World of Tanks: A Beginner's Guide to Artillery in the Shooter

So you’ve downloaded World of Tanks for free and you like the idea of trying artillery. While it’s a load of fun to rain terror and ordinance upon your enemies from afar, it’s not completely clear on how to do this effectively. With the other types of tanks, it’s fairly simple; you drive around until there’s a bad guy and then you shoot him. Artillery, however, is a little trickier. That’s why we're here to help you out and offer you a few pointers, so your shells can be used to their full potential.

The Basics

So most of this stuff is pretty elementary, but not all of it, so we'll go through it anyway:

• Left-Shift puts you into the artillery overview mode, which gives you a top-down view of the battlefield, allowing you to reign fire down upon enemies.
• The long line in the aiming reticule is important. Red means something is obstructing the fire, green is something that you can potentially hit, and grey is something that is out of the range of your tank.
• The green dots is the area where the shot will land. If you can’t see these green dots, it means that your gun is facing the wrong way, and you’ll need to reposition to land your shot.
• Use the X button. If you push X, it will lock your turret and tank so it will not move when you’re aiming. This makes it significantly easier to land shots.

Positioning

Finding a good place to fire from is really important. Setting up somewhere with a little cover, in some bushes, a little bit away from your capture point is a good idea. The cover you find means that any base rushers might not spot you and you’ll be safe from enemy artillery fire and tank destroyers if you’re next to a building or in a depression in the landscape.

Moving around after every few shots can sometimes be life-saving. In later ranks, enemy artillery will watch common artillery locations and wait for you to fire. Even if they cannot directly see you, they can see the tracers of your artillery rounds, and simply shoot at where it came from. If you move in a “V” or “W” shape, this will help you avoid these shots, and keep the enemy guessing.

Targets

Prioritizing targets is a skill useful for new artillery players. It is exceptionally difficult to land shots on light tanks or scouts, they are simply moving too fast. Try to shoot enemy artillery first or enemy tank destroyers if possible. Let your medium and heavy tanks deal with the smaller, faster vehicles.

Type of Ammo

It is sometimes confusing knowing which type of ammo to use. As a general rule, HE shells will be perfectly fine for destroying enemy tanks, but remember that if a HE shell hits a thicker piece of armor, it will do less damage. Try not to use AP rounds, they don't do any splash damage, and if they bounce off they do no damage at all. Premium rounds are also good, but they are not always available for free-to-play players. If you get the chance to land HE shells on enemy tanks with weaker armor, then that should be your priority.

If you have any other questions about how to use Artillery effectively, drop us a comment below and we will try to help you out. Good luck, and happy hunting!