Hi everyone.
I’m a constant player of 8.0 to 10.7 BR in Arcade. There is an elephant in the room - the Object 279.
I’ve never seen a tank so dominant in the game that it can stomp whole teams with 10+ kills consistently. You can’t talk about skills either, because this does not happen to even more expensive/rarer tanks.
The Object 279 is unique in that it is a bullet sponge that can soak up tons of damage while easily bouncing off even APFSDS, having an autoloader, stabilizer, high pen APHE.
Also, you have to factor in the fact that thermal does not matter as much in AB.
A Object 279 supported by a team, not encircled, not get into stupid situation, is impossible to kill without it scoring 2+ kills first.
It simply is too clubby against 8.0-9.0s.
I am not hypocrite either; I have my favorite Soviet heavy tank nerfed before (The IS-7), I think the IS-7 is my most played tank in the game (at least in AB), and it went from 8.0 to 8.3, now being easily one tapped by T-72 and other APFSDS. Am I upset? Slightly. Do I welcome the change, for the healthy of the community balancing ecosystem? Of course I am. I am not going to unthinkingly support keeping a tank at a unbalanced state just because I own it, because you know, you can be playing different nations too (I play all nations).
My idea is structurally identical to the F-14 IRIAF treatment (if you play air battles). Since it constantly clubbed the lobbies, Gaijin decided to uptier it to 13.7 ARB where it would struggle against peers, but it is far better than the vehicle stomping others.
I own the IS-7 and IRIAF that I used as examples. The truth about hyper OP vehicles is that you need to think about player retention and frustration. You may think in the moment that you’re clubbing other players, gaining lots of RP, but have you consider how it directly hurts player retention? Resulting in a situation where the OP clubber will only meet those with better BR positions (for example, the popular 9.3 to 9.7). This is the same reason why so many BR brackets are dead.
The best kind of OP tank is one that is overpowered enough to get lots of kills, but not so much it stomps the whole lobby.