M3 Hunter or M3 Striker? I like Hunter because it's a great mount for most turrets, particularly my Shaft, and I'm curious about what it will be like when hull characteristics are introduced. Striker is also pretty great to me, though.

Smoky's M2 alteration is supposed to give you improved burst damage and long range performance, and not necessarily to make it compete with Thunder in all situations. The critical hit is very important to take into account because it provides a flat 924 damage at any distance, which is almost half of a light hull's health. In my view, this is a main selling point of the alteration. Like quite a few alterations, the Precision Targeting System is intended for a specific use. By using it, you handicap yourself somewhat in normal combat in exchange for very powerful critical hits that can let you scrap people from across the map. In this respect, it seems to be fine.

Hornet-Striker format was added because the developers evidently had fun with it and wanted to introduce it to the game. Striker is a fairly skill-demanding weapon, so the gameplay is interesting. The developers are against making Wasp-Fire a format because there are very few tactics involved and it's essentially mindless killing and death, bordering on power leveling in their view. They don't want to make it any more popular than it already is.

Out of your list, I'd say that the first option is the best for long range, since Ricochet and Twins are usually going to have trouble hitting you at further distances. Railgun, Thunder, and Smoky are all hitscan and hard to avoid. Smoky isn't a huge threat at a distance, but it can hurt if a critical hit is scored. I realize that you don't want Shaft protection, but I usually run with Griffon T-A (Rail/Thunder/Shaft) protection for long-range combat. Shafts can really ruin your day and are a larger threat at long distances than Smoky or Vulcan, so take that into consideration. If you feel like you can deal with them easily enough, then feel free to use Smoky or Vulcan protection instead. Depends on the map. On small maps, Twins is the most dangerous, no question. On slightly larger ones, Smoky is slightly better.

If you ask me, Shaft is now better than ever before. Being able to one-shot a medium hull in a fully charged shot is great, and it hasn't lost much, if any effectiveness against light hulls. The only nerf it received was damage dropoff on the arcade shots, but I don't see that as much of a downside. If you're fighting with arcade shots at a distance where the dropoff is significant, you're probably doing something wrong. Magnum can fit into a long-range-support role like Shaft, but it can be a lot more frustrating to use. Both are in a pretty good spot right now, so either would be fine. You'll probably want to try Magnum on an alt before making a decision.

gib crystals pl0x

Up to you. Normal Smoky is better in terms of damage because no damage dropoff on crits is pretty great, but you're not going to be missing out on much if you prefer to fight at close quarters. The extra impact force given by Assault Ammunition is hilarious, so if you want to knock Wasps and Hornets senseless, it's a good choice. It's probably not worth 50k crystals, however, so I would recommend waiting for a sale to cut the price a bit.

Upload it to VirusTotal.com, post a link to the report here. The website can scan your file with a lot of different antivirus programs. I think the client has sometimes been picked up as a virus by some software, let's check.

That was the case, whether they intended it or not, when Vulcan and Hammer were introduced about 2 years ago, but the developers seem to have noticed the backlash. Striker was introduced in a weaker state than the current version and was buffed after release. I'm guessing/hoping that they will use the latter philosophy for Magnum to avoid the exact complaint that you're expressing here. Better to build up than tear down.

We don't get any extra discounts compared with normal players; I used to have a % discount on M2 Freeze because I had several M2s, but I just checked, and it's gone. I think you are talking about "Helper" paint, which used to come with a 18% protection to everything and is now issued with a Spectrum module with similar protection. It's true that it offers a bit of a gameplay advantage, but it is only available to the Helpers of the Month and for that month only, unless the person does such a good job that they get it the next month too. I think it is supposed to be a reward for helpers that do an extra good job, encouraging the others to perform well too. Ethics aside, the 18% universal protection isn't too bad in battle. It's a lot less than any of the current modules M2 and up, and I would personally be a lot more annoyed to see lots of Prodigi modules than a Spectrum. I think the Spectrum modules given to eSports winners have higher protections than that. The specific, normal paints that helpers get (for example, my Reporter paint) just look cool and don't get any special protections.

waw nob stanzhang stole my first Thanks for the summary, Maf. The livestreams were very informative to be sure, but they took a while to look through and the Russian one was quite inaccessible to non-Russian speakers. I'm sure that this took a while, so thanks for the effort. :)

If two sides of your tank are blocked, you'll have problems if you need to run from an approaching enemy. In my experience, one piece of hard cover is enough for transient sniping. It's fine to enter sniping mode in advance if you anticipate that enemies will be approaching soon. If you need to give teammates covering fire, it's best to prepare a shot first so any enemies that expose themselves can be swiftly dealt with. Same goes for blocking off an area. Really, you should be using your judgement. You ideally shouldn't be in scope mode 24/7, but you shouldn't abstain from charging up whenever possible either.

Here's a separate post for other matters. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I can't think of a way where someone could simultaneously hate the splash damage AND the alteration. The alteration basically reverses the update, so if you hate the update, you'd like it, and vice versa. I get that players could hate that they would have to pay up to 50k to get rid of it the splash damage, but unless that's what you're talking about, I don't understand. I did my best to stay neutral in the article. I talked about the possible benefits of the splash damage and its very noticeable downsides, and that the alteration could be helpful if you're really bothered by the self damage and are willing to pay 50k. I've revised the last paragraph of that section to remove any possible interpretation of bias, if that helps. No, they are written by separate French and Hindi reporters. They're just linked here for convenience.

Everyone, take a chill pill. Sheesh. Take a break, drink some water, play some piano, listen to music, eat a sandwich or something. I'm gathering that a lot of you guys are angered by the Vulcan changes, and think that Savage is misrepresenting them as being beneficial or positive as opposed to being negative. Some of you think that he is doing this on purpose to whitewash and glorify the developers. From there, things have spiraled out of control into a mess of yelling and arguments. That's not helping anyone. I'd like to address a few points. Savage wrote his section of the article based on his own experiences and his own testing. You don't have to agree. His own experiences may not and apparently do not match with your own, but they are still his. I don't use Vulcan very much these days, so I can't say much about how the changes have affected it. What I do remember from my days of using it for the few months after its release was that the reduction of weak damage from 50% to 25% really hurt its ranged performance for me. If somebody were to value the damage of Vulcan more than its gyroscopic effect or auto-aim angles, then they might like the update. It seems like everyone here disagrees with that view, but again, you don't have to. People use turrets in their own ways and like different things about them. And that's fine. Reporters are not literally the mouthpiece of your deity of choice. Our articles are not supposed to be a religious text that you are supposed to follow...well, religiously. When writing, I try to keep the analysis neutral, but I also offer my own opinions. It's perfectly fine to disagree with the views written in an article as long as you keep it civil. This goes for disagreeing with other people too. I absolutely hate eating squid and other cephalopods, but I'm not going to accuse people who love calamari of being idiots or shills for the squid industry. Reporters are not literally shills for the developers. I think of myself as a player first and foremost. When I hear of a new update, I don't think "hmm, how can I spin this so the players will swallow it." Instead, I think "hmm, how will this affect the game?", and then base my article around the changes. If I offer opinions, I try to keep them separate. I don't set out to convince the readers of anything- that's for you to decide. I know that there are some of you thinking "THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHILLS FOR THE DEVELOPERS WOULD SAY!", but if I was a shill for the developers, I'd be doing a pretty poor job. I don't agree or like every single decision that is made by Alternativa, but I try to keep things neutral so that you can make your own conclusions. Before some of you go and say "WELL MAYBE YOU'RE SHILLING MORE CAREFULLY TO GIVE THE ILLUSION OF NEUTRALITY", think about it. Nothing I say would ever convince you otherwise, so why are you here? Savage is admonished for hiding posts that he shouldn't have. I'm not a reporter admin, so this isn't official, but it's clear to me that Savage has been too liberal with the Hide function. I've reminded him that in the future, he should only use it for housekeeping, obvious rule breaks, and nothing else. Other forms of unprofessional behavior should be avoided as well. Realize that you're in a vitriolic argument about a weapon in an online tank game. None of this is real, so there is no point in having any significant degree of real life anger over this issue. Take it into perspective. Hopefully that settles everything, and we can drop the stick and move on from this drama. I think we can all agree that there are better uses of our time.

Neither helpful nor funny. The situation is pretty weird, but I can't think of any reason for making up or exaggerating such a story.