World of Tanks: Ammunition

So after some changes to how your ammo works in world of tanks and through playing about 6,000 more battles since I wrote the Gold rounds and You! post, I've decided to rewrite my post about ammo.

Please note that using gold rounds is not cheating or being cheap. They've been part of the game for a long while and since APCR and HEAT has recently been nerfed a bit. I can't see why people would complain about someone using gold, to me it's as silly as someone complaining about someone using a repair kit or a fire extinguisher.

Types of Rounds

• AP is the standard ammo and has a normalization of 5 degrees. Normalization by the way means that angling is just that bit less effective.
• APCR is generally a premium ammo that has a normalization of 3 degrees. It has a greater penetration value of AP however it loses more penetration the further it flies. You'll only really notice this with across the map shots or when that piece of armor you hit is really angled.
• HE is a standard ammo that explodes when its penetration value hits zero causing splash damage. It is most useful for artillery, resetting a base when you need to not bounce (aim for tracks), and dealing that last 1% of a tanks health that is hard to penetrate. (hull down T34)
• HEAT is a premium ammo that has greater penetration then AP but automatically bounces off 80 degree or greater and has no normalization. It also loses a lot of penetration when it hits spaced armor so in certain cases it is more advantageous to use AP shells due to armor layouts.

General Ammo Layout

Standard Tanks

For my standard tanks I generally go with 60~80% AP, 20~40% Gold, and 0~2% HE. Some times I'm very lazy or a tank has a low penetration value for its tier so I equip more gold shells to better support it vs +2 tiering or those tanks I can't penetrate otherwise if I can't get along side them. Depending on how many rounds my tank carries I'll have a handful of HE shells loaded for last second base resets or dealing that last 20/1500 health on a tank I can't easily pen without exposing myself to too much enemy fire. As an example I carry about 10% gold in my ISU-152 just for some awkward shots vs Tier 10's and 2 HE shells because I never run out of AP and I might need them for a side scraping E-100 that is capping.

Derps

For those tank guns that uses only HE and HEAT shells like the KV-2's short barrel the standard loadout is about 50/50 HE and HEAT. In most cases vs lower tier tanks HE is enough to deal respectable damage but it falls very short vs same or higher tier tanks. Lets say your potential damage is 300 HEAT and 400 HE. You'll probably do 600 damage in 2 shots with HEAT while you'll probably only do 200~350 damage with HE for those two shots. This is mostly why I never play derp tanks anymore, and for the fact that my ISU-152's tier 10 gun is much more satisfying with AP.

Artillery

  For artillery I generally load 70~90% HE and 30~10% Gold HE / HEAT and 0~3 shells of AP. For artillery AP and HEAT shells are rarely worth the chances of bounces / misses. Gold HE is great for when you have a lot of tanks clumped together so you are more likely to deal decent damage to all of them but your bread and butter is always HE.

Very small guns

And we can't forget them little tanks like a T-50 in a tier 9 match, pretty much you're not trying to shoot tanks unless they're other scouts but a good idea is enough AP / APCR to deal with other scouts and to harrass big tanks in the bum or some HE to peck at cappers / maybe dealing 0.1% of a big tanks health but generally I find myself equipping more HE then usual on these small tanks because what else can you do with them but tickle with those little guns.

World of Tanks: Artillery Explained

After being fed up with how often I see people complain about artillery I think I should explain more about their dynamics beyond the perception people get that they are just 1 shot killing machines. Artillery may not require as much "skill" in certain aspects of the game but to be truly effective you'll have to master a very frustrating skill, relying on your team. Artillery by itself unless it knows where you're coming from and can funnel you in front of its barrel will almost always lose a 1 on 1 engagement. Artillery has to be an ambush tank when facing off in head to head matches because of their extremely low accuracy unless you are too close to miss. Most people see artillery as free kills when they are spotted because generally they are.

Where artillery really shines is shooting long range thanks to their arched trajectory and the strategic map. However this comes at a price because of the ranges involved and the reliance on team mates to not only spot targets, but having them spot the targets you can hit and where you need to hit. Because of the lower muzzle velocity of the artillery shells they'll arrive slower meaning that the tank you just shot at normally has over a second to move, and that is generally how long it takes for your shot to completely miss. To better go on about this without adding lots of bias and long winded paragraphs, I'll try to break it up into aspects of the artillery and say the good and bad of them in a sentence or two.

Shell Trajectory
Good : It can hit tanks behind obstacles that block direct fire.
Bad : If a tank moves backwards or forwards your shot will miss a lot more often unless you compensate for it because you are aiming at a location, not a direction.

High Damage
Good : You can generally deal more damage then other tanks your tier per shot
Bad : This is balanced by long reload and aim times meaning you'll generally do less damage in the long term unless you're given the time and the targets to make each of your rounds count.

Splash Damage
Good : Even if you missed which 50% of the time you'll probably do, you'll at least do some damage and hopefully track the tank you're shooting or even hitting multiple tanks. This is very nice since it helps balance out the inaccuracies of trying to hit a tank by picking a spot on the ground to shoot.
Bad : Because of the bad accuracy at range, the splash will generally see a lose in vital damage you need to deal. And if a friendly tank happens to get too close to your target you could end up paying for his or hers repair bill.

Long Range Support
Good : Due to the mechanics you can sit far away from the battle and contribute to the war effort along with being able to shift your support across most of the battle field in under half a minute.
Bad : Because of the mechanics and the range, you'll see your shots increasingly miss due to accuracy, the target moving, or even your team killing them in the two seconds it takes your shell to hit the ground.

Close Encounters
Good : You can set up a trap and whamp someone when they run in front of your barrel
Bad : Unless you can pull off a 1 hit kill or you have team support, you're dead.

Tiering
In Game : SU-26 is tier 3, grille is tier 4, and an S-51 is a tier 6 artillery.
Actual : Due to special matchmaking these artillery are actually tiers 4, 6, and 8 respectively. So when you see a Tier 5 artillery, think of it as a tier 6~7 instead.

Anyway is artillery overpowered? Yes when viewed in a bubble however an artillery in the game has very little power to influence how a battle can turn out unless it can take out those key tanks at the key moments. So now I'm going to go onto a short list of general artillery tips to hopefully make yourself better at it.

• Use the X button, it will save you a lot of potential damage since that hair breath of a degree can mean the difference between your reticule blooming out and you getting that shot on a tank.
• Learn how to lead targets with positioning of your tank's hull and crosshair. The best way is to pick a spot where the target will be and zoom in there instead of following the tank.
• Reposition often, especially when there are more then two artillery a side. The chance of someone counter-artying and finding an artillery's tracer is drastically increased. Also due to your low health they generally just have to land that shell near you instead of directly on top of you. You only have to move a few meters at a time.
• Focus on damage over kills, this is side tracked by those tanks you need to kill because they'll tear up your team.
• Check the minimap often! if you see that scout coming for you prepare for him, he'll probably spot you and shoot you before your team can even hit them. A lot of times you'll get enough time to at least throw a shot at their face before they wrap behind you and kill you.
• T up your target before you shoot it, (the "I'm shooting this guy key") hopefully your team mates will keep that guy lit / not instantly kill him so your long long reload is ruined.

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.