My biggest issue with the top tier Abrams is that from M1A1 HC onward they’re not really that different.
For all intents and purposes, the M1A1 HC is practically the same tank as all the 11.7 Abramses.
The HC has the same armor profile, and has a dozer blade (which adds some RNG to the front hull), and weighs less than the insanely bloated SEP V2.
The only things it lacks are commander optics (which I don’t care for), slightly worse thermals, and lacks the M829A2 round (not a big deal only 30mm difference).
So you could say that USA has a bunch of 11.3s as their “top tier” tanks.
This makes for a very unattractive lineup, and as such I think the “pros” who have multiple tech trees unlocked would rather play Germany or Sweden.
Merkava has worse armour and is a worse overall tank, also shares matchmaking with USA yet still has a substantially better winrate.
Add-on armour? Unless you’re talking about ARAT or other forms of ERA, I don’t know what you mean.
ERA also won’t help against APFSDS and it also isn’t applied to the front of the vehicle.
I agree I’d have rather they implemented the SEP v3.
Im sure it was also posted here on forums but cant find it right now.
The simplest argument against your statement is, if italy was being paired with SWE-GER 99% of the time, their winrates would be identical, which is not the case.
There are many reasons affecting winrates - flavor of the month, aviablity of premiums (with top tier premiums being especially atractive for new players), minor nations being played by veterans more etc.
Reason MINOR nations get paired with the big three is the overall playercount
As a US main with positive K/D over 6k kills on sep1 and still playing despite losing 12 games in a row with an average of 9kills per game. I cannot solely blame the player base for the lack of performance of US at top tier. There are countless ways you can destroy an abrams, I mean countless, Its literally a one shot machine which is unforgiving. Even when you make your moves right, there is a 70% that a spall liner or ammo will suck up all your damage and since 80% of maps are CQB despite you doing everything right you pay the price of game mechanics. Moreover, people bring CAS as an attractive option for US until you realized that the ADATS is literally useless at this point and everything you bring CAS you don’t only have to fight their CAS which usually 2-3 SU27s and SU25 or MIGs23 that actually kill ground in one shot unlike “MAVERICKS” but you also have to fight their 2-3 Pansiers or german SPAA which are viable options and people actually bring consisntely unlike the ADATS. It gets worse when you play heli as CAS, a tree on the way hellfire loses track, most of the time 3-5 hellfires for tanks if you manage to hit anything. The difference is that now you not only trying to guide your slow and unreliable missiles but now you are also trying to survive their air, their SPAAs and also the KA50s that literally spawn on their heli pad and can reliably snipe you from across the map without you being able to do anything in response. Please stop blaming the lack of performance on the players, its not fair gameplay at all. Abrams thickest turret armor is around 680mm and that’s only when you shot straight at it, if you angle slightly there is not armor. Any leo2 side turret armor has the same value as the strongest armor in the abrams. Any armor buff given to the abrams is better than none, it gives people less places to shot and disable you. No one asked for a 5sec reload, specially when 90% of the tank it faces use spall liners and you have to shot it 2-3 times on weak spots. By the way why is literally the most OP nations playing together constaly? USSR, GERM, and Sweeden.
Solution: stop pretending that you care about realism! You dont have and will not have actual values of irl tanks (is classified) instead focus on actual (GAME BALANCED) and stop picking out of whats good iRL or not because yes. They tend to pick usually for some nations things that were never into production and place it on the game “for realism” but yet for others they want literally hard prove.
Just balance the game, its all the community wants. BUFF the abrams armor and survivability, either buff the adats, give US a good spaa or nerf all of the other spaas to the adats standard. Give everyone spall liners or take out spall liners from the game or even better a penetration shot should guarantee a tank kills regardless. 3 main nations dictates the balance of the game and the majority of players like it or not with skills or without it play USA, so yes a big portion of the community that plays top tier is being affected.
Yeah ADATS is cringe bad SPAA not to mention its classfied as TD and cost more to spawn. If it is a TD than put it at 9.3? I had more succes with LAV-AD than ADATS tbh but it cant kill stratobombers so yeah, and even if I would like to use F-15 or F-16 as CAP it only work if you are able to stay low since enemy can just bring you higher and SPAA will take you down in a seconds
ADATS is a terrible SPAA and LAV-AD has a maximum range of like 4km. Patch to patch, FIM92 performance changes wildly it seems. Sometimes, it’ll work to 6km and you can actually kinda defend your team. Usually, though, you’ll find a Ka52 climbing to space unopposed and there is literally nothing you can do about it because FIM92s have way less range than they used to. The same is true of the Japanese Type 93, but that’s a separate topic.
Typically, there are so many enemy aircraft I literally cannot shoot at enough of them. Pantsir is a hard counter for American CAS, and the equally or, possibly, superior USSR CAS is completely unopposed by American SPAA. I have no idea why, but AIM120 seems to almost never secure kills in ground RB as opposed to Air RB where it is the missile to use. Regardless of why that is, Su-25s, in my opinion, are easily the best CAS aircraft in the game. Can literally survive multiple FIM92s, Su39 can jam them even being launched from certain angles, tons and tons and tons of great air to ground munitions that are fast and powerful and you can carry a ton of.
Anybody saying F-16C is superior CAS to Su39 is off their rocker. Pantsir is a hard counter to AGM-65, which, even if unintercepted, finds a corpse to track instead of what you specifically told it to track anyways. That leaves the F-16C with Paveways. Unpowered, laser guided bombs.
The US needs JDAMs desperately, and on more than just AV8B. And give us something silly, like SDBII on F-15E. F&F CAS weapons and/or anti radiation missiles are the only way to solve the Pantsir problem that neutralizes American CAS while America gets pummeled by USSR CAS.
