So i think im not the only person who has played the 10.0 PUMA after the addition of all those “funny” internal modules and has come to the conclusion that this light tank sucks utter balls in every single regard.
The issue with PUMA after last big update, that being Seek and Destroy, is that not only is it massively overtiered it is also ill-armed to deal with the tanks around its battle rating and due to making every single map in every single update smaller and smaller, getting rid of flanking options, its extremely common for frontal engagements being the only way to deal with enemy tanks.
Recent update has given Israel a very nice and important light tank in form of the Namer 30, which not only has a pretty great gun depression, relatively hard to hit from distance turret and pretty good chance of bouncing rounds when angled down but also most importantly it has access to SPIKE ATGMs.
This make the Namer be able to both serve as its initial role of scouting vehicle but also let it be able to engage tanks frontally if the map or situation doesnt show a better alternative.
PUMA lacks this and is in every single regard a worse tank.
I know back in the “ye olden days” PUMA used to be incredibly strong due to the low BR it was assigned to at first, but that is very much in the past.
Since theres now so many new vehicles, so many new premiums around 10.0-11.3 BR, PUMA has quickly become obscured due to lackluster armaments and now also lackluster defense.
Before talking about the issue of its lack of weapons to deal with tanks in a TANK game, id like to quickly adress the argument that ive seen said so often its starting to give me a headache.
Namely the “PUMA might not have ATGMs but atleast its very survivable, you have unmanned turret so you can just pop out of cover and then back into cover”…
This is just completely wrong and is definitely coming from people that either havent played the PUMA recently or havent played the PUMA at all and are going only off of their experience of fighting it. PUMA in the last update has been made into probably the most fragile light tank in the entire game, one other user referred to it as a “repair simulator” and hes/shes completely right.
Even if you peak out of cover, your turret is the massive and any hit anywhere to it will either make your gun non-functional or will blow up your ammunition which funnily enough now automatically has a chance to blow off both your tracks through magical quantum tunneling means. This means that if you get hit by any caliber gun thats above .50cal you will either be crippled or you wont be able to move and so are a dead fish in the water.
Your crewmembers are packed closely together so a round that kills one of them will most often than not kill second person as well making you instantly die. The added FCS and autoloader modules act solely as an another way to completely cripple the tank and make no sense to be added into the game when 95% of all the vehicles like tanks for example lack it.
As for the armaments, the 30mm autocannon is simply too slow at doing any real damage unless you get lucky. Frontally its worthless against most MBTs (saying “shoot drivers hatch of a T80” at the range of 250-400+ meters is just stupid) and when it comes to shooting the sides of tanks if you dont kill a tank in the first 3 shots (because magically the autoloader of a t72 absorbs the dart rounds, or the K1 ERA thats 10mm thick somehow absorbs a round with 100+mm of flat pen at the range 500m) the chances are pretty good that the tank is just gonna shoot back and kill you instantly, or cripple you enough that you cant escape and die to the second shot.
The implementation of AHEAD ammunition “kind of” made it be somewhat better at killing helicopters but in all honesty, i went back to using darts to kill helicopters due to the higher muzzle velocity and also because incase my ammo gets blown out, which it will, id rather have <200 rounds of APFSDS than <100 rounds of APFSDS and <100 rounds of AHEAD.
The tank is simply too fragile at a BR where it cant engage things effectively and can be killed in either one or two shots from an MBT it cant even attempt to flank due to every map being flatter, smaller map offering 0 flanking routes and punishing any other behaviour than apebrawling in the center.
THE FIX:
The way to fix PUMA isnt even that hard to implement. Give PUMA its historical MELLS (Spikes) ATGM launcher so that it can atleast engage MBTs from all angles (AND I FUCKIN BEG PLEASE DONT GIVE IT 2 SPIKES ONLY THINKING THAT IS ENOUGH) or if youre still stingy about adding spikes for some reason despite the fact theres literally light tanks like Vilkas, Namer or Freccia in the game, lower the battlerating of the PUMA down to 9.3
Currently playing PUMA is akin to trying to wipe my ass with sand paper after taking a dump, it just barely gets the job done while being a pain in everyones ass.
