Or change “efficiency” metrics to where “frontally immune” no longer equates to “overpowered.” A machine like the Maus, Doom Turtle, Tortoise, Jagdtiger, Black Prince, etc etc throws away everything for that armor, and should be intentionally tiered where that armor works. Every opponent that isn’t a similar armor monster should have no choice but to go around and side/rear shot, or bomb them later. Or spawn a specialized machine that throws away most other useful traits for a gun that can ignore the armor and kill them anyway, which in high tiers is stuff like the M109, 2S3M, PLZ83, Rochev, etc. NOT everyone and their mother’s cat having HEATFS.
I honestly never understood why people are so quick to make the mental leap from “I can’t penetrate that frontally with the absolute weakest possible machine in this BR range” to “it must be overpowered, time to scream on forums/Reddit.”
Indeed - my complaint comes from the fact that every single possible opponent is able to ignore unpennable frontal armor in one way or another via either barrel damage or LOLpen rounds.
And when most opponents save for other superheavies have far better mobility than your superheavy, they should be expected to go around or die, simple as that. I killed a Maus with the IS-2’44’s BR-471B from 600m away a couple weeks ago by simply being patient and going around, then jumping them while they were distracted.
And now that we have derp artillery available to every nation in spades, we no longer need to molly-coddle people with barrel damage or the overkill influx of LOLpen light tanks. Good “balance” regarding heavy armor in my eyes is some German player being unable to kill a Churchill VII frontally with a long 75 and then proceeding to spawn a Dicker Max or Sturer Emil which can punch through the armor carelessly. M109 & friends are the rough equivalent of that concept in higher ranks - they throw away many things for that derp ability.
If something is going to stop my rampage in a heavy (TD), I would rather it be a derp arty shell than a HEATFS/sabot/dart from 30 years in the future.
You would spawn those knowing full well you may encounter something you can’t kill frontally, but also knowing full well you can run circles around those few things you can’t kill frontally, too. Which we already see with an M18 vs a King Tiger H.
Or just purposely don’t raise their BRs over a certain cap (which most are already at in my opinion, higher still and they become irrelevant) and lower reward multipliers on them to “balance” them instead.
If it were wholly up to me, I would address the ridiculousness of barrel damage, undo old nerfs to all HEAT, HEATFS, APCR, APDS, and HESH, add missing kinetic pen to all HE rounds (its been quietly added to many tanks such as 20-pdr HE for example, but strangely not to the derp guns yet), use the restored damage of all the high-pen rounds to force BR decompression across the board. Derp artillery would rein in heavy spam, not go-kart LOLpen light tanks. And in many cases I would decrease BRs of most superheavies so they can actually rely more on their armor.
Then heavies absorbing penetrating shots and not dying would become a thing of the past - it is not fun in the slightest to spend half of a match in a Doom Turtle repairing your cannon barrel.
In my opinion, I see stuff like the T29, T34, KT105, T32, T32E1, IS-6, and T-10A as far better than any superheavy because they can actually get out of their own way. I’d put all those at 7.3-7.7, with the last superheavies below that. IS-3 and Doom Turtle at 6.7, IS-4M and Maus at 7.0. Armor should matter, but when it is penetrated, you should die in 1-3 shots tops.
Tanks like the M103, AMX-50 Surbaisse, AMX-50 Surblinde, Conqueror, and IS-7 would be a cut above the 7.3-7.7 tier, and all be 8.0+. The Object 279 and T-10M are in a league of their own above those.