I mean, yeah, the Chi-Ri can get there faster, it’s 3km/h faster than a Sherman and accelerates faster than a T-34, but the difference between a Chi-Ri flanking and a Panzer 4 flanking is “THAT HOUSE IS MOVING, SHOOT IT!” and “I thought I saw that little thing move, but the longer I look at it the more I think I just imagined it.”
The Panzer 4 may not get to that flank as fast, but in all likelihood it’ll stay there a bit longer. And it being at a lower tier, sometimes that being less visible will improve your survivability by quite a bit more than usual because low tier players tend not to be looking for things in unusual places, they’re not quite there yet. But the Chi-Ri? Well, given my uptier to 6.7 rate is roughly 70%, well, people are looking for big ass tanks like Tiger IIs, T34s and IS-2s, the Chi-Ri blends right in size-wise, but might as well be paper in comparison…
And really, the Chi-Ri is not a bad tank in-game by very many means, it’s just that it gets nothing to make it worth it in the land of the uptier, a system which does (sometimes) make queue times faster, but really doesn’t like a lot of vehicles. Until the BRs are decompressed, the Chi-Ri at 5.7 is just going to face things it just doesn’t have good options against (unless your target is on the left of a T26E1-1, then they’re both very dead). Hence, why Chi-Ri should NOT be BR 5.7.
Sometimes. 75mm at a 15 degree constructional slope can do… Something. That gives it an effective thickness of 78mm when facing it head on, and yes, hitting a joint between plates will make just about anything non-pen. Those 50mm turret sides hit a little over 100mm if you shoot them and not the turret face, so yes, the Chi-Ri is better armored than the Panzer 4… If you’re making some of the worst possible shots known to War Thunder. And let’s not forget that some guns can just lolpen those 50mm plates, though of course that’s rare, what guns pen 100+mm at 60 degrees? Oh, yeah… A lot of stuff at 6.7+, any round with a cap has good enough normalization values can punch through that armor. And given how just about every round at that BR has a cap, it’s not hard to see the trouble.