Gaijin honestly needs to move the Puma VJTF to 10.3 or just fix/buff spikes. The only difference between the normal puma and this one are the spikes and they genuinly are not worth a 0.7 br increase.
Spikes need better tracking (come from above like spikes are meant to and hit the top of the tank not just go up and down just to hit the upper frontplate) and sometimes they wont lock onto a target that you can see but is half way behind cover.
This Puma would be perfect at 10.3 it has poor performing missiles that the orginal one doesnt have so the +0.3 br compensates for that and further its just a copy and paste and it fits perfectly into the german 10.3 lineup
9.7 or 9.3 PUMA (Both) would be good, at least from what I can see, obviously 9.0 is unviable as you still find Chemical rounds like APHE or HEAT.
With the Spikes it’s not well implemented in ground as for some reason helicopters with same ordinances can still perform good, example is the Israeli AH-60.
With the current BR is all about decompression, something that Gaijin refuses to work on.
Spikes are never gonna be that good though due to their F&F feature. Gameplay wise they’re completely un-interactive and if they were 100% reliable would feel like complete shit to play against. Right now it’s a 50-50 split, they kinda feel bad to use and kinda feel bad to play vs.
The Puma, with just its autocannons, was a monster at 8.3. It absolutely dominated early Cold War tanks. Even at 9.3, it was still a beast. That’s why Gaijin bumped it up to 10.0, I reckon - to finally give it a challenge.
Spikes is useless in ground battle because the maps are too small. It needs like 500 meters to be effective, but no one fights that far away in most cases.
I’d say to turn it useless, after the addition of the VJTF the number of Puma rised but for a reason, people wanna try what the VJTF can offer, short long story, it gives shit.
Same vehicle, same problems, the autocannon is pure garbage without a secondary to assist, M3A3 is on 10.0 because it has least usable missiles that the player can work with, along with the Trashmaster which is mid to bad.
People could just not waste time and test Vilkas which has the same bad missiles without going through a whole grind just to get frustrated at the end and complain on the forums, again.
Back then Puma also didn’t spall. It was quite literally unkillable unless you specifically aimed for the driver & gunner on the right side of the hull. I played the hell out of it at all of its BRs (32 nukes within the first hundred matches…) so I know its ins and outs, and what you had to give to kill one back in the day, and quite frankly, 9.3 was the sweetspot since it didn’t have to contend with AFVs it pretty much cannot take on without the other party being dead drunk, but was still armored enough that it could work.
It also wasn’t handicapped by the new damageable modules so you had to aim for the turret to take out it gun.
There is no challenge to be had against the current Puma at 10.0, it’s toothless cause Gaijin absolutely refuses to fix its armor & weapon systems. Sure, you can make it work, but your options are limited.
Neither against aircraft, unless you’re silly and just keep hovering static with a helicopter while a piece of can with explosives comes at you at 80m/s when you can hear it miles away.
The game is War Thunder, and the discussion impacts the balance of other vehicles.
A more superior vehicle [as much as we can argue about SPIKE’s effectiveness currently] moving to below the BR of another is something to be noted.
PUMA’s fast with good chemical protection and a good cannon.
SPIKE’s are arguably very non-ideal right now, and that shouldn’t impact the BR when further improvements can be made, especially since BR changes are 2x a year while major updates are 5, and bug/QOL patches are well over 50.
It’s not “whataboutism”, it’s a challenge to the post to get them to better think about that post’s position and if they should retain that position or reconsider options.
[Granted, fixing F&F code could require entirely new system that takes longer to implement than I or others think.]
Yea? And bringing up other vehicles in a thread about the Puma, just for the sake of “making a stand” is called whataboutism.
A more superior vehicle [as much as we can argue about SPIKE’s effectiveness currently] moving to below the BR of another is something to be noted.
Alright, now name areas in which Puma is practically superior to the BMP-2M.
(Firepower? Absolutely not, the ~20mm odd more penetration is irrelevant when 2Ms RPM is ~3 times as high, not to mention Kornets. Sights? No difference. Armor? Again, really no difference since everyone shoots KE ammo or ATGMs with more than 800mm of penetration. Mobility, yea, reverse. Survivability? Only if Puma sits hulldown 24/7).
PUMA’s fast with good chemical protection and a good cannon.
The other two are also fast and have good cannons (BMP-2Ms is realistically much better due to fire-rate). Chemical protection of the Puma is irrelevant anyways since it’s not enough to stop any ATGMs at 10.0 and up, maybe if you luck out in a downtier, though (if you mention HEAT-FS then I will happily block you).
Don’t forget the CTWV RCV sits at 9.7 and its struggling so bad to pen the sides of MBTs. Feels like it needs to go down to 9.3 or 9.0 with the other autocannons.
Pretty sure neither have APFSDS at this time, which was the implication by him citing CTWV.
Obviously none of the vehicles listed have armor.
PUMA came into the game as the most armored IFV, and… yeah that went as well as PT-76-57 at 7.0/7.3, cause Gaijin didn’t know how well either would perform.
@ARK_BOI
Is Abrams and Type-90 turret ring fixed? Cause I said they could be separate BRs when that occurs.
Pretty sure neither have APFSDS at this time, which was the implication by him citing CTWV.
Yet both have more than enough penetration to go through the sides of MBTs even with just APDS, and, on top of that, they get ATGMs (barrel fired as well, so there’s next to no deviation). BMD-4 is also reallyyyy fast, and has excellent gun-handling in comparison to the CRV.
tl;dr, Russian tanks, pretty much no unless at a perfectly flat angle, NATO ones, most, yes.
@Jεcka
So pre-decompression max BR Puma got to was 9.7. Decompression happened and everything at 10.0 today was once 9.7 or less prior.
Puma for whatever reason was put at 8.7 initially. OBVIOUSLY the rounds at and below that BR couldn’t do anything to it reliably. It quickly went up like the PT-76-57 for survivability.
Whether it was the lack of fragmentation and armor spalling, the armor against chemical rounds, along with the forward and reverse speed in close quarters maps that allowed it to flank mid-cold war tanks fairly easily. It was a little monster.
TODAY… at 10.0, I still aim too high on it in my tanks that can obviously pen it cause I’m trying to avoid the front armor + transmission + engine protection shot that M1 Abrams will always not fully pen on, then its autocannon goes through the M1’s turret ring. Of course that’s not just me, I witness this happen to other players both enemy and friendly whenever I go around 10.0 BR.
So its design is still centered around survivability… and at 10.0… I think it has characteristics that make it suitable to retain there.
Its 25.6hp/t.
Empty space, and significant protection design.
Its 30mm cannon with decent APFSDS.
People like to cite its crewless turret; I personally don’t see how that’s an advantage for it as you can still disable its turret then frag the crew in the 2nd shot.
I would say that I cannot see it being equivalent to VBCI-2, CV9035DK, and CTWV RCV; whom which are so much weaker in armor that people don’t second-guess where they’re aiming when using M1 Abrams or XM-1, and other equivalent MBT rounds; irrelevant if the rounds now go through where they use to not cause getting players to trust those shots is hard… trust me I know with how many people don’t trust T-80B turret shots despite firing 3BM42 or superior rounds from other tech trees.
I’ve stated previously that maybe further decompression is necessary for IFVs; and I’ve also supported improved scouting rewards as well as other light-tank duty rewards such as improved repair rewards for light tanks. Though for now I don’t think enough people are pushing for those ideas, as well as other similar types of ideas, enough for Gaijin to take note.
As for the SPIKEs… I think that them adding 0.7 BR to the vehicle seems normal for vehicles that get ATGMs attached to their existing equipment.
Though… Freccia goes up by 1.3 over its cannon-only counterpart; maybe something to do with SPIKEs being so much better than the weaknesses of the rest of the platform to warrant that increase.
Maybe VBC PT2 is under-BR’d…
Maybe something else.