How to Avoid Arty Fire

The_Chieftain: If you are getting hit by all three SPGs on the enemy team, there must be something you are doing to attract their attention. Any SPG can only be aiming at one place on the map, after all.   Anyway, there are several options available to you.   1) Don’t he spotted. Already mentioned above. It’s not foolproof, as an arty driver if I suspect someone is in a location, I may lob a shot or two anyway. 2) Don’t pick really obvious positions. Of all the vehicles, TDs are some of the most predictable. There are some places on every map where as an arty driver you just know that there is an enemy TD. The arty will take their time to aim at that location, and sine TDs often don’t move much, they can be particularly easy targets. If a blind shot vanishes on my arty screen without an explosion, I know I’ve gotten a direct impact. I may well take a second shot. 3) If you’re hit once, you can be hit again, You won’t believe the amount of folks I have killed because they didn’t react to the first impact notifying them that an arty is aiming at them. If they’re behind cover, they’ll try to hug the cover harder. 4) Tall cover. Big rocks, buildings, such like. You can hug them and gain some protection. This depends on how intelligent your artillery opponent is. Far too many don’t use the tracks under their vehicles, so you know from which direction the shots will come, and so there the shadow/dead space is caused by any obstacle. However, if the opposing artillery is aggressive (which, in fairness, seems to be only about one in ten), hugging cover just makes a lovely stationary target. Plus, as you said, hugging cover takes yourself out of the fight even more effectively than artillery. 5) See where they shoot, It can take quite a while for an SPG to lay in on a new area. If you see an arty shot land near you, you can presume that they will fire their next round in your area as well. Take avoiding action. 6) Relates to 2 and 3. When spotted, start an internal countdown, relevant to your Tier, to estimate how long it is likely to take for arty to get a bead on you. For JP II, about 20 seconds is good. After that length of time, go somewhere else. The amount of times on stream I have said “I had better get out of here before arty zeroes I’m on me” about five seconds before exploding is embarrassing. 7) As best as possible, use WASD hacks. Arty can still get lucky, but no point in making an easy target. Zizgzag, vary speed and direction, that sort  of thing. 8) Kill the scouts. If they can’t see you, neither can the enemy artillery.