I think it can be quite oppressive in a full downtier, but it becomes trivial at higher BRs, where turret mantlet is extremely weak, hull armour is unreliable, and turret rotation speed doesn’t help at all with that.
At that point, I’d rather play the M4A1 (76) or KV-85.
The penetration for the round, top speed, and smoke grenades are still quite nice, though.
XM 249 should be at 9.3. ZA-35 should be at 9.0. Geopard can stay at 8.3. Wiesel and Luchs need to be at least at 7.0 and get a drone. ZSU-57 needs to be at least at 7.3.
How about we just fix the small-caliber APHE spam that makes them OP in the first place?
Then you don’t have to move up SPAAs that get countered by things like bullpups and laser-guided weaponry, which are plentiful at 9.0+.
VK is basically a casemate considering its turret rotation speed is so abysmal.
If you get transmissioned / engined, you aren’t going to turn the turret on time to shoot them in a lot of cases.
The only real difference being that the VK can set up its gun on its side (though that isn’t really useful when you’d usually want your gun facing hull-front anyways). It wouls technically have better horizontal guidance than the Su-85M though.
But the Su-85M has much better armour (~180mm UFP armour, with a cupola that can’t be exploited, arguably better round (for the BR), faster reload, much more usable reverse speed and slightly better acceleration.
The VK.3002 gets much better flat pen, much better gun depression, better turret guidance access to smoke grenades, and is more survivable when shot (unless the round pens the UFP / side).
I’d say its a sidegrade.
Indeed.
It’s definitely one of the best 5.0 though. But I agree that it may be reasonable at 5.0.
Though is it really fair that it is 0.7 BR different to the IS-1?
Having the XM248 a full 1.0 BR higher and the Za-35 0.7 BR higher than the Gepard is indeed German main cope yes.
Can you argue that the XM248 and Za-35 are better against ground targets due to the things you mentioned? Technically yes, but they wouldn’t be better enough to justify those BR differences.
XM249 can tank shots and it’s hull makes it that you need to aim for weak points to one shot it with the 35. And it can tank MBT’s shots to unlike other vehicles. And being 12.7 proof makes it better then the Geopard which isn’t.
