Yes, it will become harder to deal with heavy tanks from the front, but this just means they will get moved up BR where not only their weak spots but the whole armour is easily penetrated and become just fat mediums. Because WT is balanced on the premise that every vehicle needs to able to take on frontally anything they can face in their BR bracket.
I say this balancing philosophy is wrong and needs be changed.
My idea comes down to changing two factors: the spawn cost of heavy tanks and their battle ratings.
All heavy tanks in the game will be moved down 0.3 - 0.7 BR, while their spawn cost will be greatly increased to a point where it will no longer be possible to spawn a heavy tank at the start of the game without first gathering some SP, even in a full uptier. Perhaps something like 300-400 SP will be enough.
Heavy tanks with strong armour and weak gun, like the 75mm Jumbo Sherman, that are currently are a pain to balance, will have a reason to be moved down BR without becoming unbalanced.
Right now heavy tanks need to have both the strong armour and a strong gun to be “meta”. Which is a strange balancing choice, as it makes them quite similar to mediums instead of letting them shine in the roles they would naturally excel in.
Finally, on a personal note, I like the idea of medium and light tanks getting into the fight first and heavy tanks only arriving later in the match due to their naturally lower mobility.
Cons:
Certain heavy tanks will become much harder to kill in a full downtier after BR changes (KV-1E/B comes to mind). Tank destroyers will have an important part to play. Also, I have faith that the brave enemy CAS pilots will be able to remedy this with a judicial application of 500lb bombs on the engine deck of offending vehicle. :)
Spawning late in the match will be unpleasant for many heavy tanks if they happen to play on a large map. I guess smart players will opt to spawn twice in a medium instead.
Such drastic change to the MM system will require extensive and therefore long testing phase, and until it is finished the quality of life might suffer for people who do not play heavy tanks for some reason.
This is it. Write your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below…
First off no, tanks like the KV-1B and E have no right being 4.0 to begin with and even if you change sp that doesn’t mean anything when its easy to get that much. Maps are fairly small so heavy tank speeds mean nothing for balancing.
Additionally Heavy tanks are fine in the meta, sure there are a few heavies that aren’t great but this post reads like your average low skill cope post of which i and other have talked about your ideas as balance isnt even a thought in your mind when you make these posts to begin with.
APHE rework will make ARL-44 and Tiger 1 stronger at the least.
Tank barrels are irrelevant cause forcing gunner sight is what makes people miss barrels to begin with.
Then why isn’t Maus 8.3+? Maus resists all MBT rounds from 7.7, and at least half from 8.0.
No. Heavy tanks are strong at their current BRs to begin with.
You’d be hard-pressed to name a heavy that is struggling outside their cupola.
Or tanks that struggle will go down in br meaning tanks now who hold their br just because of their ammo can get lower br where the rest of the tanks stat’s like armour or speed etc become their defining attribute.
This isn’t actually a new idea. This is actually how the game was originally when they added spawn points to Rb. If you spawned a heavy and did poorly you were left with spaa. Br was increased and so reduced so people could play all their tanks without being forced to leave after 1 death and improve the grind. I for one would like some heavies to be better tiered but I’m not for increasing their spawn cost. Been there, done that and it sucked.
my short answer is a solid no, Heavies are probably the best-balanced tanks in the game
my long answer, however:
Not all tanks with the “heavy tank” designation are actual heavy tanks take the Sherman Jumbo as an example because its still just another damn Sherman. Nor are heavy tanks impenetrable fortresses built to take relentless direct fire, no tank is unkillable nor should be in a PVP video game.
Heavy tanks fell out of fashion when militaries realised that mediums offer just as good firepower and overall protection for a lot cheaper while being lighter and therefore faster as a rule of thumb. Giving them a slightly lower BR will only artificially make them better because nobody will be able to counter them. Id love to play the Conqueror at 7.3 as it will demolish everything and everyone while next to nobody can fight back with much success, now imagine the IS3 IS4 IS6 and IS7 at lower BRs when they are monsters where they are now, the KV1 is a formidable beast at 4.0-4.7 to the point that most USSR teams at the BR consist of just KV tanks so putting them lower too will just make the game unplayable for everyone else.
However, the major reason why heavy tanks (this mostly goes for Tiger, Tiger 2, T1/M6 and the Pershing) don’t do so well is almost purely from player error, or as we all prefer to call it, a SKILL ISSUE. The tanks aren’t bad, I can see many heavies going up in BR and performing just as well provided the player has more than five functional brain cells.
if you remember when the Fox was at 7.0 it performed super well to the point that a HUGE amount of the community formed a strong hatred for the vehicle that hasn’t been seen towards a vehicle other than really divisive tanks like the 2S38, my stats with it boast a 56% win rate with it to this day from back then it was something like 73% before being put up to 7.7. it wasn’t that the fox was extremely overpowered for the BR and could pen everything without a thought. the fox had to be moved up because oblivious heavy tank players positioned themselves very poorly and didn’t know to listen out for the foxes loud engine and therefore got flanked and clubbed to death. It got moved up because of low-skill enemies, not vehicle potential requiring a higher BR if anything putting a vehicle with no armour and a low power gun at a BR where most foes have lots of armour contains the potential of a vehicle more than one with aluminium alloy IFVs galore that it can engage and kill from any range.
War thunders battle rating system is based on player performance overall, so if you’re being slaughtered in a tank there’s a solid chance that you’re playing the vehicle to a lower standard than the average, admittedly this doesn’t go for everything BR compression around 7.7-10.3 is really bad for ground, if it was based on vehicle actual capability I think you would hate heavies far more and we would see a lot more copium fueled posts like this
Which will ironically make them worse because they will be moved up due to it. If people want heavies to be good, they should be pushing against these instead of for them, and pushing for AP/HEAT/APCR/Other rounds being buffed.
Unfortunately many are too short-sighted to see it.
Depends. ARL-44 should’ve been 4.0 from the start.
Tiger 1? We’ll see. It is superior to the Panther, and it should probably be a higher BR than the Panther.
It’s potentially something to address with decompression if 7.3 is too strong.
You mistake the ability to kill other tanks and get good K/D ratio with the ability to use your armor.
Most people don’t really care that much, if they will get insane amount of kills. They want to feel like they’re actually playing a tank. The first thing that comes to mind when you say ‘tank’ is hard-to-kill, especially when you say ‘heavy tank’.
I can easily get 5 kills in a Tiger I or II, but not because I bounced a lot of shots, but because the gun is very good and the mobility is decent. People want to use the inner layers of the survivability onion with heavy tanks, like ‘don’t get penetrated’, instead of relying on outer layers like in any other tank.
The only tanks I’ve played that actually felt like heavy tanks were Churchill VII and Jumbo 75. The only reason they actually have armor on their BR is because they have a laughably weak gun. KV-1 (ZiS-5) was also one of them, when it was at 4.3 and Panzer IV H was at 4.0, but not as strong as those 2.
KV-1B I agree, since Russians have too weak guns, but KV-1E? A Panzer IV will have no issues dealing with a KV-1E, same for any Sherman 75.
That’s the case for a T-10M, maybe for IS-3, but not for an IS-2 or KV-1.
Idk about you but i can use my heavy tanks armor. 6.6 is definitely my best BR for it and i often push a corner after checking and rely on my armor to tank the shot or ill push with my hull first. Hate to tell you but this isnt just a tactic i use in my heavies. Imo most 6.7’s have the mobility imo to play as pseudo mediums of which are perfectly fine. If you can get your armor to work it may just be your unlucky idk what to say. I think heavy tanks are perfectly fine. If you want armor go play sim and sit at a distance. 6 0 sim is ez playing germany. At a distance the allies are fucked 99% of the time because hitting small areas of your armor is tough.
That’s my exact point, they play like mediums, not heavies. They are not bad, but they aren’t even heavy tanks at this point, but mediums that trade mobility and size for a good gun.
Yes, I’m unlucky to meet 320mm or 400mm pen HEAT, it’s totally not common at this point at 5.0-7.7.
Sim is basically the same as rb. Only air rb and air sim differ.
Again, they are not bad tanks, but the armor just ain’t it. Even without HEAT, most tanks can pen you pretty easily, they just can’t pen you everywhere.
I have to agree on this once, since it’s annoying to shoot at a Tiger I for example in an M4A3E8 or T-34-85 at range, I experience it first hand. It’s not as dramatic as you describe it though.
But again, M-51 for example shows up and your armor is irrelevant. Sure, you can kill it just as easily, but it turns off your heavy tank traits, cuts off your balls.
You know, I like this idea.
But considering how people mald about CAS I expect most wouldn’t understand SP balancing and claim that heavies are just OP
So unfortunately I don’t think this would really work.
Also, there’s the issue of the few heavy tanks that don’t have anything else at their BR, and would either need something uptiered to meet them or would be uptiered themselves.
Idk, i just don’t have a problem with heavy tanks, i personally find their armor to be pretty balanced. The majority of tanks that kill me aren’t heat slingers, they are other heavies (T29 mostly lol) or bombs, bombs a lot. Regardless id rather have heavies be balamced by how they currently are rather than them just seal club. If you wanna experience that buy the KV-1B/E. In a full downtier you are almost immortal outside of a few tanks.
it no longer makes sense to play with heavy tanks, it no longer makes sense to play with bombers, if they continue like this, soon it no longer makes sense to play
The only way to have this is if you completely lack on the other portions of the onion, as well as lack on your armament. Ex- the churchill VII. It is abysmally slow, has a poor gun for the BR, but has that armor you so want. Having a good gun, decent mobility, and bonkers armor for a BR is simply not balanced.
Excuse me, are you mad? Like geniunely, are you insane?
The panzer IV will have an extremely hard time penning the hull when angled, and the turret is notourous volumetric hell. When angled, the turret becomes nigh impenetrable, except for a couple minor weakspots on the mantlet.
Against a sherman, it is quite literally frontally invulnurable on the hull except for the mailslot/MG port, even when not angled.
On the turret the sherman barely has any way to punch through, with only minor spots on again, the nororiously volumetric turret cheeks- weakspots that can be basically nullified by angling. Hell, its not even if the '75 is a bad gun for its BR, its actually quite good, but against a KV it is quite literally useless.
It would need a lot of testing and tweaking but I like the general idea, it might also cause less people to play CAS because you can either spawn a plane, or a powerful(for the BR) heavy tank.
And that’s from 500m away, realistically you will (and should) be shooting at it from 10-100m away.
From the front KV-1E/B’s hull is exactly the same as in KV-1 (ZiS-5), their strength is that the side armor is almost just as strong.
The turret is greatly improved mainly because the mantlet and turret armor is overlaping. I don’t know why in T-34 (1942) or in KV-1E it overlaps, but in KV-1 (ZiS-5) it doesn’t.
You are aware that a tank being so much more powerful then its compatriots and being nigh-unkillable frontally is the definition of overpowered, yes?
Correct, flat-on a Pz IV can punch through a KV’s hull fairly easily, but when angled it is extremely difficult. When the turret is angled it is difficult to pen there as well, and it is incredibly easy for rounds to vanish or nonpen due to volumetric.
Against an angled KV’s hull, an M4s gun, a pretty damn good gun for its br, its basically useless. While yes, side-on it can punch through fairly easy, there are still massive points at which it is useless. Even flat-on, not angled, it is still extremely difficult for it to punch through, especially if the KV is waggling its turret and hull.
