Aim time

There are 2 aim time statistics, one is real and the other is based purely on the other statistics on your tank.

Base aim time is the real value given to your tank as a statistic.

Estimated aim time is not a real statistic, which is why you can only find it in the garage. Its not a hidden stat, its just not a stat at all. Its Wargaming factoring your tank’s mobility and gun handling and adding it to the aim time, which gives an estimated and more realistic “time spent aiming in”.

1. Base aim time
2. Estimated aim time
3. Why does it matter?

Base aim time

Base aim time is the actual given value for how long it takes your aiming circle to shrink by roughly 33%. This is different for each tank and is affected by various different factors, hence why Wargaming introduced “estimated aim time” for the in-game statistics.

Base aim time is a crew statistic, it affected by the crew mastery of your gunner and commander, Improved Ventilation, and Food provisions.

Equipment:

The only piece of equipment that can improve base aim time is the Enhanced Gun Laying Drive (GLD). This is why it is very useful on all tanks with a long base aim time (such as Tiger I, Škoda T45, T-22 Medium, or IS-4).

The GLD is less noticeable on tanks with poor accuracy or bad gun handling (such as T-34-3, 121, or even the Caliban). The reason for this is that generally these tanks are more affected by the other aspects that affect the “estimated aim time”.
For example, the Caliban has terrible gun handling and turns quite quickly, but has decent aim time, thus the GLD benefits the tank less than the Vertical Stabilizer would (you can take both on the tank for optimal performance).

Estimated aim time

Estimated aim time is the “aim time” statistic shown in-game, which you can see in the garage on your tank’s statistics.

This aim time is an estimate by Wargaming which takes into account your tank’s gun handling (dispersion on move, traverse, and gun movement), traverse speed, acceleration, top speed, and turret traverse speed.

WG combines all these stats into one number which estimates how long you have to stop your tank and let it aim for before it reaches its minimum accuracy (dispersion at 100m).

Of course your tank will aim in faster than this estimate if you were driving slowly, or if your tank overall just isn’t very fast (TOG II* doesn’t need to aim for long as its just a slow tank, incapable of letting the aiming circle getting too large as its just not quick enough).

Why does it matter?

Both aim time and gun handling are important, these are the 2 biggest factors in affecting your tank’s “estimated aim time”. Below is an example in how certain tank’s guns feel differently, even with very similar aim time and dispersion statistics.

Take this example of the T-22 Medium’s overall gun performance versus the Kampfpanzer 50t’s overall gun performance.

In battles, you may notice that when you stop moving to aim:
-The T-22 seems to take much longer than most mediums for the circle to actually make a noticeable difference in size, but you can often hit without aiming at all.
-The Kpz 50t’s aim circle aims in noticeably faster than the T-22’s, but it can’t as consistently hit without taking some time to aim.

In game, the “estimated aim time” is 3.1s for the T-22, and 3.2s for the Kpz 50t. 
-On the T-22, its “aim time” is made low due to great gun handling (and a fairly low traverse speed).
-On the Kpz 50t, its “aim time” is made low due to having great base aim time (but worse gun handling and a higher traverse speed mean it doesn’t “aim” faster than the T-22)

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