How to survive the grind?
The Tiger is hard to play in World of Tanks. Multiple factors they can lead to a poor initial performance besides the yet low-level of game experience. It wasn’t really lucky to put the Tiger in Tier VII. The armor of the VK3601H is adequate for Tier VI, but the heavy tank has almost the same protection and it faces more modern tanks and guns.
The stock version is borderline useless. It’s slow, it’s glowing on the battlefield, the agility is abysmal, the available grind weapons are modest at best. If you transfer the crew from the 3601H, the drop of experience is a lot. The heavy tank equipment is hugely expensive for a new player. We can expect a lot of ill-equipped and clumsy German heavies around, and these players will seriously struggle to achieve an impact on the battlefield. I advice to use the 7,5 cm L/70 gun first. You have to aim at weak spots more and more on this level, and the Kwk 42 has better accuracy and slightly better penetration to do hat. If you bounce, you can reload lot faster, but the short 8,8 does not cut in Tier VII on such a small platform anymore.
We can ditch the tracks for a while. Grinders should go for the turret and gun first because the gun is what makes this tank. After the gun, research the engine, leave the tracks last. What we can do with the stock weapons I’ve described along with the armor thoroughly in the 3601H article. They are not really different, the tips and tricks for armor facing all work for the Tiger against the same opponents. However, I should add that Tigers can meet Tier IXs and you really cannot hurt them (or most Tier VIIIs for that matter) from the front with any less than the top gun. If you cannot position yourself for a flank or rear shot, your Tiger is just one big fat and helpless xp-bag.
Fortune favours the bold but not the foolhardy
I had the privilege to start in a better shape. I had the best engine and the gun from the Panther II so all I needed were the tracks. After my crew had started to reach a proper level, I began to enjoy this tank more and more. Sure, you haven’t got armor to speak of, my only steel wall came when some medium tanks kept shooting my angled front at long-range. The top speed is always poor, the acceleration on the other hand is good enough. The amount of hitpoints is huge, the Tiger can take a beating if you don’t stuck in the line of fire. I don’t encourage camping and sniping tactics though. It’s a bad habit, the team needs you on the frontline. The small, confined maps of WoT do not favour long-range shooting (the most favoured tactics of real life Tigers). If you are not top dog, escort higher level tanks in the attack and engage spotted and preoccupied targets. Help to protect flanks, anything, just don’t stay behind the same bush or rock through the entire battle.
Situational awareness first
The top gun is great, you can engage and penetrate most Tier IX heavies from the front and you have great accuracy to hit weak spots. The modest alpha strike combined with the good rate of fire means that the Tiger is not really good in peek and boo fights from cover, but the German tank excels at long-range shooting and encounters where you can keep your opponents under fire without break. My advice, you really should not afraid to engage same tier heavies in a prolonged battle. If you don’t waste your shots, you can kill them in 1v1 fight by the virtue of your sustained damage output and hitpoint amount. Don’t go for them if you can be fired at by multiple opponents, because you can’t really can’t expect bounces and the hp pool of yours can vanish. In fact, the only sure way of attack with Tiger is by the sidescraper manouver, considering you have enough cover around and the angle-sensitivity is rather high. If you plan to keep your Tiger, invest into a gun-laying drive because the aiming time is quite long.
WOT Armory 
You won’t pen the E-75’s front now, unless it is tilted back and you have a LFP shot.
You also can heavily angle the Tiger H – the optimal protection angle is about 35 degrees. You will not get much over 120mm effective but it is better then the 20-25 degrees most players expect.
I love this tank!
Thanks for this post and i hope you guys keep up even befor the 8.0 patch. =)
Best of lucky for all of you! ^^
Don’t quit.
Just start it all over again.
Take the most popular post 0.8 vehicles, and test them.
IS4, IS7, E100, VK, E75, Maus – because in their case the most will change.
I know you would love to test all popular in-game tanks, but you will keep popularity as long as this site will contain useful information about in-game tanks.
I will read for sure.
This is my favourite WoT-site. I know it’s frustrating to do all the hard work again, but i’d be very dissapointed if you quit. Don’t give up!
Well, weaker parts of tanks still will be weaker so even old posts will be useful to find out, which parts of armor are bad target, and which are better target.
You are very professional and well made site. I know what I am writing, I am editor, I have my own website (not connected with games or tanks 🙂 ).
The worst part of it is that they will probably tune it even after patch. So every article with armor protection report can be inaccurate very soon and even fix of those old protection reports can’t be reworked soon.
IMO you should find some decent revert engineering specialist, to retrieve info which you need, because WG definitely wont give you anything useful for your site or you should become oriented on some different kind of articles, which wont get totaly obsolete just because WG slightly change some constants in their game.
Anyway I really like your site the most among all WoT related sites and I would be very sad if you would shut your work down.
Porbably we will do the following.
Re-test clan-wars related armor.
The rest will go tthrough a calculated conversion for the main areas. It can be done if we know the thickness/slope values.
Do you plan on tackling the Ferdy after 8.0?
Probably not, not sloped armor and the hull is the same as the Tiger P.
You are the best. Please keep going. Thanks for all your hard work. Mike 🙂
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…
Thanks for the work done so far
Giving up and stopping is not an option guys.Please keep up the good work,there is a lot of useful information in your articles, not to mention the all around professional site!
Don’t quit, i’m very close to hitting tier 10 without ever spending money – my progress through the higher tiers owes a lot to these guides. The armour tweaks are a good thing:
” Protection-maximizing and advanced armor facing tactics matter less and less in this environment, position and spotting does. But do we want an FPS with casual armor and a hitpoint-system instead of a tank game?”
That’s from your t-62 review. in my view the tweaks will reaffirm the importance of armour.
Nice review of the tiger, it’s a tank you have to play smart.
I enjoy reading your tests, pls keep it going!
Is the LFP a flat surface or are those bumps accounted for?
I am asking because the Tiger lower plate, when angled by 10° sometimes bounce bl-9’s.