I once caught a Pz-IIJ that had been up tiered into a tier IV match with my Matilda. Fully upgraded with 121 mm of penetration and a reload time of 1.93 seconds, my Matilda metaphorically dragged that Pz-IIJ behind the wood shed for a serious whupping.

something to notice about T3 is that the overpowered vehicles are all mediums and the bad performing ones are lights. This is due to the terrible lowtier-matchmaker that usually throws all lights in one team and all mediums in the other, then its no suprise the 5 Pz S35s are demolishing the tech-tree light counterparts

I'm the Chi-Ha player with 10% winrate. Honestly it's insane how bad t3 games are. You're trying to grind trough a new nation and you're stuck playing a stock t3 against premium sealclubbers over and over, only gaining like 10 xp every battle. When you think about new players coming into the game, they have to deal with the same shit. No wonder the playerbase keeps decreasing and only veterans remain.

Glad the S35 was mentioned. Every single game there is several of them and they all spam gold…

I played this vehicle at a WG event once. If you managed to get a top gun in two games, then you would get a bonus code with a prem tier 3 vehicle and some gold. Naturally I picked this one, the WG employee looked at me with a disgusted smile knowing what would happen. And yes, 1st game 8 kills.

It's a patch weekend, so every tier is horrible. It really highlights how bad their game is when most of the tanks are completely uncompetitive. At tier 5, your gold rounds are bouncing off heavies, your t7 lights get out spotted by t8 mediums and the RNG means your aiming means nothing. More people have left the game than play it and more people dislike it than do and WG thinks all of that is OK.

On Chi-Ha I got 55% win rate. But most rookies seem to have a problem with paper tanks. But the gun works well.

BZ 176 smiling on the corner Xd 😂

Worst tier are the ones that WG destroyed.j I mean tier 3,4,5,8 and 10. WG removed a lot of low tiers from tech tree and added them to "Collector Vehicles". This removed a lot of grind from the low tiers and players are basically "catapulted" to tier 5 - 7 with no knowledge or good crew. It also means that all of the low tier tanks are kinda "OP" ones with close to no weak tanks to shoot at. And btw. Collector Vehicles also lack a lot of tanks that were removed from the the tech tree and should have been there in some form (nerfed or buffed) - WT E100 or FV215b (183). For the most part, "Collector tanks" category is basically a scrapheap as there are very little tanks that are worth getting. The result is that only players who left at low tiers are "seal clubers" which makes games at low tier incredibly toxic. This also started trend that I have seen recently - some players are moving to tier 5 with their "seal clubing" as even for them it is too toxic. And of course - dreaded tier 5 arty is also there. Tier 6 or 7 is relatively OK-ish as long as you are not matched with tier 8 premiums (which happens a lot). There are some tier 7 with preferential mm but WG forgot about them and they suck more & more (AT15A or Panther/M10). Those tanks should have mm+0 by now, end even then those would not be OP, but would provide a way to ignore T8 OP preiums. Tier 8 is also destroyed cuz WG is selling more & more P2W Premium tanks. Tier 10 is not fun at all cuz it is occupied by either very good players and/or top meta tanks (like Ebola or Chiftein etc). Tier 9 would be best tier if you could easily earn cash there on a tech tree tank with no premium account. Ideal tier for me would be tier 6 with mm+1 or tier 7 with mm+0, but it does not exist. Right now, the best & balanced tier is tier 2 with mm+0 (vehicles like Light VIC etc).

I would imagine it would've been tier 8 where pretty much everybody knows what 'gold' is and you'll see easily half of the rounds being fired are gold. And getting thrown against tier 10s who are almost ALL spamming gold no matter what they're facing.

I got my Pz II J from the loot box at the end of a blackmarket event a few years ago. From what I remember you could reroll the box for credits a couple of times. In the end I had a choice between this tank and two crappy tier 8s that were available in the bond shop anyway. I took this on the basis at least it's still quite rare.

Have to agree too, but 2 honorable mentions to tier 6 and 8, the flood of op premiums makes those 2 quite frustrating, especially if you are playing a tech tree, stock or just bad tank.

Another tank that wasn't mentioned is the incredibly toxic FCm 36 Pak 40. a tier 3 tank destroyer packing 400 meters of base view range and pretty decent camo. Back when I used to grind through tech trees from the start I lost count of the number of battles that were lost because we ended up 6-10 vs a lone pak 40 and instead of rushing them all at once from different directions the players instead decided to go one at a time because they were new and didn't know what they were doing.

Grinding the Yoh line recently I noticed that Tier 7 gets horrendous matchmaking. You're almost always against tier 8s if not tier 9s. You don't get tier 7 only mm, and I only got against tier 5s twice during my grind. Tier 7 always gets bottom matchmaking so my experience was quite bad.

To me it's Tier 10. I rarely have fun at all there. Most (by now, reasonably experienced) players just move to optimal positions, sit tight and wait for the enemy to lose patience and take them out. Rinse and repeat.

The QB Effect - 2 hours after he releases a video showing the S35 and PZkpfw S35 are the top tanks for a win I played a game where my team had 6 x S35s and 2 x PZ S35s (not in platoons, and no I wasn't one of them).. we won 15-3

Funny thing is that if you play the PzIIJ you will be put in the team with all the mediums most of the time. Anyways, it's a good tank for daily missions such as get 4 kills, be top on XP, win 3 battles..and so on.

I know they've made some changes to help new players but I honestly don't understand why Wargaming hasn't been more aggressive in fixing low tiers. This strategy has driven away thousands of potential customers over the years. The easiest answer would be to make everything in tier 1-3 vs bots like in World of Warships. I know the bots are dumb but people who play tier 1-3 aren't looking for great games -- they want to blow up stuff. It's better than the turkey shoot we have right now. Players who aren't ready to face tier V tanks need a refuge until they feel more comfortable playing. The current state of tier III makes them want to quit the game instead.

Tier 8 is the worst. You get fed to tier 10 95% of the time and even a lot of the premium tanks have difficulty penning that armor. I'm not a wallet warrior who can just spam gold rounds ( that also bounce a lot by the way) and i hate feeling useless or being relegated to a support role. The game needs +1/-1 matchmaking only, that's the only way most matches could be considered fair ( or even fun really).

the reason the pz s35 and all the other tier 3 mediums are op is not just because of their outrageously good statistics its also because the matchmaker at tier 3 is completely broken. for some reason the matchmaker puts all mediums on one team (some times even 10 mediums) and all lights on the other team meaning that new players who start at tier 3 only have light tanks to play with will get absolulutely demolished by seal clubbers spamming gold in mediums.

Not all surprising really, there isn’t enough people playing low tier and seal clubber is driving new player away. WG attention currently is making tier 8-9 premium and new tech line with “special” super duper mechanic instead fixing some of the problem we have.

Agreed… tier 3 is a waste of time! I remember when I started out in this game over a decade ago that I couldn’t afford any of the advantages that other players had. At least at that time I only had to buy one set of binos, camo net, and tool box. It wasn’t until I got a Churchill III that I could grind for enough credits to progress up the tree. I feel bad for new players now.

it doesn't matter what tier, everything feels like the worst tier when you get +2 matchmaking. it's very demotivating when you constantly match against tanks completely outmatching yours, not being able to pen anything without spamming gold while being penned by everything with ease and doing tickling amount of damage to them. +1 matchmaking should be the maximum.

No news here QB. You didn't mention the seal clubbing platoons with 300k games between them that only fire gold and use prem everything. We have "players" on our server approaching 90 % win rate. Good to be a new player in WoT, and it always seems to be encouraged by the CC's who keep saying its "fun".

Last night I was working on cleaning up some tanks at low tier for my Expert medal. One of the last tanks I needed to get for my Chinese Expert medal is the Chi-Ha, now I know why. Thankfully, I got the Fiat 3000, M14/41, and Chi-Ha all last night! Since all my tech trees are at tier 4 and above, that means I’m almost done with those tiers! All I have left below tier 5 for my expert medal is the FCM 36 and the 10TP. Somehow, I cleared all the tier 4 tanks already.

Important topic, thanks for the video QB!

The worst? Tier 4 and 7 Both kinda stop-gap tier before 1. Tier 5 - The tier where most of the famous world war 2 tanks started such as KV-1, M4, T-34, etc 2. Tier 8 - Money making premium tanks

In the console, the Panzer 2J is a heavily armored p.o.s. It was one of the 1st tanks I got rid of. Now a varient of that tank (the Needle, a mercenary tier 4) is an absolute beast at it's tier.

Tier 8 is fun if you have meta premium tanks. Tier 7 is one of the worst tier for tier. It feels like playing at tier 6.5/6 facing with tier 8s but made of tier 9 armors most of them

The Pz. II J might bounce an occasional shot, but in the most outrageous game I've ever seen in this regard the tank bounced nearly twelve times (12!) his own hit points. It was of course a Mikromaus, the Pz. 38H. It was the last survivor of its team, surrounded by half a dozen opponents scratching the paint from its armor, only very occasionally penetrating a shot. Quite a sight to see....

T8 with tech tree tank is unforgiving. I played halfway through the Pershing with like 30%wr and freexp-ed the other half. The m46 and m48 Patton were so much more fun with over 50% wins and reasonable joy. (avg49%er)

At tier 3 it is seal clubbing. Five+ crewmembers. Bond equipment. 5k games played. It is the players more than the tanks.

Hey QB, to see how OP a tank at the lower tiers is in the hands of seal clubbers, just look up the Ace Tanker requirements for it. When I was grinding out the British Valentine (with some equipment advice from clan members) I had the game of my life one day. But 1800 damage as bottom tier was only good enough for a 2nd class badge...!

They can't balance t8 so why would they bother with less lucrative tiers

There was a rare moment a few years back when there was a deal to get this tank for around 50 Euros. The funny this was…it was on April Fool's. Just a 50% cut from what it usually costs. How do I know this? Well…I guess you can say my pockets got a bit thinner that day.

I have the panzer 2j i play it once a year, my favorite t3 tank is the bt7 art.

The SEA was able to use the box code only when a WG staff confirmed the purchase and code of the tank. It will be manually added to your account. SEA with a PzIIJ was a rare sight back in the early days. Also managed to get a PzIIJ platoon and the enemy team had little chance to win.

I posted a few days ago about this. Whether this was in the works before my comment or not its good to get some more people seeing the issues at low tier. I was by no means an excellent player but had a win rate of 53.58%. On this new account (thanks for not letting me link my steam to my old one) Its at 48% (a week old if that) But at the lowest low it was 38%. There are platoons of pz. S35s in most tier 3 games. A lot of tier 4 tanks dont have the guns to take them out quickly either, at least not to start with. Its quite honestly a joke how unbalanced it is down in tier 3. Considering if you have a good game you could be there in 30 minutes to an hour and then facing the seal clubbing gold brigade how on earth this game still gets new players is beyond me.

Tier 6 is easily the worst in my experience. You rarely get to fight anything lower tier really and most of the time you end up fighting a ton of premium tier 8s. You only really have to play a couple of battles at tier 3 to advance to T4, so it's not much of an issue. Tier 6 on the other hand you have to play a ton of battles to unlock the next tier so you spend more time in hideous match ups.

It's not that hard to figure out. If you are playing tech tree tanks, then tier 8 feels the worst to play at, which is ironic because tier 8 is also the best tier if you are playing in a competitive premium tank.

The lack of balance at the lower tiers killed it for me, and is why there are so few newbies around. WG don't care

I still can not believe they actually buffed this tank :)

Hahaha! I loved the Chi-ha! played it like crazy back in the day when I first started WoT.

Pz ll J is the Honey Badger of WoT. 🤘😎

the fact that he has the balls to call this GG is absolutely outrageous and just show what players who bought this are all about...

thank you qb, you are the wot goat. unlike other people who have no friends and report people trying to have fun in a fun game mode

As always, wise commentary.

Hey GB, I have watched you since 2012 love all the work you do. Keep up the good work. If you need a TOG 2 game I have a good one for you.

Hello QB love the content

i don't really play anymore, but back when i did play tier 3, i would pick and choose what tier 3s I would keep based pretty much on the criteria "can they kill a IIJ," with the exception of the Pz IC which i also refused to play at maximum effectiveness because it felt just wrong, and so I gave it the rule of must always be driving, preferably at max speed. Also interesting, the MTLS has the highest potential damage in the game, with one of the most ridiculous shell capacities in game that it could never possibly fire in a single battle. Thing has enough damage for an entire team of maus tanks, if it could pen them.

When the HE nerf came it made it a lot harder at low tiers since even the derp guns can't hurt most tanks. Low caliber guns HE is a joke at all tiers now.

Hey QB, I think all the explanation about the Pz IIJ was very true a couple years ago. Nowadays you'll mostly get TIV battles where most tanks go thru your armor. Good video tho o/

As someone who used to be a Panzer IC main who would yolo in games for fun, it’s hilarious the II J used to have a 40mm weak spot circular hatch near the front of the tracks. When WG made this tank into the HD model, they removed the weak spot… Also a lot of these new players are probably using sponsor codes and get tier 5 or tier 6 rentals, and lower tiers doesn’t feel like an introductory tier anymore. I honestly feel like that’s a good thing considering back in the day you can be someone who just joined the game, got their M3 Stuart, and have 0 changes of doing anything to a KV1. Maybe if there is somewhere in the game that needs skill-based matchmaking, it’s lower tiers to separate out newer players with seal clubbers, but there’s a lot of issues with skill-based MM and probably why WG has never implemented it

Just clicked the video, let me tell you, tier 8, a massive turdpile of people in machines they dont understand or have any business driving, followed by 10, because its the exact same but now you can lose credits

Actually, tier 3 would simply be fixed by removing the preferential mm.

I've got an S.35. Picked it up from Amazon in a digital gold pack back in 2013. S.35 wasn't bad back in the day when gold shells cost, well, gold. I only have a 49% winrate in it; I was a complete noob at the time. I also have a Panzer IIJ, it's never left the garage. Also a Micro Mouse, Panzer 38h, which has also never left the garage. This was a reward for something.

I have this tank, I play 2J when I was depressed 😊

Thanks QB for the Ke-Ho tip it’s a blast to play. Also don’t forget the FCM 36 pak 40 - I have one of these and it’s disgusting. It can drill holes in a Pz II J as it has 98 pen with std ap . It has ridiculous view range in addition.

IIRC Pz IIJ bundles were briefly offered about two years ago. I think the lowest price was in the $40 range.

Climbed back twice this year with two new players. I was shocked at how imbalanced tier 3 has become - one actually stopped playing before reaching tier 4.

For some reason tier III MM is the worst. I try to do some mission in my humble T-15 (I got it from invitation code which was in a gaming magazine 11 years ago!) and I see my team with 10 Stuarts and the enemy team with 10 S.35s! Why is that? Why can't MM put 5 Stuarts/5 S.35 in each team to balance it out? Imagine having a team full of Manticores vs a team full of IS-4s! Would WG keep this MM work like that in tier X? Why they do in tier III? How hard would it be to mix the vehicles evenly according to their power?

I used to put binoculars on a tier III and instantly spot almost the entire enemy team on that hillside map

Playing my Marder II there was no issue in killing this Pz quickly when I encountered it.

I don't like tier 5. I am constantly facing tier 7s it is soo bad sometimes as I can't pen anything.

QB is right, I started to play up to tier 3, and had many battles when those tatata tanks showed up, destroying everyone around. So I could not pass the tier 3 in my tech tree tank for few months. So I quit and not going back. Thanks for analysing the reason for the worst tier in WofT!

I believe it was available 3~ years ago in a black Friday event. I recall opening tarot cards and getting mine

tier 7 lights have been a real growing pain for me.

It was tier 4 when i played. the tanks are garbage, and you can fight (strong use of the word) against tier 6.

Maybe developers want low tiers to be bad so that players rush to tier 8 as soon as possible. Its pretty easy to get to high tiers nowadays.

I was on Cliff in a 3-4 tier against a platoon of PZ IIJ

In my humble opinion tiers five through seven are the worst. In these tiers you have guns that struggle to pen if you’re uptiered even with gold, and a solid eighty percent of the tanks feel clunky and cumbersome to play. You have some iconic tanks in these tiers, but some of them and many other tech tree tanks are just so miserable to use; especially if you are facing two tiers above you.

The Pz. II J is included in ""The Feast" bundle that WG sells at thanksgiving for $1000. To my knowledge this bundle is the only way to have the tank on NA besides the collector's edition.

Last time they sold it I think was about a year-ish ago it was for a few hours or minutes though saying "it was some mistake"

With all the XP bonuses WG is trying to get you up the tiers. It doesn't make sense for them to keep you at tier3 or w/e. I think it's meant to be a struggle. Because they want you at the tier where you need premium account and premium tanks. And I'm glad that it works - it's not that many players who play low tiers. At higher tiers players are forced to actually play reasonably if they want to have a positive impact on a battle because there are no tanks that are OP. I don't mean that all t8-10 tanks are in perfect balanced because such thing doesn't exist. Lets take strongest t8s as an example Skoda and BZ - they are not as strong as t9. So if you are not seal clubbing at t6-7 it doesn't really matter if you meet strongest t8 or t9. And the comments about scaring off the new blood before they reach higher tiers even from QB sounds wrong. He is seal clubbing every stream. Reasonable thing would be to understand that you guys who complain here about tier3 are the seal clubbers who scare off the new blood.

Tier 3 being an absolute cesspit isn't just a result of OP premium tanks (tho they definitely do play a role in it), but the fact that tier 3 matchmaking is completely broken and has been for god knows how long. Majority of the matches are medium tanks vs light tanks (just like the example game), with couple TDs or SPGs mixed in. And what happens when one team gets all the tanks that can bounce some shots. You can also see this in tomato gg stats. Highest average win rate of a tier 3 light tank is less than 49%, while lowest average winrate of a tier 3 medium is over 60%. Even the OP Pz 2J can't get above 48%, because it has to hyper carry 14 lightly armored tanks against tanks that it can barely pen frontally. Games where the lights win (like the one you showed) are very much a minority.

Oh what a fast autoaim... and then you look at his stats and ALL his hit ratios starting from tier1 are incredibly high, higher than super unicum like QB and more. Summary: illegal addon: autoaim+ (also sound is another proof).

WG dont care about lower tiers. They want you to play higher tiers where the chance of losing credits is higher so you have to either buy and play premium vehicles or gold and convert to credits. Even the new Tour of Duty is ridiculous. What used to happen as you played and had fun, has now become a grind where in a tier 8, you are against 10's 75% of the time and takes close to 40 games a day to grind the missions. I want to play lower tiers and get more tanks (Been playing less than 2 months) but now I cant do that because all my play is focused on clan platoons. Used to have fun and now am considering going to a different game even though I have put money into the game

It's simple because the matchmaker for these tiers puts all LTs in one team and all MTs in the other team. As a result all LTs have WR 30-40% and MTs WR 60-70%.

I believe a few years back TheRussianBadger was sponsored by wargaming for a video and they gave away the Panzer IIJ or at least a rental of it. It was a major focus of the video, and like in this video Badger slayed with it.

The only thing worse than facing this tank on the field is facing this tank with a tier 10 player with 30K+ games.

Can't understand how the Chi-Ha can perform so bad for most players. It has decent mobility, 15 degrees of gun depression and a pokey gun with the highest (gold) pen of any Tier III non-TD. I loved annoying KV-1 and Churchills back when it could see Tier V. I always really enjoyed playing it and still do since it is a very reliable can-opener against those heavily armored seal-clubbing vehicles at low tier. Can only recommend it to any more experienced player who want to counter vehicles such as the Pz. II J or Matildas.

I love taking my T127 for some serious seal clubbing, as I prefer not to lose some 40,000+ credits on my Pz II J

ive seen a panzer 2 j go 1v15 before, its so balanced!

"A happy little strawberry" haha

It is pretty obvious that WG doesn't care about lower tier when they start releasing new tech trees starting out at tier 5.

T10: utter sh*tshow T9: ok-ish T6-8: bz176, skoda t56, bourrasque seal clubbing T1-4: seal clubbers' paradise

I'm on NA and got mine for a reasonable price. I think it was $30 or so. So few people are playing them that an ace tanker badge is pretty easy to get.

It is illegal to nerf tanks sold for money. When I buy a car with a more powerful engine, I don't expect the company to recall the car to reprogram the engine management system to cut 20 bhp off because my neighbour is complaining my car is faster than his standard model.

Most time I play Tier 3 to do some my Day Mission. Like Hits or kills And yes Tier 3 is uff but I don't like Tier 1, Tier 2 (you no slots or only one slot for med peck or one other thing) Tier 7 ± 2 mm (Tier 9 cobra vs type 5 chi-ri)

They nerfed tier 3 lights years ago, but left the mediums the same.

I liked the british pom pom class cannon and the US mortar pyramid. But wargaming streamlined all interesting lower tier tanks to death.... even things like the luchs got gimped hard in the big light tank purge....i mean "rebalance". Look what they did to the mighty derp Stuart. Got bonked on the head so hard he now can't stop firing his puny gun after pulling the trigger. I remember having awesome games with tier 4 scouts when circling big heavies was actually still possible.... All streamlined into speedy, gold slinging heavies in tunnel maps with cqc ridgelines.

"Why aren't WG doing anything about it?" - Well basically QB because they know that the game we're seeing is a 1 in 100+ games event, that guy would have had to play for a month or more to end up in a game where he didn't run into any tanks his gold rounds couldn't damage or any tanks whose HE or gold turned his armour into a joke.

The days of the 2j are long gone though. So many tanks can pen this tank now... It might have been nicer to feature the s35, as it does seem to be the best t3 at the moment

Tier 7 suffers from almost always being matched with tier 8s and the occasional 9s, because tier 8 is very popular due to high earners playing premium tanks. For the same reason tier 9 is one of the better ones, because you frequently find yourself in tier 8-9 battles. Tier 10 is also bad, but for different reasons.

Just a note on pronunciation: "Janci_20" is from Slovak clan, so his name is "Janči", which means "Johnny". It should be read as "Yan-chie". :)

Tier 1 to 4 feels like a wasteland these days. I started in the late spring of 2011 when WoT was fresh and low tiers were where the fun was. Low wait times, no one really raged... every battle was ended with GGs from both team (when we had All Chat) and those tanks you knew from WW2 were fun to play. Now it's just... blah.

I hate tier 4-7 the most. Because in tier 4 you still have this sort of half way met tank that’s going through an identity crisis. At 5 it starts to improve substantially, so when you get bottom tier in tier 4 your nothing but cannon fodder. 5 and 6 is a similar story to tier 4 but much better, because you have decent tank at that tier. But the problem is tier 7 and 8 is where lines REALLY start getting spicy. So often your tank just can’t preform like tier 7 and 8 tanks can. But 7 while not always the case, 7 seems to be where you get that one shitty tank that you just can’t stand. But if this isn’t the case than 7-9 is usually S tier because since you have a solid tank now you can somewhat compete with the other tanks even when bottom tier.

Do you have another channel for another games you play

when u trynna grind some new nation and get some fun the the process , u will face reality with the pz s35 and lefh105

Tier 7, but I don't play T3 any more. I say T7 because there are too many situation where I can't pen the T9's, even with gold. I've even had a situation where my T7 couldn't pen the back of a heavy, even with gold.