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I was doing a battle on World of Tanks earlier and someone mentioned artillery is too unfair and should be removed from the game. Being an artillery player myself I have a pretty good feel for the player class and it's strengths and weaknesses. Artillery can be a big help for your team, but it also relies heavily on the rest of the team for help. This is a bit of a guide to help explain artillery though my point of view.

Artillery isn't as widely covered as the other classes though there are several guides for them too.

1. Artillery Birds Eye View
Artillery aiming for long distance shooting uses a birds eye view of the map so you can look all over the map. Now this doesn't mean they can shoot anywhere and I will cover that later. It does, however, give artillery a good picture of what's going on in whatever area they're looking at so they can give the rest of the team advice on how to deal with a situation.

2. Artillery can't shoot everywhere.
Some people tend to think artillery can hit anywhere, but it can't. The artillery aiming reticule consists of a circle and a line. The circle shows where the shell will land if you fire it. The line indicates trajectory. If the line is green you have a clean shot.

If you have a grey line your cannon can't reach that far. That's especially noteworthy of tiers 2-4 since their range is relatively limited. I can't speak for other countries, but when the German Grille (tier 4) gets its upgrade cannon then your range covers most of the map.

If the aiming reticule has a red line there's something between you and the target obstructing your aim. It could be a mountain or a building, but for whatever reason your shell won't land where you're aiming. You have to look elsewhere for a target or wait patiently for the target to come into range.



3. Artillery does NOT have pin point accuracy.
Every tank has an aiming reticule. It's a circle that gets smaller if you sit still. When you fire the shell will land somewhere within that circle. It won't always be exactly dead center. The same is true for artillery. The circle can be as tight as it will go and you can still not hit dead center. In some cases you get a little splash damage if you land close or you might not do any real damage at all.

Artillery is also like most tank destroyers. There's not real moving turret but the cannon can turn for minor adjustments. For major aiming adjustments you have to turn your entire hull and when you turn your hull it throws out your aiming reticule so you have to wait for it to zero in again.

The recticule on artillery can take quite a while to zero in on a target. If you have to turn the hull frequently aiming can take a while so artillery can't always provide immediate fire to an area that is very accurate. You can be fast or you can be accurate, but you can't be both.

4. Artillery can be expensive.
The first few tiers aren't too bad. Once you get the grille's upgrade that's 500 credits per shot as opposed to something like 50-100 creds for other guns of that tier (really a blind guess here). The upgrade cannon for the hummel costs 1000 credits per shot. With that kind of money per shot if you don't hit what you're aiming at it can get really costly.

5. Artillery is relatively slow.
Well the reload is pretty slow. The first German artillery is the tier 2 Sturmpanzer Bison which has a reload of about 17 seconds. As you go down the line the better the cannon the slower the reload. My Hummel takes about 25 seconds to reload. At the end of the tech tree is the GW Typ E which takes roughly 40 seconds to reload. It can't get a lot of shots out in a short period of time. They have a considerably slower rate of fire than any other player class. 25 seconds for a hummel doesn't sound like much but when you need to get the shells flying that's a pretty long wait.

The aiming is pretty slow too. It can take a while to zero in to an accurate shot. When you have a slow reload speed and expensive ammunition it's a good idea to make your shots count.

6. Artillery relies heavily on the team.
Up close and out far artillery needs the rest of the team. In close quarters an SPG is basically an over sized tank destroyer. In an emergency they can do direct fire in TD mode but they're not very good at it. With the slow aim and reload speeds if you don't make your shots count you're not going to survive well. This is why SPGs do well with an ally nearby to defend them from enemy tanks.

Artillery needs scouts as well. If your team just sits around waiting for the enemy to come get you artillery is relatively blind. Birds eye view shows the entire terrain. You can see structures like fences and small houses break up when enemy tanks run over them, but you can't see the actual enemies themselves which makes it difficult to shoot them and actually hit anything.