A lot of these heavies suffer from excessively long reloads back from a time when the BR wasn’t full of howitzers and HEAT cars with reloads several times faster than the heavies they prey on. The heavies around that BR that have reasonable times are the T-10A (15s + stab), Somua SM (4s), T58 (3s), IS-7 (10s + good mobility) and Object 279 (8.6s, stab and good mobility). None of them are in the tech tree.
The majority are too slow to reposition and/or lack the gun depression to partially stay in cover.
Most take about 15s (T32, T32E1, M103, Conqueror, IS-6, T-10M) with the really bad ones taking around 20s (IS-3, IS-4M, Maus)
The higher you go the more a bad reload can prevent actually being a contributing member of the team (being a “support tank” doesn’t exist) instead of a free SL+RP piñata.
Suggestion: Reduce the aced reload rates of them to the following and adjusting their base reload accordingly.
T32, T32E1, M103, Conqueror, IS-6 → 12.0s
IS-3, IS-4M, Maus-> 16.0s
T-10M → 10.0s
If tanks with the same cannons as the ones listed here (Conway/IS-2/Jagdtiger/AMX-50 Foch/… ) also need a shorter reload it should apply to them too.
Don’t forget (also) that the IS-7 and Object279 also get a 14.5mm that is much more useful than the French 20mm. You can nuke Turm III’s turret just with machine gun. Having access to 279 is why you’ll never see me using IS-4, T-10M, and why the T-10A is the only event vehicle I’ve ever actually sold on the market (I usually just keep everything, whether I’ll use it or not). But yeah, not sure why you’re bringing up the 279 in a topic about 7.3-8.3. It is rightfully better than any other tank in this topic, but also higher BR than all of them.
Because above 7.7 there are only 3 heavies and the 279 is one of them. It’s also the one that got a made up reload for balancing reasons while the ones that would actually need a reduction didn’t receive it.
The problem with the Caern isn’t really its armour, but its lack of access to APHE. At least the IS-3 and 4, and those other USSR APHE slingers will put a tank down when it counts. If you don’t make the solid shot / APDS shot count with the Caern, you’re done for, because it will more often than not leave the enemy tank with the ability to fire back. APHE will just nuke multiple crew, the gun, if not the whole tank.
Not at all considering its in a br where DM23 is very common, it even sees dm63 and 3bm42 equivalents. It doesn’t really have enough pen which mean you do have to aim your targets and having low velocity shells really doesn’t help your shot accuracy especially for long range targets, all this needed to be compensated by the player’s skill to be up on par with modern ammunitions it faced. Only reason people still using them is for the post-pen damage. Not to mention 10 seconds is still way longer than average dm23 reload time of 7-8 seconds, only problems with the buff is that it will destroy everything <8.0s
If it at least had some protection it could tank the return fire to finish off the target. The fact the 6.7 have better armor a full BR lower and it’s main draw being the high pen and low reload make it more suitable in a medium role than a heavy. The same applies to the Surbaisse. In practice the Centurion Mk5/1 has the same firepower (actually better if you value the.50 cal), armor layout (even better than the Caernarvon against APDS and HESH) and mobility while being labeled a medium tank at the same BR.
I’d just keep disabling his gun. But that’s a whole other topic. 341 is on steroids right now. No matter what tank you are, the dakkadakka will eventually take you out. To be fair, I haven’t used Caern since they put it up in BR, it just has no real place.
6.7 has the easiest uptiers in the entire game. They still have competitive firepower, armor and mobility. Look at what 4.7, 5.7 or 7.7 have to deal with in uptiers.