That i know of, is3 has never been 6.7. When they added GF, it was 7.0. I have screenshots from 10 years ago showing it was 7.0. It was moved to 7.3 and sat for ages, then down to 7.0 (where it did nothing), then up to 7.3 with the mass rebalance.
Only during first release of GF was it OP. APHE was worse, HEATFS was god (and nearly nothing had it), and everything with sloped armor was much more effective. Overmatch REALLY helped 122mms vs light tanks (you couldn’t bounce against armor 1/3 of your shell diameter, meaning you could pen roofs at any angle). Then they nerfed HEATFS, is3 got moved up, overmatch got removed, and heat started showing up everywhere. Hull break was nice on the 122 but you could still overpen and not hit any vital component on light tanks. Overpressure on the 122 was only added after the is3 was far beyond relevance.
Comparing tanks to their full downteir is how you make armor meaningless. T32 still sees dozens of tanks that can’t pen it frontally. IS3 actually has worse armor and actual weak points.
Tiger 1s, panthers, and US long 90 can pen the driver port with APHE on the is3 at over 500m. Driver port is nearly impossible to hide and actually fire. Also, if you hit high you can shot trap into the driver hatch.
IS3 also has a MASSIVE muzzle break making it one of the easiest tanks in the game to barrel break.
In 2014 this tank was in rank similar to 6.7 tanks IIRC so basically stayed in 6.7. And later with the BR introduction was in 7.0 destroying completely game for a time.
Oh yes and US 90 mm can pen Tiger 2H frontal turret in a tinny spot too so lets suggest move down the Tiger 2H cuz that?? hell no.
Sorry but thats is not valid reason for move down the IS-3.
Why not move up the big spam of postwar tanks instead of making russians even a more op nation???
Again, you are trying to convince ppl that a tank was dominant a DECADE ago so it shouldn’t be viable now? 7.0 now in no way resembles 2015 7.0.
So you are saying that a tank should not have difficulty penning a heavy tank a full upteir from it? Idk what armor is supposed to do in that case. Because we have already agreed that the driver port weak point is pennable, meaning it isn’t frontally immune to a full br under it. At its own br its a joke vs every round it can see.
T32 is nearly strictrly better than the is3. better armor, slightly less pen but better reload, good gun depression, turret able to shrug off 300 and 320 pen HEAT, and still faster. Sits at same br and isn’t even considered that stand out of a tank. 6.3 tanks have a FAR harder time with the T32 than the 6.0s would have with the T32.
If every current BR were moved up by a factor of at least 1 step, then we would have a range 33% larger than now, which would alow for several adjustments, more nuance, and for vehicles to only ever face opponents closer in capabilities.
the same mantra peolpe have been saying for literally a decade. Any problem? decompression. But thats not how any of this works. They literally just decompressed 7.7 less than a year ago.
6.0 tanks CAN fight an is3 frontally. Many 6.3s have no difficulty. Most 6.7s are just as effective if not more. If you EVER want armor to be effective you have to make the concession that full downteirs shouldn’t be able to point-click a heavy tank in a full upteir. It doesn’t matter how compressed or decompresed the game is, thats just a gameplay fundimental.
WHAAAAAA my ONE tank that doesn’t fit the mould should make them do an incredible amount of rebalancing to make it fit. Yeah, not happening.
The maus is effective at 7.7. Most 6.7s and 7.0s struggle to pen it, and even if they can they need 2-3 pens at min to kill it. The maus pens anything even in an upteir. Literally the same thing as the is3 if it was at 7.0. That people expect the maus to be unpennable is the problem, not the tank.
Nah, what you are seeing is black hole BRs. BRs where players gravitate towards because there are iconic tanks or many nations that have good lineups. That leads to more players, meaning more matches of that br, meaning more upteirs for -1.0 of that BR. The tank is balanced if it fought the full spectrum of battles in 4.7-6.7, but it doesn’t. Its going to see mostly 6.7s and therefore feel weaker because 6.7 is where the tiger 2 sits along side US 6.7.
Much the same thing as 8.0 being extremely popular along with 8.3. Then you jump to 10.3 and 10.7. Decompressing just ends up with different black holes that are even stronger due to less matches being found in their BR range. (if there were fewer 7.7 tanks from decompression, 6.7 would see more and more downteirs due to the lack of 7.0 and 7.3 lineups across most nations)
Constant demands of decompression is just going to cause as many problems as it solves, leaving many BRs that sit under a black hole unable to find downteirs anymore, making them even more useless.
Me as a Russian Player the IS-3 is perfect for it BR nobody can pentrate you anyways and you always stay domiant. Lowering it down make it very unfair.
If a vehicle seeing certain amount of certain vehicles is a problem, then it shouldn’t ever face them.
Balance should never be reliant on how many people play or don’t play certain vehicles, nor depend on how lucky or unlucky you are to get uptiers or downtiers.
Every vehicle should be balanced at all times against all of its opponents.
Pure fantasy with little grasp on reality. Perfect balance is asking for the impossible, and demanding it is going to get you nothing.
If a 6.0 tank only ever sees upteirs, it will be considered weak. Its not because of the inherent capabilities of the tank, its due to its matching. Does it deserve a downteir? If you say no, then the tank will remain weak and no one will play it. If you say yes, then what you are seeking is not balance against all its opponents. Your argument just doesn’t work.
There would be a super-small selection of tanks at BR 5.0 that could scratch the IS2. On the reverse the IS2 would one-shot almost everything it aimed at.
As for the IS3… a similar comparable is the Conqueror
It has better frontal turret armor (with a horrible weak spot mantlet) but significantly worse armor on sides and back.
Though the conqueror has better reload and pen, it is still quite slow and has no HE filler.
The conqueror top speed is slower compared to the IS3.
All of the above and the Conqueror sits at 7.7 And you think it reasonable to drop the IS3 to 7.0? I don’t agree at all.
Ok, i’ll bite. Name a tank at 5.0 that can’t pen the is2’s 100mm mantlet or pen the driver’s hatch. I’ll wait. The EBR would struggle at 5.3, but that tank has a lot wrong with it that i’m not going to touch on.
Conq has 10 degrees gun depression and has a full stab. it has 500 pen. Its designed as a sniping tank. None of these are comparable to the is3. The only reason the conq is considered bad is because that apds round has something wrong with it. Dozens of people have tested and come to the same conclusion. When they changed the pen from 380 to 500 they changed something in the postpen numbers that messed up the shell, generating seemingly random postpen effects that have little to do with the plate hit or the remaing velocity after pen (how most apds work).