The E100 largely depends on the map. In the right map you can really do well. On more open maps, its slower speed and large size really hurt it. But its better than the maus on open maps.
balancing?
been fed up with arty for the past 6 years.
I think Wargaming can fix a lot of the grievance on arty by simply limiting the number of arty on each team to no more than two, or even just one, even if it is at the expense of longer wait time for arty players. It shouldn't matter to their bottom line since they hardly offer any premium arty anyway.
I don't want arty to be totally removed because sometimes it helps keep those top tier "super" heavies and TDs with super gun and impenetrable frontal armor in checks from steamrolling the team with mainly top tier mediums. Another thing would be trying to perfect the arty mechanics. I don't like that arty have the god view of the battlefield. Though I don't have a good idea of the perfect mechanics either, maybe fire by coordinate reported by friendly tanks, but that can get complicated and also you might have ppl trolling to tell the arty to fire at his own team. Anyway, I think limiting the number of arty is the quickest and easiest to implement now.
the real problem with arty is, they added them in the game with a purpose they never had in real life. Hence all the problems, satellite view, really? laser accuracy, really? we are talking about ww2 arty era, gps were not even invented. they fired blindly 90% of the times or required dedicated spotters and constant communications between them. Anyways, arty were useful in huge numbers to completely suppress an area and deny enemy troop movement, not aim at a tank and one shot it (it could happens when 20k arty were firing together, out of luck)
the whole thing is a videogame and made for that and arty makes perfect sense for that. It's actually quite a good design.
Basically, 100 points of damage from a heavy or medium tank doesn't cause rage, but 10 points of damage from arty causes more rage than that 100. They're simply furious that arty hit them, and that's it. These players' solution is, don't let arty hit them. Let arty sit there and do nothing. Fixed. The problem is these players - there is no game fix to that that's clear.
if it was such a good design, there would not be a constant disgust about it among half the player base. have you heard someone or lots of complains about scouts? repair kits, and so on? I have only 1 complain about the game and ...as you have guessed it, arty. Everything else is fine, no game is perfect.
I understand you like to play arty, but for every guy like you, there's another who despise it. And in my book, this is totally unacceptable.
The current issue with arty is that they have reloads that are twice as fast as before their buff, their aim times are twice as fast, and the stuff effect can be very debilitating for heavies. Like I said, I often have all three arty shooting only at me. So they can keep me perma tracked, meanwhile they are 1/4 mile away and I cannot do a single thing to avoid them or shoot back. If I am battle another tank and they shoot me, I am ok with that. Because I can shoot back.
WG's map changes and the arty changes from last year are intended to make people not want to play arty. I guarantee once the number of arty players drops below X percent, they will be gone. The ONLY reason I have ever played arty is for the missions. If order for me to get honors on a certain set of missions, I have to play arty.
you can critic anything another person will write. Critics are endless and can be made valid with any kind of logic. We just see Arty from very different perspective. Me - annoying as hell - and you - beneficial for the game - we will never agree no matter what our arguments are.
what we want - as players and as game developers - is a good, fun and enjoyable game. Being shot by an arty with satellite view, with shell bending gravity and dead laser accuracy, removes most of it. Of course you have a different opinion.
As i have said, i am not annoyed by anything else but arty. it's almost a game breaker, meaning that i would play a lot more if that stupid mechanic wasn't in the game.