Maus Guide

Welcome to the Maus (AKA Panzer VIII Mammoth)! One of doctor Ferdinand Porche’s craziest vehicles. The final German heavy tank in the Porsche line and the heaviest AFV ever made!

Previous tank: VK 4502(P)

Specs:


Tech tree:


Overview:
The Maus starts fully elite and the only thing you can do to improve it is to get your crew to 100% and spend money on modules and consumables. It’s the tank with THE most HP in the entire game, and bringing that HP down will require at least tier 9 guns thanks to the extreme characteristics of this vehicle. The most important for it being the armour. It is an extremely tough vehicle that only some T9-10 TDs can take out with relative ease. Thanks to its back-mounted turret, the sidescraper maneuver is quite easy and effective, as long as the player remembers to always slope their turret after each shot.
Its gigantic in size, pretty much the largest heavy tank in the game. Size does help it cover its teammates, take shots over obstacle, firing into the turret tops of smaller vehicles (IS-4 for an example) and blocking paths, but it also makes it VERY easy to spot and the favorite target for artillery players.
Its mobility is quite poor. The low top speed, low traverse speed and unsatisfactory turret traverse speed make this vehicle one of the slowest and most cumbersome tanks in the game. On the bright side, what little speed it has, it can keep thanks to the powerful engine.
The Maus itself has a decent enough gun, although it doesn't penetrates much as the guns of the IS7, IS-4, AMX 50B and T110. It is at least more accurate than the 130mm S-70 carried by the IS-7. By the way, you might have noticed a second smaller gun (it is a 75mm) and it will be activated in a future patch... hopefully.
However, the tank is pretty slow, but considering its tonnage that’s normal, which by the way leads to another funny problem. It cant stop itself when going downhill   . However, getting rammed by it... is painful...
Price: 6,100,000 (yes, it costs more money than Switzerland has)
Camouflage: Poor. The thing is the size of Everest, what do you expect? Its invisible!
Gun Depression: -8°/+24°



Pros:
-Good armor that can be made even better with artificial sloping. Can be one of the toughest vehicles to penetrate in the game, except T95.
-Insane amount of hitpoints.
-Getting rammed by a Maus can hurt a lot.
-Second 75mm gun (soon I hope).

Cons:
-Bad speed and maneuverability.
-Huge target for the enemy.
-Can’t stop down hills.
-Penetration on main gun with standard ammo should have been better. At least gold rounds are great.

Designation:
1. Warrior 2. Steel Wall  3. Sniper  4. Brawler

Crew:
1. Commander
2. Gunner
3. Driver
4. Radio Operator
5. Loader
6. Loader

With two loader this means that if you lose one, your overall skill level will only go down to 50%.

Modules:
Hull:
Armor scheme currently in use

Spoiler:

The frontal armour is technically penetrable by all tier 10 guns, BUT with even a moderate angle, you can turn the Maus into a fortress. This is all thanks to the incredibly advanced fat brick design and thick side and rear armor which allow for superior angling when compared to every other tank in the game.

Suspension:
Mausketten – load capacity 192,9t/ Turn speed 15 deg/sec
The maneuverability of a battle ship on land...Makes the tank very vulnerable to flanking medium tanks.

Engine:
MB507 – 1750 h.p. / Chance of Fire on Impact 12%
9,26 hp per ton the maus keeps its 20km/h almost constantly.

Radio:
10WSc – range 720m
Great radio just like all other tier 8-10 tanks.

Turret:
Mausturm (the Germans seem very creative in naming things)
Armour: 240/210/210
Rotation: 16 deg/sec
View range: 402m
The turret is very heavily armored and only tier 9 guns have a chance of penetrating it frontally. Do know that you MUST slope it in order to bounce tier 10 guns. It also turns very slowly, which means that high end medium tanks can circle you easily. A good tactic is to shoot at the enemy and then stop looking at them in order to slope the turret whilst reloading. Only shoot when ready.

Guns:
128mm KwK 44 L55
RoF: 4,04
Penetration: 246/311/65
Average damage: 490/490/630
Accuracy (100m): 0,38
Aim time: 2,9 sec
Decent accuracy, good damage per shot, slow RoF and barely penetration. It will see some struggle against the IS-7, T110 and other Maus tanks, but it can get the job done. Not a bad gun, but it does need a little more penetration and RoF.  It can penetrate all other T10s with standard AP rounds, but its not always certain whether you will. Technically there is also another 75mm gun, but it will work in a future patch.
Gold rounds are APCR, which means they get the normalization bonus against sloped armour but lose penetration with distance.

Comparison with its peers:
PZ. VIII Maus vs E-100:
The Maus has better overal armor than the E-100. Even though the E-100's frontal glacis plate is tougher, its weakspots are much easier to get. The E-100 seems to take less damage from arty splash damage and has access to both the Maus's gun and a 15cm cannon.
In short:
Both are tough vehicles, though Maus is definitely tougher.
Both have good firepower, however the E-100 will have the edge in experienced hands or with gold ammo in Clan Wars.
Both arent exactly fast, but the E-100 has a higher top speed.

Pz. VIII Maus vs. IS 7:
The Maus has far more armour and hitpoints, but lacks the maneuverability of the IS7. Furthermore the Maus can’t hide very well since it has a pretty big profile, unlike the IS7 which is far smaller. The Maus also has a more precise gun, but lacks the penetration of the IS7 (unless using gold rounds).
In short:
The IS-7 and Maus have somewhat similar firepower. The Maus may have worse standard penetration, but has better APCR penetration.
IS-7 can flank and maneuver, these words don't exist in a Maus driver's vocabulary.
Maus has 650hp more and armor even on the sides and rear giving it better overall armor.

Maus vs IS-4:
The IS-4 and the Maus both rely on sloping themselves in order to achieve bounces. At long ranges the turret of the IS-4 is harder to penetrate than the Mausturm. Still, the Maus is the superior steel wall, but is obviously a good deal slower than the soviet heavy. IS-4 is a smaller target, but Maus can cover its teammates much more effectively and is a superior ramming tank than the 4. Even though the 122mm gun has 50 less damage, most people can say it is overall superior to the 128mm cannon because of its better penetration.
In short:
Maus is still the best steel wall we can find.
122mm gun is overall a superior gun than the 128mm.
IS-4 is faster and more maneuverable.
Maus can cover its allies more effectively.

Pz. VIII Maus vs. AMX 50B
AMX 50B leaves Maus in the dust, and can almost do circles around it. Its gun has higher penetration, both normal and APCR. Even though the gun does less damage per shot, it fires 4 shots in quick succession. However, despite these advantages, it suffers from being very vulnerable to arty (unlike the Maus) and big weakspots. Only its glacis plate can bounce a shot, and its rear is penetrable by HE rounds ( quickest way to die).
In short:
AMX 50B is by far faster and more agile.
Its capable of putting a lot more damage if given several seconds.
Maus absolutely blows it away at "Taking shots and still surviving".

Pz. VIII Maus vs. T110E5
Both tanks have good frontal armor (if flawed), but the T110 is most definitely beaten in overall armor. Its sides and rear are too weak to slope effectively, whereas the Maus can turn into a fortress. The T110 does feature a gun that can be considered superior despite the lower damage per shot. Its also much faster and infinitely more maneuverable
In short:
T110E5 can unleash greater DPM, with better penetration and accuracy but lower single shot damage than the Maus.
The Maus is tougher than the T110, both in health points and in armor.
T110 is faster and more maneuverable.

Historical Maus:


Historically the Pz. VIII Maus never saw action. The Germans only managed to build two prototypes by the end of the war, one of which without a turret. When the soviets closed on the Kummersdorf (say it angrily! Feel German! jk) facility where the two prototypes were housed, the Germans managed to successfully scuttle the completed one. When the facility was in soviet hands, the turret from the destroyed tank was moved to the still intact hull of the other prototype. The tank was then taken to the USSR for tests. However, the soviet tank bureau deemed such a heavy tank worthless in the soviet tank doctrine, which demanded tanks to be around 50-60t at most. The prototype survived the Cold War and is now kept at the Kubinka Tank Museum.

What if?
The fundamental question of whether the Maus would have been effective in battle remains? Here is my plausible answer completely shared by every historian on the planet, as I am awesome:
- If the Maus had entered service with the Wermacht it would have had absolutely no effect on the war, in fact it would have helped the allies. It would have diverted precious resources from the construction of much more effective German tanks like the Panther. A 200t tank would have been a profound target for allied aerial attacks and a 200lbs. bomb would have send the tank and its crew into the grave. The tank’s weight also meant that it would have been unable to travel along most of the bridges in Europe. Another problem that would have plagued the Maus is the suspension. The suspension of tanks like the Tiger I and II was unreliable, that of the Maus would most likely have broken every 5 minutes.

WoT Armory report: http://wotarmory.com/2012/08/05/hier-kommt-die-maus/


Originally written by Charcharo

Nice guide!

Just one thing I wanted to point out, not specifically about the Maus. The effectiveness of air power against tanks during WW2 was vastly overstated, not entirely by accident either.
After the D-Day landings Allied aircraft claimed up to 120 kills in one day but after battle investigations showed that very few armoured vehicles were actually hit at all and the 120 kill claim was in reality more like 5 to 6 damaged vehicles with the vast majority of the vehicles taken out by arty, anti-tank units and allied tanks. It wasn't until the emergence of guided missiles that air power became the main threat to armour. The basic fact of the matter was that even a Maus would have been incredibly difficult to hit at the speeds aircraft were attacking and even what appeared to the pilots to be a direct hit usually caused no more than a headache for the crew.

Antony Beevor and Stephen E. Ambrose have both written very well researched books named "D-Day", well worth a read