Equipment usefullness and recommendation disscussion

Hey guys,

our clan commander posted this one, with minor mistakes like Eagly Eye (but who cares, most of ore experienced players know which perk he meant anyway), what do you think about it, what would be your recommendations and thoughts for:

1) CWs, Absolute TCs, Trounaments, Solo randoms, 2-3 men platoon randoms
2) Tanks with different roles like scout/damage dealer, medium, heavy, td, arty

Constructive and informative discussion very appreciated!

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[quote author=Cynep link=topic=31.msg78#msg78 date=1361783739]
Let's talk about what equipment you shall install on your tanks.

First of all - Rammer. This is the only piece of equipment that directly increases your DPM. So there is no excuse for not having it on tanks where it is available. Sad exceptions are only tanks with autoloaders. All others need Rammer to be installed.

Next one is Vertical Stabilizer. "20% while moving or rotating turret" hint says. But it is more than that - it is 20% less aiming time. For heavies with high aiming time like IS-7 (0,4 accuracy and 3,4 sec aiming time) it is must have. Simply because you'll get gun with 2,7 sec aiming time - and it's quite different experience. Even for tanks with 2 sec aiming time it's still 0,4 sec less aiming time and 20% less recoil in rush.

So you should have Vertical Stabilizer on every damage dealing tank. Only exceptions are pure scouts who don't care about shooting at all - but show me such tanks in these days. And slow tanks in defense which have a lot of time to prepare ambush and aim propertly - like Maus or E-100. Or slow TDs.

Semi-scouts like Batchats, AMX-13-90 and T71 should have Vertical Stabilizer too. Simply because it gives you 20% advantage in duel with other scouts. Priceless.

Next piece is Coated Optics. 10% to view range is a lot for tier 10: 400m basic viewing range turns into 440 m. Maybe you've heard about limit for scouting - you can reveal tanks not further than 445 m. And maybe you think "What's the use of Coated Optics, if I already have perks which raise viewing range?" But this train of thoughts heads into wrong direction. Because there are passive camouflage bonuses, perks and camouflages itself - they all directly decreases your ability to scout enemy tank.

Lets look at tank with 10% passive bonus to camouflage, full camouflage perk and camouflage put on it. With 400 m scouting range you'll reveal such tank only at 360 - 340 meters in open field. With all bonuses avaialble (+5% from BiA, +5% from Ventilation, +5% from 100% commander, +2% Situational Awarness, +3% Eagle Eye) you'll scout it at 410-420 meters away - and only with coated optics you'll reach limit. And we are talking about heavy tank in open field. With light tanks in bushes it will be only worse.

So our scouts needs every bonus to viewing range that is available. Coated optics is must have for light and medium tanks without exceptions. I would even recomend to install it on fast heavies such as AMX50B - but that is optional.

Next come "Brothers in arms" cast in metal - Ventilation. Hint says \"+5% to all crew skills\". If after going through list above you still have free equipment slot - put it in for sure, cause all other choices are very situational and disputable.

Enhanced Gun Laying Drive - please leave this one for arty only. It does not work while moving, so it is useless for our scouts and our rush group. And our tanks in ambush can spend half of second more for aiming.

Large Spall Liner - this one should not be used in clan wars and tank companies. If you're under arty fire - it will not help you much. If you aren't - it is useless and taking out equipment slot which should be filled with something usefull. Besides that Spall Liner is most heavy piece of equipment and it slows your tank down. You can easily tell IS-7s with Spall Liner installed in rush: they are always behind.

Toolbox maybe useful in randoms. If your crew has zero reparing skill. But when crew trained repairing above 30%, usefullness of Toolbox drops down to 10% or even less. In addition, in tank companies and clan wars if you are tracked twice in the row - you're dead in 99% cases despite reparing speed. So please don't take this one.

Wet Ammo Rack and Tanks filled with CO2 aren't required in these days. There was a time when you can't play propertly on some tanks without this equipment (like T-43 or Tiger), but these times are gone.

Camouflage Net and Binocular Telescope works only when you are not moving. Usefull for passive scouting. But do we use passive scouts in tank companies and clan wars?

So lets summarize all of this:

Batchats - Vertical Stabilizer, Coated Optics, Ventilation.

Other meds - Rammer, Vertical Stabilizer, Coated Optics.

Heavies in main group and fast TDs - Rammer, Vertical Stabilizer, Ventilation.

AMX 50B and T57 - Vertical Stabilizer, Coated Optics, Ventilation.

E100, Maus, IS-4 sitting in defense, big slow TDs - Rammer, Ventilation. Third piece might be either Vertical Stabilizer or Spall Liner.

We would apreciate if someone from dedicated arty players shares his views on artillery equipment.
[/quote]

Interesting point about leaving out GLD for TC/CW, honestly wouldn't have come to my mind leave it out as it's mounted in most of my tanks.

Important point for random players is the bit about viewrange and camo, something that many people forget when looking at the figures.

Mind that GLD is very usefull for certain TDs like Foch155, where aiming fast is imperative, and it helps with their very painfull 3 sec aimtime. GLD was also essential for 50B pre-restore, and I'm still contemplating if it should be part of it (fairly long aimtime). Besides, only the US turreted TDs can use stabilizers, none of the non turreted ones can.

Question: Should I get vertical stabilizer+Gun Rammer on Tiger 2? I want to keep the tank in my garage even after I will elite it.So...are there big diferences between having them and not having them?
Sorry for posting here, Remove it if I posted in a wrong section.Thx !

I have vert. stab, GLD and rammer on my KT and very much like it. Makes it very easy to snap shot which can be very useful while sidescraping, which is a good tactic on KT.

GLD seems seems redundant on KT compared to vent imo, because your gun is already dead accurate, your tank is slow so expansion of reticle isn't a major thing.

For all arty I have GLD, Rammer and Cammo net, the net because I haven't found anything else much use and it can't hurt even on high tiers with allegedly good cammo value.

Kawashiro wrote:GLD seems seems redundant on KT compared to vent imo, because your gun is already dead accurate, your tank is slow so expansion of reticle isn't a major thing.

I actually checked yesterday and I have Vents instead of GLD It's just that I've been trying Rammer+ Vert.stab+ GLD combo in many damage dealing tanks lately.

Well, I used EGLD over Vents on KT and P2. Basically it was almost instant aiming with P2...

P2 would benefit from GLD imo, because it's a non brawling medium. The lack of armor also would mean that reducing the time exposing yourself would help more than 0.2 sec better load time.

P2 was the only tier 8 from all meds/heavys, were I have used GLD instead of vert. stab. and it felt pretty good to be honest.

lazydot wrote:P2 was the only tier 8 from all meds/heavys, were I have used GLD instead of vert. stab. and it felt pretty good to be honest.

P2 doesn't move fast, ergo its dispersion increases little while moving, somewhat the similar principle to why E-100 and Maus doesn't need vert stab even though their guns have high aimtime. If the dispersion doesn't go beyond 50% or above max dispersion anyway, GLD is better than vert stab.

Been playing on test servers and ended up out of credits and gold within 1st day (100mill credits and 30k gold is not much as you can see). Tested every tier 8-10 I wanted, some of them beyond that (like 20+ games). The only thing I did different from what I thought is "right" is to use coated optics over vert. stab on _ALL_ tier 10 meds (m48a, t62a, 121, bat).

Also I feel that especially BatChat is suffering from not having vert. stab. the most its still very viable and valid option for randoms, tournaments and TC's/CW's.

Forgot to test UK meds and CH heavies.

What do you think about it as general rule of thumb?

Tier X specific!:
Personally, I use medium tanks as damage dealers, depending on which one that is.
Batchat is a scout, that's no question, it can't randomly fire accurately on the move or brawl, but its the fastest and meanest 1 vs 1, meaning it can take out enemy scouts it encounter very easily. For the other meds, coated optics is a bit odd for me, because while they do get a nice viewrange boost, I'd rather put coated optics on heavies. The reason is because tier X meds outDPM the heavies not by a little bit, but by a considerable amount.
This combined with superior accuracy and better aimtime than their heavy counterparts, leaves mediums as naturally better adapted to long range damage dealing. The only somewhat exception to this would be T110E5, FV215B and T57, with only FV215B somewhat matching the firepower of medium tanks (T57 by far outdpm most of the tanks, but it doesn't really work like a normal tank in the first place).

In my opinion, you only need coated optics for 1/3 tanks if you're in a homogenous platoon rather than all of the tanks.

Platoon, tournament, TC/CW yes, you're right, was playing solo on test server of course and testing different approach. I'd get vert stab over optics all day if my team mates would carry one with them and do also some spotting job. Usually though, even ind double/triple tier 10 med platoon, no one will have coated optics, except of me.

Not doing it on any tier 9 meds/heavies and not planning to change that, I see tier 9s more of damage dealers than tier 10s kinda. Tier 10 battles are prone for arty partys more often, where good scouts/arty decides the games way to often, thus optics over vert stab on tier 10s.

I also see in a lot of replays from the best players having binos in their high tier meds/heavies and since they are as good as they are, there must be a valid reason for it (except that they don't have enough credits to get all equipment they want).

On what heavies and for which kind of games would you take optics over vert stab?