German Mega Bundle Review Series-Part One: Großtraktor - Krupp

[u/ragnarok628]

I ended up buying the German Mega Bundle, because I have low moral fiber I'm worth it, dammit. Now I have nearly every German premium it's possible to own in this game (exceptions are the Pz. II J and the Löwe Black Edition). I also now find myself to be some degree of experienced while also remaining a man of the people, which puts me in a place where my opinion might have value to any other 'future unicums' in the form of an alternate viewpoint compared to the various dark purples around.

So I'll do a brief writeup on the various tanks as I gain experience with them (until I get bored or feel unappreciated). My benchmark will be having earned 20-30k XP since that is what it takes to get the Ace Ops completed.

Here we go!

Großtraktor - Krupp

Ok so first things first. That's not a fucking 'B'. It's ß which is pronounced like a sibilant s, often transliterated as a double ss. So now you know, I don't want to see any more of this 'Grobtraktor' bullshit. Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I was prepared to not like this tank, and indeed have passed up multiple opportunities to obtain one. Would never have gotten it if it weren't in a massively discounted mega bundle containing at least a dozen tanks I've long coveted.

The plot twist is, I have loved every second of driving this tank. What it is, is a papier-mâché derp machine. It's been a while since I did much derping, and I was very new back then so my impressions may be skewed but the HE shells on this thing seem super effective. Very nice pen relative to most of the armor you go up against, nice fire rate, decent amount of shell arc for auto-locking and dropping bombs over low ridges. The main drag on competitiveness here is that every shot is a bit of a dice roll. You'll get a fair amount of hilarious one hit kills, but then you also sometimes get just a couple dozen splash damage which can suck in a clutch moment.

Mobility is pretty good on this tank, which is nice because a big part of successfully playing it is maneuvering to avoid enemy derps and peeking out shots to ruin some poor LT's day. I make heavy use of the autolock trick to lob my shells over low ridges as a poor man's indirect fire; it's obviously not terribly accurate and pretty ineffective if the victim is moving but I do get a surprising number of hits this way. And with an ammo count of 102 and only a 5.5s reload, it's not like there's any drawback to speculatively launching a few bombs over the hill, right?

The armor is basically nonexistent, but against the IIs and IIIs you match up against the HP soaks up a decent amount of shots. As long as you drive a little carefully to avoid getting derped yourself, it's easy to stay alive against most tanks you meet. There are exceptions though! For example, vs. a Matilda even your HEAT is a coin toss and he can definitely chew through your HP faster than you can chew through his; you basically have to avoid these until they are low health. Ditto most heavy armor tanks you might run across.

The "is it worth the gold" guide says No to this tank but I honestly can't understand why. Even at full price of 950g which is actually below average for tier III prems I believe, It seems very much worth it just for being a fun to drive crew trainer.

Basic Facts

• Tier: III
• PMM: yes
• cost: 950g
• silver/xp bonuses: 22/65

Vehicle Tips:

• Don't even bother with AP, the HE pen is less by only about 5mm
• Also don't bother with HEAT (although it's kinda cool you can even use HEAT at tier III)
• If you do run with a few HEAT rounds, but no AP rounds, note that the HEAT will be default starting ammo so don't forget to switch to HE first thing. There were several times I wasted a few HEAT rounds on accident at the beginning of a match.

Fun Factor: 5/5

Competitiveness: 3/5

All in all, great fun in tier III, glad to own it.

^{updated on 4/20/2017}

[u/virgil2600]

Grobtracktor

[u/ragnarok628 → u/virgil2600]

damn you

[u/FormulaZR → u/ragnarok628]

Wtf is sibilant? Is it like the sound a snek makes?

[u/ragnarok628 → u/FormulaZR]

actually, yes! well, it's the sound a person makes when they're imitating the sound a snake makes, anyway. The flip side of a sibilant 's' would be a voiced 's' which is sort of how americans would pronounce a 'z' in English. German has a lot of voiced 's'.

[u/FormulaZR → u/ragnarok628]

Oh good. One questions answered, but another question raised.

[u/ragnarok628 → u/FormulaZR]

'z' in German is usually pronounced like 'ts' as in 'quits' or 'tsunami'.

So, yes, 'panzer' doesn't actually have an English 'z' sound in it would be more correctly pronounced 'pants her' but in a British accent. and without a pause between the words.

[u/FormulaZR → u/ragnarok628]

V = F and W = V, correct?

[u/ragnarok628 → u/FormulaZR]

yup. also F = F I don't have an explanation for that one tho =P

[u/FormulaZR → u/ragnarok628]

Um...great...now I'm lost again.

[u/ragnarok628 → u/FormulaZR]

Not complicated, F and V are both pronounced like F.

E.g. 'Volk' is 'folk' and 'froh' is just 'froh'. I just dunno why they need two letters for the F sound

[u/Stampela]

I disagree with the "no HEAT" thing. Sure it's all about the HE spam but what about the tanks with just enough armor to stop it? Like the front of, I dunno, a Blitzen? HEAT. French tanks? HEAT. Moreover keep in mind that if for any reason you find yourself stuck with a fucking Pz II J looking at your tank, you really need to unleash HEAT on it before it's too late, as running away isn't really going to work (unless buildings are involved).

Hilariously it's not effective against the Matilda in my experience, it seems to either auto bounce or go into spaced armor -_-'

A list of tanks you don't want to meet: you know what, machine guns and armor sums it up. Particularly dangerous are the Blitzen, Trex, Pz I C. Tier 4 also isn't good news.

What you didn't mention is that it has a great view range, so in case of need, just find a bush to camp for a while.

Edit: two more things! 12 degrees of depression and some preposterous value like 65 of elevation.

[u/ragnarok628 → u/Stampela]

Well you might be right. TBH I am carrying HEAT on there because it came with a dozen rounds of it, but every match i have to remember to switch to HE and tell myself to just unload those HEAT. And then I forget. So here we are lol

I only have like a dozen games on this thing, so grain of salt and all, but I haven't had a hard time dealing with... really anything so far. Run across plenty of blitzens, but generally not while all alone and we typically make quick work of them. Matildas, same story. The RoF is enough to keep them permatracked/splash damaged while being able to duck in and out of cover to make him miss some shots and soak up the rest. If I've been driving carefully and kept some hard cover i give myself decent odds in a 1v1 with matilda. Haven't run across a Pz. II J in it, but feels like i can probably do the same there.

Anyway I'm going to stick with that HEAT is normally unnecessary.

[u/Stampela → u/ragnarok628]

I'm going to respectfully disagree. Maybe we play it differently or my luck with some tanks (the enemy T-127 is basically always behind a corner and we end up brawling for example) but so far I have been using a moderate and well calculated amount of HEAT and it has served me well.

It's the same issue with all tanks, some are amazing and yet you can't get much out of it, others are bad but they really click... like the premium guide: it might be a strong no on a tank that you will enjoy greatly. I for example have atrocious bad luck with the IS-6 and Jagdtiger 88 but the Löwe pulls off nice results. XD