First sentence: complete horseshit. There is no *deep thinking* involved.
Disagree, at least when it comes to solo pubs. Clan matches are a different beast and I would agree with you there.
You say there's little difference between playing an arty well or poorly, I say there's a big difference.
I would agree, my m40/43 pulls in a 59% win ratio with 750 battles, played under the same name, >99% solo pubs.
Been following this thread for a bit, since I'm a bit of a lurker here. My two cents:
Skillset to do well in Arty in pubs:
To do really well in arty, you need think strategically, mostly because you can shift fire from one side of map to the other in the time it takes to reload. You need to know where a good shooting spot is to minimize the cover the enemy to use, but also balance that with where the other friendly arty is at to give the enemy even less cover to use. You also need to see where you scouts are going to estimate where the first practical enemy will be spotted (med/heavy vice t50-2). You need to see the balance of tanks, to shore up the weak side when 3 tanks take one lane, and 6 the other (or help the 6 tanks for a quick breakthrough, depends on enemy). Need to pay attention to see if friendly scout is going for an arty run, and alert him if you can't hit corner to corner (like the 40/43 on some maps). I maximize hits by not going counter-battery, wastes time and shots that would be better off on an exposed tank; I run about a 40% hit rate with arty, generally I see 500-700 damage hits on heavy armor; most frenchies/soft tanks get hit harder, and rarely see 1000+ hits, since I run almost exclusively HE. No XVM, though that would help to target good players. But I don't run it because ultimately, I go for the easy, open shot. Why waste time trying to hit a good player in decent cover when another tank is in the open?
Every shot needs to count due to long reload times. And the shots must get out quickly, can't waste time turning the hull once loaded, and wasting another 20 seconds to get an accurate shot. Thus target prediction is key, accurately predicting what the enemy will do 30 seconds from now so I can aim while reloading, for the entire map. The perfect shot is one that you can get off the moment you reload, and switching sections of map (hull movement) is ideally done only during reloads, as part of relocation to avoid CB fire.
Why we hate arty
Especially with the introduction of TD's that can two shot a m103, or the ever present risk of getting ammo-racked, the problem isn't so much the insta-damage, its that arty can shift fire rapidly from one side of map to other that makes it overly valuable for a single vehicle. Just as important, there's always the anger felt when you get hit by something that you can't fight back at. Its easy to get beaten by another tank while in a tank, after all, most of the time you're duking it out with him, and you get your licks in before dying an honorable death, but with arty, you explode out of nowhere which is very frustrating. The arty is sitting back not risking his own tank while you get blasted away, seems unfair. There is similar backlash against invisible tanks, but even that is more acceptable since we know that if they can hit us, we can hit them, and we can also blaim sight mechanics for that.
Conclusion
Ultimately, arty requires a different skillset than tanks, and to learn the basics and do decent is much easier in arty than in tanks, due to lack of incoming rounds and no need for mechanics knowledge (weakspots/pen/armor/etc). But to excel in arty, it is just as difficult as tanks, just in a different skillset.
To illustrate, comparing the stats for PowerYoga and myself, he is clearly the better tanker, yet when it came to his top two arty, an s-51 and 212 (the two also most similar to my 40/43 thanks to the large gun on the s-51 and same tier for the 212), his win rate is clearly lower than mine (53/48% vs. 59%). The result can be attributed to either, a) the 40/43 is OP and I exploit that, b) arty skills are different than tank skills, c) platooning makes a huge difference, or d) I'm really, really lucky with MM and RNG.
If arty is so easy and unbalanced, shouldn't good players have equal or higher win rates for their arty than with their tanks? How often is that true?
I think the pattern is developing that those that have played arty at t7/8 for 500+ games think that to excel in arty is difficult, but easy to do well, and the ones that haven't think that all arty is easy. The disagreement is whether that crossover point exists.
**Side note: I hate that tanks will earn Lucky if I kill them, but I also happen to die in my own blast radius at the same time. Its happened on more than one occasion.
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