Lower BR for Chieftain Mk 3 and Mk 5

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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Incredible armour and an insanely powerful gun
The Mk 3 is a bit slower, sure, but it can entrench and the dozer passively adds something like 80mm RHAe to the vulnerable lower plate. At 8.3, the Cheiftans would be fighting IS-3s, and 7.7 heavies in only a partial downtier.

Use them in hull downs, use them at range, or go brawling with a battle buddy or two. Just don’t expect to be able to flank, keep your head on a swivel, and don’t leave yourself alone and exposed. Just like you would on a lower tier heavy tank.
Your goal should be not to hunt other tanks (that’s the job of something faster like a Vickers) but to contest space and deny the enemy area to operate. Either by being a hull-down sniping monster or forcing the enemy to face you front-on at close range and high pressure where you can shrug off their fire while one-shotting with your enormous cannon.

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Literally everything stronger than APHE can pen the turret front near the gunner’s optics. HEAT, even 90mm HEAT that’s common at 7.3, can pen the majority of turret. And all APHE bar M82 shot can pen the LFP too, dozerblade or not.

That last part matters quite a bit considering how few maps are left that actually cater to a hulldown playstyle. Going brawling with the Chieftains is a bit of a non-starter considering just how weak your hull is. Not to mention the longer than average reload and slow reactive mobility.

A reminder that the Cheiftains share the same BR with the T-55-AM1, which crush them on on armor without giving up their mobility to do so.

Both Chieftains and the other weak 8.7s (T-62, Object 435, RISE (P), etc) either need to move down, or the stronger 8.7s need to move up.

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The T-55-AM1 also gets a laser rangefinder (long-range accuracy is kinda the Chieftain’s Gimmick) and APFSDS on a marginally lower calibre gun…

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I don’t really agree

I think they are absolute beasts at 8.7. 120mm at that br is really good and APDS gets bad rep too much its very good and 7kg shell just destroys.

Down-tier like here it absolutely smacks everything without any skill needed.

At 8.3 I would Imagine it would be death incarnate with experienced player.

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20mm is quite a big difference.

I do think the T-55’s are very strong at 8.7, some of, if not THE best 8.7’s, but their guns aren’t 9.0 material. 8.7 is a victim of compression.

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I see what you mean.
If I were to think of an 8.3 vehicle similar to it, I would say the M60A1 (AOS) performs similarly against 7.3s (Although having a 105mm instead of 120mm, it gets a 6.7s reload instead of the 7.5s reload, with arguably better hull armour for the cost of the APHE cupola weakspot).

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I don’t think you realize just how superior the Chieftain’s APDS is compared to the T-55AM-1’s short-rod APFSDS.

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From what I can remember, the 120mm APDS that the Chieftain has doesn’t shatter nearly as much as the early APDS like with the Centurion Mk.3 and such.

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Not just that, it essentially doesn’t shatter at all. It’s also basically modeled as late APFSDS.

It’s extremely powerful and it spalls a lot more than earlier APDS, even large ones such as the Conqueror. For all intents and purposes - it can be seen as long-rod APFSDS.

I think the only shell more potent at 8.7 may be the PTZ89’s 120mm APFSDS, although I’m not sure if there’s anything else. Regardless - it’s easily one of the best shells available at BR 8.7.

I’m personally grinding Britain precisely because of the Chieftains and Falcon - but it sure would be nice if the Chieftain Mk.3 were 8.3 for the lineup…

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If it were only for the lineup, I would have to disagree… as BRs for vehicles for the sake of convenience is not fair. They should be judged by their merits instead, as you might agree.

I have mixed feelings about the Chieftain going to 8.3, because like @D00MBrInG3r777 said, it seems to perform really well in downtiers (like expected for any fully downtiered vehicle), but more importantly the gun and armour is fairly good (although not the best for 8.7).

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Of course, but I do believe convenience should have at least a slight influence.

The biggest problem for the Chieftains is easily their mobility, and the Mk.3 gets a strictly weaker engine, further exacerbating the issue.

It is obviously worse than the Mk.5. So when they’re the same BR, it feels like the Mk.3 strictly exists as a back-up to the Mk.5.

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I would be more fine with the Mk.3 going to 8.3 and the Mk.5 staying at 8.7, despite the Mk.5 only having a marginally better engine.

The Type 81 going to 11.3 had partly destroyed Japan’s 11.0 lineup, so I can understand the frustration of Japanese players despite the Type 81 being mostly justified at 11.3.

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Yeah but know the T-62, which is fully stabilized with an APFSDS round is now only one BR step higher than the T-54s

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The T-54s being 8.0 is beyond me. XD

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The problem in game is compresion and it’s tendency to frustrate players into buying premium br lineup where you basically get ‘‘preferential matchmaking’’ just by shire amount of premium players and you are bound to get many downtiers because many prem 10.0 vehicles for example

That’s why they are careful about decompresing things because it makes them money.

It’s not just the Chieftain problem that we have it’s basically every non premium tank that happens to be near premium battle rating spam and so on.

Look at t64a it has no laser range finder, no thermal, no reverse speed etc…

But look what premiums you have at 9.3 that is same br as this thing. Just totally obsolete that poor t72 that I like to play on occasion because I’m a masohist.

But if you put it lower than 9.3 it starts to wreck things even more so than the Chieftain which really isn’t special tank that much, there are many many more cases where as I said compression due to forcing you to buy premium happens trough whole game sadly.

Whoever plays 9.0 and 9.3 you are just constantly trown into 10.0 and 10.3 games due to premium spam.

Thats designed on purpose. We have just so many players that we could easily decompress the b.r to something like 14.0 or even more.

I get into matches after 3 seconds clicking on ready button. What’s gonna happen if I wait for 5 seconds more let’s say?

But then those premiums won’t be so favorable because basically we the players made ‘‘preferential matchmaking’’ just by buying so much premium tanks that they are the most played vehicles anyway at top tier because we and Gajin know that ain’t nobody grinding for free to get to top tier modern vehicles or Abrams, T72’s anyway. That’s designed on purpose, even though it may seem sneaky it’s very manipulative.

So basically what I wanted to say, this is the sole problem. Basically most of the vehicles that aren’t premium suffer from compression and just from stupid amount of premium stuff that you see in game.

Basically we have hundreds and thousands of vehicles in game and that is just a gimmick and a sale point and not a reality. Because on many br’s due to premiums it feels like this game has only something like 50 vehicles because that’s the only things you see in game and everything else is a rare unicorn to see.

10.0 all the time even if you are in 9.3 tanks or let’s say 9.0. this is what you see every game …2S38, TURMST. SU25K, CV90105, ZTZ96A(P),LEOPARD2PNZBTLASLADL, T80UD,BMP2M,M1KVT,WOLFPACK, … and that is REALL variety of war thunder… Also trow in a couple of rare tanks that you can buy for 200 dollars or more, earn trough working like it’s your daily job etc…

these vehicles are basically played by 80% of community at these br’s. And that sucks badly and gets really tedious and boring after a while especially since we are playing the same boring map festival that got even more crowded and cramped.

The problem is all mighty compression but they wont do it because it’s not a viable for profit.

They should never brought this many premiums in game because now the game is just becoming more and more pay to play and really well made hidden pay to win model that basically players forcefully made and Gajin planed that.

Yeah we made preferential mm just by so many premium stuff bought my us and that just destroys free to play players and benefits only Gajin.

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29

This just isn’t true.

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The uptiers are rough but as a whole the Mk 3 and 5 are in the best place they’ve been since they were first added

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The funny thing is that 11.0 is pretty good because you get downtiered to 10.0/10.3 quite often too, due to the shear number of 10.0 / 10.3 premiums. And this is exacerbated by the premium Type 90 and Merkavas too.

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I could agree with the Mk 3 but not the Mk 5.

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No the mk3 shouldnt go down.
Dont re compress shit at all, its fine at 8.7