It has been around 3 years since the addition of Israel to the game, and yet their main series of tanks is long overdue to be fixed.
Let me start from the most outrageous: Merkava Mk.3 tanks in WT have literally 60 mm of hull armor. Do you think that a country like Israel, who’s entire armored forces doctorine is ‘make the crew survive at all costs’, would build a tank in damn 1989 when composite armor is available, and NOT give it any hull armor? Why did Gaijin add this tank (promising, BTW, that it has an ‘outstanding level of protection’) with only the outer layer of it’s armor? How hard it is to give it, if not it’s real-life thick and terrifyingly effective armor, at least some level of basic protection? Why does this tank play at 11.3 - 0.7 below top tier! - when you can literally penatrate it’s UFP using a T-54? ANd it’s not like this thing got any other advantage to go by. It’s gigantic, sluggish, has a terrible FCS and an avarage gun for 11.3.
(I know the real-life FCS should be good, but in-game it doesn’t even have a stabilized commander sight)
And the Mk.3 is not the only one. Mk.1/2 suffer from this as well - the complete lack of their realistic hull armor, beneath the outernal layer. Mk.4 gets only 40% of it’s hull armor.
The same applies to Merkava turrets - Mk.1, 2, 3 and 4 all have 25-50% of their real-life armor values.
Like, man, this tank series is famous for never letting the damn crew die even when hit by anything the anti-tank world has to offer all at once. It was always considered the most well-armored, survivable and best-protected MBT in the world - that’s the entire point of the Israelis making it such a fat overweighted machine. I don’t care if in return for the amazing armor it should get, they give the Merkavas their real weight too (Mk.1: 61.5 tons, Mk.2: 63 tons, Mk.3: 66-69 tons, Mk.4: 70+ tons), just let this beast be what it always was.
There are also several other problems, like the M339 being nerfed to the ground, the gun depression on the Mk.4 being -7 rather than -8, the Mk.2B lacking it’s .50 cal and so on, but the main issue is that
THOSE STUPID DAMN HEAVY TANKS DON’T GET ANY OF THEIR ARMOR, YOU DAMN DUMB SNAIL.
May you all have a very good day.