T-34-85 has maneuverability, ISU-152 has… gun? It’s gun isn’t significantly better than the 85, I would say objectively worse because of the reload. T-34-85 is just better
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Me a Japanese Chi-To main reading this discussion whilst playing against hard-mode enemies.
Gee, I can’t wait for us to get moved up BR again if we keep using our heads to survive and win.
Just switch to Germany
The problem is that I shouldn’t have to switch to Germany to solve my problems. They should just admit that they made a wrong choice and but it at the right B.R…
You misunderstand. What ID_Heaven was saying was that DTalpha98 should switch from playing a minor tree to playing a major tree. It’s a sarcastic comment, rooted in the fact that players who start out in WT tend to pick one of the big three. The minor tech trees are usually played by people with more experience, and are also more difficult to play, in part because the rookie players drive down the statistics (and therefore the BRs) of the major tech trees, so minor tree vehicles tend to be over-BR’d.
Of course, I can see where that confusion originated, because to make his joke in line with the thread, Heaven should have said “just switch to the USSR”, considering that this is literally a thread asking for the T-34-85 to go to 4.7. But hey, why pass up an opportunity to mock the dumb, dumb German mains, amirite?
Now, me being one of those dumb dumb German mains, I play the game on easy mode and probably don’t know what I’m talking about, and yet I am going to respond with my thoughts anyway, probably out of masochism. So:
It absolutely is not. To be honest, this opinion is so far from my own that I think we must have some wildly different underlying assumptions about what makes a vehicle “good”, so I’m just going to lay out my own reasoning, and if any of that happens to be useful to you or resonate with you, then good.
Vehicles like derp gun tank destroyers offer you a tradeoff. You are sacrificing everything for the sake of your gun. Of course, some tank destroyers are also well-protected, but those that are like this, usually will have some other kind of handicap, like a long reload time for example.
So, here’s the thing. You’re paying a price to carry the big boom stick around, that’s the tradeoff I was mentioning. You give up a turret, you give up on mobility, armour, or sometimes even both, and you give up rate of fire. When is this price worth paying? When you need to guarantee a penetration (or, in this case, overpressure through high calibre HE). Basically, when you have a high priority threat on the battlefield and you need to make sure that it dies.
Otherwise, when the 85mm is enough to cripple or kill most of the stuff you meet, you’ll go with the T-34-85 instead, why? Because it is highly mobile, with excellent acceleration, better agility in cramped spaces, a turret. It has all the advantages over the ISU except the gun, and that’s only against heavily armoured targets, because against most things you will encounter, it’s actually much better to have the fast RoF of the T-34-85. Count how many shots you can get in with it (and how much damage you’ll do) while the ISU reloads.
This is a game about capping points, a game where mobility is king. The T-34-85 combines excellent mobility with a good gun that has (especially important) fantastic normalisation. Its weakness is its hull armour. If it didn’t have that weakness, it would be incredibly strong on all three major performance criteria, speed, gun, and armour. And WT doesn’t balance any vehicle that way, correctly so.
We are all, by design, uptiered 75% of the time. This means that every single tank you play, will almost always be uptiered in some capacity, but so will most of the enemy team, so you shouldn’t let that discourage you.
Right. This is the part where I point out that below 500 metres, there is a weakspot on the Tiger’s UFP that you can pen with the T-34-85 even if the Tiger is angled at 45°, which often results in ammo rack detonation. That’s without mentioning the cupola weakspot of the H1, either.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just a German main, after all.
While I agree with what you said. My point though is that the T-34-85 doesn’t have the armor to handle anything, which would be fine if all the maps had an outside that you can go around because other tanks usually don’t go there. But most of the maps you have to face tanks head on which doesn’t really give you the time to aim at a weak spot in the armor because you’re usually dead by that time. The armor of the T-34-85 is to weak that’s why I suggested that it be down-tiered to at least 5.3, 5.0, or 4.7.
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Armour is only the innermost layer of the security onion. You should never rely on it, as a matter of playing habits. Even on tanks that do allow you to survive, you’ll be better off adopting that mentality. And most medium tanks in WT are put in this exact position.
WT maps are terrible, yes, though the reasons you cite will not give you issues with this specific tank if you know how to play it. The maps where the T-34-85 is uncompetitive are maps that force long range engagements, and/or maps that require gun depression. But maps that are flat and favour close-quarter brawling are this vehicle’s friend.
That’s one hell of an at least. You do not balance a tank with great mobility and very good gun by putting it at a BR where its armour also excels.
I find myself going back to this post, because it is probably the most definitive response that you’re going to get here.
Now that I think about it you may be right. I just have to play the tank from the sidelines or at a distance and not head on engages.
I’m just going to say that maybe if they added a 10 mm plate that you could put on your tank then maybe it would have enough armor then to be somewhat effective. I mean when you play most other tanks they can survive past 1 hit. I’m just saying that the armor value is too low considering what B.R. They placed it at. I mean if the plate gave it at least an 80% chance to be able too survive past 1 hit then it would be okay. I’m not suggesting that you give it insane amounts of armor, I’m just suggesting enough to make a considerable change in its play dynamics.
The T-34-85E is more of how I think the T-34-85 should be like, that’s why know I think that’s its fairer to be at 5.3.