Whats the point of heavy tanks if its only advantage gets negated by some 60s car with 400+ pen shells? Not to be some sort of “NO MUH GERMAN BIAS MAUS ISNT OP” but cmon, a Ratel with a MILAN MISSILE can fight against a Jumbo 75.
18 Likes
the ratel is probably the worst example you could’ve given with how trashy the ratels are but I understand your annoyance. vehicles like the PT76 at 5.3 are toxic as hell. but they would also completely suck at a higher BR, paper armour makes them easy targets for anyone
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The PT-76 is just as bad. It is like the M-51. All pen, nothing else. The post pen damage from the 76mm is horrendous and it is pretty common to need multiple shots to kill a vehicles crew because of the low caliber HEATFS. The M-51 at least gets a 105mm HEAT round, but the rest of the M-51s characteristics are awful.
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The problem here is that all these vehicles are is penetration and literally nothing else. The PT-76 has good penetration, but the round itself is just kind of fine and the vehicle itself is bad, the Ratel 20 is garbage, the M-51 has a great gun at the cost of literally everything else, the Type 63 has the same problem as the PT-76, Type 62 is pretty good but still not insane, etc. The common thread here is that they have good penetration but they sacrifice everything else or almost everything else.
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Its the same reason the ikv 105 is 4.0 with 400mm pen heatfs, i believe it was 5.7 or 6.0 at one pount and the vehicle can be penned from 7.62 from the front and just did really poor. Besides most of the reason we have Heat on certain vehicles is because the vehicles due poorly at higher Br’s. When playing 6.7 japan heat for me was better known as(break in case of tiger front plate)
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Exactly. The Ikv 105 has great penetration, but is still complete trash.
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Or the 3.0 swedish td with a starting solid ap round with 69mm pen until you get the heat shell with 240mm pen. Even that thing is mega trash cause post pen is abhorrent.
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It just isnt fair to pit them against WW2 heavies and such though. Takes the fun out of heavy tanks when they drive for 5 minutes just to get one shot KO or disabled by some car with a recoilless rifle.
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And its not fair to pit these heat slingera against even more armored foes. What ends up happening is things get faster, better protected and in general more self aeare players. Heavy vehicles havent been the meta ever since light tanks existed. Heavies are fine as is and fit well for pushing positions. Light tanks may have high pwn but they lack in spalling and serious damage. Sure sometimes they one shot but other times they dont. Try playing them for a bit.
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Have you played any of these “heat slingers”?
yes?
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Which ones have you played?
Many. LekPz M41, SPz LGS, JPz 4-5, M36B2, M56, M50, 2S1, BMP-1s, AUBL/74, FIAT 6614, AML-90, AMX-13-90.
SU-122-54
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Using the SU-122-54 as an example of a HEAT slinger is crazy.
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122 HEAT-FS and APDS at 6.7, with decent armor…
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The LekPz M-41’s APDS is better than the HEATFS round in penetration and post pen damage.
The SPz LGS has god awful traverse on the recoilless rifle along with the horrible ballistics that come with a recoilless rifle platform.
The JPz 4-5 is worse off than the Jadgpanther in every single way other than having a HEATFS and slightly better mobility, which is the only way it is viable to use.
The M36B2 is a horrible platform overall and the HEATFS is the only real strength it has.
Same thing with the M56 except for the speed it has and can be killed by literally any MG because the crew is completely exposed.
The M50 wouldn’t be useful if it didn’t have 6 of those recoilless rifles, it still has effectively no ammo, and the trajectory of the rounds is awful.
2S1 is a horrible platform as well, HEATFS is the only thing that really makes it useful at all.
The BMP-1 has about the same post pen damage as the PT-76, a 5.4 vehicle, along with no gun depression or armor. It does get a useful ATGM after you grind up rank 3 modifications, and then it still suffers from terrible depression.
The AUBL/74 is another perfect example of HEATFS being the only thing really going for it. No armor, only 3 crew, and the HEATFS is the only really useful round.
The Fiat 6614 is worse than the AUBL/74 in everything other than ballistics and speed. The traverse is terrible, the ballistics on the HEAT is terrible and the reload is terrible.
AML-90 is all speed and the only viable round is the HEATFS. No armor, only 3 crew, and a terrible reload rate for 7.7 French vehicles.
The AMX-13-90 may be the first decent vehicle on this list that uses HEATFS. But it is a 7.7, it only has a crew count of 3, and will get shredded by the autocannons of it’s BR.
If you use the HEATFS for the SU-122-54 over the APDS or even the BR-471D then you are wasting MASSIVE damage potential because you can’t hit weakpoints. The BR-471D is going to 1 shot everything frontally (and is one of the few APHE that can overpressure targets) except for a few of the 7.7 heavies which the APDS would handle quite well. Plus the APDS is almost twice as fast as the HEATFS round and has much better ballistics overall.
As you can see, almost all of the vehicles that use HEATFS at these early BRs RELY on that HEATFS as their primary strength. The only exception is probably the SU-122-54 and the APDS would probably treat you better. They are at the battle rating they are with HEATFS because the vehicles are mostly crap. The best ones are the fastest ones and the rest are just kind of meh. None of them are great vehicles by any means, other than the SU-122-54. If they didn’t have their HEAT ammunition, they would have to be lower BR than they are already or wouldn’t be in the game because HEAT is their only ammo.
6 Likes
Agreed, HEAT-FS/ATGMs should not be able to face armour-based previous-gen vehicles, it’s by far the worst case of BR compression in the game.
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So it seems you only say “well bad armor so balance”
You don’t seem to get how useful the mobility and small profile of them is.
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Mobility and (usually) small profile and arty and (usually) scouting and lower spawn costs… and so on.
Light vehicles, especially types like these trade survivability to get everything else, while heavies trade (almost) everything just to have armour. Which they don’t even actually get in practice.
One of the biggest issues seems to be the devs’ insistence that basically all vehicles be able to frontally defeat basically anything they encounter. Light tanks taking out heavies from the front, SPAAs at far-too-high BRs because they have AP belts, etc. Instead of emphasizing that different vehicle types have different roles, and that putting your light tank in a quick draw duel with a heavy is something people should learn not to do.
It’s one of those cases where the victim’s balance is more important than the attacker’s.
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Yes, if they have terrible armor and terrible gun handling then they should be balanced lower than similar vehicles. Speed helps, but survivability is a huge drawback to vehicles, especially in a game with autocannons and HMGs all over the place.
I am aware of what small, fast vehicles can do, but that isn’t what we are talking about here. We are talking about HEAT rounds and their impact on heavily armored tanks. If you use the speed and maneuverability of the light vehicles mentioned then HEATFS rounds mean almost nothing as some of the vehicles have better ammunition for side shot kills. Also, a majority of the vehicles you mentioned have HEATFS, low pen HESH, or small caliber HE which makes HEATFS the only VIABLE ammunition type.
So which is it? Are these light nimble vehicles with HEAT rounds so amazing because they have the mobility and small profile to flank targets and use ambush tactics, or are they only good because they have HEAT rounds that the strengths are basically nullified if they are attacking from the sides?
I can guarantee the M36B2 would be almost exactly the same as the normal M36 without the HEATFS, very redundant to have two near exact vehicles foldered together at the same BR. The M36B2 is only 5.7 because of the HEATFS and it is still hot garbage. The LekPz M-41’s APDS is the better choice in my opinion over the HEATFS because of the ballistic characteristics, but they are honestly about the same. The SU-122-54 is NOT part of this small and nimble crowd, and the HEATFS is honestly just useless for that platform anyway. Good aim will make the APDS and APHE much more powerful than being a crap shot with high pen. All the others have HEATFS as the primary shell or the only viable shell. Plus if you take in to account the detonation of HEAT projectiles on any kind of cover then it just gets worse for those vehicles because anything has the potential to make your shot worthless.
If this wasn’t a discussion based around vehicle balancing, then by all means separate the technology where it is possible. 7.7 is where HEATFS rounds start to make a serious appearance on mediums and heavies and ATGMS start to pop up. Decompress those 7.7s so they don’t face Tiger 2s, Pershings, and IS-2s. But the vehicles that are inherently crap, like the M36B2 or the M-50, the HEAT rounds they have are the best thing they get and CAN’T be decompressed from their BR because they are not good vehicles overall even with the HEAT ammunition.
2 Likes