The Abrams (and similar NATO MBTs) have a higher skill floor and a higher skill ceiling, T-series have a lower skill floor and a lower skill ceiling.
So you are right that for a new/inexperienced/not as good player the T-series are much easier to get into and do well in due to the low skill floor, but due to the low skill ceiling good players will often find themselfs limited.
On the other hand the same new/inexperienced/not as good players will struggle in the Abrams, but good players will be able to do much much more in the Abrams than in the T-series (there are always exceptions to this of course).
The T-90M will always be limited in what it can do due to it’s weak mobility, firepower and gun depression. So it’s not nearly as scary to face than a good Abrams player.
I will say that the base M1 and M1 KVT have the lowest skill ceiling out of every Abrams variant since it doesn’t have the “best” in anything relative to its BR. You can still do extremely well with it but you are held back by its limitations that are solved in later variants.
I despise base M1 and KVT due their firepower/spalling.
Its the sole reason why I bought Click-Bait despite having top KVT already, switching from mediocre 105mm shell to 120mm nuke shell makes life much more enjoyable.
Having the only sub 400mm APFSDS as a top shell and pisspoor spalling makes it painful to play, but I have a large lineup around it. I also don’t like fighting LMURs, Kh-38s, and Pantsirs so I play 10.7.
I got entire Us tree so I have plenty options when it comes to large line-ups on each bracket, still I wouldn’t spawn in M1 Abrams when M10 sits right next to it.
I’d like to confess that whenever I feel like playing top-tier NATO nowadays, I just ask one of my friends to queue as russia with me. I feel like a coward and the wait times are admittedly atrocious, however, the overall experience is much more enjoyable this way.
You’re going for neutral objective? Well, bad for you, because you gonna fight alone because NATO team is sniping. And you’re getting jumped by russian team who actually playing together around objective.
Map knowledge and taking spots? Russian team
Exchanging your teammate if they got shot? Russian team
Surrounding one enemy who hides around corner? Russian team
Pointing on map? Russian team
I bet even without CAS or BMPT that Russia still would had higher winrate than NATO vegetables
But honestly the Booker is kind of criminal at 10.7, especially when it’s closes counterpart in the VT5 sits at 11.7 (probably more to do with that thing being overtiered).
The whole reason why VT-5 sits at 11.7 because of combination Autoloader,Spall liners and amazing mobility.
No doubt Booker is more or less on same level but if you ask me but should be 11.3 at best or they can give BT4A round to VT-5 to increase its firepower.
I have personal bias towards Germany thinking Gaijin made personal setting for Germany more likely to team up with Russia so their winrate won’t fall to abysmal 30%.
Observation from 700 battles with abrams.
It still baffles me that there are some people on here (not you obviously) that look at all the examples you give alongside PL12/12A being gutted and somehow still believe that Gaijin is biased towards China as well.
I believe main reason is because of Taiwanese vehicles, they look at Mirag2000-5,M1A2T and AH-64E and think “yeah Gaijin is based towards China” while completely ignoring those facts.
Not gonna lie I was skeptical that China was receiving NATO vehicles but in time I got use to it.
