality it is faster due to your powerful engine.

Armor
The armor is the strongpoint of this tank, as no tank in your tier can penetrate your upper front plate(tier 8 TD's can however). The lower front plate however is a lot weaker, and also has the gearbox behind it, which can cause engine damage or even fire. The sides are only 80mm but that is enough for you to be able to angle yourself, which will increase your protection further. The turret front may seem weak at only 180mm but most of it is covered by the gun mantlet, so shot that aren't carefully aimed will either hit the mantlet or glance of the sides most of the time. Weakpoints in your armor are the machinegun port, the commanders hatch and the lower front plate.

Armament
When you get your new King Tiger, it will have the same gun you already used on the Tiger, the 8,8cm L/71(usually called long 88). This gun is very accurate, and in the Tiger II it also fires considerably faster than in the original Tiger. Drawbacks of the long 88 are the low damage per shot(240), penetration(203) and aimtime(2,9sec) are also not as good as on the best gun. The top gun on the KT is the superb 10,5cm L/68. This gun has better aimtime(2,3sec), damage(320) and penetration(225) than the long 88, whilst keeping the great accuracy. The damage is lower than that of your russian counterpart the IS-3, but it fires faster and has better accuracy and aimtime. One of the great features of this gun is the high shell speed that helps you hit moving targets at range easier.

Review
The Tiger II has a combination of good armor, a great gun and reasonable mobility which make it a great tank for me. It has the armor to resist a lot of shots, especially at range, but in your own tier also in close quarters if you angle yourself well and hide your lower plate. The gun is also very good, the accuracy, shell speed and penetration give you the ability to hurt your enemies at long range, where they cannot hit your weakspots and might very well bounce. I have done some trainingroom battles against a friend that was in an IS-3, and as long as I kept him at a distance, I was very able to defeat him every time. At close range however, he could kill me more easily by peekabooing and using his higher damage per shot to his advantage.

Advantages of tank
good frontal armor
gun with good penetration, accuracy and shell velocity
heavy, but not slow, allowing it to ram others
good viewrange and radiorange

Disadvantages of tank
it is very big, meaning that it has no camo at all
shots in the lower front plate can set your engine on fire
top speed is sometimes too low
side armor is not too good

Suggested crew skills
Repairs is a must for this tank, because when it is tracked for too long arty will eat it. For the first skill I'd suggest repairs for everyone, when this is at 100% you could retrain the driver to preventive maintenance to prevent engine fires, and optionally 6th sense for the commander. For the second skill a lot of skills are useful, save stowage is about the only useful one for the loader though, for the driver both offroad driving and clutch breaking are good to increase mobility.

Suggested equipment
I personally use rammer-ventilation-vertical stabilizer, rammer for increasing my damage-dealing capabilities, stabilizer for being able to shoot on the move, but mostly to be aimed faster after stopping and ventilation to boost everything a bit. Gunlaying drive could be used instead of ventilation if you want to, and if you don't have repair skill yet I suggest using a toolbox untill you do.

Research Path
Research the best engine on the Tiger before getting the KT! The stock gun does its job well, so I'd suggest upgrading the turret first(as the first turret has close to no armor), but unfortunately this also requires the suspension. That makes this the research order: Tracks>Turret>10,5cm guns>E75. If you do not have the radio yet then I suggest you get it too before researching the E75. As for the guns, I prefered the 88 over the first 10,5 but that is up to you, the first 10,5 trades accuray and RoF and a little bit of penetration for more damage and lower aimtime.




Written by AngryBanana

Well, if you have a little spare credits you can install enhanced suspension for the time being sacrificing one equipment slot for faster grind.

One of my recommendations is not to bother researching the last engine on the tiger before you get the KT. Just buy the second best engine then research the King Tiger, and continue to alternate between your two tigers. the original tiger for the engine and the King tiger for the rest.

Tip 2. I would agree to keep the long 88 for grinding until you get the long 105, because in my opinion, the 88 long is far superior to the short 105, the increased damage is negligible considering that your penetration value take's a rather big hit. Besides you can still turn a profit very easily with the L88 considering the shell cost is substantially lower.

Tip 3. When fighting in Urban environments protect you're lower front plate by covering with some rubble. it means that the enemy will not easily penetrate you as they have to aim for you're smaller weak spots such as the machine gun port and the commander's hatch. I also suggest that if you are being aimed at in this situation is to wiggle you're tank makes it even harder to hit the small weak spots.

What is the slope on the upper front plate and the lower front plate?

CountOfTuscany wrote:What is the slope on the upper front plate and the lower front plate?

50° on ufp and 45° on lfp.

OK. So angling the Tiger II 25 degrees will auto-bounce incoming shells. I guess the slope is similar to the Jagdtiger 8.8 one, where some angling is really effective.

CountOfTuscany wrote:OK. So angling the Tiger II 25 degrees will auto-bounce incoming shells. I guess the slope is similar to the Jagdtiger 8.8 one, where some angling is really effective.

JT has Tiger 2 hull, so they are exactly the same.