It will make 9.0 worse as well, so really nothing has changed. Problem still exists, but elsewhere.
They are fine at 8.7 and will trade blows with many 8.7 MBTs as well.
I doubt their armor will matter much at a BR where darts are common, so in most cases it’s nothing more than a dead weight.
If both ZTZ88s are at 9.0 then T-55amd should be 9.0, I think many people are missing the fact that it has a gun launched ATGM. I Think the ZTZ88b should stay at 8.7 and the ZTZ88A being at 9.0 could be justified because of the better round. Overall the ZTZ88s being 9.0 is bogus since the T-55amd hasn’t moved also. and what was that about the chinese M60 TTS being 9.0 without ERA…?
They are missing that fact for a reason. ATGMs aren’t very good at the moment, people will just use darts instead and do much better overall.
Shell is exactly the same, but is fired from a different cannon so penetration differences are pretty negligible, which means it shouldn’t be that important.
But, my previous point about their good UFP armor, that can even work even against some darts, still stand.
Ask Gaijin, I can’t tell you that.
It has no ERA and has a weaker round than it’s US equivalent, but yet those share the same BR.
Is it US bias or ?
I don’t think expanding the 9.0 bracket will make the 9.0 bracket worse I think you will see more matches against tanks in your BR range rather than the consistent uptiers.
Do they, though? Let’s compare.
M60 RISE (P): Worse armor, worse mobility, no LRF, worse round (Currently, the patch broke it and it may be fixed in the future). Benefits: Better gun handling, more gun depression.
T-62: Worse armor, slightly worse mobility, no LRF, worse reload. Benefits: Better round, one extra degree of gun depression
Obj 435: Haven’t played it, can’t discuss it with confidence.
Chieftains: Worse armor, worse mobility (Cripplingly so in the Mk III’s case), worse round, no roof mounted .50 cal, no LRF. Benefits: Slightly better gun handling and depression.
AMX-30 B2 and BRENUS: No armor, no stabilizer. Benefits: Faster, better round, thermals, better gun handling and depression. Bit of an apples to oranges comparison, the lack of a stabilizer is more crippling than the advantages they have over the AMs IMO.
T-55M: Much worse armor, worse mobility. Benefits: Slightly better round.
Strv 104: Worse armor, much worse mobility, no .50. Benefits: better round, better gun handling and depression.
Outside of the apples to oranges comparisions, it does seem to me that the AMs are substantially better than most other 8.7s. It’s hard to imagine a situation where I’d rather be in a Chieftain or a T-62 over either AMs.
Is that enough for them to go up to 9.0? Probably not unless we see more decompression that moves a lot of 9.0 up further. They are notably weaker than several notable 9.0s. But pretending the 8.7 MBTs are well balanced in comparison to each other seems rather disingenuous.
ZTZ-88 pens 80% more than T-55AMD & AM1.
So no, they shouldn’t be the same BR.
M735 and L15A3, even post nerf are not worse rounds than 3BM25
You have a point, but to be fair, a couple of tanks you brought up should be moved down in BR. I have no idea why T-62 is at a higher BR than T-55A to begin with. Then there’s RISE and Chieftains as well, while others are fine where they are.
Also, I’d argue that RISE and Strv 104 have similar armor to AMs considering they have ERA and will stop chemical rounds with very similar efficiency (especially RISE). I won’t go into protection against darts since hardly anything at 8.7 has meaningful protection against those.
This brings up another problem, one of their biggest advantages on paper is their armor, which sadly is nothing more than a situational advantage in reality, considering how common darts are up there.
That’s like bringing up, for example, Tiger II and slightly less armored counterpart to a 8.0 match and saying Tiger is more armored (advantage), which is correct if you read the stats, but in reality most of the times that “advantage” will simply be negated by commonly used shells there.
I doubt 9.0 would be nearly as played as 9.3 or 10.0 so I highly doubt that would be the case.
Simply put, those tanks don’t belong at 9.0 in the current state of the game.
The problem with this is that every tank at this tier that can pick APDS over HEAT, typically does so. Even post nerf, APDS still does more consistent damage, is easier to aim, and doesn’t get defeated by ERA as easily. The armor can be useful against light vehicles you face in downtiers that only have HEAT as an option, but compare that with armor that will troll even the highest performance APDS rounds, and I don’t think it’s much of a contest.
I agree on that with you, but some people like to use HEAT-FS, since it’s a better round to use on light tanks and against heavies (especially Russian ones at ~8.0).
But as you said, some tanks won’t have APDS available and are forced to use HEAT. I mean, just look at Germany, outside of Leopard I, they are filled with HEAT-only tanks at 7.7 - 8.0.
I only argued about their chemical protection being the same, but I acknowledge the differences in their KE protection.
Also, speaking from personal experience playing around that tier, 8.3 - 8.7 vehicles will often get sucked into “premium hell” at 9.0 - 9.3 and above, since so many popular premiums reside there and also, several nations have ridiculously stacked 9.3 - 9.7 lineups as well.
ZTZ88s both have obscure difference in penetration values compared to the 3BM25, The angled performance is slightly better but not enough to make difference enough for a 9.0 vehicle. I’ll say it again y’all might not think much of it but a gun launched atgm goes a long way, Both vehicles are equal considering the AMD has APS and The AM-1 Has Extra armor on the turret.
80% more penetration is not “slight”.
If gun launched ATGMs weren’t limited to the gun’s position, I’d agree. However, they were the last time I tested them.
what do you mean by 80% more? the Type-83-APDS has 2mm more flat penetration the only difference is the angled performance of the rounds. look at my latest post about ZTZ88 and T-55s
Angled pen matters far more at these BRs.390mm vs 258mm at 10 meters. [Using the penetration calculation of armor thickness divided by cosin of angle.]
And 390/258 is 151%, or 51% more. It’s 77% more at 2km.
I don’t understand what you are saying neither the round 3bm25 or Type-83APDS have 390mm pen at max
195x2 is 390.
195/cosin60 is 390.
The T-55AM-1 at its present BR range is quite simply p2w
With the recent shuffle of tanks moving the Chinese 8.7s to 9.0 there is little justification beyond player skill lacking in the tanks remaining at their present BR.
Composite armor which is effective against the majority of rounds present at its BR range and mobility and fire power to back it up.
No other nation is offered such a trifecta for their tanks.
laser range finder, composite armour and dart …yet the same BR as a chieftain mk3/5 … no clearly not. 9.0 all day long
The ZTZ88s should be 8.7. the T-55 variants should also be at 8.7.
Man, you are coping too hard with this one.
The composite armor is useless versus common kinetic rounds found above 8.0 (M728, M735, OFL 105 F1, DM23, M111 and L15A3); your claim of it being “effective” only holds true when fighting in a full downtier.
The mobility is average, and the firepower is subpar with the best kinetic shell being a worse DM13 (105); initially found at 8.0 on the Centurions Mk.10 and the Leopard 1.
Meanwhile 8.7 France has thermals, the best APFSDS for it’s BR (not counting the one used by the PTZ89) and all of the advantages that late NATO MBTs (gun handling, reverse speed and optics) have over their russian equivalents.