So I have been playing a lot of heavy tanks across various trees, GER and SOV in particular and I had a thought while getting bombed with CAS (unrelated). What purpose do heavy tanks actually serve in game?
You can’t really push with them because your armor, while good, makes you too slow to turn to confront flanking lights and mediums in most cases, your gun is also good in most cases but the reload time (with rare exception like the American Jumbo which is a “heavy” tank) is also too slow for brawling or CQC. You’d then think to try sitting back and sniping but because you are so big you more often then not just get hit by CAS or focused down by TD’s.
The heavy tanks flaws do get slightly better as you get further down the tree but by the time they do, around 6.7+ your armor stops mattering and you just get murdered by HEAT and APDS, or god forbid 30mm SPAA.
Now obviously historically heavy tanks were phased out in favor of MBT’s but that’s not really the point of the discussion I’d like to have here. In your opinion, whoever happens to read this, what purpose if any do heavy tanks serve in current War Thunder? Because I’m scratching my head trying to figure out where they sit in the game other then just slow moving targets for basically everything else.
That’s been how I tend to play heavies when I do play them, but that begs the question of, if I am playing a tank like a medium, why not just…play a medium tank? I get that due to the loose “realism” of this game there’s not really a hard rock paper scissors element to the classes, but still.
The majority of heavy tanks require teamwork to be used most effectively. Positioning also plays a huge part in how effective a heavy tank can be. Sure you have heavy armor and a hard hitting gun, but you end up with longer reloads and poor mobility. If you have teammates that make up for those disadvantages, a heavy tank can be a serious threat.
The armor does not do much against Heat at 5.7+. Against those enemies it’s just a handicap as it slows them down and makes them easy targets. Plenty of high pen APCBC rounds at 4.7+ as well that, if they don’t kill a heavy, can certainly cripple it.
Play like a medium, be happy when your armor bounces mroe because you’re treating it like a medium, dont ever take a bad position in order to score a kill.
I’m only playing Maus and recently I’ve noticed that tigers kinda stopped getting ahead of me. So I was wondering if, well, they’re not so good anymore…
Oh no, a ww2 heavy tanks performed better than anything else alright.
A tank is a tank of course, but you need like 3-5 mediums to have the same effect as the guy just reporting:
-There’s a tiger…
And the whole front line going
-FR?
…
Worked both ways though.
Considering the resources required to make a single heavy tank in comparison with a medium tank, the combat performance its not worth it. Even considering mechanical failures like transmission, fuel consumption, getting stuck in mud, etc.
Thats why it is believed germany could have perfomed better spamming panthers rather than making some Tigers 2.
But yeah theres some exceptions like the Tigers in Africa or the KV-1s against panzers 3/4.
But then you have tank destroyers as isu-152, jagdpanzer or infantery at guns such as the pak 88mm, even a firefly, that will kill your expensive heavy tank easily. Even infantery weapons such as panzerfaust or panzershrecks could do the job.