The chieftan is great once you 1) treat it like the sniper it is and 2) get the still brew appliqué armor.
The Akatsiya is.. big. And expensive. Performance? It's quicker in turns and repositioning than the Gvosdika and has three shots to a salvo despite having the same reload time. The tricky part comes from enemy counterbattery. Firing all three rounds marks your position precisely, so save the big volleys for when you know you can't be hit. Personally.. I despise counter-battery. It's a lot of wasted shots with no reward. Arty still takes shots at tanks, you can't really stop them effectively. Ping the map for the scouts when they shoot and go after dumb tankers. More points, more money. Had someone bitch at me for not doing CB tonight. I asked him if he'd like to be told he could only have a 500 point $45k match in his Abrams. CB is a secondary objective at best.
ok, so, with the spaced stillbrew armor the turret on the Chief is basically impervious to just about everything in-tier. the gun depression is amazing, so with this tank, find a low hill or depression, go hull down so only your turret is showing, and then laugh when nothing can hit you and your accurate APFSDS rounds tear shit apart. my only regret is that the HESH round is useless. they need to buff its component/crew damage.
Now that I look at the two arty trees, I have a feeling the Wolfi line is out-classed. ALL of the Shishkin arty gets the rocket-propelled HE rounds (travel faster, harder to evade) and their top-tier damage per round is almost twice as much. Only the top tier in Wolfi gets RP-HE. Three rounds in a salvo is no joke, but it really doesn't compare. The advantage that I've learned to exploit, however, is that you can use your first round to scare the enemy out of position and have the second in the air where you intuit they will be. It's worked well for 1v1 counterbattery, but when up against a pair of coordinated or even just equally attentive arty, you suffer. Of course.. T6 Shishkin arty gets RP-HE AND 3 round salvos. Something stinks.
Don't know if i have said it before but i'm playing this on the EU server. My primary focus is on HCLA and Recon. Counter-battery is not worth it if its only 1 arty per side unless you have a really good shot at it. Even if its 2 per side i would say the same. Once you reach 3 per side, one should do counter-battery. What i found from playing the Scorpion (It only have HE and HESH) is that HE tend to deal more damage while HESH deals more component/crew damage. I atleast get more crits with it
Just got mine yesterday and that's exactly what i do. You are totally right about the ammo too. The HESH rounds are weaksauce and even the AP seems to either overpen or underpen a lot of targets (i miss having HEAT for killing those light tanks). If I'm using HESH rounds, I should be able to kill or seriously maim any MBT with no more than 5 rounds... that is not the case right now. I can consistently deal more damage in my OF-4 (leopard line) which is a whole tier lower... but speed might also be a contributing factor; the Chief is great at holding a alleyway, but it is lousy at intercepting and exploiting weaknesses in the enemy's lines. You are spot on about it bouncing most everything, though. Find a nice little crater to park yourself in and laugh as you shrug off the hits... can be a little boring though if you like mobility.
Learned a new (to me) trick tonight. Find where the baddies are guarding a chokepoint. Smoke in front of them. Flare on top of them. Suddenly: sniping. Completely wrecked their composure. Fire from the sky.
I has a Chief. Chief is good. Sheo is right - it cannot brawl on PvE HARD because you're up against Tier 7 and 8 TD and MBT. It's a sniper so have your loader learn reload skills and make that barrel all Shiny and Chrome! Applique makes the turret near indestructible, which is awesome. Also, Mags, much of it's idiotic mobility issues get sorted if you use your Universal slot for Air Induction, get Smooth Ride or Cross Country on your driver and upgrade to the last engine. It doesn't become "mobile" by any stretch of the imagination, but it's significantly better than it starts with. Also, the increased Hull Turn speed allow you some flexibility when you're caught fighting in a street.
Looking at the Wolfi Recon tree, you see "CRAB" way down at tier9. Google returned: http://www.military-today.com/apc/panhard_crab.htm
I killed the enemy team's Fox (and only Recon) by asking a question about his name, subsequently causing him to drive off a cliff while he was typing. We won. PsyOps Badge unlocked.
Had a guy in a BMP-2 call me "useless" after doing 8700 damage. Which is about 6700 more than he did. Had the rest of the team laugh their asses off at him. It was funny.
I'm convinced now that the most consistent way to organize a team of children and idiots in PvP is to run as a scout and focus on spotting targets. Just looking at my win/loss stats shows a massive improvement when I'm using a scout. It is definitely the fastest way to make money for damn sure (PvE is still a solid choice for XP though).
