That is where our logic differs - I see barrel damage as a concept to be a poisonous built-in cheat for all intents and purposes.
If you can’t frontally pen something, you either hide, let him overextend, and shoot his side, or you go around where he’s camping and looking. If you run into him frontally with no rounds able to pen him, you should be blown to kingdom come if he doesn’t miss. Simple as that.
A Jagdpanther can actually move when it encounters something that can frontally render its armor meaningless.
But a T95 cannot - you cannot dare claim being able to render that frontally impotent is “balanced.” Nor can a Churchill, Ferdinand, Jagdtiger, Maus, Tortoise, or any other similar vehicle of the same “slow armored rolling bunker” concept.
That is why I frankly think barrels should be made totally immune to all damage - they already phase through walls as-is. Either pen the actual armor of the vehicle or go around it.
it’s accomplished way too easily. These light tanks / spaa often have much better gun handling that goes along with an astronomical ROF.
Why should they be able to affect it frontally? Their nature means they should be at a huge disadvantage and they need a different tactic - which can include retreat, not engaging, and asking for help.
SPAA in general need to get nerfed to shit, a gepard should not be able to kill an Olifant 1 frontally simply because it can go through the cupola. and if you get barreled in your jagdpanther by a light tank that’s a skill issue.
we get it dude, you only play casemates and heavy tanks. Stop trying to buff your own stuff and make it even more annoying to play against. Churchills were never hard to kill anyway, you don’t need to barrel them when you can just turret roof them. The tortoise actually has a pretty good reverse gear and a cupola which means it gets deleted by APHE anyway. T95 has the cupola problem, Ferdinand is a Tiger P hull so your corners are pp bad. The jagdtiger deserves to be bad, the Maus has insane armor all around itself. You’re just biased because you play casemates and heavy tanks exclusively, and quite badly looking at how you’re framing the barrel thing.
Yes, let’s buff 3 of the most insufferable vehicles in the game to play against because their players are mad that light tanks can actually fight back. Have you considered that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, you are biased because your favorite vehicles are easy to play unless they get barreled? SPAA needs to get nerfed into the ground but how is playing a (most) light tank spray and pray. You keep bringing up heavy casemates and my argument is that yes, those vehicles are crippled by barreling, but they should be. Volokolamsk is already a god awful map but your hypothetical change would make it EVEN WORSE every time a jagdpanther player decides to queue. I’m sorry that you keep getting barreled but that’s not my problem, maybe play a vehicle that isn’t a casemate :)
We shouldn’t remove barreling as a tactic, as certain vehicles all but rely on it (Mainly the Jumbos, and other slower vehicles with lacklustre firepower).
However, we could stand to both make it more difficult, and less effective. It’s currently too much of an easy, one-shot solution to any tank you come across, no matter what you’re in, or they’re in. And it is particularly infuriating on a few specific tanks, who generally all have the same combo of overwhelming frontal armor (So most players know a barrel shot is their only chance), alongside an already long reload.
Firstly, decouple the barrel from the breach. A barreled tank can still reload, and can still fire. The round will just have a noticeably greater amount of dispersion on it, enough to make hitting weakspots or even hitting a target at all at longer ranges impractical. However, up close, against weakly armored targets, a barreled tank remains a threat.
Secondly, buff barrel health for larger calibers. Generally, a particularly large barrel should not be destroyed by a single shot from a low caliber weapon, or a short spray from an autocannon. Small caliber weapons already out-reload larger caliber weapons, so this won’t be an issue if the opposing player is playing smart and catching you out on reload. But it means that if you both stumble into each other in close quarters, they can’t just one-shot disable you for free.
Combined, this gives more counterplay for heavy tanks while still preserving barreling as a tactic that can be used in the right circumstances.
Barrel damage can be highly dependant on the server, as when a turret is moving the barrel can be in a completely different place from where it’s displayed on your screen.
This means that even if you think you’re hitting a flat part, you might actually only be hitting the barrel when it’s super angled, resulting in the round just bouncing off.
All that being said, if you manage to get the jump on a tank while it’s turret isn’t moving, or hit it once it’s turret has settled on you (But before it fires), it’s very consistent. Much more consistent on tanks with pronounced muzzle breaks, admittedly, but with good enough aim any barrel is a fairly easy target.
They are the ones most susceptible to this tactic, it must be said. It is the classic case of something being annoying to play with, and annoying to play against - the Tutels definitely fit that sad category.
ok look I can get behind nerfing small caliber/autocannon barrel damage nerfs but normal caliber rounds should destroy barrels and especially high caliber HE rounds should delete them even on glancing blows. HOWEVER (and this is coming during a session of playing 8.x because of how awful low tier is right now), regular cannons should continue to destroy barrels. I also agree with Aegis’s proposal on barrel health scaling with gun caliber, but there are very specific tanks that need to have reduced barrel health as a balancing factor, and who’s barrels should be able to be deleted by SPAA. One of those is the T58.
No, we damn well should remove barreling as a tactic, and let the vehicles which “rely” on it see their stats plummet, followed by their BRs not terribly long after.
Let the fucking Jumbos burn for a good while, then maybe the downtiering of both that fans of said tank claim to want will actually be able to happen. The same “but muh JUMBO!” whiners already sank Snail’s one attempt to make APHE not stupid in its postpen spall pattern when the prospect of having no cupola shots was imminent. So no, I don’t respect such folk - they should burn into total irrelevance.
Barreling is not counterplay, its a built in cheat mechanic. The biggest, slowest, heaviest tanks unequivocably pay the price for this dumb mechanic.
If someone with a weak gun ends up in front of a heavy tank, and the heavy doesn’t whiff their shot, the other guy should perish, simple as that. The “counterplay” on the other guy’s part was thrown away - he had the mobility to not end up in front of the heavy he can’t pen, and through either terrible luck, impatience, or just plain stupidity, he chose not to use his vehicle’s strength’s effectively and should be taken out for it.
The other reason I vehemently oppose any retention of “barrel has HP” is because of all the autocannon spam from IFVs and SPAAGs. If you “raise the HP” those things only need to spray a little longer to take out an opponent’s barrel. If you raise the HP enough to where autocannons are functionally useless to take out gun barrels, then every other tank gun also becomes functionally useless at barreling - so why keep the mechanic at that point and not just make barrels immune to damage given they already clip through solid walls and earth as is?
Aaaaand you’re quite wrong on that front. I’ve spaded the majority of Tier 1-4 tanks in most nations, and quite frankly I enjoy most kinds of tanks equally.
Rather, it’s that I plainly see heavy armor consistently given the short stick no matter how many times you look at it. Maps favor rush-to-camp as the go-to playstyle. City clusterfuck maps directly punish vehicles that are sluggish or rely on longer ranged engagements. Overabundance of HEATFS and APDS render heavy armor mostly irrelevant. CAS of course also exists and slower things are easier targets.
And barrel damage is insult to injury when added on top of all those other problems. You’re telling me that even on the rare occasion I get downtiered and actually bother spawning something with armor on a map suited to a slow rolling pillbox that I STILL cannot rely on my armor to aggressively shove people out of their camping spots like a “breakthrough tank” was explicitly designed to be able to do? Seriously?!
Dude, you’re a light tank. A light tank is not supposed to be able to run into a heavy tank frontally and remotely expect to win until the day and age where said light tank is packing HEATFS or excessively strong APDS.
Your “counterplay” is your mobility and agility - you are able to move to where you would not end up in front of something you cannot pen in the first place. If you choose not to move often enough despite having the ability to do so, I’m afraid to say that’s a user problem. A slow rolling pillbox literally can’t do much of anything about cases where its main strength of heavy armor is able to be so carelessly bypassed, be it by LOLpen rounds or barrel damage.
Indeed, I don’t like barrel damage as a mechanic regardless of the affected tank - but anything with a physically larger gun, slower turret traverse (if it has a turret at all), slower reload, slower mobility, and slower agility are inherently much more susceptible to said stupid mechanic.