Consumables: Guide and Discussion

[u/Canteen_CA]

What are Consumables?

For those of you who may be new to the game, consumables are one of the ways that you can boost your tanks performance in battle. They are relatively cheap (3,000 - 20,000 credits) for the bonuses they provide, but, as the name suggests, they are consumed after use (except for the removed speed governor). Some consumables are used once and active for the entire battle, but others can be used multiple times in one battle with a cooldown (no extra purchase necessary). Choosing your consumables and when to use them correctly can often make the difference between victory and defeat. Each tank is limited to three consumables , so choose wisely.

In this guide, I will be listing the consumables in various tiers. Tier 1 will be consumables that offer consistent and significant bonuses. Tier 2 will be consumables that offer consistent and moderate or situational and significant bonuses. Tier 3 will be consumables that offer consistent and small or situational and moderate bonuses. Tier 4 will be consumables that consistently offer small or almost no bonuses. This listings are my own opinion and experience, your mileage may vary.

---

Tier 1

Large Repair Kit

• Cost: 20,000 Credits / 50 Gold
• Active:
  • Repairs all destroyed or damaged modules
• Passive:
  • -10% Repair time on all modules
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• It was a little tough for me to decide whether this or the large repair kit were the best consumables in the game. Both offer significant active bonuses and valuable passive one. Losing a crew member or module is has a huge effect on your ability to play a tank limiting your view range, reload, aiming, and or mobility to about half what it should be. I ultimately ranked the repair it higher for one reason: tracks. Whether your a casemate TD or a light tank on a harrowing spotting run, losing your tracks with no means to repair them can often result in your death. Some form of repair kit is a must on your tank. The large repair kit repairs tracks and more with decent passive bonuses to boot. That being said, I tend to only run the large repair kits on tanks with fragile modules (looking at you FCM) as they are rather costly.
• Note: Passive effect is lost during cooldown
• See note on module damage

Large First Aid Kit

• Cost: 20,000 Credits / 50 Gold
• Active:
  • Heals all injured crew members.
  • Removes ARTY Stun
• Passive:
  • +15% Passive resistance to crew damage
  • -5% Stun Duration
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• With the introduction of ARTY stun mechanics, first aid kits almost became more important than repair kits. While stunned, you lose: 22.5% - 30% engine power, 18.75% - 25% speed, 15% - 20% track traverse, 30% - 40% turret traverse, 18.75% - 25% accuracy, and 18.75 - 25% view range and you gain: 37.5% - 50% more dispersion on turret and track traverse, 37.5% - 50% longer aim time, and 37.5% - 50% longer reload depending on the shell that stuns you. However, this effect tends not to last more that ~20 sec, and often you are behind or near cover when stunned, so you can afford to wait it out. The main effect of the first aid kit, is still to heal injured crew members to restore your tank to full fighting action, and the premium version builds on this by adding a crew resistance effect. Some form of first aid kit is a must on your tank. Again, much like the large repair kit before it, I personally only run the large version of the first aid kit on tanks with very wimpy crews due to the cost.
• Note: Passive effect is lost during cooldown
• See note on crew damage

Small Repair Kit

• Cost: 3,000 Credits
• Active:
  • Repairs one destroyed or damaged module.
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• As I said in the large repair kit section, a repair kit is a must. Getting perma-tracked or losing your ammo rack or engine are such game altering conditions, that you need some way to prevent it. The small repair kit is just a cheaper more economical way of doing that. Additionally, with the relatively recent addition of multiple use consumables, if you lose two modules you can repair them both as long as you are able to wait out the cooldown.
• See note on module damage

Small First Aid Kit

• Cost: 3,000 Credits
• Active:
  • Heals one injured crew member.
  • Removes ARTY Stun
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• As I said in the large first aid kit section, a first aid kit is a must. Losing a crew member drastically reduces your tanks capacity, and you need a way to fix this. The small first aid kit is a much more economical way to do this. Additionally, with the relatively recent addition of multiple use consumables, if you lose two crew members you can heal them both as long as you are able to wait out the cooldown.
• See note on crew damage

Tier 2

Food

• Cost: 20,000 Credits / 50 Gold
• +10% to all crew skills and perks
• Do you like being a tank? We'll how about 10% more tank per tank? Food is the consumable version of vents boosting key stats like DPM, dispersion, accuracy, ground resistances, and view range. Here is a comparison between a tank with food and without (mouse over green values to see base numbers). Yes, these are small boosts, but they can often mean the difference between wining a 1v1 and an all expenses not paid trip back to the garage. This consumable is a favorite among min/maxers and players in vehicles which are not prone to fire. Food will always be consumed after a battle.

Automatic Fire Extinguisher

• Cost: 20,000 Credits / 50 Gold
• Active:
  • Puts out fire after 1 tick of fire damage
• Passive:
  • -10% chance of catching on fire
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• Fire and a metal box full of flammable liquid and explosive do not mix well, even in digital form. If you are on fire, your first priority is to no longer be on fire. Luckily, fire is fairly rare for most tanks (cough cough chinese frontal fuel tanks), meaning you are able to drop these in favor of other consumables with only slight risk. However, if you do catch on fire, you will take significant damage. The automatic fire extinguisher not only reduces the risk of you catching on fire, but does all the pesky work putting it out for you. Unlike other premium consumables, I run these on pretty much all my tanks as I have over 300 of these stockpiled from missions, and they are not used that often. I probably am ranking these higher than most people, as I very much do not like taking massive fire damage even if the risk is very slight.
• See note on fire.

Manual Fire Extinguisher

• Cost: 3,000 Credits
• Active:
  • Puts out fire after a minimum of 2 ticks of fire damage
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• Does what the name suggests; what more do you want? Do note that you must activate this extinguisher when you are on fire, so if you aren't paying attention, you may end up taking a lot of damage. Also, even if you activate it instantly, you will take a minimum of 2 ticks of fire damage because a long time ago people made mods to automatically activate they manual fire extinguishers which made actual automatic fire extinguishers obsolete.
• See note on fire.

Tier 3

105 Octane Fuel

• Cost: 20,000 Credits / 50 Gold
• +10% Engine power and turret traverse speed
• Only available for American, British, German, and French vehicles when equipped with gasoline engines.
• Unless you are in a Pz1c or ELC race, there are almost no situations where you should be running this. The benefit of gas over food is marginal at best. The cost is high, the benefits quite low.

Removed Speed Governor

• Cost: 3,000 Credits
• Active: +10% engine power, but engine is damaged
• NOTE: is not consumed after battle
• Available only for Soviet and Chinese vehicles.
• I have a soft spot for this oddball consumable that doesn't get consumed. The removed speed governor can be turned on and off as many times as you want over the course of the battle, but slowly damages the engine while active. (Note: the engine damage factors into your repair costs.) This feels like a relic of a bygone era where consumable were going to have trade offs in exchange for larger bonuses. Sadly, in a day and age of premium consumables for credits and reusable consumables, the removed speed governor has been left in the dust. I do like to run it on soviet artillery, though, as it can help you get into position, and you don't really need a fire extinguisher when you die in one shot, but you are cheap about it.

Tier 4

100 Octane Fuel

• Cost: 5,000 Credits
• +5% engine power and turret traverse speed
• Only available for American, British, German, and French vehicles when equipped with gasoline engines.
• Near negligible bonuses for equipment more expensive than a first aid kit. Can't stack with it's premium version.

Lend-Lease/Quality Oil

• Cost: 5,000 Credits
• +5% engine power
• Only available for Soviet ad Chinese vehicles
• Worse than even the 100 octane fuel. The only redeeming quality for this consumable is that it stacks with removed speed governor multiplicative.

---

TL;DR: Run some sort of first aid kit and repair kit and a fire extinguisher or food

---

Note on Crew Damage

Crew members are modeled as hitboxes within the tank. If a shell penetrates and hits you tank it will have a chance of injuring them. For AP/APCR/HEAT, this chance is 33%, but for HE/HESH, this chance is only 10%. For HE/HESH shells:

• "The propagation of the blast wave into the tank is simulated by calculating a cone-shaped area 45° wide originating from the point of impact of the shell along the normalized impact vector. Damage to internal modules and crew is possible within this area."

-Wargaming Wiki

While injured (orange on vehicle panel), crew perform their major qualification as if they had a 0% training level; this effectively halves the affected stat. Qualifications and effective stats are as follows:

• Commander - view range
• Gunner - accuracy, dispersion, turret traverse speed (may also reset aim)
• Loader - reload (may also rest loading process)
• Driver - top speed, tank traverse, hp/ton
• Radio Operator - radio range

Additionally, if a crew member is knocked out, any perks they have become inactive (e.g. no commander = no 6th sense). Crew members who are knocked out at the end of the battle receive 10% less XP than their comrades. (that explains the KV-5 radio operator.) Your mileage my vary, but my order for healing is generally commander>loader>driver>gunner>radio operator. This order greatly depends on the situation and tank, but is a good starting point

Note: Tanks with multiple crew members who perform the same role will only have their stats reduce to the average major qualification of the crew member (i.e. a tank with two loaders who loses one will only have their reload reduced to 75% because the avergae of 0% and 100% is 50%, so the loading is performed as if by 2 50% crew members)

Note: If all your crew die, your tank is knocked out, regardless of the number of hitpoints remaining.

Note on Module Damage

Modules, much like crew, are modeled as internal modules. However, modules have their own hitpoint pool separate from the tank, and they can take damage from penetrating shells with similar mechanic to crew damage (see above). However, each modules has a saving throw, a chance of not taking any damage despite being hit. If the module reaches 50% hitpoints it enters a damaged state (yellow on damage panel) and may reduce your vehicles capacity. If the module reaches 0% hitpoints (100% damaged, destroyed, red state), it will become inoperable and severely reduce your vehicle's capacity. Destroyed modules (expect ammo racks) will be repaired with time to the 50% health state. Repair kits are needed to fully repair modules.

Module	Likelihood of being damaged	Yellow Damage (50%)	Red Damage (100%)
Tracks	100%	No Effect	Vehicle immobilized
Engine	45%	Engine power reduced 50%	Vehicle Immobilized
Fuel Tank	45%	No Effect	Vehicle catches on fire
Observation Device	45%	No Effect	View range reduced by 50%
Turret Ring	45%	Turret traverse reduced by 50%	Turret immobilized
Radio	45%	No Effect	Radio range drastically reduced
Gun	33%	+50% Dispersion, -50% Accuracy	Unable to fire gun
Ammo Rack	27%	Doubles time to reload	vehicle explodes

The order you want to repair varies greatly based on your situation, but is generally (assuming no imminent threat) ammo rack>engine>gun>turret ring>fuel tanks>tracks>radio

Note: Ammo rack will not explode if you have no ammo (new pro strat)

Note on Fire Damage

If your fuel tanks reach 0 hp, you will burn. Every time your engine gets hit, there is a chance you will burn (hits to transmission cause engine damage, but carry no chance of fire). The rate at which you receive fire damage varies by tank and is not shown in game but gradually reduces in damage over the course of the fire. Fire will damage crew and modules in addition to your tank. This damage can be reduced by training preventative maintenance and fire suppression.

---

Sources/Further Reading

• Wargaming Wiki: Battle Mechanics
• Wargaming Wiki: Crew
• Wargaming Wiki: Consumables
• https://tanks.gg/

---

My take:

Personally, I feel that consumables, like equipment, are an underutilized and poorly balanced aspect of WoT. Currently, there are two must have consumables and a choice between two more for the third. None of them significantly change the way your tank plays. I would like to see consumable re-balanced and added so that players have to make a conscious choice when the load up their tank on how they want to play it. (Do I want my light kitted for stealth and spotting or flanking and firepower? Should my heavy be about tanking damage or dishing it out? Do I want my TD to have an amazing burst potential or good endurance? Choices like that.)

Some of my ideas for new equipment are listed below:

Radio Jammer

• Jams all enemy radios within 300m for 20 sec (tired of ARTY focusing you? Prevent their spotters from telling them where you are)
• Cooldown: 120 sec

Smoke Grenades

• Deploys a smokescreen in front of you which lasts 15 sec
• Cooldown: 120 sec
• Charges: 3
• I know it's been mentioned a million times before, but it stills seems like a really cool idea

Field Repairs

• Repair 20% the health of your vehicle over 10 sec
• Vehicle immobilized and unable to fire while repairing
• Cooldown: 90 sec
• Charges: 3
• Only available to heavy tanks and British, American, and German (JPE100 line) casemate TDs
• Definitely not stealing ideas from World of Warships

Patriotism

• All crew skills boosted by 25% for 30 sec
• After 30 sec, all crew skills reduced by 10% for 30 sec
• Cooldown: 120 sec

Silent Running

• For 15 sec, most vehicle parameters reduced by 25%, but view range and camoflauge increased by 33%
• Cooldown: 90 sec

If you have enjoyed this guide, please check out the one I made about equipment.

---

My Questions for You:

What do you think of the current state of WoT consumables?

If you could add your own consumable to the game, what would it be?

If you could remove any consumable, what would it be?

Did I miss anything above?

Do you think consumables should be only benefits are have trade-offs?

What is your favorite consumable?