I hate the M18

[Minamitsu]

Pros:
It is fast.

Cons:
It can be taken out from the front by .50 cals, and the open top means even a biplane can kill it.
The 'good' shell is only 149mm pen at 6.0
Seriously, they have up-tiered this thing so far that they had to change its classification to a light tank instead of a tank destroyer because it's a tank destroyer that can't destroy tanks

"It's good if you can flank. You can't be shooting at the front of enemies".
Again, what is this vehicle intended to be? Every game is going to be against tiger 2s. If a fast tank is considered balanced by its ability to shoot through side armor then why not just knock the puma up too? It's even faster and can kill a super pershing from the side.

The only thing keeping the M18 even vaguely usable is incompetence of enemy players.
It is a vehicle balanced around people being upset that they died looking forwards and holding w across an open field 3 times in a row.

The lineups for it are awful too. Either you pick filler of clunky machines that can't handle the 6.0 bracket, or you go higher and guarantee that you will never find a match your M18 is useful in.

[elsimate]

Snail could just give it it's real off road speed of 40 km/h and then it would go down to 4.3 probably.

[Khergit Horse Archer]

m8 im pretty bad myself and i can somehow use a m24 to do well in ground arcade at 7.0 then you can definitely do well in m18 in 6.0

[Shad1902]

it's a skill issue.
I'm still using the M24 at 7.0 and it rocks....so the M18 ccan do at this BR easily

of course, the vehicle is only as good as its user...

[^4Steel ^1Jackal^2~FYANB~]

idk what your doing but i intentionally uptier my m18 to get the 5000 sl bonus from killing tanks +2br above you. slink around and be sneaky, know what targets you pen, and be ready to run at a moments notice

[ArtemisHunt]

The M18 has a great shell that works in uptiers. There's really no problem with it. If it's spaded, just bring it up, it's fine.

[Chaoslink]

Thing is, they pushed its BR up and up, then once it was nice and high, they also nerfed it a few times.

[firebat47]

its a paper cannon. The gun, and, speed is really good. Everything else is really really bad. If you know how to kill an M10, you can kill a M18. Yea. I know they are annoying. Just wish it was classified right.

[Wandering Flare]

If you begin your list of downsides with "it can be .50 cal'd", then there is no point in reading the rest as they all stem from the same thing - you have no idea how to use the vehicle properly.

[Tankoslav Tepyatdesyatpyatovich]

This is basically the best vehicle in USA tech tree lmao. Why would you even start grinding the TT if not for M18 in the first place? It's so good it can fight against anything, except some heavies with real good all-sides armour (Object 279, IS-7, Maus), and modern staff which a) Moves not that slow in comparison, so you'll have hard time trying to outflank them, b) Has thermals to spot you with ease, c) Has two-plane stabilizers and laser rangefinder + fast darts/HEATFS or deadly autocannons to kill you on the move. That's when you switch to some other light tank that gets all the new cool toys to be competitive against them.

[Ansaraina]

Not of big fan of the tec-tree m18 from the lack of weight and its interaction with suspension. Similiar to the m22 in the sense that many driving line offer demerits when comes to being able to,
Fire at a threat quickly,
Evading a return shot,
& Moving to cover.

M18, just cant. Fire, evade, moving to cover, when executing synchronously. Its a recipe for a low quality shot+ becoming an easier target.
Pumas, AMX, cromwells, m24 can do this within functional reason and have their terrain advantages for quicker shots or to utilize for evasion.

Premium Super hellcat. ADDS weight from the 90mm turret. Yea bigger gun, so what. The increased flexibility from the weight in its driving lines help stabilize the shots quicker, coming back into being able to Fire, evade, and move to cover within functional reason.
though its really only within 1-3rd gear to around 26km trying to shoot in 4rth gear in RB is a significant increase in difficulty to land reasonable shots. might skip shooting and focus on evading & moving to cover. if I start a fight in 4rth and only fire till I evade(because it will drop to 1-3gear which. ar around 15ish kilometers. It takes a while in automatic for downshits to occur. So if you have something set to manually downshift, awesome. But also, aim higher, downshifting will drop the aim down. SHOOT while also downshifting. hold true for automatic. Their defiantly a timing window there. being in 1-3rd gear is a good conditional for reasonable shoot while on the move. If however, i am trying to shoot in 4th or 5th gear. Aim higher, to increase the tolerance for any dips on the ground that will effect the shot. Instead of aiming at the side, maybe turret level or the air above the hull instead. adding a turn before the shot can also move the shot lower or higher, a useful quick adjustment.

[Khergit Horse Archer]

also if you dont know how to *just flank bro*

try watching and memorizing some of these locations in this dudes video guides. i dont use most of these locations, heck i almost always abuse single locations in every map and just pray no one hits me lmao

https://www.youtube.com/@wait_4_me/videos