World of Tanks Dodging Artillery Guide

World of Tanks Dodging Artillery Guide by MaxL_1023

Many players complain about getting melted by artillery. I sympathize with them from both sides – I have been 1 shot in a Jagdtiger and 1 shot an IS-4 with my GW Tiger. In both cases the destroyed party was not in arty cover and moving extremely slowly if at all. Since I play both sides I feel I can give a few tips on how to avoid artillery fire. I am also assuming that you know about hard cover and firing angles. Here goes:

Tips to finding cover:

1. Notice where your artillery sets up. Chances are if you are fighting on the same map from the other spawn point their arty will go to the same place. Additionally, pay attention to where enemy arty is lit up. They will be there again.

2. Based on number 1 estimate their firing angles. If you are near a house figure out which side gives you the best artillery cover – often its actually not a side but a corner when the angle is diagonal. Rocks are similar – figure out of the rock is high enough to shield you and wide enough to cover all likely firing angles.

Note that sometimes arty will set up in a weird spot – usually it is not the optimal balance between firing lanes and survivability but it might be able to hit YOU. Most cover can be splashed around or even negated by positioning.

3. Note which artillery pieces the enemy has – very low tier (4 and lower) artillery has an extremely high firing angle. Tiers 5 and 6 are usually fairly flat while 7 and 8 are slightly higher. Note that the S-51 counts as a tier 7 not a 6 because of its gun. This will help you select appropriate cover. Remember that the farther away from the likely firing position you are the higher the trajectories will be – an extreme range shot falls almost vertically.

4. Note how defensible your cover is – can you be easily overrun from multiple directions? Pick a better spot.

5. Note how defensively valuable your cover is – can you shoot at approaching enemies without breaking cover and/or shoot base cappers. If you can’t effectively do at least one of these things then find better cover.

6. Can you be splashed? As a rule of thumb add 1 meter of splash for every tier of enemy arty. Assume they can hit you from that far away. Splash usually does about 1/3 of normal damage with a close miss, less if it is farther away.

7. Is your cover destructible? If it is then many arty players, especially ones with a good rate of fire will try to destroy your cover to get at you, especially if you are top tier.

I hope the above tips will help you find adequate arty cover when you end up with 5 nuke launchers high tier arty per side.

2. Avoiding Fire

If you are ever caught out in the open then here are a few tips to make it harder for artillery to hit you.

1. Find a reverse slope. A reverse slope massively increases the shell dispersion along its incline, meaning that many arty shells which normally would be damaging splash hits will hit the ground far enough away to miss entirely. If the slope is steep enough they won’t be able to hit you at all, their shell trajectories are too flat. Note that if you are very far from the artillery or facing low tier arty you may still be hit due to the extreme firing angle.

2. Move perpendicular to their firing direction continuously. Essentially force them to traverse their guns to lead you, with many artillery you will be able to move enough to force them to turn their hull and drastically reduce their accuracy. I won’t shoot at all unless I’m nearly fully zoomed, I can’t hit a Maus otherwise. High tier artillery is especially vulnerable to this effect. Note that the GW panther and to a lesser extent the Hummel have very wide traverse – it is almost impossible to get out of the arc of a GW panther (It can almost hit from corner to corner from the opposite side.)

3. Move randomly parallel to their firing direction. This is extremely effective if you have a low profile, but in all cases it makes you harder to hit by possible altering your range as a shell is in flight. This will cause some shells to miss entirely and others to merely splash instead of a deadly direct hit.

4. Turn you turret towards the likely direction if possible. From experience it makes a miss near the turret side much more likely on a near overshoot.

5. Periodically reverse direction 180 degrees. If you do this unpredictably and you are fairly mobile you are almost impossible to hit. A good medium driver is extremely difficult to directly hit if they reverse and move forward more often then your shell’s flight time – you literally have to guess not where they are currently moving but when they will reverse and this is more difficult. Even heavies can cause problems especially at long range.

6. If you see a nearby splash drive in a straight line perpendicular to the firing direction for 4 seconds per artillery tier while continuing to vary your parallel range. Usually this means that while they are reloading you will exit their gun traverse and force them to re zoom – buying you another 15 seconds if the arty is high tier. If there are multiple artillery pieces firing at you then you should still force most of them to turn if you can move fast enough and hope for a miss due to your range changes. It is hard to avoid a few splashes though and the arty can get lucky.

7. Retreat from the local battle for about a minute – you may disappear from the map and arty will target another tank. Then come back from a different direction and execute a flank attack.

Conclusion

Tactics can defeat even the most skilled artillery driver – if you change direction while their shell is in the air then unless they were going to miss and got lucky you will dodge at least a direct hit. Overall whether or not you get melted is partially luck – but you can massively improve your odds by smart positioning and skillful evasion. Practice will make perfect, and soon you’ll be making GOD-arty curse their own name.

PS: Try arty for yourself if you haven’t yet – it will help you evade them if nothing else. It’s good to see both sides of the story, maybe your opinion of them will change. If not well I’ll try my best not to nuke you too often, just don’t try to go anywhere important. I got teammates to support same as you do.

Happy Hunting! (If you read this then not for arty)