So do you remember when Leviathans update dropped in June 2025 and Gaijin completely broke the HE damage? You know the one that generated the massively supported bug report? You know…this bug report?
This was at a point that MG.151 damage was the lowest that it has ever been. Lower than even when this thread was created. And it also completely nerfed a bunch of other guns at the same time…including ShVAKs.
This was not fixed until around 7 months ago.
Guess what the “realistic damage” advocates were saying at the time?
That’s right…they were saying that it was perfectly acceptable performance for the MG.151 and that ShVAK still needed to be nerfed in comparison. This was a bug that affected all HE shells by the way.
During the same timeframe Kiwi was still pushing for nerfs as well. This is from August 2025 when the HE bug was still active.
how does bugged cannon damage justify current models? Maybe because of actually fixing cannon damage they just jacked it up 20 times and called it a day.
It’s like if one day heat rounds stopped spalling so instead of trying to restore the spall they just borrowed code and now heat overpressures like a explosive round.
Even if I was early on in my WT playtime I still was shocked by the brute force that came after this.
The current models are the fix to that bug and a result of player support. The damage nerf advocates will never be satisfied.
We can go even further back to Realshatter 1.0 but unfortunately the old forums are no longer up and not every thread is searchable on the internet archive.
The same people were saying the exact same things when it was bugged and made any cannon inflicted with it ineffective. The second they upped the number of fragments and made it so that fragments did damage…the same people were throwing fits about the exact same thing.
Because the community will vote whatever makes the “grind” easier and tank the skill floor even more, even if they dumbdown entire aspects of the game on it they won’t care.
aphe rework because people couldn’t manifest the fact BRs would adjust eventually and they would need to aim at actual important modules for once.
Bombers stripped of objectives like airfield bombing and nerfs to MANNED gunner accuracy instead of simply reworking said aspects.
And now 20mm damage because they don’t actually appreciate air combat, just a dumbed down duck hunt mode, and it is now so messed up that when someone looks for info on filler to pick “the better explosive round” they just eat a whole burger of nothing because if they look for said round they will just end up loading a weaker belt, case and point is the Type 99, with the belt full of “weak” explosives actually putting out more damage than the universal or stealth belts.
And if mg151/20 FI-T round steps up into the current model you’ll start to see tracers taking over because for why I would sacrifice ballistics for more filler if both shells deal the same damage.
La-5 family for example literally have no use for the extra thick armor plate mod, because it add weight and SL to the repair bill, and will only help so that instead of being instantly pilot sniped by a 50cal +600 meters out it would now be +500 meters out.
For example, did you know the Fw-190 F-8’s belly is covered in armor? no? because if you shoot it from below you just cut the tail and wing off and armor never comes into play.
Did you know A6M5 Hei and A6M6c are actually meant to have survivability via armor and self sealing tanks? OR the fact almost every Japanese plane does have some some backseat (sometimes even very respectable at 13mm or more) armor except for the A6Ms and army planes before the Ki-43?
Well because them and every plane are dunked on by 2 explosive shells to the enormous wings or tail.
everyone who was actually doing air combat and not just larping thought it was a terrible change, even the many CCs that do not need to “grind” for anything because they already HAVE everything
The vast majority of Air RB content creators complained about the cannon damage bug and also supported the bug report to get cannon damage fixed. Pretty much every time Gaijin has reduced cannon damage to “realistic” levels content creators have complained and every time they have buffed them back to normal levels content creators have rejoiced.
APHE rework was tested on dev server and anyone that tested it quickly realized that it was not a good change and basically added the same kind of “realshatter” inconsistency to cannon damage but for tanks and was basically just a massive buff to stuff like Tiger I.
It is one of the rare few times that the community made a collectively good decision in spite of all the same bad idea fairies like Spanish Avenger lobbying for it.
The claim is “a single hit”. That’s what has been CLAIMED in this thread over and over again - a GUARANTEE that a SINGLE 20mm HE shell will detach a wing.
You control the keys you press. Don’t like being proven wrong, don’t make easily disprovable claims.
There is quite literally no period of time in the past 3 years that the same people have not been making that claim. Even during Realshatter 1.0 they were somehow still getting 1 shot.
And yet if you scroll back 3 years they were all getting 1 shot constantly to the point that they even asked for fragmentation damage to be turned off.
Ingame fragmentation boost is just unreal. Thick walled shells with tiny amount of explosives shatter like a nailbomb + 250g Semtex. Some shells black out whole sections of any given plane.
For me it looks like certain nation communities requested more damage again and again and finally Gajin complied and now we’ve got Mineshells everywhere.
A single 20mm can do that as I’ve proven multiple times with video evidence. Sometimes it’s a whopping 2x anaemic Shvak rounds that can literally lop a 190A’s tail clean off. It’ll do the same to bombers too.
I’ve also shown the Hispano using a whopping 2x rounds to completely tear a Stuka’s wing away. I’ve got a clip saved at the moment where I attack a 109 and 2x Hispano rounds delete a 109’s right wing, then I give it another tap and 2x more rounds then remove the left wing.
The damage models are clearly borked and I still have no idea why or how you’re defending this.
Exactly this. I might do an experiment and ask for aim assist and see how the community votes. To the logic of some of the posters of this thread if I’m putting my nose on you then you should just die right? The game is already pretty much a point and click adventure anyways.
Even during the HE bug where Air modes became almost unplayable you lot were still wanting further nerfs. The vast majority of players, even highly skilled ones, enjoyed high gun damage much more.
Only for the MG-151 in my case, as I’m sure we’ll both agree it was stupid. The issue is that now as Thodin has said every gun is now a fridge launcher barring maybe the U.S .50cal. Anything with HE obliterates fighters.
It’s plain stupid, but I won’t go further as we’re beating a dead horse at this point.
US .50s have probably never been better. Even the early or mid war belts are great and take anything apart in just a few hits. Don’t know how the Buffalo isn’t any higher with four of those.
Especially in ground rb and naval. Its not all about arb. There was a recent BP task where you had to kill 5 ground player targets and 5 boats with fighters. I took the P-47 after I tried several others without much luck. Cal50 is the best weapon all around imho.
Especially dreadful vs bombers (all game modes). I suppose cause of the rather high AP values, cal50 almost always instantly detonating the bomb load. Short burst and result is a huge midair detonation. Even dropped bomb series which detonate in a chain reaction until explosions reach the bomber ;)
