I did not spend too much time tanking this past weekend, and when I did, I was focused on the KV-4. Thanks to it being a double crew experience weekend I managed to get all of the crew, save that one lagging loader, into their second skill/perk.
On the advice of many, I went with Sixth Sense for his first perk. I have found that perk useful when running tank destroyers and scouts, but I remain a bit dubious about how useful it will be overall with the house sized KV-4. I think the biggest surprise with the skill is not how often I get spotted, which is always, but how often I apparently fall out of sight only to get spotted once again. I see that orange light bulb more often than I thought I would.
One of the things the KV-4 has done for me is allow me to be a bit more of a “tank tourist,” so to speak. It is the first tank I have had that gets me into tier X battles. So I have gotten to see some of the biggest tanks in the game, like the Maus.
Maus in the background
Of course, being a tier VIII tank in a battle that includes three… Mauses… Mausi… Mäusen… whatever… and an E-100 means that my potential contributions were somewhat limited. I managed to bounce some shells off of the Maus on the other side… I knew it was a futile front shot, but I wanted to be able to say I have been there… but was otherwise mostly bait to distract the other team.
I also decided to spend the experience and the credits and go for the upgraded turret on the KV-4.
On the plus side, the new turret increases my view range by another 20m and beefs up the armor on the sides and rear of the turret. All good things.
On the down side, it is even bigger than the old turret, adding nearly 9,000 kg to the weight, adding a noticeable burden on the already struggling KV-4 engine… going up those hills on the Westfield map is painful… and it has a non-functional mini-turret on top which is purportedly a weak spot that everybody and their dog knows to shoot at.
The offending mini-turret
So I have been debating as to whether or not to stick with the upgraded turret. Doing so will clearly mean getting the engine upgrade as well as… slow tank is very slow.
But otherwise, I am enjoying the KV-4… which is a good thing, because it is still a long way to the ST-I. When it is the top tank in a match, it can shrug off a surprising number of hits. I zig-zagged up to a Jagpanther in one match, bouncing his shots by staying angled while pounding him.
I just have to stay out from under the rain of artillery. Ending up in a match with 4 SPGs on a side generally means a lot of pain if I am not very careful.
Oh, and don’t forget to change your password to pick up 300 gold.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I have always chosen not to upgrade the turret – weakspot is just too easy to hit. Even without the upgraded turret and the upgraded engine you are not winning any horse-races in this thing. On the other hand, if you manage to execute a ram when you are going downhil the enemy tank gets a whole world of hurt. Also amusing when enemy tanks ram into you only to blow up – happens now and then.
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I’m not quite clear why wargaming.net want me to change my password so much that they’re willing to give me 300g. I read that somebody had stolen some of their account data. I would hope that if this were the case, they’d write directly to the holders of the compromised accounts, letting them know what’s happening, rather than relying on those account-holders to read their web-site.
Is it possible that they don’t know what data has been compromised?
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The sight range is the real weakness of KV-4 imo.
You’re just begging to get shot at and don’t see who is shooting at all (making you useless as the guy leading the charge or as ‘scout’).
Plus if you’re shooting at something that you don’t see (what your team-mates see), you’re sharing xp and money with them (so less for yourself).
With that in mind I’m firmly in the camp that you *need* the best sight range you can get. Even if that’s 350 vs 330m (compared to 400m on Lowe at the same tier — which, by the way, is awesome because of that :)). I also always mount binocular telescope myself — but that’s useful because I ‘camp’ quite often (not for an entire match, but for some period of time in some spots) — so depends on your play pattern.
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@WA: Silly story about Mausen. An incorrect, but still used plural is ‘Meese’. Meese is also an incorrect plural of ”Moose’. This has lead to a few of the Maus drivers local to slap a Canadian flag on the side of their turrets and talk about driving their Meese into battle, leading to not a little confusion both in chat and local when a new player shows up at the centre and joins in the chitchat.
@DC: Apparently what was stolen was a portion of the password hashes and their assigned email addresses. They aren’t saying how much of their DB was accessed, however good IT security policy is just to have everyone refresh their password. It also tends to prompt people who re-use the password elsewhere to change them up a bit. Considering modern crackers on a reasonably new machine can crack a few dozen at least within 24 hours, it’s worth taking the short-term credibility hit to recoup some long-term security stability.
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Just to clear this up: The plural of “Maus” is “Mäuse”. Not sure if that was actually used when refering to the tanks though.
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