Raptor_q’s World Of Tanks Wiki Guide to Stop Playing Like A Noob!

Well as you know I love to play WoT and been trying to improve my game to get my stats up. There are so many websites and media that it gets a little overwhelming, so I thought why not get my mate raptor_q who is Super Unicom player in our clan to help me. So what did he do? He wrote a wiki !! Legend 😛

Foreword From Raptor

I have written this guide to help people improve their gameplay both in solo and platoons/clan wars, if you are just beginning at the game you might need to get a couple of hundred battles under your belt as this is a rather advanced guide and i will go over many subjects, you can read it all in one go, or take some parts at a time.I myself have played since the beta and i have managed to get myself to a good perfomance level, in this guide i will give you some of all that information i’ve learned over the thousands of battles i’ve played, the rest will have to come with experience as you play the gameIf you can manage to follow the basics of this guide you should be able to push yourself up into the blue area of XVM, maybe even into the unicom area if you have enough experience, but just remember, it will take time, you will not see the results immediately.

Remember you to apply these basics to your own playstyle, whether you are an very aggressive player or careful, it doesn’t matter, don’t let others decide on your playstyle or you will not improve, just keep in mind the basics.

Just to show at what performance level i am at here is my stats: WoT and Noobmeter. You can also find some videos of my battles on youtube uploaded by cheesyboofs and you may be able to see a thing or two that can help you.

If you think you can help to make some improvements to the guide drop me a message on the forum link.


Penetration Mechanics


Spotting Mechanics

Wiki site explaining mechanics


Random Number Generator

The random number generator in World of Tanks works by assigning a random value to the shells damage and penetration value, the fluctuation is +/- 25% so a gun with a 100 ap can end up having a max ap of 125 and the lowest value can be 75, these values are different for each shot, so you can find yourself Ricochet of a weakspot just because of a low roll, damage works the same way.

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How each shell type works

Armor Piercing (AP) Shell

AP

This shell does the full damage listed on the gun specifications if it penetrates the enemy’s armor. However, if the shell doesn’t penetrate the target, it will bounce and do no damage whatsoever. It can also damage tank modules and crew if it hits at the right spot. AP shells are subject to normalization and lose some penetration value over distance.
AP shells normally cost credits.

Armor Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) Shell

apcr

This type of ammunition has the highest penetration value (thanks to being subject to normalization), but the damage value is the same as an AP shell. It still has the AP shell characteristics, with slight twists. APCR has a higher muzzle velocity than AP, meaning a shell leaves your gun at a higher speed (resulting in less “leading” of distant moving targets), however APCR also loses much more penetration value over the same distance as AP. Generally speaking, low caliber guns such as a 57mm gun will lose penetration at a much faster rate than high caliber guns such as a 120mm gun. At the very high end of tank gun calibers, the penetration lost over distance is so minute that at the same range as AP, APCR will still have, or at least have a similar, penetration value as AP.
APCR shells normally cost gold. However, 7.5 made APCR shells the standard ammunition used by the new tier 10 medium tanks. Additionally, 8.2 made APCR shells the standard ammunition used by the 76 mm Gun T185 cannon, which can be mounted on the T71 American light tank, and the T69 American medium tank. They cannot use AP ammo at all, and instead can purchase this ammo using credits rather than gold. Tanks whose guns default to APCR are also not subject to the same penetration loss over distance as premium APCR, but still have the higher muzzle velocity.As of 8.6 with the balance changes apcr has lost some of it’s value as it has gotten less normalization it used to be 5% but it’s down to 2% now, whereas ap has a 4% making Ap more effective against slopes then APCR, it used to be the other way around.

High Explosive (HE) Shell

This shell has the highest damage value among all the shell types in the game, but also has a very low penetration value. These rounds have a very small splash damage area. It doesn’t need to penetrate to damage the target, but the damage drops off quickly as the difference between the target’s armor and the shell’s penetration value increases. If it manages to penetrate the armor, it will explode inside the tank for the full damage listed in the specifications, plus HE deals additional damage to multiple internal modules and/or crew, depending on how high the HE damage value is. HE shells typically have a maximum damage value 25% higher than AP shells, rounded to the first significant figure.

High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) Shell

This is the Premium ammunition for most SPG-class, tank howitzer, and many high tier tank guns. It carries a higher penetration value than AP, but unlike AP and APCR, is not subject to normalization, and therefor must penetrate the effective armor value at the given impact angle, meaning HEAT will have trouble with very thick, sloped and spaced armor more than AP and APCR. However, also unlike AP and APCR, HEAT does not lose penetration value over distance.As of 8.6 there is also this to be added.

  1. New rules of how HEAT shells work:
    HEAT shells will start to ricochet if the impact angle equals or is greater than 80 degrees. (please note that every shell can have slightly different settings).
    The armor penetration after ricochet will remain the same.
  2. After successful penetration, a HEAT shell cannot ricochet inside the tank (as the shell is transformed into a continuous stream.)
  3. After successful penetration, the HEAT shell will lose 5% of armor penetration value for each 10cm of travelling distance (50% for 1 meter travelled between the spaced armor surface and armor)
  4. After successful penetration, the force with which the HEAT shell continues to travel through the armor will lose penetration value equal to the amount of armor hit and will take into account the angle of impact between the armor and penetration spot.
    Suspension now also counts as spaced armor

High Explosive Squash Head(HESH) Shell

This shell much like high explosive deals some very high damage while also having a large amount of ap, it also have a splash radius.The downside is that it works exactly like HE with a large amount of ap on it, so it cannot penetrate tracks or spaced armor, which leaves very few locations to shoot at.

Currently only the british tanks have access to these shells.


Camouflage

There has been some changes to the camo system in patch 8.6, they are the following.

  • Proximity spotting is no longer 15m but 50m.
  • The demasking value of firing your gun has been increased, so you are almost certain to get spotted when you fire your gun.
  • The camo value of of bushes has been lowered and the camo value they will give is depending on their size.

Every vehicle in game comes with a base camouflage value assigned to it by the developers as part of game balancing. The value is defined separately for moving and for standing still. The baseCamo value is generally lower while moving the hull than while standing still, but for some tanks including most light tanks the values are equal for both states, which is a big advantage for dedicated scout tanks.

The baseCamo values are not shown in game.

Camouflage skill on the crew can be an significant improvement and can be the edge you need to be able to hide, try to always take it unless you don’t care about being spotted.

Another skill you can take is BIA, which will also improve the camo value of the tank (same with ventilation).

When you are shooting you will loose some of your camo value, depending on how big the muzzle flash(depends on tank/gun) you slowly regain the lost camo value over a few seconds.

You can also eguip a camouflage net to improve it further but there is generally no need for it, as either you can cammo or you can’t which depends on heavily on what tank you are using, it can generally be a better idea to eguip a pair of binocs instead (personal experience; Raptor_q).


It is also important to know about how the tank is spotted which will be shown in this picture, with something called “visibility checkpoints”

If any of those areas are shown to an enemy and you are within spotting distance, you will get spotted, so cover them when possiple(buildings, bushes and fallen trees can be used for that purpose, destroyed tanks does not give any bonus to your camo).

Visibility_checkpoints
Click to enlarge

Game Play

Using cover efficiently

You can use cover in many ways however the main rule is “Why do you seek cover” everytime you go into cover, what is the goal by going into cover, for the most part it is to limit where you can get shot from, however there are plenty of ways to use cover that many people don’t think about.

Good cover, bad cover, a general tactic

If you have sought cover without setting the goal for it, you’re just playing as a drone and waiting for something to happen, the idea is, you want to go to cover because you know that the flank you are sitting at is coming under attack or you need the advantage, if none of that can be said to the situation, you just end up sitting as a noob in a bad location and not being useful for the team.

What is cover

When the question is asked people always say, if not yell, the tallest building, forget that, cover is not static, it depends on what you are hiding from.

Arty cover

When seeking cover from arty you generally want something tall, however if it is only arty that is the problem, you might as well just go outside of spotting distance and eliminate the threat completely, remember cover is static, but if you have to be close to the enemy, say you are forced to hold a flank, first of all you have to decide where is the enemy arty sitting, and what arty am i fighting, when you have decided that, seek tall cover, prefered with some bushes, however you’re very vulnerable to flanking in that situation.

You can also use slopes to make it harder for the enemy arty to hit you, however it requires you keep moving around on it.

Anti tank cover

Once again, buildings is what people would say, but if your main threat is the enemy tanks, determine what tanks you are fighting, do they have bad gun depression, how is the view range, if the enemy has a bad depression, you might as well go down into a dip and go under their gun depression, as seen in the picture, once again remember, cover is not static, the position is risky if you don’t have any support though, you will get the first shot, but after that, the enemy could easily have driven into the dip with you.

Tactics_crestRidge

If you are in a fast tank, a bush on a hill can also work as cover, you can use the bush to keep your tank stealthed, if you shoot or get spotted, go back down the hill and you are in cover.

The Chieftain has also written a guide on using cover and what is important to remember to focus on, these two guides are much a like, but i can only recommend you read it —- Link


Hull down

Tactics_hullDown

Most tanks have a turret that is harder to penetrate then the hull, the upper part of some tank destroyers are also harder to penetrate then the lower hull so they can also be “hull down”.

Good hull down positions usually means that you are only showing the hardest point of the tank to the enemy, and a very small % of the tank, it is good for keeping the enemy at bay as you can shoot freely upon them while they can’t really shoot at you, however many people think that is just it, when fighting hull down there more perks then just “hard to shoot at”, you provide scouting for your team, you are putting stress on the enemy as there is a tank they can’t do anything about that is shooting at them, you are holding a position, remember good cover is just not cover, there is an idea behind it, and that can be an idea that some people never learn and even for those who want to learn it, it can be hard, here is a couple of pictures showing the general idea.


Sidescraping

Sidescraping means to use a hard object infront of you to hide some weak points and give the enemy a smaller target to shoot at, there are a couple of key steps involved to do it, your goal is to create such a steep angle for the enemy too shot upon the shell will richochet.

First: You want a building that is big enough to hide your tank completely.

Second: Getting the correct angle on who you are fighting.

Third: Try to bait the shot as controlled as you can, if the enemy does not shoot, expect a more experienced tanker.

Fourth: Back out far enough so you can get a shot on the enemy while still only showing your side armor, take a look at the picture for a visual queue.


Shooting beyond your distance and beyond 707m

Shooting beyond your own view distance (usually around 450m, but i can be affected by many variables.) and even beyond the view distance you can see (707m) by shooting at stealthed individuals you know are somewhere at that area, look for large bushes, rocks, destroyable buildings and other stuff they can hide behind to give themself some cover, odds are they are sitting right there, it’s a useful method of killing passive scouts and hitting hidden enemy tanks, shots that go over the distance you can actually see yourself, for that you will have to rely on the map, identify the location of the enemy on the map and the area on the terrain, look for signs of a tank, destroyed debris, bushes, knocked down trees etc. and take your shot, shots beyond 750m distance should just end up as dings unless fired by arty (uncomfirmed just something i think i’ve read somewhere:Raptor_q).


Understanding arty

Understanding arty is as easy as understanding the person behind it, hard.

However we have something to go on, reload time, shell arch, and reverse slopes, they can all make your life a bit better when fighting them.

Arty has gotten a major nerf since 8.6 and it has required people to relearn arty, don’t believe when people say arty is useless, it’s harder now, but far from useless.

When you fighting against arty it’s important to know their rounds per minute, and their gun arch, some will shoot very low, others very high as seen on this image.


Defending the cap and resetting

Defending the cap is relatively easy, but often not something done by better players, instead people would cut of the roads toward the cap instead of sitting at the cap and defending it, but the idea is to protect the road to the cap instead of defending the cap itself, you have more time to move to spot the enemy if they are closing in on your base and you also have the room to pull back further if it is needed.

If the enemy already is in the cap, you need a careful approach as the enemy will now be in a defending position and ready to shoot at you, so a flanking attack is the best course of action if arty cannot reset it, of course it all depends on the situation, sometimes one tank must fall for the rest of the team to manage to get back.


Brawling

When brawling with other tanks, try to alwas keep your front to the enemy if they are faster then you, never just stand still turn with your turret, turn both the turret and hull at the same time!

At times when you fight with a medium against a heavy tank, depending on the situation, load gold, a medium is all about DPM in close quarter situations, heavy tanks tend to be more favored towards armor, so it is very important that every shot counts.

Some tanks like the Maus are very tall and can hardly aim down, if your medium tank or light tank is small enough you can hug the side of the maus and he will be unable to aim down on you.


Tank Types

Light tanks

Light tanks are generally the most dangerous tank on the field in the sense that it can spot an area and let his team kill the tanks he spot, all he needs to do is spot.

When playing your light tank, people expect you to scout, and you should if you can, some light tanks behave more like a medium then a light tank though, primarily the chinese lights, when you are trying to scout, it’s important to plan ahead on how you scout, that is done in the garage, passive scouting or active scouting.

Passive scouting will usually be binocs, camo net and maybe fuel to reach the destination faster.

Active scouting is all about movement, so you generally bring optics, ventilation and maybe fuel if you need the faster acceleration, but you tend to keep moving at max speed as much as possible, so acceleration is not so important.

Scouting the correct area

When scouting it’s not enough that you just scout the enemy, you need to be sure you scout the correct area, if the enemy has a density of tanks in a certain area where your heavy’s can’t move to without getting shot to pieces, you usually can, get behind, proximity spot, anything you can do to spot the right area, the better it is, and that is also why the scout is the most dangerous tank on the field, it’s not something you can learn by reading, it requires map knowledge, experience with viewrange and a good map awareness.


Medium tanks

A medium tanks job is to bring firepower where it is needed or smash through a very weakly defended flank, on some maps you are actually playing more like a heavy then a medium though, but that is just bad map design, they can in a pinch also be used as a hybrid scout.

When playing your medium tank you want to keep a steady eye on the map, is a flank loosing, is a flank open etc, your job is to close those if you can, you don’t play like a heavy who would go and sit behind a building or a rock, no, a medium should go and find a bush where it is easy to retreat from with good room for manoeuvrability, if you can’t get the first shot in and retreat safely, you might want to look for a better position.

A mediums job can also be to secure choke points early in the game (it depends on the team, something that might be the correct thing to secure, might just cost you the tank for no reason as you didn’t get backup, better stay away from the choke point then) if you can manage to secure the choke point your support, IE heavy tanks can move up to the location without getting destroyed, Malinovka and the hill is a prime example of this.

Some of the Mediums play more like a heavy, especially the E50 and the E50M, more so after the 8.8 patch, so those few mediums might actually want not to sit in a bush but be more in the face of the enemy, often the most deadly E50/E50M is the one going straight for you and not the one sitting and sniping.


Heavy tanks

A heavy tanks job is to secure an area and then move forward and giving the previous area to the mediums and TD’s, sounds simple, on paper it is, but in-game you have your hands full.

Your heavy can vary by a large margin, by such as armor juggernauts as the Maus and the speedboat of a AMX 50b, but the idea is the same, there are what you call hp tankers and armor tankers, HP (high, but mostly flat armor) tankers tend to have more hp then other similar tiered heavy tanks, the ones who are sporting smart armor(very angled) and better mobility.

The difference of the two is that as the name suggest, the smarter tanks(armor tanks) survives by their armor and smart design(angles), whereas the HP tanks survives not by their smart design, but because of their massive hp pool, they expect to get damaged, many of the hp tankers can me made into armor tankers with some effective use of sidescraping and angling making them a much larger threat.

Often heavy tanks don’t fight alone, they tend to fight in a group of other heavy’s and it’s usually a frontal fight against the enemy where both party’s have access to cover, angling and hull down will help you in that regard in those fights, it’s generally smarter to pull back and save your tank if you fall low on hp and save your gun instead of risking it all by staying there.

When you are fighting in a heavy on a city map you will more then often get shot from the side, learn from that, when you are playing look at the map and cover the flanks, if you can’t be at the front, cover the flanks, more often then not, the game is not won frontally in city maps, it’s by the stress from getting shot from the side and flanked.

That stress leads to other people making mistakes, pushing directly into the enemy guns, don’t be that heavy tank.


Tank Destroyers

A tank destroyer will have 2 jobs, one is to sit around and wait to ambush people, that is the one most people refer to when saying “sit back and snipe” the second is following the heavy’s and being just behind them, but not in the way.

When you’re sitting in ambush position you want to be sure that the enemy is coming into your fire, if they don’t you have just wasted 2 minutes sitting around as a noob, plan ahead and be sure, if you are forced to sit and defend because no one else is helping on the flank, you’re doing the right thing, you don’t want to overextend yourself in such situation, you want a place where you can get to cover fast and you’re 100% sure to get the first shot in.

When you’re supporting the heavy tanks you want to follow them and give them support fire, one thing of note is that you do not want to get in the way of them, they need the extra space to move around with as much as you do, so don’t get in the way, if you are in the front and decide to take the corner, do it controlled, take a wide sweep if you have friendly heavy’s on the corner, that way you will not block them, else do a close sweep.

The alpha on your guns can scare most mediums and heavy tanks away, so it is not necessarily a bad thing to get spotted if you try to lock the enemy down.

Do not be surprised if arty is trying to aim for you, arty loves tank destroyers so they will mostly try to shoot them first, so learn to stealth, shoot, withdraw, dissapear, reposition and repeat.


How to track enemy

When you are trying to track and you want to hit the drive sprocket itself to have the highest chance, look at the picture for visual queues.

A damaged track will only have 30% of it’s original hp (not confirmed, just something i’ve read somewhere;Raptor_q) so if you have a low damage gun you might have to fire a couple of times to first damage it, then to track it.


Teamplay

Movement

When fighting with larger amounts of friendly tanks it can be easy to get into a clusterfuck, so mind the other tanks around, and don’t go infront of friendly guns that are pointed at the enemy, you will just end up eating a shell from the friendly.

I won’t go too much into this subject because there is also a good video of it done by Wargaming (see above), mind the tractors, they are a well known reason for getting stuck.


Giving light in darkness, aka spotting.

When spotting it is very important you have learned about the mechanics from the spotting mechanics.

Everyone may have to do the scouting job as tanks will die during the battle, so it is important that everyone learns about it, lucky for you wargaming have made a video (above) that explains it’s very well, while also being short.


Keeping team mates alive

When you are fighting with a team it’s important to try and keep each other alive as best as possible, when someone falls low on hp he should fall behind the others and start acting more as support, there is no magic in how it’s done, it requires training and skill, and some map awareness, to some extent, as you have to keep an eye on your team members hp.

You can also try to catch incoming killshots on friendly’s, just be careful if you do so as you may as well catch the friendly’s killshot or disrupt their aim.


Focus fire

When focus firing it’s important to choose the correct target, don’t pick targets who are of no threat to you, if your job is to call targets you will first have to assign a “threat” value to the enemy tanks, the threat is calculated by the enemy guns, if a gun can’t penetrate your armor then he is of no threat to you, if they all can penetrate your armor, go for the fastest kill, remove as many guns from play as possible.

When you have determed your target, be sure it’s clear who is the target and your team knows it.


Reacting to the enemy

This is all about map awareness, when you are working together with other people it pays of to keep an eye on the map as you can relocate some of all that armor to a better suited place, such as a flank that is loosing to an enemy, those calls can win AND loose games, so don’t just call them on a whim, think about it first.


Cornering

When getting around a corner and you have a team behind you, there is a couple of key steps to keep in mind.

Step one: Make sure your team is ready.

Step two: When everyone is ready, try and bait the first few shots, either by sidescraping or some other maneuver so that the enemy will be reloading when you get around the corner, unless you are trying to be sneaky about it.

Step tree: Pushing the corner, some tank will have to go first, usually the one the furthers away from the corner itself, when going around the corner you want to do it together, much like minute timer on a clock, in broad sweeping motion where you inclose and flank the enemy and you will end up shooting at them from all sides.

That is the general strategy behind it, however there is plenty of small things to add to the situation.

If a tank is dying when doing that motion, he can stop, and back of a few meters, if it is done correctly you will not disrupt the friendly tanks and they will also keep pushing infront of you ending up as an effective shield for you.

You can see it in action around the 6:50 mark link.


Mobbing tactics

When you are mobbing up the last few enemies on the map you want to do it with numbers and come from unexpecting angles as to not run into their guns and get killed in the process.

Making sure to flank the enemy so he has to keep turning his turret, it’s a surefire way to kill an enemy without loosing any hp.

The counter to a mobbing tactic is to simply run away, if you keep moving they can’t position them self for a flanking attack like that, however you might get a shot or two into your ass, that’s the downside, better than dying though.

These tactics can both be used against healthy tanks and damaged tanks.

Here is a short video of it done by Wargaming, do mind that the video is demonstrated with a larger amount of tanks, but it’s basicly the same.


Knowledge

General weakspots and critical hits

When fighting an enemy tank it’s important to know the broad strokes of World of Tanks, all tanks have weakspots and some of them are universal.

One of the most well known universal locations to shoot an enemy tank is the lower frontal glacis as shown in this picture

As you can see the lower frontal glacis (green area) has less armor then the upper part, reason for this is that tanks are designed to sit “hull down” and fire at the enemy, so only a small amount of the tank is actually shown, in World of Tanks though, you will have the joy of abusing that knowledge to kill your enemies.

Another one is the “Cupola” some tanks have very large cupola

The british TD line is a good example of that

Others have a very small one, the russian IS-7 is a good example for that

You can usually penetrate the cupola easier then the frontal armor, as a side bonus, often you can hit the crew when you shoot the cupola, in particular the Commander or the Gunner.

Now when you are trying to kill the enemy the most important thing you can focus on is damaging the enemy tank, sure it’s nice to disable some components in the enemy tank, but it is not vital to killing the enemy tank.

So in other words think more about damaging the enemy tank then trying to take a module from him, unless you know exactly what you are trying to accomplish by removing said module.

You can read more about weak spots on the enemy tanks at this site – wotguru.com

You can also get something called hitskins, which basicly turns the tanks into moving circus tents

refer to the mods section of the guide on where you can get those, they also tend to show where the modules are in the tank, i highly recommend these as it’s a great learning point.

Another great resource for general knowledge about the game is Wotinfo.net


Fighting tier 10

This section is primary to players who play a lot of tier 10 and would like to improve in that area of the game, this is not for the beginners, some of the things said here can take several thousands of games played just to get the gist of it.

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is familiarizing yourself with the tanks at tier 10, especially the one your drive yourself, what odd quirks the tank have, how is the snap fire, module damage etc. when you have identified that you can start using the tanks strong side, and avoid using it for what it’s weakest at.

Gun reload, it cannot be stressed enough how important this is, just by reading the tech tree you can get a good idea on how many shots they fire per minute and you should get a good idea of it, let’s take the FV215b (183) as an example, it has a fire rate of 2 rounds per minute, now that is a 30 seconds reload, now that wasn’t hard to do was it? But just to be on the safe side, remove another 20% of it’s reload time so that is 30 – 6 = 24, why we do that is because the commander of the tank adds another 10% ontop of the other crew in the tank so they have a 110% efficiency, but we also have to take into account the effect of the Gun Rammer, ventilation, BIA and the reload can be even pushed further down by using gold consumables.

And again know the enemy tank, is it fast, is it slow, gun depression, and one of the most important things, how is it’s armor, does it survive by using angles or sheer hp and high value armor, a good tool for identifying what type of tank it is by using a third party tool called WoT Tank Viewer it will show all the tanks in the game and how high it’s armor value is, and what is BEHIND the spaced armor, just take a look at those angles!

Example tank is the russian IS-7.

That is something you normally can’t see and you wouldn’t even know about it until you did your research.

Another important thing is to learn when to back away and safe your gun, your tank might be down to 1hp, but as long as that gun of yours has ammo, it can shoot, AKA doing a “Tactical Withdrawal” you are not going back because you are running from the fight, you are going back because you know the risk/reward is not a gamble you can afford to take, when the team looses a tier 10 tank it means the loss of a top tank and a morale hit on the other players in that match as it means the enemy tier 10’s now outnumber them.

You would rather have a tank that is alive and a pissed of team because you are “camping”, then have a dead tank and a team on low morale, but it’s important to remember the section about cover always have a plan with where you are going to sit, and don’t just go sit there because it’s what others do, look at the map and plan ahead.

Is it safe? learn about the enemy arty where can you effectively sit in cover against what arty, what is the reload of the arty, when you first get spotted, how long does it take before you get back to stealth again.

Gold ammo, and not the polish kind, gold ammo at tier 10 is a invaluable tool so always bring some, you might be in a hard spot where you have to be sure you can take down the enemy tank and you simply can’t afford to waste shells ricochet off the armor, it can be those times that can win or loose the game, but remember the downsides of the gold ammo as well!

Tank Destroyers, TD’s at tier 10 can do the same damage as arty can on that level, never push into a known TD’s firing line unless he is already occupied, reloading, you have plenty of support behind, when rooting out a TD that is sitting and holding you down, it’s often better to have fast tanks move up to him first, they might take a hit, but they will sit behind the heavy or even out of view range most of the time else, so try and save the hitpoints of your heavys when you can, and NEVER push into into a TD’s which you know is sitting there and waiting for you if you don’t have support, you can try to flank to get close, but never get into his firing range, just let him sit there, and wait for him to do a mistake, this bears much resemblence to the tactical withdrawal part.

The correct tool for the job, be sure to take an extra look at what your tank needs, maybe your tank needs some optics/binoc instead of ventilation, does it need 2 repair kits instead of 1 and a fire extinguisher, choose those tools with care as they can enchance your playstyle by a large margin.


Mods

Usefull mods

You can get many mods that can improve on the gameplay, such as a minimap that can tell your max viewrange so you can see when you yourself are out of view.

Examples.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Some mods have been called out as being illegal by wargaming as they provide an unfair advantage, so if something looks to good, it might just be so.

Here is some links to where you can get some mods.

Drongo-lab, it’s in russian though it’s very popular, you can usually get the mods the same day as World of Tanks release a new patch.

Mirtankov.net, also in russian also very popular, but not by the same extend, there is also some annyoing adds there.

Curse.com for World of tanks mods popular english site for mods.

World of Tanks Nexus, same site you get mods for Skyrim not that popular but it’s ease of use is great.


Sources

 Sources used for pictures and information is linked here.

Wiki.WorldofTanks.com/tactics Some incredible good pictures used from there to explain certain situations.

Wiki.WorldofTanks.com/Ammo Took the information about the ammo as well as the pictures, i myself updated (raptor_q) them with the new mechanics.

Wiki.WorldofTanks.com/Battle_Mechanics truly a gem when it comes to information about World of Tanks.

Other pictures from this guide has been uploaded by myself to imgur.com unless there already was a good alternative on google images.