Chi-Ri should NOT be BR 5.7

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
41

I don’t understand how the devs think that reload is so much more valuable than pen. the strv m42 DT has the same problem. Even though the round is amazing for 4.0, at 5.0 its so outclassed you struggle with most things. You are also working with an outdated chassis with poor turret traverse, effective no armor, and a gimmick that is only effective at short- mid ranges. Exact same scenario with the chi-ri. I didn’t want to play it at 5.0 without a list, since the chi-tos were mediocre. At 5.7 it has a list, but is utterly outclassed by everything it faces.

Oh, and comparing it to the T34-85 is laughable. the BR-365 shell still has unmatched ability to pen at angles and will regularly bite into 70+ degree shots. There is a reason why the upgrade to a 148 pen shot is 135 pen.

1 Like
42

In any scenario it’s completely nonsense they forego statistics, instead of giving it a chance to see how it performs and balancing it accordingly they are vibe coding and just arbitrarily uptier it.

Also it is not going to improve in performance, but we will never be able to know because it has to sit at 5.7 where it’s going to do worse because it faces King Tigers and all sorts of nonsense despite barely being a 5.0 worthy vehicle.

And the average player is not going to play this at 5.7, the stats will inflate, it’s BR will be solidified and yet another vehicle will be lost to Snail’s incompetence, as we have seen again and again and again and again, because they completely fail at reading statistics despite building an entire game around it.

Or in this case they just ignore the whole core design of the game because vibes.

43

Ch-To-Late has never been accused of being agile/mobile, yet it has greater hp/ton ratio than the Ch Ri. Ch-To-Late also has better side turret armor.

Ch Ri is no better than the Panther D or Sherman M4A2 (76), both of which are at 5.3

What? How you figure Japan can’t have a 5.3 lineup?

Ch Ri x2, SUB-I-II, CAS and/or CAP and you can even throw in Ch-To-Late as a backup since it has the same gun ( minus the autoloader) as the Ch Ri. And you can even include the m24 as the light tank for scouting.

Just because the above is not YOUR optimal lineup does not mean it can’t happen.
The above lineup will never face a Tiger 2, or a T44, or M26 and would face enemies like a Jagdpanther less often.

44

I’m only mad, because at 5.0 it was such a good line-up with the two Chi-Tos. On the other hand, if Gaijin would consider adding in the 5.7 -6.0 range a certain japanese heavy tank, (Wink,wink) I would forgive them instantly.

1 Like
45

It does alright at 5.7, but maybe 5.3 would be more suitable.

Probably just another impulsive whine/ cope post.

46

Brother, this is the peak of whine/cope posts.

You know why it does okay at 5.7? Because it still fights mostly the same stuff it did at 5.0. Where it did okay. It was okay where it was, as far as I know absolutely nobody complained about it, and now it’s… A King Tiger sized Panzer 4 at 5.7 It doesn’t have troll armor or speed like the T-34, it doesn’t have a stabilizer or .50 cal like 76 Shermans, it doesn’t have the APCR both of them have, and just because some people did okay with it drug up to their 5.7 line-ups before doesn’t mean it should be there permanently. The issue with it lacking APCR is 6.7, and literally every heavy there being immune to it. With the Sherman Jumbo at 5.7, when the Chi-Ri was 5.0, that was the one vehicle you had to avoid, everything else, you could fight anything else and not worry too much so long as you took care with your shots. Now, imagine that… But 8 times worse because there’s also the 76 Jumbo, the T26E5, the Ferdinand, the Jagdtiger, the King Tiger, the SU-122-54, the USA T-34, T-44s… At this point do I need to go on? Flank them you say? Cool, me and my barn will flank, only for some… Hellcat or whatever… To also flank and zap us. And let’s not forget the howitzers, HEAT-slingers and APDS-throwers… No-one needs those to kill the Chi-Ri easily, most of the Chi-Ri’s armor is 35~50mm and not angled in any meaningful ways, it almost completely lacks volumetric nonsense and so doesn’t survive easily.

The Chi-Ri may be doing alright at 5.7, but it doesn’t deserve that over a buff Gaijin took 9 years (since the addition of the Japanese tech tree and the Chi-Ri itself) to add, only to put it up to a BR where that change is barely of any use. I wouldn’t even complain if it were 5.3, I can tell being the same BR as the Delat Torn and having more rounds in the ready rack would not be right. 5.7 is NOT where Chi-Ri should be.

6 Likes
47

I think that’s looking at it a bit too closely. Sure most things you can kill within three shots, but this is War Thunder after all and it may miss, volumetric eats it, it just doesn’t pen, because this is capless AP, or your dealing with more than one person.

For a vehicle that relied so much on quick delivery of rounds, you had to micromanage the hell out of it to maintain that. You always had to hang back in case you did expend all three shots, or suffer a glacial base reload, and an even slower ready rack replenshiment.

Really, this is what limited Chi-Ri the most. The one thing it was good at, besides a decent reverse among all the 5.X mediums, was so limiting, it simply could not keep up with the action.

After these changes Chi-Ri has shot up to the first page of my statistics page, with a 4.94 K/D. It’s able to stay in the action for so much longer with this assited loader, and it shows.

2 Likes
48

It should have never taken that long to fill the ready rack, this is a nuisance that plagues many vehicles and increasing that is what would have actually helped the vehicle, there is no logic behind it taking that long to load a shell, nor why they are picking those nose for a while before even starting the process.

When you shoot someone and you fail to kill, you have a much greater chance of getting another shot off if that reload is 3.3 instead of 4.5s before they can respond… if you have a head on engagement you have a much greater chance to get an extra shot off when your third shot is 6.6s instead of 9 seconds, when so many vehicles are in that 7-8s reload range.

There will be a plethora of situations you will lose that you would have won before with a faster reload, and a much smaller amount that you will win with this change as it only starts redeeming itself after 4 shots, which is unlikely in a poorly armored vehicle the size of a barn with flat angles and an extremely cramped crew.

It’s nice that you don’t have to sit around for it to reload, which again is just poor game design, but sitting on a cap would have resolved a lot of that… in no scenario does it seem likely that reducing the reload speed is worthy of a massive 0.7 BR increase, and it’s absurd that Gaijin even refuses to consider the statistics on which this entire game ‘‘supposedly’’ operates on.

49

Yeah its absolutely bonkers. And most games with it are 6.7 games anyway. When it was only nerfed with armour the br stayed but second they fix its secondary gun ammo (only real buff after this update imo) off to 5.7

Talked about it before update.

Talked about it after update. Its basically nerfs not buffs considering what was done with chi-ri lately. - losing armour, forced ammo in turret, reload for more shells but longer isnt really buff tbf.

1 Like
50

In my local area, 5.7 is the (snarky voice) chud zone (end snarky voice) and only the uber good 5.7 players (myself not included) go around team-wiping. My luck, tinnitus, and lacking perception in reflections, screens and the like gets me killed a lot, and so I technically belong at 5.7… But the Chi-Ri does not. Additionally, 6.7 players in my local area have evolved from the chud zone to the damn good zone, often chipping my team to pieces or rolling them back like a line of cheap suits. You’ve got a lovely pre-nerf 5.0 lineup, the Na-To is a beautiful little demon, say bye-bye KV-1! I miss pre-nerf Chi-Ri, but current Chi-Ri is nice… If it’s a 6.3 game, max. And so it should be 5.3, if Gaijin really wants to nerf it for all the shit they’ve put it through so far. All the buffs it got were buffs to other vehicles except the reverse…

51

This was definitely a buff, though. Chi-Ri has so much staying power right now compared to before where if you planned on shooting at long range you were better off bringing a Chi-To or even Chi-Nu II, because as soon as those 3 shells ran out you were stuck on a 10s reload and a VERY long 1st stage reload time. With these changes you can engage multiple enemies one after another without stopping or slowing down.

It doesn’t really deserve 5.7, but there’s loads of potential in it.

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Also what GetDunced said is very true, it was very annoying to play before since you had to always keep track of your 1st stage and what you could do with your 3 shots. When aiming at anyone you couldn’t let anything go to waste.
Now I see a guy out at 1000m+ and start shooting until I find the range and kill them. Yesterday I got a Jpz IV from the front at 1600m! Doesn’t matter that I took like 4 shots to find the range and only the 3rd hit actually penetrated and did enough damage for a kill - unlike the old Chi-Ri I CAN do that now.

3 Likes
52

I won’t deny the fact it’s buffed, the ability to fire 19 consecutive rounds is frankly quite insane, but I was quite okay at managing the old ways, as well, though often I had enough team nearby to fall back on… And watch get obliterated horribly because I was really what the biggest threat was waiting on going away and my team, aware or not, wasn’t making it out. In that same situation with the new reload, that same big threat has to hang back or take a gamble… A reversal of the situation, in a way. The new Chi-Ri should absolutely be 5.3, as much potential as there is, the buffs aren’t making it a be-all-end-all tank. It’s still good, just not in a good place.

2 Likes
53

I agree, but unfortunately, we don’t exist in the timeline with a Gaijin that would’ve made that sensible change earlier. That always puzzled me about the OG Chi-Ri, IT’S RIGHT THERE, PICK IT UP.

The math works out on your second point, and I can’t argue with that, it has its use cases. But I’ll return to this.

I personally have to disagree with your third point though. It really depends on where you play your Chi-Ri. The 3.3s autoloader was great in smaller, slower, mid-range engagements where you can take the time to recover and you’re less likely to waste shells. The assisted loader is just more versatile, allowing you to keep the heat up in short-range brawls or range in targets without immediately needing downtime. It’s a trade off, but one that I think leans in the favor of the assisted loader.

For example, you’re in an engagement that asks for 5 shells within the last minute, which I don’t think is an unreasonable ask for a more intense engagement.

Chi-Ri auto: 0, 3.3, 6.6, 16.6, 26.6

Chi-Ri assist: 0, 4.5, 9, 12.5, 17

That adds up a 10 second difference, that you could’ve fired two more shells, replenished one in the rack, or repositioning while ready to fire instead of still reloading.

In regard to the BR, 5.7 is a bit much, but I find it’s entirely because of 6.7 heavies. They are an absolute fortress for Chi-Ri frontally. I think 5.3 is justified, Chi-Ri feels like a medium going against 6.0-6.3 tanks. It isn’t able to rail gun enemy heavies but is fully capable of handling them when they aren’t angled or at notable range, and I think that’s a good thing. It still requires that you to think and exploit every weakness or mistake like old Chi-Ri did, it’s just not as restrictive.

1 Like
54

So at best it’s a side grade and by no means an outright upgrade or improvement… and the question is why it takes 10 seconds to load a shell when the vast majority of tanks has no problem loading a shell in 6-7 seconds in a large variety of circumstances, tank size, crew size, shell size… and even more questionable however long it takes to refill the ready rack out of combat.

It uses a pretty generic 75mm shell that a Panzer IV can load in under 6 seconds.

I feel a lot of the issues were artificial and implemented by Gaijin, ready racks are generally complete and utter nonsense with how slow they are to refill.

55

I agree, I was making the point that a lot of people - especially over on the subreddit - somehow think this is a nerf because the reload is slightly longer.

This is actually not far from what I was doing in the match I posted above. And even with the new 1st stage size + shorter reload time I ran out of 1st stage ammo at one point. That was also a 6.7 match btw.

Agreed. Getting it out of the 6.7 matchmaker would be very helpful.

I certainly feel like it is a massive improvement. The only huge downside is being 5.7.

56

If you think the jumbo is frontally immune this you are genuinely braindead

57

I certainly feel like it is a massive improvement. The only huge downside is being 5.7.

Going from 3.3 to 4.5s reload and going from 5.0 to 5.7 doesn’t feel like an improvement in any way, shape or form.

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58

The Chi-Ri is far more than just reload time. That’s an extremely reductive way to look at this.

59

Japan has no 5.0 lineup.
I guess 4.7 would be the only appropriate solution, which would also include moving the Chi-To lower.

60

It’s big and clunky, it has no worthwhile armor to speak of, overly cramped crew… what is so special about it

1 Like