I’m sure anyone who played Israel and another nation, knows that Israel ground is both genuinely non-fun, and comparatively worse and less fun to play than other nations.
This can be explained with 2 reasons specific to Israel:
Since update “Winds of Change” was launched on March 2022, not a single unique vehicle was added to Israel. It remains effectively the same as it was back then. It was launched with a line of Magach tanks, a Sho’t/Tiran line that advanced into a Merkava line, and a few very naked SPAA that lacked features like radar, optics, missiles, etc and were only slightly effective against aircraft.
Any vehicle added since March 2022 was a copy of another vehicle that was added to other nations so Gaijin didn’t really put effort there. The only unique models existed for the Magach tanks that Gaijin added in large numbers because people skipped them. The Hovet, M109, the new M113 with TOW that comes in the new update, they’re all just copy paste and part of the slim release roadmap Gaijin showed in early 2022 before the Winds of Change update. @Smin1080p said copy paste vehicles are not a substitute for unique vehicles, and that they’re implemented in addition to them. Well if that’s the case then Gaijin didn’t release any unique vehicle in close to 2 years, with the upcoming update showing no addition for Israel in the ground TT. Only the Rochev which is an M109A5, and M113 TOW which is an M113 with TOW.
The existing tanks are not good because they were released in an extremely bugged way and since then none was fixed. Many bug reports, historical reports etc were filed, but rarely any was actually fixed. You can’t take a varied lineup of tanks, IFVs, arty, SPAA, LTs, and “fun” vehicles. You can only take an MBT, a much slower MBT, and a pea shooter against aircraft. The average overtier is between 0.3-0.7, meaning every tank in Israel’s TT is overtiered compared to its couterparts.
Gaijin, please either fix the entire Israeli TT and add approximately 12 unique vehicles to Israel this update, lower the BRs across the board by at least 0.3, disable all bugs, and hire game designers who can consult on balance creation, or delete Israel’s ground tree and reimburse all players who had vehicles there.
I think the only bad thing about the Israeli tree is starting at Rank IV with 0 crew skills. Every player you meet has at least a moderately trained crew giving them an advantage in some of the most important vehicle stats, i.e., reload, repair, and targeting. Even worse, you can expect to face expert/ace crew level opponents in many cases. There were WWII tanks and aircraft that came to Israel that could have easily given them a Rank II/III start to the tree easing the crew level situation. Those would have still be copies of Shermans, Stuarts, Hotchkiss, Beaufighters, Mosquitos.
I only played Israel up to 7.7 in GRB
I had a number of games on the M51 alone for a long time.
My observations were that I had a lot of enjoyable games in the M51 despite its faults.
The main issue was one of CAS.
At 6.0 BR there was none. An Me 109 at 3.3(?) or is it 3.7. Awful and no premium for ground attack. The price for the premium Spitfire against its quality as a ground attacker was not there for me, an expensive pack that never got reduced in a sale as far as I could see. One plane that I had to try and grind in ARB on its own, no. So, no CAS at 6.0.
The next available vehicles were awful and pulled the M51 up into 6.7 where I did not want to be and the SPAA was way down at around 4.7 or something. It was dreadful.
Went for the Magachs at 7.7 and the Shot which is just a Centurion but it was tedious and at 8.7 I felt I had no place being on the map in those slow old tanks.
AML 90 was good fun on certain maps.
So yes, Israel for me was a mess as people like me always said it was going to be.
What it is like later on I have no knowledge but there is little early on to entice players to play Israel unless you are Israeli, Jewish or just desperately bored of the other nations. It is for a big part the copy paste nightmare that many people said it would be and full of gaps like everyone knew it would be.
Hope it gets better later for all those Merkava fans.
Hey man if you’re having fun with the Israeli TT as it is and perfectly content with its selection, balance, and playability, sure. Good for you. But that’s not how most people feel about this tree.
They could delete half of the Magachs, Sho’ts, and Merkavas and no one would notice, not even Gaijin.
The weakness/suckiness of the Israreli tree is in its “low tier”. It doesn’t have one, as mentioned.
IDK what they were thinking other than using it as big kosher carrot to get players to break down and just buy a rank 4+ to get access to the tree and then a big ol’ halal stick once you get there to make the throwninthedeepend grind less painful. So typical…
I’m sure you are right, but it does seem like they threw the Israel tech tree at those who wanted it as an afterthought. Typical really of the way the game is going generally.
I find that 6-8 BR range to be neither one thing nor the other generally. Not WW2 nor modern just a sad and desperate mix of the two and starting as Israel underlines that for me.
As it is right now, none really goes for Israel thinking they’d get to play low tiers, at least in the near future. So while it’s a mid to high tier tech tree, Gaijin should make those tiers fun for people. IFVs, LTs, good SPAA, and balanced MBTs, are needed for a good lineup which in turn can make things more fun.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of potential vehicles to add.
Only because you can’t, because of how Gaijin added them. Which is guess is explainable, no one wants to play the literal trash the IDF started with, they want the cool famous stuff.
The Israelis never really went in on the IFV or LT (which are the same thing in WT) thing. They were always very tank focused, it was even one of their biggest weaknesses in several conflicts.
They just don’t have anything comparable in the upper tiers to BMPs et al. Achzarit and Namer, much less halftracks and M-113s don’t fit the WT meta.
I agree that the Merks should be better in game, but… handwave something about “game balance”…
In all fairness, Israel has a significant military for a tech tree. It just so happens to not exist in the era that the game originated from. The real creative solution will be finding a way to add the various smaller nations that had WW1 and WW2 tech and participation that wont necessarily fill a tech tree on their own.
Play War Thunder’s Merkava 4 main battle tank to fully enjoy the vicious hostility from gaijin, the top 120mm tank has the slowest loading speed and very “reliable” 65-ton paper armor protection.
What nation has gotten a complete unique ground vehicle rank IV or higher in the past two years that isn’t part of an existing tank family or shared with other tech trees?
I can only think of the Lynx and a couple specialized vehicles.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what Israel’s lowtier ranks would look like. Unlike China, Israel did not have the pleasure of importing vehicles, they needed to collect scrap from junkyards and glue together vehicles with mostly WW1 technolofy and some WW2 technology here and there. The first rank especially would be full of half tracks equipped with random weapones. Halftracks in Israel are named “Zachlam”, which is an umbrella term for halftracks of various variants (M3, M5, M9, M14, etc…). Here are just a few:
And don’t even get me started on the Sherman with a 20mm HS.404 inside the barrel instead of the regular breach, the CMP Ford F60 armed with a a Scotti-IF autocannon and premitive composite armor made of steel and wood, several SA38 equipped vehicles which use an improvised AP shell using the casing of the original gun but the penetrator of the M51B1 APCPC, and ao much more.
I’d share my custom-made Israeli tech tree one day in the forums and Reddit, but currently I am working on a HUGE update so I’d like to finish that first. But in short: Israel has way more than enough to make ranks I-III with no copy&paste or at least very little of it.
You assume Israel had 1948 technology in 1948. Untill the 60s, the IDF’s equipment and vehicles were 30 years behind the west. There are so many mad-max contraptions to add that would perfectly fit ranks I-III.
With all that said, I’d rather see Israel right now getting some actually good and domestic support vehicles, like the Sholef V2, HVSD/ADAMS, or PT-76-2000. Israel really needs more support vehicles right now.
What do people think about adding an additional nation to the Israel tech tree to allow it to have a low tier plus some potential diversity at the higher end in the same way as Sweden also has Finland etc?
I think it’s a bad idea, at least until about 2025-2026. If Gaijin keeps adding copy pasta to the Israeli ground TT, at some point they’ll run out of them and be forced to add genuinely interesting and unique vehicles. If another nation is added, that just keeps real progress away. As it stands, Israel is on a trajectory to run out of copy pasta vehicles by around 2025-2026, and after that we can think about adding a minorer nation.
Unfortunately Israel does not really have a “best buddy” nation to add to the game as a subtree. And a US subtree is out of the goddamn queation.
I actually have an idea in the works: a subtree for Israel consisting of private ventures of Israeli military industey complex companies. A subtree that will have vehicles developed by Israeli companies without direct funding by the IDF or the Israeli MoD, including prototypes that never went anywhere like the Rascal, M113 HVMS, M109I7 ‘Spark’, as well as the prototypes of exported vehicles to various nations like the PT-76-2000, RAM V-1 (TOW), and SandCat Mk.4 (the one with a SPIKE ER launcher), and the T-54M3 prototype.
I think it is also a good idea to include just straight up export vehicles, like the Sabrah ASCOD, TAM 2C, and the production version of the T-54M3, but export vehicles need to have a high tolerance of what can be added. Not every vehicle with a tiny Israeli sensor should be added to the subtree, but rather only vehicles where Israeli companies had an absolute or a very large part in development.
