Maybe, but it really depends on the BR system.
Currently, it’s a mess. All these tanks are suppose to be balanced within a 12.0 max BR range, which causes a lot of balancing issues. With the system I’m referring to, we’d probably already have a max BR of 15.0 or so.
I don’t think so.
The Ariete AMV is better than the Ariete (P) in a couple key aspects.
Perhaps. I’m not really sure.
Probably a 0.3 BR difference.
Glad to hear.
In reality, I think Gaijin probably initially places a vehicle by comparing it somewhat to its appropriate surroundings, and then balances it out via vehicle stats (which can be useful but I can’t say it has been working very well).
For example, the Turm III came out at 8.3, probably because most things at 8.0/8.3 have a stabilizer, APDS, and alright mobility. The Turm III is honestly a 8.7 vehicle from my experience, and what others have said about it.
However, it’s still at 8.3 because of how poor the win rate for it is.
No, it would still be 12.0 because a 5s reload proxy shell with no IRST lock or gun elevation is not a huge benefit. You’re implying it would go up to 0.3 but I’d say it would be a 0.05 increase.
Again, still a benefit, but not a benefit that would increase the 12.0 Abrams’ BR by itself.
I believe you would agree that it should, but I’ve explained how Gaijin balances things.
I don’t really agree.
F-18 has better dogfighting potential, whereas F-15E has insane thrust-to-weight, making it one of the best climbers and MRAAM spammers in the game at the moment.
It depends.
If they both have time to position themselves, I believe the F-15E would win most times. It just has too much energy to play around with.
In a strict dogfight setting, yes the F-18 would win.
So I would look at it in an ARB setting. The F-15E would generally be better, but in GRB setting, maybe the F-18 is better (though I doubt that too).
Yes, that is a key aspect. It is one of the main reasons I believe Russian MBTs are worse than NATO counterparts.
Yes, that is also quite important. One of the main factors that affects a vehicle’s BR.
Yes, this is quite important in long range maps or ranges > 600m with APFSDS (in my opinion).
Though it is not as important in close-range engagements.
Not really sure about that one.
It’s can be useful, yes, but a lot of the times you won’t have enough time to react. Often half a second after you have received it since after that you’ve already been shot by the person who lasered you.
I think it’s a lot more useful if you survive the shot or they miss since you are more able to identify where it came from, though.
Sure I guess.
In some cases, I agree. It really depends on the situation though it can be useful if given the correct one.
Again, I think it’s quite situational. Smoke grenades are great for when your breech or vehicle is disabled and you want to get out of the exposed position before you get shot again.
It may allow the enemy to approach you, but at least you are not dead.
They can also be used to cover your retreat, or when you’re flanking behind enemy lines. You wouldn’t want to get shot in the back, after all.
I think it depends. Most SPAA are self-centred and only focus on what they can kill. They usually don’t care in the least about your safety as long as they get the kill.
Self defence is best, and so if there’s a plane coming for you, proxy can help way more than a distracted (with another seemingly unthreatening aircaft) or unaware friendly SPAA.
Again, very situational.
I wouldn’t use it in most cases, but if you’re in a 9.0 vehicle (like the M60A3 TTS), and are fighting 8.0-9.0 vehicles (most of which don’t get access to thermals), it is a huge benefit.
For top tier (where thermals are everywhere), you can still use it to your advantage by deploying IR smoke and then using ESS while retreating from that position.
If they push you, they will have to turn off thermals to better see through the IR smoke, just for them to not realise that they had passed through it and now in ESS smoke. You will then be able to see them while they wouldn’t even notice that they left the IR smoke.
Not sure when you should ever use proxy rounds against tanks, unless you’re in one of the SPHs with a lot of TNT equivalent.
The only use case I’ve had with proxy rounds against tanks were against open top SPAAs behind rocks / general cover (such as the M163), or against Panthers / T-44s (they have pretty weak roof armour) when they were hull down and difficult to directly hit.
I think it depends on the HE and at what BR. Low-pen HE (like the ones found with the M4A2 sherman) have enough TNT equivalent to overpressure open-top tanks, which comes very handy because APHE tend to not fuze against thin armour.
Sure. I agree that the main round with the 2S38 should be the APFSDS.
But in some cases, like getting a wide flank, you’re going to be able to one-shot opponents or, if not, kill them much quicker with APHE:
This example may not hold true in most cases, but I think you’re going to need at least two or possibly three (if you don’t aim exactly for the crew) to kill the 2A4 with APFSDS. But I think you can easily kill this 2A4 with APHE in one or maybe two shots by shooting at the general location of the crew.
2A4s, sure. 2A5, no.
The 2S38 is 10.3, maybe 10.7 if Gaijin decides to uptier it.
The 2A5 is 12.0, so it’s impossible for it to see it naturally.
The 2A4 is probably one of the hardest 10.7 NATO MBTs to deal with, but it’s still possible:
You will take out their driver and horizontal drive. You are then free to take out their barrel, or flank and kill their turret crew, or proceed to continue killing their driver one by one until it’s dead before it gets to repair the turret ring (or just destroy the turret ring again because you have 144 rounds, 0.5s reload, and no first-stage ammo stowage to worry about).
If you shoot far away enough, you can even get its engine along with the turret ring, though I wouldn’t rely on it:
I think the driver + horizontal drive is much more consistent.
I still think this leads to questions and problems but elsewhere, as you’re just moving the compression around. We simply need more BR steps which is obvious by all of the vehicles that can be described as: “too bad to be at their current BR but too good to be one BR step below”.
May be, but it also might introduce some unbalances when it comes to other vehicles and how they’re looked at.
I think against most targets, launching at like 4km would still be pretty optimal, as the missile would only travel a few seconds before acquiring track lock. You’d have to be extremely vigilant to notice what’s happening if you were a ground unit without radar, like 2S38.
Trying to notice a plane 5-6-7km away with 65Ds when you don’t have a radar feels like a very inefficient way to spend your attention.
Might be the case but we’ll never know for sure.
Bottom line, I highly doubt 2S38 is where it is stat wise just because premium vehicle = godawful players. This is what plenty of people assume without even looking at premium vehicles’ performances when compared to TT copies.
At this point I believe it’s yet another years old myth, just like BVM dominating top tier.
We have global stats on it and in ~80m games it managed to get 0.76 KPS, which is far from great as well. Sure, it could be better than what it’s shown in the stats, but you could argue that to be the case for most vehicles when looking at their stats.
Also, German premium 2A4 (~70m games) has extremely similar stats as a TT variant (~50m games), so we are talking about really big datasets when comparing things.
I think if we use that system, then it would indirectly create higher BRs for better performing vehicles, since the max BR would be based on comparison rather than what Gaijin wants the max BR to be.
Yes, which is also what I’m advocating for.
Turm III’s ‘true’ BR could be 8.55, which means it should be closer to fitting into the broad category of 8.7 instead of the broad category of 8.3.
Until we divide the BRs further, or increase the max BR range, then this disparity between ‘bad 8.3s but too good for 8.0’ and ‘good 8.3s but too bad 8.7s’ can’t be solved.
I mean, sure.
But I think you can agree that it’s better for one vehicle to suffer from a BR change than every vehicle in one BR bracket having to suffer from one ‘undertiered’ vehicle.
I can remember the 8.3 Puma or 8.7 BMP-2M wreaking havoc, but now that they’re at 10.3, they are not exactly that good (especially the Puma), but at least it isn’t causing any problems.
I mean sure, though it really depends on how far away the target is moving from the original locked position.
Sure, but the funny thing is that non-radar SPAA / vehicles can use the ‘Air Alert!’ gimick to not only tell them the enemy plane’s azimuth, but also its altitude. There’s also a mostly unknown feature of it which I think a good number of players don’t know about it is that you will get a red arrow marker around your peripherals that points towards the direction of the last-know location of the aircraft too.
However, this does require the 2S38 / SPAA player to know that there is an A-10 to begin with, or for them to routinely use Air Alert where their air spawn / airfield is.
I agree with that, though if you notice your team dying to an A-10, you could possibly try intervening.
The biggest threat is taking out all enemy SPAAs and then assuming there’s nothing else that could hurt you. A-10 players would then rely less on the max range of Maverick Ds so that they can volley them faster instead of having to redo the setup every time they get too close.
I understand that, and maybe I’m overexaggerating its effect in GRB.
Though I can’t help to think about all the good qualities that the 2S38 has that somehow the average player doesn’t manage to utilize effectively.
I’d say the VCC-80/60 isn’t that great. Even though it can UFP most MBTs at or (definitely) below its BR, it suffers from similar post-pen damage of the 2S38, as well as the lack of damage against tracks, along with the 2s reload being quite lackluster at killing enemies quickly before they either manage to get back into cover, or shoot back with their reaction time. The lack of penetration against anything with reasonably good armour (basically any 9.7+ MBT) also makes it have to aim carefully at specific crew members or ammunition (which may or may not be impossible to kill given a situation)
Its statistics of 0.82 KPS for 140247 games in July being reasonably low according to my assessment above. (Quite underwhelming considering it’s used by Italy players, which are notoriously better than the average player).
I guess so.
And so I’m not sure if the similarities are because of the fact that tech-tree variants are usually played by more experienced players, but are hindered by the stock grind, or if those differences don’t really matter in the longrun.
Though you could argue that once you spade the tech-tree 2A4, you don’t have to go through it again, and so the number of games that are played using the unspaded / relatively unspaded version of the tech-tree 2A4 is negligible.
¯\(ツ)/¯
That might be the case but we must work with stuff we’re given and sadly Gaijin isn’t really keen to keep giving us more BR steps.
That’s right, decompression without more BRs is impossible task that will just shuffle it around to different places.
Fool’s errand that is.
Yes, but I more meant how people might start talking about other vehicles as a result of that and be like: Look, this vehicle moved up in BR which opens up the possibility of another, similar vehicle to move up as well to preserve balancing between them.
I don’t know how big of a “circle” seeker of those missiles would be looking at when firing from 4km.
Also, shooting up while moving might not be the best tactic for something like 2S38.
I started writing this but you did it already.
Spamming Air Alert doesn’t seem like the best of tactics and if you aren’t doing it often enough you’ll have big chances of missing the plane all together.
Yes, ambushing planes like that seems like the best strategy for vehicles like 2S38. You’re basically feeding off of pilots getting reckless.
Lack of radar there might help you stay hidden as well.
I haven’t played it unfortunately but I don’t think it’s that good either. I expected slightly more from Italian players though.
At this point those things are just a guessing game.
you dont get the point, even if you shoot that lfp it will do 0 dmg and that a4 will shoot you dead before you do your second shot, unlike that HSTV/RDF that oneshots all soviet tanks from all possible angles, those vehicles are way more cancerous than 2s38 ever was. As a light vehicle the 2s38 sucks because is not fast or agile enough and its gun doesn’t make for it, this is why bmp2 is a far superior vehicle and has a lower br, even btr80A is a better vehicle if you know how to use it. This 2s38 is just a vehicle that is hated by russophobic entitled and fustrated gringos.
Well clearly not – I have shown you that it is possible. You also have a 0.5s reload, and no Leopard player (unless he already knows you’re there) has a reaction time of <0.5s.
Sure, and I agree that HSTV-L / RDF-LT are great at taking out Russian / Chinese MBTs.
However, you are comparing the most survivable MBT at 10.7 (the Leopard 2A4) to the least survivable MBTs at Top tier (Russian and Chinese MBTs).
The HSTV-L and RDF-LT have to face the Strv -122B, 2A7HU, French 2A6, and of course the 2A7V, which all are extremely survivable against them.
They are just as difficult to kill (if not more) with the HSTV-L than the 2A4 with the 2S38.
Its mobility is mediocre for a light tank, but it’s adequate enough.
It’s not like the mobility of the M60 (which barely has any armour and has much worse gun handling).
Not sure about that. BMP-2M has to rely on ATGMs to kill things frontally.
ATGMs are generally worse than SABOT just because it takes time for them to travel to the target.
You will die much more easily than with the 2S38 if both parties know where each other is.
Oh you’re actually saying the 8.7 BMP-2 and 7.3 BTR80A is better than the 2S38?
Okay…
u realize that spaced armor on the leopards makes the post pen damage of the 2s38 to do jack shit and flanking is not an option because is too slow for that? and yes BMP-2M is a far better vehicle no matter what you say. But let me guess you are the typical US main that hates everything that is russian by default.
Vehicles are just vehicles. I couldn’t care less if they’re from the US, Russia, or China.
If I had a bad experience facing them / using them, then I will point out why I think that may be the case. If I had a good experience facing them / using them, then I will point out why I think that may be the case too.
If you’re talking about the side skirts, almost all tanks have them. The 2A4 is not special in that aspect.
And it shouldn’t be surprising to you that I am going to state, again, that the RDF-LT and the HSTV-L has to face 2A7Vs with spall liners and Strv 122B+ with composite side armour (and spall liners), which are much bigger issues for them than the side skirts on the 2A4 that the 2S38 has to deal with.
Technically all tanks can flank. Most great players flank with their MBTs, even though they’re not in a light tank. It’s beneficial for any tank to flank. The only difference is that light tanks can do it quicker and can often get to the positions first before the enemies arrive. 2S38 and said MBTs just have to force your way into flanks. It may not be easy, but when you do, you can easily reap the benefits afterwards. You may not even have to get into a frontal engagement. Often times (from my experience) the enemy gives you an open passage to their flanks without any resistance. You just need to find the right opportunity and passage.
In some cases, I agree with you. The ATGMs can one-shot kill quite a lot of things, and you can shoot them on the move. They are good for close-range engagements, but anything more than ~300m the ATGMs start becoming an issue. The enemy could have a worse reaction time than you and you wouldn’t be able to connect the ATGM before they already killed you with SABOT.
At that point, I would rather have the 2S38. The 2S38 is also better against aircraft to a noticable degree.
When you’re unwilling to change your mind about something as grey as this, you aren’t worth debating about anything. It isn’t as clear-cut as you may think it is.
Some of my most played vehicles are from USSR.
And I especially adore the Su-25T, Yak-141, and the Su-122-54.
Am I now a Russian main because of this?
I play a variety of nations, since most nations have something special to offer.
If I think the vehicles are good, I will try to explain why.
If I think the vehicles are bad, I will try to explain why.
My takes may not always be ‘correct’, but I try to point out what I don’t agree with (either factually or opinion), and at least I hope that I am open-minded when I talk to other people (of course, only when they talk civilized as well).
Because Sweden didn’t buy or field it. Neither do they really need it, they already have a wide selection of good vehicles. If every nation got the same treatment as Sweden with tested or acquired vehicles being added, the USA could get, but not limited to: Tiger 2, PUMA, pantsir, T-90, Renault FT, BMP-1, Matilda 2, T-72, Ratel, Marder, AMX-10. (Using USA as an example because they have the largest selection of foreign vehicles)
Lets be real. No one wants that. WW2 vehicles can kind of get away with it because they were often captured then used in combat and retrofitted. Those vehicles are rare event or premium ones. The Swedish tiger 2 was massively pushing it. It was bought from elsewhere then only tested on as target practice. Pretty certain it wasn’t even fired. Sweden should stop getting this special teatment. I don’t get why gaijin specially allowed them to recieve vehicles like this.
E-100, prototypes and vehicles like that are their own matter.
Also I do agree 2s38 should be taken up to 11.0 if something like the otomatic, which has same features but with a radar and larger profile, is 11.3.
Light tanks that are often slower than MBTs at the same BR are in a kind of a predicament and they require a special playstyle.
This is especially true at the top, as MBTs are getting faster and faster. Such a problem is probably one of the biggest reasons light tanks received scout drones, as they need something else to increase their performance levels up to normal level.
Speed and armament simply don’t cut it anymore, at least in my opinion.
Indeed. I wouldn’t say it’s the easiest but it can still work very well if you have the experience needed.
I would definitely say the 2S38 is not the most noob-friendly premium.
I agree to an extent. I believe 8.0-9.7 MBTs are relatively slow, but then 10.0-11.3 MBTs are much faster.
11.7 - 12.0 MBTs tend to be slightly slower than 10.0-11.3 MBTs just because they are effectively more heavily-armoured 10.0-11.3 MBTs (Think about 2A4 vs 2A6/2A7, or M1 Abrams vs SEP V1 / SEP V2).
Of course, the 11.7-12.0 MBTs are still faster than most 8.0-9.7 MBTs.
Here’s why I believe most Top Tier light tanks are overtiered.
The CV90120 is a great example in my opinion, as it’s 11.7 with similar firepower and mobility as 11.7 MBTs; however, it sacrifices a lot of armour for the ability to scout / use drone, and to have better FCS.
That isn’t worth it in most cases in my opinion, so all these 11.3+ MBTs (a part from less-meta MBTs like the ones from USSR , China, Italy, France, and Britain) should all go up in BR by at least 0.3 in my opinion.
So although the 2S38 is probably in one of the worst BR bracket in terms of seeing ultra-mobile MBTs (10.7-11.3), I think its FCS (decent sight and ~Gen 2 thermals) and gun handling (great turret rotation speeds etc), as well as the good-enough gun for most front-on engagements against most MBTs at or above its BR (especially in full downtiers) makes up for it.
Stuff like the Centauro I 120, CV90120, and HSTV-L may be slightly better off than the 2S38 in terms of seeing ultra-mobile MBTs, but the guns they have are comparatively equal to MBTs, and they now lose the FCS / gun handling benefits (as now most 11.7/12.0 MBTs share this quality), and they also now have to face MBTs with much better armour (compared to CV90105 / 2S38 has to, for example) and survivability like spall liners (and even in a full downtier, most NATO MBTs have things like blow-out panels).
10.3 Light tanks are much more fun from my experience than 11.7 Light tanks because of the issues 11.7 light tanks have to endure / face.
True, it might work in the right hands but getting it to work isn’t that easy, especially against certain enemy vehicles.
Light tanks higher up simply lost their identity, as lights usually always had best mobility, guns, thermals or stuff like that, while trading armor for it. If you simply want to play tanks and don’t care about SP reduction that comes with lights, many light tanks are simply inferior to MBTs.
2S38 definitely benefits from still being able to see tanks with not so great mobility that sit just a few BR steps below or some that have poor gun handling and crappy thermals which definitely increase those tanks’ reaction times. The higher you go, the less vehicles like that you’re going to see and thus your performance will likely drop.
First two definitely aren’t anything special, even more so the Centauro as it’s wheeled and doesn’t have an autoloader. HSTV-L is the best of the bunch, at least to me, as it still has mobility advantage over basically anything and it’s great gun depression allow you to attack from some very weird spots and get a few shots in before the enemy understands what’s going on.
I hope for some decompression at top tier soon-ish, which will definitely help those lights. Of course if Gaijin doesn’t move them up as well lol.
10.3 lights definitely feel more like lights than 11.7 ones.
