I watched some recent arty videos from the sandbox server and came up with a idea to potentially make the arty more usefull and overall less annoying to play, and to play against.

• Counter battery fire
  whenever a arty shoots it gets marked on the map for enemy arty and the 3D model is rendered for a certain time (without nametags and markers though) the mark on the map gets more and more accurate the longer the arty stays in one spot, and eventually (lets say 5 shots without moving) it gets marked on the map for other tankers.This means there is a arty vs arty gameplay and each arty has to move every few shots, or it gets counter batteried by enemy arty or anyone knows where the SPG is sitting.this mechanic was the core of the arty gameplay in Armored warfare and it made it much more difficult to do well in arty.
• Ammo changes I would change the ammo arty gets to 3 "different" HE rounds (its basically just different fuzes):
  – The normal HE round with impact fuze and a slightly lower blast radius and no stun, this round does the same damage as old arty does. (some people in the comments mentioned they rather take a big slap, than be stunned to death)
  – a Airburst with HUGE blast radius that detonates like 10m over the ground and stuns everything in a large area without doing damage (to do ANY damage the enemy would have to be right below the explosion, it does extra damage vs open top vehicles though)
  – HE with delayed fuzing that has high penetration and a super small blast radius (like 10% of the original, because it digs deep into the ground)
• On top I would add 2 more ammo options:
  – smoke rounds
  – illumination rounds
• Swaping ammo
  to make all rounds more viable I also would reduce the time to "swap ammo" to 1/4 the normal reload time (imagine the arty crew just changing the setting on the fuze of the round and putting it back in) this would be a realistic approach to the issue of changing ammo in arty and having a completely different battlefield / situation 40 seconds after you did that, the "ammo swap" idea would help it using a mostly realistic method, because fuzes with multiple settings where already a thing in the timeframe of WOT:

Mechanical time = Airburst, Superquick = Impact. the fuze functions on both ways depending on the setting used. SOURCE: TM 9-1300-203, Artillery Ammunition, April 1967

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These fuzes date back much further, wikipedia says multi function fuzes exist as early as the mid 19th century, here a example of 1915.