Original date of blog: February 16th, 2015
I recently got my second tier X tank. So that means I have completed another line of tanks. The line this time is the Russian tank destroyer-line. I will be skipping the first three tiers and going straight to tier IV with this line too.
The tier IV tank is the SU-85B. Not sure why the B comes first when tier V is the SU-85, but heck, logic was never Wargaming’s strong suit. It is a nice tank. It’s a convertible tank, and I think it should only be used in good weather. Luckily, it never rains in WOTB, which helps, but I feel for the guys that had to drive it IRL. It has a good gun too, which, if you fail-platoon it with a tier IX tank, can even take out those high level tanks (I did this with Turtle and he had two kills one match). Just keep in mind that fail-platooning is a mean thing to do and that one shot can and will kill you.
Tier V is the SU-85, which has a nice gun, but the tank itself takes some getting used to. The tank is very low, especially compared to all the German tank destroyers that just get bigger and bigger as the tiers get higher. It reloads somewhat slow, but overall you can have some great games with this little thing.
When you get to tier VI and start driving the SU-100, you start to notice that, where the German tanks just got slower as they got bigger, these tanks start to get faster, but change fairly little in size. Of the several tier VI tanks that I have, this is the only really tolerable and fun one. Though I have to add that I don’t have them all yet. Not by a long shot.
Now, I’ve skipped through those fairly quickly, to get to the SU-152. This tank I’d like to call the Reaper. Why? Because the stock-gun is so frigging awesome that with HE loaded, you can one-shot most tier V tanks and even some tier VI tanks. Heck, you can even one-shot a fellow SU-152 with it! It is completely epic! It was the sole reason I started down the road of the Russian tank destroyers, having seen Turtle drive it so expertly when we first started platooning. To be that powerful, you have to have big weaknesses though, and the weakness of this gun is that you can only fire every twenty seconds.
While you get to spend XP on the tracks and the engine, there really is no need to get the bigger guns. Yes, the higher tier guns can penetrate more, but you regret equipping them whenever you meet tiers lower than you on the battlefield. This tank will teach you to appreciate HE, it teaches you patience, to take cover, because with only one shell every twenty seconds or so, you need to make your shots count.
After the SU-152, I already figured it would be hard to find a tank -that- awesome and the ISU-152 doesn’t disappoint you in disappointing you. Compared to the SU-152 it is just slow, and the gun is no good, and the tank seems to derp all over the place. The top gun costs a massive 75k XP, which doesn’t help. Even with me saving up all my free XP to get parts for tiers VIII and IX, I didn’t have enough to get it straight away – and I worried about what I would need when I would get to tier IX in this line.
But the top gun on the ISU-152 is actually the same top gun on the Object 704, as was the engine, meaning I would only need roughly 30k XP to get the tracks for it. That was do-able. So I invested all my free XP into the top gun on the ISU-152. It made quite the difference, making the tank a lot more fun to drive. Considering this is the second tier VIII tank that I was driving that disappointed me so, I’m fearing what the other tier VIII tanks will do to me.
While the Jagdtiger, being my first tier IX ever, gave me much hardship when I first got it, getting the Object 704 was like getting a box of fun. It’s a lot more mobile than the ISU-152 and faster, too. It’s incredible. I’ve gotten an excellent winrate on it, and that’s not even just because of those I’ve been platooning with. Even without the crew at a 100%, and with the ventilation equipped and using chocolate as a consumable (both adding to crew skills), it rocked so hard it felt like an earthquake.
This has to be by far my favourite tank, combined with the Jagdtiger. It is excellent to peek-a-boom with. This is why I’m calling it the Crocodile. It is best for lying in wait, not to be confused with sniping, then when you spot your prey, strike hard and true, before returning below the surface of the water, cherishing the damage you inflicted. For a tier IX tank, it has reasonably weak armour, and using cover is something you have to do in order to survive and be good in this tank. And like all tank destroyers, you have to be careful not to get flanked in it.
The grind to get to the tier X tank of this line seems endless, but definitely not something to mind, because it is such a fun tank to drive, and this tank works well with mediums, heavies and other tank destroyers. It’s almost as fast as a medium, which means you can actually use it to flank fairly easily, though I advise only doing that when you have support with you in case you meet the mediums of your enemy.
And then, last thursday, I suddenly had it. The Object 268. It had me squealing in joy, even if I got shot dead easily the first match (thanks for that, Mouse!). The thing is incredibly fast, and has a decent firing rate and a big gun like all tier X’s. The price? It has crap armour. On one side, you can bounce a hell lot of shots in it (now that I’m becoming a better tanker, I’ve been able to bounce a lot more in any tank to be honest, but with this tank, it’s even easier), but two shots can kill you.
One of the niftiest things about the 268 though, is that it’s near impossible to flank, unless the flanker is a medium driven by someone who knows what they’re doing. Which, nowadays, is something you don’t see very often. That, combined with the fact it can bounce so much, means that you can survive getting flanked. But for some reason, as I entered battle after battle, I just kept dying. My overall winrate has dropped 0.15% while driving this tank.
At first I truly didn’t understand why I kept dying in it, and why my rates in it just aren’t near what I manage to get in the Object 704. Chimp kept telling me to stay on the second line of battle, and I usually remembered that whenever I had driven off, was in front of everyone, and met the enemy on my own and got killed fast (so, a bit late). I’m used to slow tank destroyers from the German line, where you just gun it to get as fast as you can wherever you’re going. That just doesn’t work in Object 268.
And something Chimp said last saturday made me realise why I die in the 268 and pwn in the 704; the 704 is just that little bit slower than I’m not the fastest to get anywhere, so I would be on the second line of battle in the beginning to begin with.
But the 268 can run at the enemy, damage the enemy, go past the enemy, and run for cover – just like medium can. Which is how I got to the name the Raptor. Only, you can’t circle with this tank and it doesn’t have a turret. So you can’t drive it like a medium either. And darting at and past the enemy can well get you shot in the behind.
It is a creature that is hard to learn how to control, and I will probably noob quite much still while learning to do so. But if I can just keep telling myself again and again to hang back, to wait, to let the boobs spring any boobytraps there might be (and have others tell me that too, when entering battles together), I might get as decent a winrate on this tank as I have on the 704. It’s a challenge, and I think I’ll like wrestling it.
It will also teach me some of the things I will need to know when I start driving mediums, seeing as I couldn’t drive one of those right now to save my life. I should have realised that I would suck in the 268 when I first learned just how fast it was. It might have saved my winrate, and the winrate of those I’ve tanked with too (sorry guys!). I promise I’ll better myself!
There have been a few pro’s to dying so fast though, if you can call it that. One time, I was platooning with Chimp, and we were in the map Oasis Palms. It has desert hills in one corner, and rock hills in the other corner. Whichever way you go, you will get sniped at from the other side of the map. Chimp was driving his E100, I was in my 268. I drove up the rock hills, not even getting sniped at yet, but up there I met two enemies. Though I damaged them a bit, and Zeus managed to kill one before it killed me, I was busy facehugging the second tank and near possible survival against it, when a third tank (an Object 704) came at me and killed me off.
I switched my view I could watch Chimp play. Let me tell you, it was beyond epic. While our team just vanished around him, getting absolutely slaughtered by the enemy, Chimp took care of the two tanks near my corpse and the third tank that was near him, angling his tank expertly and not even getting damaged. This left him alone against the three remaining enemies.
Ever since I’d died though, he’d been telling me not to worry and that he had this, and though I know him to be epic, I still figured he would be dying, alone against so many. I watched, wide-eyed, heart in my throat, making squeaking noises, as he bounced several shots, and killed off two of the three, leaving just one little guy. But as all this went down, time had been ticking away. Chimp shot – and it bounced. There were few seconds left before it would become a draw, we were both just chanting ‘come on’. At the literal last second of the match, his gun had reloaded and he fired – killing off the final guy just as the text ‘battle finished’ came onto the screen.
He did 8,776 damage to the total 12,030 health the enemy team had, earned a whooping 1,998 XP in just -one- battle and earning himself a Raseinai medal to boot. It was the most epic battle I have ever witnessed. That’s the kind of player Chimp is, and why he used to have the name Zeus in the blog. He’s OP.
BF: 4,255 still
WR: 59.95%
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