That was a fun 5 minutes.
Link for reference:
I have been shaking excited about ranked for months. I am over the fact we had no updates at all until today. Perhaps I am just a complainer but I noticed something I consider absolutely insane in the information package.
Role Experience.
Is the idea good. Yes. Yes it is. Now you don't have redline sniping scouts. If you do they quickly get left in the dusk in Division 1.
What is the issue? Ranked was already a reward tank and OP tank fest. WG has put the nail in the coffin of a huge number of Tier X tanks. You simply will not see them in ranked because the bad tanks are actually given a handicap. How does this even happen? This tank is not ideal for ranked. Here. Have a 50% handicap on Ranked XP. Perhaps it is a bad joke that will be corrected.
Let us compare a few assuming 100% experience is a tank can fulfill all objectives of the role it is given. With equal share given to each if more than one.
S. Conq and Obj. 277: Breakthrough tanks.
Objective: Block damage, take damage, deal damage (Within 300m)
Ability of these two tanks to do that: 100% All 3 objectives are regular occurrence and a good player can encourage them to happen more.
Patton and Centurion AX: Light attack vehicles.
Objective: Block damage and deal damage within own view range.
Ability of these two tanks to deal damage within view range: 100% Ability to block damage: 0% (Perhaps not zero but awfully close)
Total Ranked XP bonus available 50%. No matter how good you are you are NOT going to block damage in Tier X ranked with either of these tanks. Nearly any gold round fired will pen your turret at 10 degrees depression. Unless you are lucky and skill does not determine whether the enemy shell moves over one single mm and you get lucky.
We can then go to scouts. Tracked scouts are told to sit in a bush and do not move.
Requirements: Spot and assist damage without being spotted. Damage enemies in your view range. spot enemies first.
Two of these are mutually exclusive which means to get 100% experience you need a 15 minute game and 7.5 minutes passive spotting and 7.5 minutes active hunting.
Compare this to wheeled lights.
Qualifications are the same except the requirement to be unspotted goes away and is replaced with ADDING tracking damage.
This means all actions by an EBR are included in the total for the entire match where in a tracked light you get to pick 50% of the bonus.
The list goes on and on. There are tanks that unless you are AMAZING and even then you would progress much faster in other tanks that you will totally fail in when it comes to experience.
I will do my best to compile a list of tanks to never play, tanks to perhaps play and tanks you MUST play to do well (Obviously without being so good that these things do not matter). It is not a matter of if the tank is stronger but if it has the proper bonuses. Which, sadly enough it seems most of the OP tanks have the proper role.
Welcome to world of ranked with only 3 tanks supported. Stay tuned for my list within a few days.
Correct me if I am wrong.
EDIT: As I think about it we missed ranked last time so they could 'improve it'. Two things. One: I called that this would be a train wreck in my post last week ranting about ranked. Second thing: It would have been much less coding and trouble to simply say here are the few tanks allowed in ranked. Have a nice day. Seems a lot of programming and development time we really need elsewhere was used to do just that but much more in depth…SMH
