I’d like to give my own insight on the Object 120.
What are its pros?
Well, it has a 152mm gun with APFSDS and HEATFS, which can bore right through armor.
It has an autoloader, which its entire ammo rack is part of.
Its fast, clocking in at 40mph, or for those who don’t use miles per hour, 64 kilometers an hour.
Its transmission is its armor.
Now for the cons:
10 second reload time, will be beaten by most vehicles.
22 rounds of ammo.
Turret rear is an first stage rack, so it always has ammo there.
Weak armor.
Transmission is massive, will be taken out most of the time.
No Co-ax MG.
So, to answer the question, does the Object 120 deserve BR 8.0? Yes, it does deserve 8.0. Sort of.
It has a huge cannon, with a 10 second reload, with APFSDS. Before it was moved, I would constantly see Object 120s in 6.7 to 8.7, at 6.7, you would pray it wouldn’t hit its mark, which it always did.
A lot of strong points are made here. Personally (my own opinion, do not quote me on this), I completely agree that Object 120 is in an awkward position where it is extremely challenging to balance. The situation is quite similar to that of Black Prince Churchill, except that the circumstances are inverted. Black Prince Churchill’s armor does not justify being lower than BR 6.0 because BR 4.7 vehicles will have a terrible time attempting to penetrate it if downtiered. However, its gun does not actually deserve being placed at BR 6.0 because it is essentially a BR 5.3 gun found in the Challenger medium tank.
The conditions are reversed for Object 120. Here you have a gun that is completely justified in the BR 8.0+ range, but the lack of a laser rangefinder and stabilized gun means it will struggle to play at a rating higher than BR 8.0.
Therefore, every purchase should be thought over 3x. Always assuming the worst case scenario. Didn’t you learn the sales policy of this company? There’s always some machine that has a low BR and for a year they can’t wait to switch BRu giving them great sales, then something new comes along as sales start to slowly drop and the old one gets a nasty BR and comes full circle.
That’s why I personally buy only with money coming from the market from naives and on sale -50%.
Giving vehicles equipment they never had isn’t “balancing the game” - it is creating War Thunderhammer.
BR, ammunitions, and rate of fire are what they use to “balance” the game.
The 120 is a derp machine, and so it is very difficult to find a sweet BR for it - too low and it is ridiculously OP in a down-tier, too high and it is useless.
But since BR is apparently based on how players perform with it, we can reasonably assume that a lot of players have done quite well with it at lower BR’s, hence it is pushed up.
It’s never been 8.0 before so there is no data that suggest people are good enough, and it’s stats at 7.3 are mediocre at best, and I don’t get why you have to throw petty insults like a child when we’re just talking about a virtual vehicle, apparently some people are incapable of having a discussion about something without throwing insults.
Its unfair that that thing snipes WW2 vehicles from 1500m away with APFSDS that goes through literally everything. They have zero chance.
I hate that thing, it deserved to go up just as much as the Leopard 1.
Also it only went up 0.3 relatively because everything in that BR range went up 0.3 anyway, so in relative terms its fighting the same vehicles it would be if it was 7.7 before its BR change.
Gaijin has data on how the Object performs at 8.0 without it ever being at 8? That’s magical.
And there’s 7000 pieces of data that put the 120 at a k/d of 1.5, which is no reason for concern.