World of Tanks Artillery and You Guide

World of Tanks Artillery and You Guide by Baine

Hello,

I figured I would like to write a little something on the teamwork between you and your artillery. More than enough i see teamwork fail in the most important aspects, resulting in a loss for the team.
This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with artillery.

General
I, as the biggest artillery piece in my team 98% of the time, like to try and organize my team, as i think i have a feeling as to how people like to plan their attacks. This doesn’t mean I’m right 100% of the time, but i experienced that i forsee it most of the time.
Now what i noticed that while there are a lot of good people that accept my strategies and help me out, there are people that go like “YEAH RIGHT, don’t listen to the arty fu**er” “omg you cocky bastard” “WHY DO ARTILLERY GUYS ALWAYS THINK THEY CAN COMMAND US?”
I don’t know what made those people so angry but I guess we have to go with those black sheeps.

Flanks
The most important thing on any map is to secure the flanks, defend the flanks and kill the light tanks that come through. It’s is of great importance to NOT sit next to your artillery and say “I’m gonna defend you from here” because if the enemy gets that close, it’s over already. Instead you will have to move out at least 3 sectors in front of the artillery, so you spot enemies at a range where the artillery can still pick them off.
And please ram the light tanks, thats where people usually fail, they try to snipe a leopard going fullspeed through 7 guys, with nobody hitting him, most likely rather shooting each other by accident.

Open Flanks and you
Sometimes people will ignore the advice to secure the flanks and thus leave one completely open. (You may get the regular good guy trying to hold it on his own, but getting overwhelmed – they still get my respect)
If you see the whole team moving one side, try to get someone else to help you on the other flank.
If you don’t do that, you will have no artillery support on the flank that everyone attacks because I as artillery will have to save my shots to survive vs flankers.
That happens more than enough and when I’m busy killing the small medium tanks that rush through the open flank where only 1 tank would have stopped them, i get insulted by the big group of rushers that went the other way in a big wolfpack and encountered a Maus and a Ferdinand or something like this and get slaughtered horribly – because I didn’t support them and thus am “a stupid arty noob who is sleeping”. Yeah right.
And again, friendly reminder: Don’t sit next/behind your arty in order to protect it. It will fail in 80%. Move up!

Scouting
If the artillery asks you to defend, then stick to the 3-sector-plan and don’t camp in close proximity to it. If you plan on attacking, especially light tanks, announce it early enough, so arty can get ready and ping the sector where you are going to.
Sometimes when i ask scouts to scout mid ahead on Lakeville for example, i get the response “Fu** you, you want me to die, so you can get the kills, i don’t sacrifice myself for your stats you ass” – And I ask myself, where did i say go and die. There are many ways to scouting, some people think it’s going ahead and standing in front of big tanks, while there is so much cover that still gives the opportunity to scout well.
Scouts are one of the most important tanks for every artillery, it should be a symbiose not some sort of rivalry…

Getting Arty support
So let’s assume we got a good defense and some people start an offense.
Soon they meet an enemy wolfpack.
At first check where they are, if they are behind houses, artillery won’t be able to help you, try to lure them around, make them come to get you, DON’T engage them if they are in cover, unless you have no reason to fear them.
Always go for the weak targets! Leave 100% targets to the artillery, because those are not much of a shot waste for me, rather one shot a 100% target than a 20% target. (This is what a lot of artillery players still need to learn as i hear it more than once that “ARtillery only steals my kills” and on the other hand some people just need to wake up)
Ping the map, or write in chat if you need support vs a special target.
Try to disable the tracks or ram them or block them in order for the artillery to get a more precise shot off. Important: don’t stand with the back to your artillery, but rather with the side to it, or else you will most likely stop the shot… and die.

Priorities
If you see the loading screen showing a big artillery piece on the enemies side, then you light tanks should already plan on how to get it
Most of the time it becomes a “Who-spots-whom-first” Western, where artillery kills artillery. Again, dead enemy artillery helps your team aswell.
That’s why enemy light tanks are on the top kill list. If they spot the artillery, it is in deep trouble most of the time.
Big fast tanks are another high priority target, as they like to rush in aswell, tanks like that are Panthers, VKs, T-43/44 and the IS for example. Tracking them is of great importance.
After that come the big slow tanks, like KVs, Maus, Ferdinands etc. and the medium tanks.

If you stick to this, in most cases with an artillery player who knows his business you will win.

Just not on Himmelsdorf.