World of Tanks: Maneuvering

As requested by a clan mate, I'm going to write a little post about moving around the map, especially in related too moving your little tank butt in relation to other tanks on your team. Now this might seem silly to devote a whole post too but way too many people don't seem to grasp how close is too close to an allied tank and will start hampering mobility. Generally in relation to team mates I follow two simple rules. The first is that you don't hamper back and forth movement by being directly behind a tank so they can retreat after taking a shot or pulling forward so they can take a shot. The second is to give enough side to side room so they can wiggle their tank.

Rule 1: Never be directly behind someone!
This is very important and covers a lot of situations, the first being is that if you are on a corner and three enemy tanks start pulling around it and you take your shot, you'll be backing up as fast as you can so they can't hit you back or lure them into your teams range of fire. If a tank is blocking you from pulling back then you're stuck with bullet holes in the side of your tank. Worst of all for the guy behind you is that if your tank isn't blocking the shot, your body pushing against theirs will sure make them more likely to miss making the damage you're about to take all the more pointless.

Another situation is you're driving to a position and the tank in front is going the same way, for whatever reason he decides to stop such as taking a shot or because he was hit by artillery the last place you'll want to be is sniffing his tail pipe. For one if he's lining up a shot you'll ruin his aim, and for two anyone shooting him has perfect shots on your stationary tank. (Also artillery is less likely to miss two targets)

Rule 2: Give tanks wiggle room!
I'm sure we've all been there where someone parked so close to your side that when you moved to angle your armor you've been blocked by doing so, or even when you turned your hull a little before pulling back and being stopped because your new angle caused you to grind up against the tank next to you. This is a bad situation to be in since you can't protect yourself as usefully as you'd want due to all the reasons listed in the last section, but also because side hugging an ally means that artillery will have an even easier time to hit one of you, and also the entire time you grind you'll be ruining accuracy. Generally I give about half a T-50's width or more depending on the tanks.

Taking that corner
Now with those two rules out of the way lets go into different situations and how to best move in them. To start that out lets talk about swinging around a corner to shoot someone or to push on them. Most tanks can just pull straight out, shoot, and then pull back but doing so will expose your weak side armor at a horrible angle meaning they'll more then likely deal damage to you or even track you in that very vulnerable state. This is why you always want to take a corner at an angle along the lines of 30~50 degrees so that more of your front is exposed then your side. This is especially true for tank destroyers, you want your barrel facing them as soon as possible so they should take a wider turn to compensate for not having a turret. (when you poke out you're barrel will be closer to the target compared to hugging the corner and turning after you expose yourself)

Driving past the Enemy
A lot of times when I am in a close up battle I tend to drive past the guy I'm brawling unless I can easily win in a face to face match. This is because not only do they have to turn their turret to hit me but unless they want to give me an easy shot into their side or rear armor they'll start angling their tank so their aim will be as disrupted as mine. Also if you have allies following your push either you or them will have beautiful shots on the side / rear of their tank or turret since they'll have to choose who to shoot at.

Being circled
Besides backing up to some wall / cover if a tank is moving fast around you, you'll probably have to turn your tank along with your turret to hit them. The best way to get their tank in front of your barrel if they insist on circling you is to imagine their path as a circle and your goal is to make that circle as big as possible so they have to travel a longer distance. If they are driving past me I go forward and turn so they have to make a sharper turn to get away from my gun while. Mix it up with whatever makes your barrel turn toward them the fastest like standing still or moving forward / backwards. Just make sure your barrel is NEVER rotating in the opposite direction of your tank, it will crawl slowly and take way longer then it should. A hellcat turning left and rotating its barrel right will actually make the gun slowly turn left because the turn speed is faster then the turret rotation speed.

If artillery can see you
First of all, do not sit still unless you have enough vertical cover to block artillery shots, like a 100 story mountain or hugging a 3 story house. The next thing is to move and don't do it in a straight line. As an artillery player the only thing easier to hit then a stationary target is one that is moving in a straight line. All I have to do is guess where your tank will be in 1~2 seconds (based on range) and BOOM splash or direct hit most of the time. If you veer slightly to the left then right, then right again artillery is much more likely to miss since just a few degrees of a turn can mean you're a whole tank length away from where the artillery is aimed at. Also being on the opposite side of a hill is good since there is less are for the artillery shell to splash near you since a little bit low means its hitting the top of the hill while a little bit high means it is hitting the bottom of the hill and no where near your tank on the middle of the slope.

TL;DR

• Give people room to back up
• Give people room to rotate their tank
• If you think you're spotted, don't stand still and don't move in a straight line
• Use hills for cover and to make it harder for artillery to splash you
• Turn your tank while something is circling you
• Drive forward / backwards to try and make the tank circling you take longer
• Don't turn your barrel and your tank in different directions.
• Finally, don't touch allied tanks, especially if the are shooting something.

World of Tanks: Gold rounds and you

So we've all know that gold rounds can be purchased for tanks with credits making them widely available to the masses. However there seems to be people who don't understand gold rounds based on the complaints I see thrown out in battle and the lack of them during competitive play. The first is that using gold rounds is not cheating. You can use only gold rounds in your tanks and get all the penetrations you couldn't before so aiming becomes less of an issue, however due to the cost you'll probably be losing credits.

You can also decide to use no gold rounds at all, however when facing a heavily armored tank and not being able to penetrate it can cost you valuable experience due to the lack of damage because of missing weak spots.It is a balance since too much gold rounds will lose you credits, and not enough can see you facing up against opponents you can't hurt easily enough when you have to hurt them. However I can not go into just gold rounds without talking about the other kinds of ammunition.

AP / Standard Ammo
So the standard ammo for your tank which is usually AP though some tanks have APCR (T71) is your bread and butter ammo. (Artillery's is HE) You'll want to load most of your rounds in this ammo type, probably about 65% depending on how much ammo your tank holds. (swings from 50% to 80%) The reason why you want to have it loaded the most is that it costs the least amount of credits and is generally up for the job vs most of the tanks you'll fight against. For tanks you can't hurt easily we'll be getting into what ammo to use for those later.

HE
High explosive rounds are best used on Artillery and Derps. A Derp gun is an artillery gun on a tank like the KV-2's 152 mm M-10 which does 910 damage with 86 pen on the HE rounds. For most tanks out there HE is worthless to bring except for a small handful of rounds if you are not using an artillery gun. This is primarily for making sure you deal some damage (even if it is just track damage) to someone who is on cap. You'll probably never use them, but hey they are there in case you have troubles dealing damage to a guy capping who is angled.

Gold rounds (Anything round you can buy with gold)
For normal tanks I generally run with about 30% gold shells (APCR or HEAT). A lot of times I won't need them like in a KV-1S in a Medium tank company however when I meet up with something that is harder to pen I like to switch over to gold rounds. My best example is my IS-6 vs another IS-6, I can pen him if I try but due to angling, wiggling, and the low pen of the gun I'd prefer just to switch to gold rounds and hit him on the flattest surface. (IS-6's armor can still easily bounce another IS-6's gold rounds) Now for artillery since they are so different then normal tanks I'm going to talk about their gold rounds separately.

Artillery

• HE : Increases splash range which is very sexy and will probably be your main gold rounds in artillery. This is because you're more likely to deal higher damage through a splash hit vs your regular He rounds because of the way splash damage is calculated.
• HEAT : Great for low tier high accuracy artillery like the SU-26, it has no splash damage so you need to hit hull to deal damage (sometimes you get those annoying track only hits) however compare the damage between an SU-26's HE and HEAT rounds on a KV-1S (20 and 200 respectfully) you can see the merits of it. For my SU-26 I load about 50% gold or 75% gold depending on if I'm playing Pubs, Medium Tank Companies, or Junior Tank Companies.
• AP : Your regular AP round but with crazy pen and damage. It is mostly only useful with high accuracy artillery like HEAT since it does not splash. I load a few (4ish) in my Obj.212 since I have shell room while I don't load any in my S-51 because of its very limited shell count and accuracy. However when those hit you're pretty much killing anything in 1 to 2 shots.

TL;DR

1. About a 66% standard, 33% gold, and 1% HE is a very effective split.
2. HE or Gold rounds should be used to reset base. You do not want to lose because of a bounce. on that 99% captured base
3. Gold rounds have different tracers
4. Only load gold rounds in tournaments, I bet you the other team will have them loaded.
5. Even though they are expensive, you don't have to use them. But having them will definitely help you.